4264 The Zoologist — December, 1874. 



almost instantaneously rectified and the victim swallowed head foremost. 

 The wings are used exactly as a turtle uses its anterior flappers ; indeed 

 when the penguin is enjoying his subaqueous flight round and round his 

 limited tank, in pursuit of a gudgeon, the motion of bis wings is identical 

 with that of the flappers of a turtle, as I have seen them exhibited in the 

 Aquarium at Brighton. The penguin under water may be not inaptly com- 

 pared to a turtle which having lost its posterior flappers by some accident, 

 ■was allowing the anterior pair to do the ^yorlc of all four : a disciple 

 of Lamarcli would without hesitation affirm that the remaining pair had 

 obviously increased in length and strength in order to meet the increased 

 duties that had devolved on them in consequence of the casualty. Then, as 

 to the legs, t^ey are stout and strong, but appear even less adapted to 

 aquatic than to terrestrial progression ; in his subaqueous flight the penguin 

 holds them straiglit beliind him and close together, the tail, as in the seal, 

 alone intervening, and legs and tail foiming a truncated termination to the 

 seal-like body, which is drawn after the flappers, without any motion of 

 legs or flexion of the spine; of course the ornithic arrangement of bone 

 would render such flexion impossible. I trust the time may be approaching 

 when we shall have the opportunity of watching tlie subaqueous movement 

 of all animals whose home is the ocean ; and that the projectors of the 

 Aquarium at "Westminster will shortly exhibit porpoises, grampuses, dolphins 

 and turtles, utterly regardless of all considerations but the healthy condition 

 of their prisoners, and, as a consequence, the reumncrative character of their 

 spirited undertaking. The poor penguin verified my prognostication of his 

 fate by dying on the 3rd of November : on examination his viscera were 

 found to be much diseased. — Edward Newman. 



An Angler or Fishing Frog at Ihc Manrlicstcr Aquarinm.— Mr. Saville 

 Kent, who has just received from Colwyu Bay, a living specimen of this 

 peculiarly objectionable-looking fish, has thus described his acquisition in 

 the ' Field Newspaper' of November l4th : — " lie lay hke a huge toad, or 

 rather the very embodiment of some hideous gnome or other demon of rapine 

 and darkness. A more flattened, repulsive-looking, low-typed head — and the 

 animal is all head— than that of this fish scarcely exists, with its extra- 

 ordinary development of lower jaw, armed with threatening rows of recurved 

 teeth, its close-set eyes, and the numerous rugged ridges and protuberances 

 with which its surface is beset. Nevertheless, as in all other instances, 

 associated with the master hand of Nature, a closer contemplation of this, at 

 first sight, repulsive-looking fish leads us gradually to substitute feelings of 

 wonder and amazement for the earlier ones of aversion and repulse, until 

 our minds at length become lost in admiration at the beautiful adaptation to 

 a fixed purpose exhibited throughout its entire construction. Thus, though 



