524 Miscellaneous. 



" I have also shot a very fine Tot anus glareola, or Wood Sandpiper ; 

 and a pair of Charadrius Cantiamis, or Kentish Plover, male and fe- 

 male, very beautiful birds : the female is in the Margate Museum." 

 3, Bath Road, Margate, Kent. 



Mr. Mummery, who is now on his way to the Orkney Islands, on 

 an ornithological expedition, also informs us that two Porbeagle 

 Sharks, a male and a female, have just been taken at Margate in a 

 mackerel-net, and are designed for the Museum there. 



EMBERIZA HORTULANA. 



Henfield, Sussex, May 29. 



Sir, — As it appears to me that the occurrence of every rare animal 

 ought to be made known to those who take an interest in Natural 

 History, I send you the following notice, thinking that the Editors 

 may probably consider it worthy of insertion in their Magazine. 



On the 29th of April a very perfect specimen of the Ortolan Bunt- 

 ing, Emhcriza Hortulana of Jenyns, ' Brit. An.' p. 132, was shot 

 whilst sitting on the parapet of the viaduct of the Brighton and Lon- 

 don Railway, near the Brighton terminus. When first seen it was 

 very restless, flitting about and uttering an incessant shriU chirping 

 note. This specimen, which is now in my possession, agrees in every 

 respect with the descriptions of Mr. Jenyns and of Mr. Yarrell, ex- 

 cept that the tail has a portion of the inner webs of three of the 

 outer feathers white instead of tioo. 



This is, I believe, at most only the sixth specimen which has 

 hitherto occurred in Britain. 



I am. Sir, yours obediently, 

 Richard Taylor, Esq. Wm. Borrer, Jun. 



Diluvial Scratches. — " Large areas of this rock being uncovered for 

 the purpose of quarrying, it is found planished as if by the friction 

 of some heavy body moving over it, and marked by parallel grooves, 

 which are regarded by Dr. Locke as 'diluvial scratches*;' they 

 are found at ' Light's quarrj% east of the Miami, and seven miles 

 above Dayton, thus rendered particularly interesting by the discovery 

 in it of ' diluvial grooves,' a circumstance which I had thought pro- 

 bable from the fact of the planishing or grinding down of the strata ' 

 first observed at Col. Partridge's quarry, ' where the upper surface, 

 especially at the apex of its convexity, has its roughness nearly worn 

 off, not by corrosion or by decomposition, nor by the attrition of sand 

 and gravel, but by the grinding of a flat surface, making the work, so 

 far as it went, a perfect plane, and leaving the pits of the deepest 

 cavities entirely untouchedf.' ' Light's quarry has been ' stripped' 

 of soil, more or less, over ten acres, and the upper layer of stone is 



* [They will now, perhaps, be claimed by some of our geologists as 

 glacial. — Ed.] 



f These cavities are found, where another layer of the rock lies upon this, 

 to answer to salient points in the upper one, and the " natural surface of the 

 stone is within certain limits as rough as can be conceived, there being sharp 

 teeth, an inch long, projecting from one layer and entering tlie contiguous 

 one." 



