1176 The Zoologist— April, 1868. 



Hare (Zool. S. S. 977). — Mr. Notinan writes me: — "In noticing 

 the hare, you omit the curious superstition the Swedes entertain 

 respecting that animal. In Sweden every sportsman cuts off pussy's 

 head immediately after shooting her ; there is a fine of so many rigs- 

 dalers for taking one home with her head on. The benighted people 

 imagine that should a pregnant woman see the head of a hare her 

 child is sure when born to have a 'hare lip'; hence this fine." I have 

 since learned that anoiher form of this superstition still lingers in some 

 parts of Scotland, where it is believed that if the mother step over a 

 hare's "form ' the same effect will be produced. 



Boar (Zool. S. S. 979). — In the inside of the fore-leg of a pig, are 

 four small pores; these, say old women in Scotland, are the holes 

 through which the legion of devils entered into the herd of swine 

 which "ran violently down a steep place into the sea and perished in 

 the waters." (Matthew viii. 28—34.) 



Edward R. Alston. 



U05, Bath Sireet, Glasgow, 

 March 4, 1868. 



Badger near Wisbech.— On the evening of the 10th of February a fine badger was 

 captured on the farm of Mr. Crow, at Gorefield, near Wisbech : it was first observed 

 on the 6lb by Mr. Crow's shepherd. The animal had a burrow in a plantation four 

 feet deep and six feet long: three men dug it oul and despatched it. It has been 

 purchased for the Wisbech Museum. — T. E. Gunn ; 21, Regent Street, Norwich. 



Mice and Periwinkles. — A few days since, whilst on a visit to a neighbour who is 

 famous for his choice collection of old-fashioned herbaceous plants, he directed my 

 attention to a piece of rock-wovk. which was covered with the different varieties, 

 double and single, of the lesser periwinkle (Vinca minor). The shoots of these plants 

 were almost all gnawed through close to the ground, whilst in all directions stalks, 

 bitten up into small pieces and chewed all over, bore testimony to wholesale de>truclion 

 on the part of some small animal. My friend informed me that the rock-work in 

 which the periwinkles yrew was the abode of numbers of shrew mice (Sorex araneus) 

 and the common short-tailed field mouse or vole (Arvicola pratensis). Upon setting a 

 number of traps he caught many of each species, but still the destruction went on, 

 and he was fearful that his plants would be quite destroyed. The quantity of debris 

 at the mouth of each hole left no doubt as to the cause of the mischief. The odd part 

 of it is that the mice and the periwinkles have been there for years, but my friend has 

 never had any damage done till the preseut season. — H.Harpur Crewe; The Rectory, 

 Draylon-Beauchamp, Tring, March 6, 1868. 



Osprey in Norfolk. — I have lately received information that a pair of ospreys were 

 observed on Rockland Broad, about the middle of February. My informant was out 



