1 956 Annelides. 



of the month, retained much of the summer plumage ; in the other two, which occurred 

 about the end of the month, it had almost entirely disappeared. We have also to re- 

 cord the capture, at different parts of the coast, in the same month, of four specimens 

 of Richardson's skua, two of which were in immature, and the other two in adult 

 plumage : of the latter, one was taken alive, and appears to do well in confinement, 

 feeding readily on pieces of fresh-water fish. He has for his companion in confine- 

 ment a night heron, with whom he appears to be on very good terms. A specimen of 

 the black-tailed godwit also occurred in September at Salthouse. The angel fish has 

 been taken at Yarmouth, and several specimens of the migratory locust have been 

 captured in various parts of the county. It is observable that wild geese, during their 

 migratory movements, fly in regular order, — usually in lines or wedge-shaped figures, 

 — one acting as leader ; and although the changes which our domestic race has un- 

 dergone since it was reclaimed, render us unable to say with certainty from which of 

 the wild species it originally sprang, or whether from any one exclusively, it still re- 

 tains distinct traces of this singular habit ; being constantly observed, in places where 

 it is kept in flocks, to go and return to and from its feeding-grounds with great regu- 

 larity, in long lines of single file. — J. H. Gurney, W. R. Fisher ; October, 1847. 



Habits of the Leech. — While staying at Folkestone, in August last, I founcTthat 

 horse-leeches were common in a ditch near the house. One day I noticed what ap- 

 peared to be a leech and a worm adhering end to end : T took them out of the water, 

 and v on pulling them asunder, found that the leech had swallowed a portion of the 

 worm nearly equal to its own body in length ; and on being drawn out the part seemed 

 shrunk, as though it had been deprived of some portion of its juices. Another day I 

 found that three leeches had attacked one worm, one of them having swallowed one 

 end of it, another had swallowed a loop formed by the doubling of the worm, so that 

 the other end was free, the third leech simply adhering by its mouth. I brought home 

 two of the leeches in a bottle, and, having kept them about a month without food, on the 

 22nd of September, in the morning, I put into the bottle a moderate-sized earth- 

 worm : it had not been in ten minutes when one of them seized it by one extremity. 

 In the middle of the day I noticed that the worm was doubled, a leech holding it by 

 the loop : on this occasion I did not ascertain whether any part of the worm was 

 within the body of the leech. In the evening I observed that the worm had been di- 

 vided, and a portion of it, about a quarter of an inch in length, and of the usual 

 thickness, projecting from the mouth of one of the leeches : I then removed this leech 

 from the bottle, and taking the portion of worm with one hand, and the leech with 

 the other, I drew out a considerable part of the worm, much shrunk, and very thin 

 just at the part which the mouth of the leech had encircled. I subsequently put in 

 two more worms and a small Limax, but the leeches took no notice of them : in the 

 course of a few days they were drowned, and, beginning to decompose, I threw them 

 out. Considering that in the leech the stomach (which has a number of little coecal 

 processes on each side) forms nearly the whole of the alimentary canal, the facts above 

 mentioned are in no way inconsistent with its structure ; therefore I should suppose 

 the circumstance to he of frequent occurrence, although I am not aware of its having 

 been before observed . — H. N. Turner, Jun . ,■ 1 , Upper Delgrave Place, Pimlico, September 

 25, 1847. 



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