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EDITORIAL GLEANINGS. 



We have received the Annual Report and Transactions of the " North 

 Staffordshire Field Club " for 1897-98. In Sectional Reports, and under 

 Zoology, Mr. Masefield reports as follows : — " It is frequently said by our 

 landowners who are Fox-hunters that Badgers kill or drive away Foxes. 

 Now the Badger still survives in our county, as is shown by the frequent 

 reports I receive from different localities of Badgers having been observed, 

 dug out, or shot, and therefore I am glad to be able to state, on the 

 authority of Mr. Heinman, of Porlock, who has had exceptional oppor- 

 tunity of studying the ways of Badgers, that equally in Devonshire, 

 Somersetshire, and Northamptonshire he ' has constantly found full-grown 

 Foxes and Badgers dwelling together in unity.' This statement will, I 

 trust, dispel the fears of Fox-hunters for ever, and should cause them to 

 extend * neutrality,' at all events, to our local Badgers in future." 



We are all cognisant that light attracts fishes as well as many other 

 animals. We have been much interested in the accounts of the new 

 French naval destroyer ' Gustave Zede.' Anything more unlikely to pro- 

 duce a zoological observation than this proposed navy annihilator is difficult 

 to imagine. Still, the unexpected always happens. We learn that the 

 destructive powers of this new terror are limited, not alone by naval 

 science, but by natural causes, and by fish. " As for the telescopic 

 mirror arrangement which was to enable her to direct her course from under 

 water, it failed, not for one but for several reasons ; while her * electric 

 eye,' or searchlight, so far from enabling her to see anything ahead of her 

 through the water, rather rendered the sea ahead more opaque, as it 

 attracted shoals of fish, which hovered round the brilliant disc, like moths 

 round a candle." — Westminster Gazette. 



At a meeting of the Zoological Society of London, held on Feb. 7th, 

 Mr. G. E. H. Barrett-Hamilton read a paper on the Mice of St. Kilda, 

 of which he recognized two species — Mus hirtensis, sp. nov., a repre- 

 sentative of M. sylvaticus, and M. muralis, sp. nov., representing M. mus- 

 cuius. Both of these species showed good distinctive characters from their 

 well-known prototypes. 



