VOL. XLIV.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 351 



Many creatures of very different kinds put off their skins and shells at certain 

 periods. All serpents are supposed to do so ; the skins of several kinds being 

 often found whole. Crabs, lobsters, cray-fish, shrimps, and probably most or 

 all of the crustaceous fishes, cast their shells from time to time , and if we may 

 guess of the rest by the fresh water shrimp, which Mr. B. had kept scleral times 

 and observed, their shells are put off without any other breach than one, longi- 

 tudinally, in the middle of the belly part, through which the body, tail, and 

 claws are drawn out, and the shell left in a manner whole. 



Of the insect tribe, every caterpiller has 3 or 4 skins, before its change into 

 the aurelia state, in which the place of creeping out is a little below the head. 

 The spider throws off the skin or shell 3 or 4 times, getting out of it by a rup- 

 ture underneath, and leaving every claw, and even the homy covering of his 

 forceps entire. Even the little mite casts its skin also at several short periods, 

 and nearly in the same manner. 



PI. 8, fig. 1, represents the lizard; and fig. 3 the same in the act of drawing 

 off the skin with its mouth. 



A Remark by the Editor. — Wm. Oliver the viper-catcher, mentioned in N° 443 of these Trans- 

 actions, made a present to the Royal Society of a female viper big with young, which was kept alive 

 in common green moss, in a box with a glass cover. She brought forth several young ones, which 

 slipped off their skins, and the outer membrane of their eyes along with them, in 6 weeks after their 

 birth ; and they shed them again 2 months after : but being then put into spirits of wine to preserve 

 them, they were killed ; but may still be seen in the museum of the Society. They first loosen the 

 skin about the mouth, and so slip it olF backwards, by wriggling themselves through the entangle- 

 ment of the moss : for some of the skins were torn, and parts of it stuck in the moss. C. M. — Orig. 



An Improvement of the Celestial Globe. By Mr. James Ferguson. 



N° 483, p. 535. 



The paper may be seen at large in Mr. F.'s Astronomy, art. 401, and the fig. 

 of the globe in pi. 3 of that work. 



The Case of a young Child, at Houghton in Huntingdonshire, born with all its 

 Bones Displaced. By Mr. Edward Davis, Surgeon at Huntingdon. N° 483, 

 p. 539. 



Mr. D. being desired to see this child, found both the radius and ulna of the 

 right arm, with the bones of the carpus and metacarpus, also the fore-finger and 

 little finger of the same hand, all dislocated. The radius and ulna of the left 

 arm were dislocated, and receded from each other ; likewise the fore-finger and 

 little-finger of the same hand. The os femoris of the right leg was dislocated 

 very oddly, and laid downwards, so that one might feel the end of it : the pa- 

 tellalaid high up the thigh ; and the tibia and fibula at their union with the os 

 femoris were also dislocated, and receded very much from each other. The 



