2 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



it went on to say that "it has been proved by the National (!) 

 History Museum authorities to be an extremely rare Australian 

 specimen . . . the strongest and heaviest ever seen in England." 

 From a Lowestoft naturalist I afterwards ascertained that it was 

 despatched to Messrs. Lusty, of Limehouse, importers of Turtles ; 

 and being unedible was very likely destined to be preserved. Also 

 that the Scotch drifter that fell in with it broke its neck in 

 hoisting it on board, although the wretched creature lived for 

 two hours after the accident. 



I wrote to the Cromwell Eoad Museum authorities, and 

 received a reply from Dr. S. F. Harmer to the effect that no one 

 at the Museum actually saw it, but the owners had telephoned 

 some particulars. Dr. Harmer thus refers to it : " The statement 

 that it is an Australian species is nonsense. The Leathery 

 Turtle, though generally considered a rare animal, has a wide 

 distribution within the tropics ; and specimens are found from 

 time to time, as stragglers, in various places." Pennant, 

 evidently referring to this species, records two on the coast of 

 Cornwall, taken in Mackerel nets in the early autumn of 1756, 

 one weighing 800 lb., the other 700 lb. A third, taken about 

 that time off Dorsetshire, equal in weight to the first-mentioned, 

 was believed by Bell to be in the British Museum. Dr. Harmer 

 tells me they have examples — one, for many years, from Devon- 

 shire, and another caught in Cardigan Bay in 1908, and had 

 heard of another captured in 1909, eighty miles west of Cardiff. 



Early in January I saw at a local fishmonger's a plaice of 

 some 4 lb. weight, with the whole upper surface of a beautiful 

 porcelain-like white, with the exception of a patch of brownish 

 on the "face," and a narrowish dark streak near the upper 

 pectoral fin. The fish was quite without any of the characteristic 

 red spottings. 



January 8th. — Considering the abundance of Haddock in 

 the North Sea, in close proximity of Yarmouth, when I was a 

 lad, its present scarcity is remarkable, if one can leave out the 

 effects of the incessant trawling that then obtained. A 2-foot 

 specimen was sent me from Eccles, where it had been caught 

 on a line by a gentleman named Meale. It was a " slink," and 

 so attenuated, either from disease, or from parasites (although 

 only two or three Lerncea branchialis were taken from the gills), 



