[ 414 ] 



INTELLIGENCE. 



ZOOLOGICAL. 



The Leeches and Reptiles of Chili — It is a remarkable fact that the leeches 

 of Chili are all terrestrial, living in the woods, and never in water. M. Gay 

 assures us that he could not make a botanical excursion without having his legs 

 bitten by these blood-suckers. They crawl upon plants, along trunks of trees, 

 and ascend shrubs, but never approach marshes or rivers; the only one which 

 M. Gay accidentally discovered in these latter habitats is a very small kind of 

 Branchiobolelle, which has the singular habit of living in the pulmonary cavity 

 of the Auricula Dombeii. M. Gay had previously discovered, in the environs of 

 Santiago, another leech of the same genus which lives under the branchiae of 

 a species of lobster. (The leeches of Chili, in their sylvan manners, resemble 

 the leeches of Ceylon.) 



A fact not less interesting is this ; in these western regions the reptiles have 

 a tendency to become viviparous. The greater number of those which M. Gay 

 dissected afforded him proofs of this assertion. Not only the harmless snake of 

 Valdivia brings forth living young, but likewise all the pretty Iguanians allied 

 to the genus Leposoma of Spix, and which, from the beauty of their colours, M. 

 Gay provisionally calls Chrysosaurus. Even those species which are oviparous 

 at Santiago are here viviparous. The Batracians furnish some examples of the 

 same fact, although in general they are all oviparous. However, a genus allied 

 to the Rhinella of Fitzinger, consisting of several agreeably coloured species, is 

 constantly viviparous, and consequently adds to the proofs of a fact the more 

 remarkable that all the examples of it are found collected within a radius of two 

 or three leagues only — Ann. des Sciences Nat. Avril 1836, p. 224. 



Spirula Peronii — It is a rare thing to find this common shell with its ani- 

 mal, a fact which, according to MM. Robert and Leclenchet, is in some mea- 

 sure explained by their having discovered that it is the prey and common food of 

 the Physaliae, which swarm in the same equitorial seas. The figures hitherto 

 published of the Spirula are incorrect; it is a cephalopode which approaches re- 

 markably in form to the shelless Lobgo sepiola, having the shell almost entirely 

 imbedded in the posterior. part of the body, where there are two natatory expan- 

 sions of the cloak. The eye is proportionally very large, and without a lid 



Ann. des Sciences Nat. Avril 1836, p. 233 and 226. 



Huge Marine Animal. — Upon the 22d of June 1834, in latitude 46° 57', lon- 

 gitude 58° 39', Captain Neill of the ship Robertson of Greenock, then upon a 

 voyage from Montreal to Greenock, saw the head and snout of a great fish or 

 sea-monster, of which the accompanying sketch or drawing was at the time 



