Miscellaneous. 29 1 



" On the subject of cocks, he gave an account of their fighting in 

 England, exhibiting to his class a pair of steel spurs, as used by them 

 in their battles. Of the flamingo* he had never seen a single spe- 

 cimen, though, at one of the museums at Oxford, he was shown a 

 dried leg and foot. 



" Blumenbach's lectures were by far the most interesting of any 

 I attended at Gottingen. He exhibited one day a machine for hatch- 

 ing eggs, which he had frequently used, and which only required the 

 heat of a spirit-lamp, and constant attention to keep all in order." — 

 Viator in Medical Gazette, April 15, 1837- 



British Museum — A grant of L. 1575 has been voted by the 

 House of Commons to enable the trustees of the British Museum 

 to purchase the collection of shells belonging to W. J. Broderip, 

 Esq. offered by him at the price of 1500 guineas, and valued by 

 Messrs Turner and Sowerby, at L. 1640, 12s. 6d. Mr Gray says, — 

 " The collection consists of nearly 3000 specimens, and contains 

 about 200 species, or very distinct varieties, that are altogether 

 wanting in the already extensive collection of the British Museum : 

 Such is the beauty of the specimens, in consequence of the great 

 attention paid by Mr Broderip to the purchase of none but the 

 finest that could be procured, and so remarkable are the deviations in 

 form and colouring in the several series of the more variable species, 

 that nearly every individual specimen of the remaining portion will 

 also be valuable to our collection, either in replacing a much infe- 

 rior specimen, or as rendering more complete the series which we 

 already possess. The duplicates to be displaced will be few, and 

 will, for the reasons above given, be taken in every instance from 

 our present collection, and not from among the specimens in the new 

 acquisition. A very large proportion of the species contained in this 

 collection, and wanting in the British Museum, are among the rarest 

 shells that are known to exist, and many are absolutely unique." f 



Wernerian Society Prize Essay. — It gives us much pleasure to 

 announce that the honorary premium of Ten Sovereigns, or a piece 

 of plate of that value, offered by the Wernerian Society of Edin- 

 burgh, for the best account of the fishes of the district of the Forth, 

 has been awarded to Dr Richard Parnell, so well known to every 



* The Dodo is evidently what Viator should have written. 



t Lord Stanley stated in his place in the House of Commons on Friday last, 

 That on Easter Monday, in the course of eight hours, 23,985, and on Whit- 

 Monday, 30,000 persons had visited the British Museum without doino- the 

 slightest mischief. 



