British Association. 1045 



may perhaps be allowed to say, that I have on many occasions observed a globule of 

 fluid at a fly's mouth, although until reading Mr. Lewis's paper, I never gave it any 

 attention. — G. Guyon ; Richmond, Surrey, June 28, 1845. 



Curious Fact related of the House-fly. I have often seen the common house-fly 

 playing with the drop at its nose, as mentioned by your correspondent (Zool. 948), and 

 have read of one that did so after he had been drinking pretty freely of gooseberry- 

 wine. May not inability to withdraw the drop of fluid in the autumn, be the cause 

 of so many flies, at that season, becoming attached to the glass of our windows by the 

 extremity of the proboscis ? — Alfred Luxford ; Kennington Lane, July 10, 1845. 



Larva and Pupce of (Estrus Cervi. Mr. Bracy Clark has just brought me several 

 specimens of the larva and two of the pupa of this insect, which, I believe, is totally 

 unknown in the perfect state. As the pupae appear to be alive and healthy, I trust 

 that with care they may be reared. The larva? were found in the throat, just at the 

 commencement of the oesophagus, in deer that had been killed for venison. Full par- 

 ticulars will be given as soon as they can be ascertained. — E. Newman; July 11, 1845. 



Proceedings of the British Association for the Advancement of 



Science. 



(From the Athenaeum, No. 922, dated June 28, 1845). 

 Section D.— ZOOLOGY AND BOTANY. 

 Db. Richardson read a Report, which had been called for by the Section, ' On the 

 Ichthyology of China.' Till within a recent period, little was known of Chinese fishes. 

 Linnaeus was acquainted with about a score of Japanese fishes ; and a few were after- 

 wards added to the list by Langsdorff, who accompanied the Russian admiral, Kne- 

 senstiern, in his voyage to the Isles of Japan and the South Sea. With these excep- 

 tions, the fish of the eastern coasts of Asia, from the Sea of Ochotsic down to Cochin 

 China, were, till very recently, known to European naturalists only from Chinese and 

 Japanese drawings, several collections of which are to be found in the Paris and Bri- 

 tish libraries. Yet the fish of the coasts of China are abundant, and the fisheries ex- 

 tensive and important. Materials for the description of these fishes were not wanting. 

 Mr. John Reeves had beautiful coloured drawings, mostly of the size of life, made of 

 no fewer than 340 species of fish which are brought to the markets in Canton. Copies 

 of these drawings now exist in the British Museum. Some fishes have been recently 

 sent from Chusan ; other Chinese fishes have been described in the account of the voy- 

 age of the Sulphur. A collection of 100 fishes made at Canton exists in the museum 

 of the Philosophical Society of Cambridge. From these and other recent sources, the 

 present report was drawn up. The author concluded from his researches that the ex- 

 istence of chains of islands or of continuous coast having an east and west tendency 

 promotes the range of a species or of a group of species. Thus, to take the intertropi- 

 cal zone of the ocean, we find very many fish common to the Red Sea, the coasts of 

 Madagascar, the Mauritius, the Indian Ocean, the southern parts of China, the Phi- 

 lippines, the whole Malay Archipelago, the north coasts of Australia, and the entire 

 range of Polynesia, including the Sandwich Islands. In the generic forms of its fresh- 

 water fish, China agrees closely with the peninsula of India. If we could suppose 

 that the extensive belt above alluded to, enclosing more than two-thirds of the circum- 



