OCCASIONAL NOTES. 499 
ADDER TAKING POSSESSION OF A Nest.—Looking over last year’s notes, 
I recently came across the following, which I intended at the time to send 
for publication in ‘ The Zoologist,’ but which, in the hurry and scramble of 
a change of quarters from Aldershot to Ireland, found its way to the lowest 
depths of a portmanteau instead of the pages of that welcome periodical :— 
“ June 4, 1878. Warder Ford reports a strange incident. He was at Fleet 
Pond, and seeing an Adder lying coiled up in the thick herbage at the 
foot of a bush at the water’s edge, he struck at it with a thick stick and 
killed it. To his astonishment, the blow also knocked a young Reed 
Bunting, Emberiza scheniclus, out ofa nest on which the Adder had been 
lying, fortunately doing it no injury. It turned out that the reptile had 
coiled itself up—probably already gorged by a previous heavy meal—on the 
top of the Bunting’s nest, containing four young birds, like a veritable 
dog in the manger, waiting till its appetite returned before devoting its 
gastronomic energies to the consumption of its victims.” It is satisfactory 
to know that the whole of the brood safely left their nest in due time.— 
8. G. Rem (Capt. R.E.). 
Boak-FIsh ON 1HE DeEyonsHirE Coast.—The shore on the western 
side of Plymouth, on August 12th, was strewn with Boar-fish, Capros aper. 
I asked some fishermen, who were drawing a seine for Mackerel, whether 
they had caught them; but they said that they were caught by the trawlers 
in the channel, who in coming into Plymouth threw them overboard when - 
turning out their nets, and as there was a strong easterly wind blowing at 
the time it accounted for so many being driven on the western shore. 
I should say there were more than a thousand of them, and almost all of 
‘the most beautiful colour, some quite crimson, others more scarlet or pink ; 
but all more or less beautifully banded or striped. I found, however, that 
these bands soon faded or disappeared altogether on being exposed to the 
light and air. They had a peculiarly strong fishy smell, and their very 
small scales were exceedingly dry and rough to the touch. The construction 
of the protruding and retractile snout is very curious. On asking the 
fishermen, out of curiosity, what they called them, they one and all answered 
“ Cuckoo-fish”; but I-think what is generally by fishermen called by that 
name is the Cook Wrass, and. sometimes one of the Red Gurnards.—Joun 
GarcomBr (Durnford Street, Stonehouse). 
Tue OccurrENcE or Lepropora IN LxGLanp.— At the recent 
meeting of the British Association at Sheffield, Sir John Lubbock, in the 
Department of Zoology and Botany, called the attention of the Section to 
the occurrence in England of. Leptodora, a very interesting crustacean 
