Additions to the British Fishes. 521 



I coiijrfder to be much less plentiful than tlie yellow wren, 

 though in Kent, where it appears as early as the third week 

 in March, it is more numerous than the wood wren. In a 

 short tour through North Wales I could not discover it, but 

 frequently met with the other two species. 



Bewick, in the last edition (1826) of his ingenious workx)n 

 British birds, gives a figure and description of a fourth 

 species, under the title of the least willow wren, and says 

 that its length is scarcely 4jin. I have in vain endeavoured 

 to identify this bird, and, till something further is produced, 

 shall doubt its being distinct from the lesser pettychaps. 

 I trust that some of the readers of this Magazine will attend 

 to, and communicate, any facts they may discover likely to 

 clear up this point. At the British Museum the yellow wren 

 and lesser pettychaps do not appear to be correctly labelled ; 

 and I imagine that the bird there marked as the Sylvia 

 Natterer? of Temminck is only a lesser pettychaps, the shades 

 of plumage varying according to age and sex. 



T. R 



Art. VII. Additions to the British Fauna; Class, Fishes, 

 By WiLLiAxM Yarrell, Esq. F.L.S. Z.S. &c. 



Sir, 



If the following short notice prove an acceptable trifle for 

 insertion in your Magazine, it is quite at your service. The 

 subject suggested itself to me on reading the interesting 

 observations of your correspondent O., in his account of the 

 stickleback, (p. 329.) 



It appears to be but little known that three distinct species 

 of three-spined sticklebacks have been constantly confounded 

 under the name Gasterosteus aculeatus of Linnaeus ; that all 

 three of these species are common in our rivers, particularly 

 the Thames, although only one of them has been included in 

 any British Fauna. 



We are indebted to Messrs. Cuvier and Valenciennes for 

 a general description applicable to all three of these fishes in 

 the fourth volume of the Histoire Naturelle des Poissons, with 

 accurate figures of two of them. The specific distinctions 

 of each are also pointed out; and as the old term aculeatus 

 applies equally to all of them, this appellation has been drop- 

 ped, and new specific names attached to each, which will be 

 mentioned in the sequel. 



It is not my intention to occupy any portion of your valu- 

 able space with a repetition of that, which will be fomid in the 



Vol. III. — No. 16. mm 



