386 Miscellanies. 
legs very small and slender: toes five in number on all the feet, ter- 
minated by small hooked nails, with the exception of the four 
thumbs, which are armed with a small and broad nail: tail about 
the length of the body, not including the head and neck, covered 
with short hairs, and terminating in a delicate pencil. Head rather 
elongated ; snout furnished with from twenty to thirty sete of dif- 
ferent lengths, some white, others black: teeth, consisting of six 
molars in each jaw, invested with enamel, and marked on their 
crowns with transverse eminences: four incisors, short above, and 
sub-piceous on their anterior surfaces ; inferior, long, compressed, 
and white. 
‘Dimensions.—Total length about nine inches, viz. of the head. 
2 in. 2 tenths, of the body 4in., of the tail 4 in.: length of the 
anterior extremities rather more than I in. 
Habitat.—Found in the fresh water swamps of New Jersey and 
South Carolina. The present specimen was taken near “ Fast 
land,” in the vicinity of Salem. A similar specimen was sent to me 
by Dr. Bachman, of Charleston, S. C.—Cab. of A. N.S. Philad. 
‘Remarks.—Native species of true rats are very rare in the United 
States; besides the present perhaps but one other species exists in 
this country,—unless indeed we admit the Mus rattus to be native. 
The Mus Sylvaticus is common to Europe and North America; the 
Mus leucopus, and Mus nigricans of Raffin. we take, fret his 
descriptions, to be mere synonymes. 
MISCELLANIES. 
DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN. 
1. On the Meteoric Shower of November, 1836. 
By Denison Oxmsrep, Professor of Natural Philosophy and 
Astronomy in Yale College. 
For six years in suecession, there has been observed , on or about 
the 13th of November of each year, a remarkable exhibition of 
shooting stars, which has received the name of the ‘ Meteoric 
wer.” 
In 1831, the phenomenon was observed in the State of Ohio,* 
and in the Mediterranean, off the coast of Spain.t In. 1832, the 
* Amer. Journal of Science, xxviii, 419. 
+ Bibliotheque Universelle, Sept. 1835. 
