197 



every season to catch nightingales, to bring me a cock and hen bird 

 which had paired naturally ; he did so, and, fortunately, they meated 

 off very readily. By " meating off," I mean that such birds as live 

 on insect food will not peck at dead food until taught to do so, which 

 is effected by enclosing meal-worms in a small glass tube, corked up 

 at each end, and then placing the tube in their food ; on pecking at 

 the worm the beak slips off the glass amidst the food, which they 

 swallow, and will afterwards go to it without the aid of a tube. On 

 finding my birds feed freely in the small cage, in which until then I 

 had confined them, I turned them into the place I had fitted up for 

 them, and was much gratified, about a week afterwards, to observe 

 the hen bird flying about vdth an oak-leaf in her beak. She made 

 her nest in one of the small cages at the end of the large one ; laid 

 four eggs, of which she hatched and brought up three young ones. 

 During the time she was sitting, the cock sang as well and as loud as I 

 ever heard one in a wild state : when the young were excluded he left 

 off singing, and was most assiduous in assisting to feed and rear them. 



June 24, 1851. 



J. E. Gray, Esq., F.R.S., Vice-President, in the Chair. 



The following communications were made : — 



1. On a new genus of Anomiad^, in the Collection 



OF Mr. Cuming. 



By J. E. Gray, Esa., F.R.S., V.P.Z.S., P.B.S. etc. 



Tedinia. 



Shell irregular, loosely lamellar ; upper or right valve with a broad 

 cardinal groove, and with three muscular scars, the upper small, ob- 

 long near the cartilage, the other two large, subcentral, upper sub- 

 trigonal, lower oblong, transverse, united by a nearly straight medial 

 cross line ; left or attached valve with an elongated, triangular, con- 

 vex cardinal ridge, with a deep groove on each side, having the car- 

 tilage on its inner edge, with two muscular scars, one small, half ob- 

 long near the cardinal ridge, the other large, subcentral, subcircular, 

 and with a roundish circular hole near the upper edge, with a slight 

 impression showing the grooves to the margin some distance from 

 the cardinal ridge ; the plug shelly, fixed into and exactly fitting the 

 hole, with a triangular base sunk into the surface, commencing from 

 the apex of the shell on the outer surface, and formed of erect shelly 

 longitudinal plates within. 



The shell has the plug and much the external appearance of the 

 subgenus Pododesnms, but differs from it and all the other Anomia- 



