1 882.] Zoology. 245 



Permit me to make a little fuller statement about this shell. 

 I met with it in great numbers at Oswego in June, 1879, and ^ nc ^" 

 ing no description of an American shell corresponding to it, re- 

 ferred the matter to Dr. James Lewis, who was equally puzzled 

 with myself until he saw the shell. He at once pronounced it a 

 Bythinia, the first he had known in this country, and thought it 

 B. (entaculata Linn., but, as it varied locally, he was not sure but 

 it might prove a new and native species. Mr. Tryon at once pro- 

 nounced it B. tentaculata, but it is interesting for comparison with 

 the European shell. 



Dr. Lewis had successfully colonized Western mollusks in the 

 Mohawk river and Erie canal, and I sent him several hundreds of 

 this species for that purpose. How they have thriven I do not 

 know. I put some in the Seneca river, but have seen none of 

 them since, and think they require still waters. In the Erie canal 

 at Syracuse, west of the Oswego canal only, there are a good 

 many. At Oswego they adhere to the wooden piers and stones 

 near the mouth of the river, and I found them nowhere else there. 



Soon after these shells were brought to Dr. Lewis' notice he 

 showed some of them to Mr. Charles E. Beecher, of the New 

 York State Cabinet, and found that he had frequently observed 

 them in the canals near Albany, but had mistaken them for an- 

 other native shell. Mr. B. certainly saw them before I did, though 

 I happened to report them first. Dr. Lewis thought this species 

 would spread rapidly, and it seems inclined to follow the canals, 

 but not the streams. In ponds it would probably increase fast. 

 Although it must have reached Oswego and Troy by way of the 

 St. Lawrence, I am unable to learn of its presence on that river, 

 or in Lake Champlain.— IV. M. Beauchamp. 



Zoological Notes. — The species of orangs, which have been 

 placed at from one to four, have been examined by Mr. F. O. 

 Lucas, of Professor Ward's establishment, who reports in the 

 Proceedings of the Boston Society of Natural History that all four 



forms must be referred to one. Professor Ward has returned 



from a collecting journey to New Zealand and Australia with a 

 large collection of marsupials, Ornithorhynchus, specimens of 

 Echidna from New Guinea, and of Hatteria from New Zealand. 

 His account of the habits of the latter very rare lizard, given in 

 Ward's Natural Science Bulletin for January 1, is well worth 



reading. The mollusca of H. M. S. Challenger are being 



described in the Journal of the Linnaean Society, London, in a 

 ' a series of papers, by Rev. R. B. Watson, of which we have thus 

 far received eight parts. The deep sea mollusks of the Gulf of 

 Mexico and the Caribbean sea obtained by the U.S. Coast Survey 

 steamer Blake have been described by Mr. W. H. Dall in Bulletin 

 No. ir, Vol. ix, of the Museum of Comparative Zoology, at Cam- 

 bridge, Mass. The collections made by the Blake in one winter 



