7278 Reptiles, 



about this part of Bengal. I now send a sketch from a dead bird just 

 rolled over by old Forsyth, the chicose partridge of India ; and also 

 another sketch, being the gray partridge ; both are to the very life, 

 although I did them myself. I intend, when I get a chance, to send 

 you a sketch of both the black and painted partridge. This latter 

 bird is rare about here, I having only shot one. 



" I have just obtained five splendid Longicorn beetles. My insect 



collection is going on famously. 



" E. A. W. Tayler." 



Captain Taylors Sea Serpent. — A friend, who has the opportunity of communi- 

 cating with Melbourne on the subject of the young sea serpent which Captain Taylor 

 says (Zool. 6985) he presented to the Museum at Melbourne, has ascertained through 

 Mr.Coates, of that town, that Captain Taylor is so far correct, that he did at the time 

 specified present a specimen of Pelarays bicolor to the Museum in question, and Pro- 

 fessor M'Coy exhibited the same to Mr. Coates. Of course there is no rational 

 ground for concluding that this small sea snake is the young of any such gigantic 

 creature as Captain Taylor has described. — Edward Newman. 



A Female Adder Swallowing her Young. — Walking in an orchard near Tyneham 

 House, in Dorsetshire, I came upon an old adder basking in the sun, with her young 

 around her ; she was lying on some grass that had been long cut, and had become 

 smooth and bleached by exposure to the weather. Alarmed by my approach, I dis- 

 tinctly saw the young ones run down their mother's throat. At that time I had never 

 heard of the controversy respecting the fact, otherwise I should have been more 

 anxious to have killed the adder, to further prove the case. As it was she escaped, 

 while I was more interested in the circumstance I witnessed than in her destruction.— 

 — Henry Bond ; Vicarage, South Petherton, Somerset, August 14, 1860. 



Discovery near London of a Physa new to the British Fauna. — Early last spring I 

 observed in a water-tank, in the Koyal Botanic Garden at Kew, a mollusk, which at 

 the time I supposed to be the Liranaia peregra, but which on a closer examination, a 

 short time since, I found to be a species of Physa, and quite distinct from either of the 

 indigenous species P.fonlinalis and P. Hypnorum. I became interested in the discovery, 

 and I set to work immediately to endeavour to find out by what means it came there, 

 and in order to ascertain its species I forwarded a few specimens to an eminent conch- 

 ologist of my acquaintance, who pronounced it to be the Physa rivalis of Maton 

 and Kackett. I sent some afterwards to the British Museum, and was informed that, 

 according to the specimens there belonging to the collection of M. D'Orbigny, it was 

 the Physa acuta of Draparuaud, and that its native habitat was the West Indies. 

 I was led, therefore, to infer that it had been imported with some exotic aquatic 

 plants, but upon giving the subject still further consideration two facts presented 



