OCCASIONAL NOTES. 523 
path in the Zoological Society’s Gardens, Regent’s Park. These 
appear to me to possess all the characters assigned to the species 
now under consideration, although I have not yet had an oppor- 
tunity of examining them under the microscope, and satisfactorily 
determining the presence or abseuce of teeth. 
The occurrence, then, of this annelid in England having been 
placed beyond doubt, it is to be hoped that observers in different 
parts of the country will look out for it, investigate its habits, and 
forward for publication the results of their researches. Worms and 
leeches with most people are not especial favourites; but, under 
the present aspects of science, they are of more than usual interest, 
particularly as regards their habits and modes of development. 
OCCASIONAL NOTES. 
Mr. Wuarton’s ‘List ov BrivtsH Birps.—In ‘The Zoologist’ for 
October (pp. 458 seqq.) you published a review of my ‘List of British 
Birds.’ With your kind permission, I desire to make a few remarks in 
reply. In the first place, your reviewer finds difficulties in regard to 
Sundevall’s system, which a reference to his ‘ Tentamen’ would have easily. 
dispelled; most of the objections that he raises are inseparable from a 
simply linear arrangement. But when objection is taken to my definition 
of a British bird, I must answer that I aimed at making, not a Census, but 
a List. It is not to such a mere enumeration as mine that a zoological 
geographer appeals when he wants to know what species are really indi- 
genous or natural to any given country. But surely it does throw light on 
a fauna to have on record even the isolated occurrence of the most alien 
species, thus showing not only its resources as a metropolis, but also every 
form which it is capable of associating to itself. Your reviewer not 
unjustly dreads an undue multiplication of genera, but the retention of the 
Serin in the genus Fringilla is rendered impossible by the acceptance of 
Sundevall’s method; he places the one in the family Chloriding, charac- 
terized among other particulars by the absence of vibrissee, and the other 
in the family F'ringilline, where the vibrissee are evident. And surely the 
separation of Helodromas from the Totani requires no apology when, as 
pointed out by your reviewer, it depends upon an obvious osteological 
difference, which similarity of external circumstances shows no tendency to 
obliterate.. The inconsistencies of terminations to which your reviewer 
alludes depend on a simple question of grammar. Phenicurus and rubecula 
are substantives standing in apposition to their respective generic names; 
