236 Miscellaneous. 



breeds, now extinct or rare, both of quadrupeds and birds, were still 

 common. The fox, whose life is, in many counties, held almost as 

 sacred as that of a human being, was considered as a mere nuisance. 

 Oliver St. John told the Long Parliament that Strafford was to be 

 regarded, not as a stag or hare, to whom some law was to be given, 

 but as a fox, who was to be snared by any means, and knocked on 

 the head without pity. This illustration would be by no means a 

 happy one if addressed to country gentlemen of our time : but in 

 St. John's days there were not seldom great massacres of foxes to 

 which the peasantry thronged with all the dogs that could be mus. 

 tered: traps were set ; nets were spread; no quarter was given; and to 

 shoot a female with cub was considered as a feat which merited the 

 gratitude of the neighbourhood. The red deer were then as common 

 in Gloucestershire and Hampshire as they are now among the Gram- 

 pian hills. On one occasion Queen Anne, on her way to Portsmouth, 

 saw a herd of no less than 500. The wild bull with his white mane 

 was still to be found wandering in a few of the southern forests. The 

 badger made his dark and tortuous hole on the side of every hill 

 where the copsewood grew thick. The wild cats were frequently 

 heard by night wailing round the lodges of the rangers of Whittle- 

 bury and Needwood. The yellow-breasted martin was still pursued 

 in Cranbourne Chase for his fur, reputed inferior only to that of the 

 sable. Fen eagles, measuring more than 9 feet between the extre- 

 mities of the wings, preyed on fish along the coast of Norfolk. On 

 all the downs, from the British Channel to Yorkshire, huge bustards 

 strayed in troops of fifty or sixty, and were often hunted with grey- 

 hounds. The marshes of Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire were 

 covered during some months of every year by immense clouds of 

 cranes. Some of these races the progress of cultivation has extir- 

 pated. Of others the numbers are so much diminished that men 

 crowd to gaze at a specimen as at a Bengal tiger or a Polar bear." — 

 From Macau/ay's History of England. 



On Thaliklla, a new genus of Cirripedes allied to Scalpellum. 

 By J. E. Gray, Esq., F.R.S. etc. 



Thaliella. 



Valves 1 1 ; opercular valves subtriangular ; dorsal elongate, curved ; 

 lower dorsal and anterior compressed, with two pairs of lateral valves 

 in the middle of the body above the base. Peduncle with rings of 

 imbricate horny scales. 



This genus chiefly differs from Scalpellum in the front and hinder 

 lateral pair of valves being each united into a single compressed valve, 

 and in having no middle basal lateral valve. 



This genus was shown to me by Mr. J. S. Bowerbank, who re- 

 ceived it from Algoa Bay attached to some species of Plumaria. 



Thaliella ornata. 



Pale horn-coloured, varied with red spots, or with a single red band 

 on each side ; valves horny, subpellucid, radiately striated. 



On Plumaria, Algoa Bay, Cape of Good Hope. Presented to the 

 British Museum by J. S. Bowerbank, Esq. 



