3408 The Zoologist — February, 1873. 



Singalar Sitnation for a Squirrel. — On tbe 4th of November last, while 

 shooting with my brother in some low wet marshes, a dog we had with us 

 found something in a wide ditch with a thin fringe of sedges, which we 

 supposed to be either a waterheu or a water rail, and accordingly prepared 

 for a shot ; the dog seemed for a time a good deal puzzled, but at last made 

 a drive at something in the water, and pulled out a live squirrel. This 

 occurred at a long distance from a tree of any kind, the nearest wood likely 

 to be frequented by these animals being more than a mile from where we 

 found him, and the intervening ground ^YCt and marshy. — O. S. Pope ; 

 Leiston, Suffolk. 



Another Frozen mammoth. — In the ' Times' of Januaiy ITth, under the 

 head of " Arctic Expedition," there is a remarkable notice of an expedition 

 to the North Pole, under the command of a young and wealthy French- 

 American, M. Pavy, extracted from the ' Courier des Etats Uuis.' The 

 despatches are dated from the eastern coast of Wrangell's Land, August 23. 

 At eighty miles from the mouth of a newly-discovered great river, " the 

 explorers found on the plain some vestiges of mastodons " (evidently mam- 

 moths, Elephas primigenius, as indicated in the sequel by the described 

 curvature of the tusks), " and on clearing away the snow from a spot whence 

 emerged the tusks of one of that extinct race, they brought to light its 

 enormous body in a perfect state of preservation. The skin was covered 

 with black stiff hair, very long and thick upon the back. The tusks 

 measured eleven feet eight inches, and were bent back about the level of the 

 eyes. The fore legs were bent, resting on the knees, and the posterior 

 parts were deeply sunk in the snow, in a posture indicating that the 

 animal had died while trying to extricate itself from a watery or snowy 

 trough. Professor Newman had not discovered sufficient characteristics on 

 the body of the mastodon to justify his classing it as a different species 

 from the elephant of our day" (showing thereby that he was unlikely to 

 have distinguished a mastodon from a mammoth!) "From its stomach 

 were taken pieces of bark and grasses, the nature of which could not be 

 analyzed on the spot. Over an area of many miles the plain was covered 

 with the remains of mastodons, indicating that a numerous herd of these 

 gigantic animals must have perished there. This region abounds with Polar 

 bears, which live on the remains of the mastodons." Hardly so, or the latter 

 would have disappeared long ago, even if the bones of those animals had 

 been intended. Nothing is stated about any specimens having been secured. 

 —From the ' Field.' 



Zoology of Jlr. Stanley's New African lake. — " The immediate shores 

 of the lake on all sides, for at least fifty feet from the water's edge, is one 

 impassable morass, nourishing rank reeds and rushes, where the hippo- 

 potamus's ponderous form has crushed into watery trails the soft composition 

 of the morass as he passes from the lake on his nocturnal excursions : the 



