94 CORRESPONDENCE—GLEANINGS. 
and grass snails are often found in its stomach. The toad which is often 
found in the stomach of the common snake is not found in the stomach 
of the viper. The reproductive organs in the male and female differ very 
much. The male has a soft roe like a fish, the female a string of oblong 
small bodies—ova—which develope into the shape and size of robins eggs, 
consisting of yellow matter like the yolk of an egg, before there is any 
trace of the existence of a young viper. The young viper does not 
escape from its fine membranous covering until immediately before its 
passage into the world, when it is lively, active, and well provided with 
every means of procuring food, and at once leaves the parent. They 
may be often seen coiled up on a flat stone in a sunny spot when very 
little longer than when they passed from the old one. You often meet 
with very young ones early in the spring, during the summer months, 
and as late as September in the autumn. The young vipers are of a 
reddish or copper colour; something like that of the common blindworm, 
—Hewnry Birp. 
Glewnings. 
Tae Minptanp Nartvuratist.—The Northampton Natural History 
Society has set an example which we commend to the consideration of 
the other societies in ‘‘our Union.” The committee has decided to 
present each member (100 in number) with a copy of the ‘“ Midland 
Naturalist’ during the present year. 
Lyeww’s SrupEnt’s ELemMEents or Groxtocy.—A third edition of this 
popular work has just been issued, revised by Mr. Leonard Lyell, Prof. 
Judd, and Mr. Etheridge. 
Guactan Derrostrs.—Mr. D. Mackintosh, F.G.S., of Birkenhead, who 
is well known as an untiring worker at the Drift of the North and 
North-west of England, has printed a syllabus of a paper he has lately 
laid before the Royal Society. After some introductory remarks, he 
treats of the ‘“ Boulder-supplying capacity” of (1) Criffel in Kirkeud- 
brightshire, (2) the Lake District, and (3) the Arenig Mountains. Then 
the association of flints and lias fossils with Northern Boulders is 
discussed with many other interesting points. Altogether this ‘‘ syllabus” 
is well calculated to whet the appetites of glacialists, and to make them 
wish for a speedy publication of Mr. Mackintosh’s Memoir, either by 
the Royal or the Geological Society. It is, we believe, illustrated by an 
elaborate map. 
‘Ture Busou List or British Burrerruiss,” just issued by Mr. H. W. 
Marsden, of Gloucester, will be welcomed by Lepidopterists as a useful 
pocket companion. It is based on Dr. Staudinger’s List, includes all the 
‘‘yeputed” species, and gives synonymes and authorities. It ought to 
help to break down the wall of exclusiveness with which the English 
Lepidopterist has so persistently shut himself in with his ‘“ British 
Butterflies,” as if he wished it to be thought that they had ‘‘ no connec- 
tion”’ with those ‘‘ over the water.” 
Proressor Huxiry will lecture in Leicester to the Literary and 
Philosophical Society on March 24th on ‘‘ The Structural Characters and 
the Operations of the Simplest Forms of Living Beings.” This subject 
will be especially interesting in connection with the recent researches of 
Dr. W. Jobnston, F.G.S., the Assistant Officer of Health for Leicester, 
who traces the infantile diarrhcea, which has been so fearfully prevalent 
in that town, to the action of various forms of Bacteria, Microscopic 
274 
