THE ZOOLOGIST—FEBRUARY, 1876. 4805 
Edible Turtle off the Sussex Coast,—A few days before Christmas Day 
the Hastings fishermen found, floating in the British Channel, a large 
edible turtle, dead but in quite a fresh condition. They could not find a 
purchaser for it whole, so they cleaned out the shell and brought the dorsal 
part to me; all the rest of the animal was thrown into the sea before they 
came to me, or I should like to have preserved the head or some other parts 
of it. The men stated that they found more than a quart of eggs within it. 
The carapace measured in length, from front to tail, over the back, forty- 
one inches and a half, and its greatest width across the back was thirty-six 
inches. How it came into the position in which it was found is unknown, but 
it was evident that it had very recently died. Bell does not record the finding 
of any specimen of this species in his « History of British Reptiles.’—J. 8. 
Bowerbank ; 2, East Ascent, St. Leonards-on-Sea, January 8, 1876. 
‘Toads in a Tree.—I have cut the enclosed from the ‘ Kastern Daily Press’ 
of this day, and send it to you, thinking that you might perhaps like to 
insert it in the ‘ Zoologist. —J. H. Gurney ; Northrepps Hall, Norwich, 
January 21, 1876. 
“Perhaps the enclosed cutting from the ‘ Uitenhage Times’ (South Africa) 
of December 10th may not be uninteresting to some of your readers :— 
‘A few weeks ago, at the Umgawali Forest, a tree with a trunk of sixteen 
feet long being on the saw-pit, when the bark and the first plank had been 
sawn off, a hole was found going inwards, the size of a wine-glass, from 
which the sawyers scraped out sixty-eight small toads. T hey were each’ the 
size of the upper joint of one’s little finger, of a light brown, almost yellow 
colour, and perfectly healthy, hopping about and away as if nothing had 
happened. All about them was solid yellow wood, with nothing to indicate 
how they could have got there, how long they had been there, or how they 
could have lived without food, drink or air.—C. Daniels.” 
The Westminster Aquarium.—The imposing ceremony of opening the 
Westminster Aquarium was performed on Saturday, the 22nd instant, by 
H.R.H. the Duke of Edinburgh. It is constructed on the circulating 
system as successfully carried out by Mr. Lloyd at the Crystal Palace: 
but, alack! there was neither water nor fishes. The writer of this hoped 
to set the engine in motion for the first time, but the absence of the two 
essentials nullified his efforts: he intends to report progress next month.— 
Edward Newman. 
Torpedo on the Irish Coast.— During the first week of December a 
torpedo came into my possession, which had been offered for sale in the 
Dublin Market along with a number of fish taken by the trawl-boats, 
probably off our south-east coast. Like the other examples which have been 
recorded from the Irish Seas, this proves to belong to the so-called “ New 
SECOND SERIES—VOL. XI. L 
