434 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



of the first plumage, which in both sexes resembles that of the 

 old female. Any coloured feathers remaining upon those which 

 I take to be the old birds are ordinary male feathers. Moreover, 

 the develoj)ment of the comb, or wattle over the eye, corresponds 

 with that of the black lore. In the old males there is a full red 

 wattle, with fringed and projecting upper edge ; in what I con- 

 sider the adolescent males, who have only the promise of a black 

 lore, the comb is insignificant, and yellowish in colour, like that 

 of the hen bird. 



Will any reader of ' The Zoologist,' who may happen to have 

 a series of skins of any other Ptarmigan, be good enough to look 

 over those in winter plumage, and state whether he finds a 

 similar state of things to exist ? 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



MAMMALIA. 



Parasitic Disease in the Hare. — At a recent meeting of the Paris 

 Biological Society, M. Meguin gave an account of a peculiar disease which 

 is very prevalent at present among Hares in Alsace. It is a parasitic 

 disease, a sort of pulmonary tuberculosis, caused by the presence, in the 

 lungs, of Strongylus commiitatus [Filaria pulinonalis of Frohch). The same 

 disease was noticed in Thuringia in 1864. 



Squirrels at a distance from Trees. — In the month of September 

 last, when Grouse-shooting in Elginshire, I was surprised one day to come 

 suddenly upou a Squirrel in the heather, right out on the open moor, far 

 away from any trees. The little animal was proceeding by short bounds 

 through the heather, every now and then stopping to rest, as if much 

 fatigued, and was apparently on migration. A similar case has been 

 noticed by the late A. E. Knox in one of his delightful books, ' Autumn 

 on the Spey'(p. 52); and other instances are mentioned by Mr. Harvie 

 Brown, in his excellent essay on the Squirrel, Proc. Roy. Phys. Soc. Ediub., 

 vol. vi. (1881), p. 1G6.— J. E. Harxing. 



Young of the Hedgehog.— On the 17th October last I was shown a 

 Hedgehog which had been found in an outhouse, with a litter of seven 

 young ones, as near as I could guess about a month old. Bell, in the 

 second edition of his 'British Quadrupeds' (p. 110), says, "The female 

 produces from two to four young ones early in summer"; and Macgillivray 

 (Jardine's Nat. Lib.) states that " Early in the summer the young are 



