NOTES AND QUERIES. 437 



the road a few yards off, which I saw at once was a Eock-Thrush in 

 blue and yellow plumage. He was quite tame, and hopped and 

 pecked about till a youth threw a stone at him and frightened him 

 away. I believe, therefore, that the brown birds were young Thrushes 

 in autumn plumage, for Mr. Backhouse, in his very useful ' Hand- 

 book of British Birds,' thus describes them : wings dark brown, 

 beneath orange rufous, with a narrow bar of brown at tip of each 

 feather. This was my fourth experience of this beautiful and very 

 interesting bird : (1) at the Hospice of St. Bernard, 8120 ft., singing ; 

 (2) Pilatus, 7000 ft., singing with uplifted wings and alighting on the 

 rocks ; (3) at the Grimsel, near the Todten See, at about 7000 ft. ; 

 these also descending with wings uplifted. A circumstance which 

 occurred at Berchtesgaden is perhaps deserving of notice. At the 

 Hotel Bellevue the Yellowhammers were so tame they came into the 

 dining-room regularly when we were there to be fed by the waiters. 

 There were also flocks of small birds which flew at a considerable 

 height, and alighted in the tops of the trees at Oberwald ; these, my 

 kind friend, Herr Sellers, assured me, were Snowfinches. I should 

 have taken them for some species of Eedpoll. They were constantly 

 crying " gip, gip," but I found it impossible to identify them from 

 their height in lofty trees. — Chaeles W. Benson (Balbriggan). 



Errata. — In the October number of ' The Zoologist ' {ante, p. 391), 

 at the end of the first paragraph, for " female " read " male." — 

 E. P. BuTTEEFiELD (Wilsdeu, Bradford). 



MOLLUSC A. 

 Notes on the Breeding and the Boring Habits of Pholas crispata. — 



General Bemarhs. — Pholas is found around the Fife coast wherever 

 suitable environmental conditions exist. The rocks on this coast are 

 for the most part of the Lower Carboniferous age, and consist of 

 alternating layers of sandstone and shale, with here and there a thin 

 band of limestone. These bands have been thrown into a series of 

 folds now denuded, and as the shale and sandstone do not resist the 

 waves equally the sandstone forms long ridges or reefs, while the 

 shale is cut out, as it were, leaving long trough-like hollows, which 

 are locally called " lakes." It is in these "lakes" that Pholas is most 

 commonly found. In any one they will, as a rule, be found evenly 

 distributed, but those at the upper or landward end are smaller, 

 because they are longest out of the water between tides. 



The Body. — Pholas has a thick, white, elongated, fleshy body, and 

 from the anterior end of the animal protrudes a long tube traversed 

 by the two canals or siphons, through one of which the water neces- 



