178 THE ZOOLOGIST. 
older members. Having been transferred to the Customs, Mr. Peach 
eventually came to Scotland, being stationed first at Peterhead, and after- 
wards at Wick. It was while at this latter place that he made the 
acquaintance of Robert Dick, the Thurso baker and geologist; and the 
account of their friendship and mutual studies is contained in some of the 
most interesting chapters in Dr. Smiles’s ‘ Life of Robert Dick,’ part of 
which book is devoted to a biographical sketch of Mr. Peach. It was also 
while stationed in the north that he made the discoveries at Durness 
of those fossils which are now our means of determining the geological 
age of the Highland rocks, as by similar discoveries he had previously 
obtained the key to the age of great part of the older rocks of Cornwall and 
Devon. Not only, however, among scientific men had Mr. Peach a large 
acquaintance, but his genial and sympathetic nature attached to him also 
to many men of literary pursuits, amongst whom was Lord Tennyson, who 
was a frequent guest in Mr. Peach’s house at Fowey, in Cornwall, and 
with whom he formed a life-long friendship. Hugh Miller and Robert 
Chambers were numbered amongst his more intimate Scottish friends, 
Zoological Lectures at Oxford.—Among the lectures announced for 
delivery at Oxford next term by University Professors are a course on 
“The Mammalia,” by Prof. Moseley, and a course on “ The Haustellated 
Orders of Winged Arthropoda,” by Prof. Westwood. Mr. W. B. Spencer, 
one of the Demonstrators of Anatomy, will lecture on Embryology. 
MAMMALIA. 
Variety of the Squirrel—aA variety of the Squirrel perhaps worth 
notice was killed last summer in the extensive fir woods near Ringwood. 
It was remarkable both for size and colour. It was a male and weighed 
nearly seventeen ounces, or five or six ounces heavier than an ordinary 
Squirrel. Its colour was a pale brownish grey, resembling that of the 
common wild Rabbit, but with indications of the normal brown colour on 
the cheeks, feet, and flanks. The ears were destitute of any decorative 
tufts, and the tail somewhat scantily furnished, but the longest hairs 
thereon were white; the condition, however, of both ears and tail is doubt- 
less characteristic of the season. [So also is.the colour, Squirrels being 
much greyer-in winter than in summer. If the specimen in question was 
killed in early summer it might not have assumed its nuptial pelage, or if 
procured in late summer or autumn it may have prematurely donned its 
winter garb.—Ep.] It was frequently seen in different parts of the woods 
before it was killed, and for a time was unmolested; but having been 
detected in what the gamekeeper considered too close proximity to his 
Pheasant-coops, he shot it as a suspected depredator. I have been informed 
that a specimen almost exactly similar in size and colour was killed the 
previous year in some fir woods a few miles distant.—G. B. Corsin (Ring: 
wood, Hants). 
