NOTES AND QUERIES. 59 



forty-five of these pests on one individual, affecting mostly the 

 throat, limbs, and face. 



The proportion of the sexes seems to be more equal than with 

 L. muralis. The males still predominate considerably, although 

 the females, especially towards summer, appear to be more 

 numerous, owing to their diminished activity, 



(To be continued.) 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



Death of the Rev. H. T. Frere. — We have recently heard with regret 

 of the death of an old contributor to this journal, in the person of the 

 Rev. Henry Temple Frere, who passed away in December last, in the 

 sixty-ninth year of his age, at Burston Rectory, near Diss. He was born 

 at the family seat at Roydon Hall, in 1821, and was all his life devoted to 

 the study of Natural History. The owner of a small but choice collection 

 of birds, he prided himself especially on two British-killed Savi's Warblers, 

 one of which he lately presented to Professor Newton for the Cambridge 

 Museum, and an American Meadow Starling, Sturnella magna, shot at 

 Thrandeston, in March, 1860. He was one of the oldest correspondents 

 of ' The Zoologist,' and a member of the Norwich Naturalists' Society, 

 whom he entertained at Burston on the occasion of one of their annual 

 excursions. In the Natural History of his own county he always took a 

 great interest, and was a constant correspondent of the late Mr. Stevenson, 

 to whom he communicated several useful notes for his ' Birds of Norfolk.' 



MAMMALIA. 



Melanism in Mammals and the Irish Rat.— In Dr. Mivart's ' Mono- 

 graph of the Canidae,' in his description (p. 7) of the black variety of the 

 Wolf, he remarks : — " It is not, however, completely black, having a reddish 

 tinge on the hinder part of either thigh, while the margins of the mouth, 

 a patch on the brea&t, the under surface of the lower jaw, and the paws are 

 white." Now in the black variety of the Common Rat (the so-called Irish 

 Rat, Mm hibernicus of Thompson), the region of the muzzle is whitish, the 

 feet are silvery white, and in about twenty per cent, of the specimens 

 examined by us the breast had a white patch. The flanks of the Irish Rat 

 have a reddish cast, and in not a few specimens this is more pronounced 

 upon the thighs. We have no wish to give undue significance to the value 

 of these peculiarities, but we venture to suggest the probability that the 

 phenomenon of melanism in the Mammalia is frequently accompanied by 



F >! 



