7378 Quadrupeds. 



cove, with patches of long coarse reedy grass in the background. This is a favourite 

 resort of the seals, and here their manners and custonns may be always studied. The 

 old gray bulls rear the fore part of their bodies and slowly sway themselves from side 

 to side, meanwhile throwing up their great heads and bellowing continuously. 

 The cows and their calves are congregated together in a coterie by themselves, and 

 on the outlying rocks repose, in attitudes anything but graceful, an entire seraglio of 

 young females. The noise of the seals in the night is something fearful: it is like the 

 croaking of Brobdignag bull-frogs, varied at intervals by deep growls and sharp cries, 

 low-muttered curses, snoriings, dissonant brayings, and other sounds even more un- 

 earthly still. Three individuals fall victims to the prowess of our sportsmen, and are 

 towed on board in triumph. From the simple pointed molar teeth of the upper jaw, 

 and by other characters, I make them out to be a species of Halichoerus, very possibly 

 H. barbatus. — Arthur Adams. 



Cat taking the Water. — A man in my employment, who lived in an adjacent 

 cottage, had a fine tortoiseshell cat, which was not only an excellent mouser, but was 

 also extremely fond of the flesh of water-rats and moorhens. In pursuit of these she 

 was frequently observed to plunge into the water, and seldom failed to bring out a 

 prize. — Jonathan Gruhb. 



Hedgehogs. — We have hedgehogs constantly in our garden ; and during the late 

 wet summer (1860) I observed that they had been very busy at night on the lawn 

 rooting, so as quite to disfigure it ; but I could not perceive that it was the plantain 

 roots that attracted them, as mentioned by Gilbert White. I rather thought, from 

 the appearance of the holes, that worms were the object of their search. I have fre- 

 quently pursued them in the dusk on a summer's evening, and found that so long as I 

 kept at a moderate distance they continued to run pretty fast, but as soon as I got up 

 to them they immediately sought safety by rolling themselves up and concealing all 

 the tender parts within their prickly armour. It was pleasing then to watch at a little 

 distance the cautious manner in which they unrolled themselves and made oflf to the 

 nearest cover. — Id. 



Note on Spermophilus erythrogenoides, Falconer, a new Species of Marmot. — 

 I have much pleasure in presenting a sketch of the right ramus of the lower jaw of this 

 new species of marmot. I have made the sketch from the jaw now in the Museum at 

 Taunton. It has been to London, and compared by perhaps the greatest authority 



for cave-animal remains. Dr. Falconer. 

 This gentleman informed me that he 

 considered it then to be the jaw of 

 Spermophilus citellus; but he after- 

 wards found it to be not that species, 

 but an entirely new one, to which he 

 has given the above name. The speci- 

 men, which was bought by the Somerset 

 Archaeological and Natural-History So- 

 ciety, was in the late Mr. Williams's 

 collection of Devonian fossils and cave-animal remains. The latter are from 

 the Mendip caverns, and among them are some very fine specimens ; one, a head of 

 Hyaena spelaea. Dr. Falconer told me is the finest in Europe. These marmots, or 

 ground-squirrels as they are called, were probably as plentiful in our limestone hills 

 ages ago as they are now, scattered over the Old and New World. This animal, to 



