NATURAL HISTORY MISCELLANY. 439 
to the roof, or fence or whatever it is sitting on.— Famrax, Vir- 
ginia, July 3d, 1871. 
Tue Bitiriso 1N Fresh Water.—Mr. G. Brown Goode of the 
Museum of the Wesleyan University, informs us that a fine speci- 
men of Belone truncata, ‘Green bone,” ‘‘ Billfish” or ‘Salt water 
Gar,” measuring twenty inches in length, was taken, in June last, 
in the Connecticut River about thirty miles up, and that he has 
heard of several other specimens having been taken in the fresh 
waters of the river, though all the authorities he has been able to 
consult, give the habits of the species as strictly marine. 
There are about fifty species of the genus Belone described, and 
though they are essentially marine fishes of the tropical and tem- 
perate regions, yet many of the species are known to live, in great 
part, at the mouths of rivers, and to ascend to, and thrive in, the 
fresh waters. It is probably a characteristic common to the 
whole genus and to the allied genus Hemiramphus. Many fishes, 
generally classed as marine, enter the rivers in pursuit of their 
food, or for the purpose of spawning, and our local authorities do 
not always mention such facts in their works, being often more 
taken up with describing and identifying the species, than in 
giving accounts of the habits of the fishes that come under their 
observation. — Eps. 
New Enexianp Ascrp1ans.— Prof. Verrill is publishing a se- 
ries of illustrated articles on our ascidians in the “American Journal 
of Arts and Sciences.” The number for June contains descrip- 
tions of some of our compound ascidians which have heretofore 
been sadly neglected. Several new genera and new species are 
described. He s that the young of Lissoclinum aureum 
from Eastport, Maine, contained ‘ tadpole-shaped embryos in 
an advanced stage of development,” while in another species 
. tenerum n. sp.) from Newfoundland, the eggs were few an 
relatively very large. ‘t The development of such eggs is direct, 
without passing through a tadpole-shaped larval state.” This is re- 
markable, though paralleled in the crustacea, where, for instance 
the craw fish and several other crabs undergo no metamorphosis 
while the majority do pass through transformations. In a note 
Verrill says “ with alcoholic specimens it is not possible to trace 
completely the early stages of this development, or to be per- 
fectly certain that these egg-like bodies are.genuine eggs, al- 
