472 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



a heavy fish for this river (the Avon); but an old fisherman, who has known 

 the river many years, informed me that he once saw one caught which 

 weighed nearly five pounds, and yet he tells me it is considered a very good 

 fish to weigh two pounds and a half. The dark markings upon the back 

 and sides of the fish I had were very indistinct. Is it the case that these 

 heavv fish are old, and that they lose these markings, in some degree, with 

 age? — G. B. Corcin (Ringwood, Hants). 



Large "Sea-purse" or Egg-case of the Ray. — Having lately found 

 what I consider to be an unusually large "sea-purse" or egg-case of the 

 Ray, washed ashore near the Devil's Point, Stonehouse, and never having 

 before — among the hundreds I had previously picked up along the sea- 

 coast — seen any at all approaching it in size, T think its dimensions are 

 worth recording. Including the horn-like processes at either end, — two of 

 which are short and not worthy of being called '•'tendrils," — its entire 

 length is about fourteen inches and a quarter, and the oblong body nearly 

 six inches and a quarter long by five inches and a half broad. Were it not 

 so broad in proportion to its length, I should suppose it to have been shed 

 by a very large shark — J. Gatcombe (Stonehouse). 



MOLLUSC A. 



Oyster Culture in America. — It appears that Mr. Ryder, the Em- 

 bryologist of the U.S. Fish Commission, has solved the problem of the 

 culture of Oysters from artificially impregnated eggs, and at the beginning of 

 September, at the U.S. Government Station, Stockton, Maryland, there were 

 millions of young Oysters three-quarters of an inch in diameter, which had 

 been hatched from eggs artificially impregnated forty-six days previously. 

 In 1870 Dr. Brooks, of Baltimore, had succeeded in artificial impregnation 

 of the ova ; but the difficulty, now overcome, was to prevent the young 

 Oysters after hatching from escaping and being lost, for the spat will pass 

 through the meshes of the most finely-woven fabrics. 



ZOOPHYTES. 

 Large Jelly-fish.— While with my three boys on the shore below the 

 lighthouse at Hunstanton, St. Edmunds, Norfolk, in August last, the 

 youngest one drew my attention to a specimen of a Jelly-fish, which far 

 exceeded in dimensions any J had hitherto seen. Its measurement was 

 carefully taken and ascertained to be twenty-one inches by nineteen inches 

 and a half. The mauve ribbon-like border near the outer edge, common 

 in smaller specimens, was in this instance — as also in some others that 

 T have seen — replaced by one of a ferruginous tint. — F. A. Walker 

 i 3a, Bassett Road, Notting Hill). 



B-U. 



