ZOOLOGY. 239 
the stomachs of these Diptera undissolved and unaltered after 
passing through the entire length of the leathery and extensile 
proboscis.” — A. W. B 
Nore on Cassx’s PYRRHULA.—Ornithologists have generally ac- 
cepted the Pyrrhula Cassini Baird from the Yukon region, Alaska, 
as a valid species, the essential character consisting in the absence 
of red on the part of the male, and the elongated white spot on the 
outer tail feather. Ina communication presented at the eighteenth 
meeting of the German Ornithologists’ Association, Dr. Cabanis 
referred to a Pyrrhula from Lake Baikal, having very much the 
character of Cassini; and at a meeting of the society held in Berlin, 
on the 3d of June, 1872, this determination was re-aflirmed by 
Cabanis, in the strength of three specimens lately received from 
Baikal precisely like the Alaska species, previously described. 
The bird is said, indeed, to be quite abundant, and its occurrence 
‘in Siberia, therefore, removes the difficulty which was felt in assent- : 
ing to the existence of a purely American species, of a genus that 
is eminently characteristic of the Old World. 
In the same communication by Dr. Cabanis, it is stated that 
Cassin’s Bulfinch was also to be accounted as a bird of Europe, since 
reference is made by Wickevoort Crommelin, in the Archives Neer- 
landaises, to a bird, killed in a flock of Pyrrhula vulgaris in Nov., 
1866, which differed from the rest in having an elongated white 
` Spot on the inner edge of the sat P feathers. (Cabanis’ 
Journal, 1871; 318; & 1872; 315.) — S. F. B. 
Hyra Pickerrnen IN Winter.— Mr. Samuel P. Fowler, of 
Danvers, Mass., has sent us a beautiful fawn colored specimen of 
the little spring piper, or Hyla, which he found, on November 
29th, embedded in a heap of grass sods in his garden. We know 
nothing of the winter habits of our Batrachians and every fact of 
this kind should be put on record. 
APPLICATION OF THE Darwinian THeory TO Bees. — Hermann 
Müller publishes, in the * Transactions of the Natural History 
Society of the Prussian Rhineland and Westphalia,” an elaborate 
` paper of about a hundred pages octavo, under the above caption. 
We have already given in the Naruraist the exceedingly inter- 
esting paper by this author from the Italian version, with notes 
by Prof. Delpino. Space only allows us at present to briefly notice 
