21 4 General Notes. [F ebuary, 
kinglets, with several red-bellied nuthatches and a pair of brown 
creepers, “I have seen the purple finch in some of these mixed 
flocks, and a few hairy and downy woodpeckers, and_ hermit 
thrushes sometimes hang about their outskirts, but the latter are 
more commonly seen by themselves in groups of half a dozenor. 
thereabouts.” ~~ 
The account of the panther contains considerable new matter — 
Dr. Merriam insists that it never climbs trees unless very young, — 
or when pursued by dogs. iG 
It is stated that a panther can leap an almost incredible dis- — 
tance. “On level ground a single spring of twenty feet is by no | 
means uncommon, and on one occasion Mr. Sheppard measured — 
a leap, over snow, of nearly forty feet.’ Important notes ints — 
breeding habits are added. Some fallacies regarding the alleged 
fierceness of the panther, its mode of capturing its prey, its size 
and its mode of carrying its prey, are exposed, and the statement — 
made that the panther cries and screams is called in question, 
those who have had to do with panthers being the most skeptical 
in regard to their cries. The Canada lynx, wild cat, wolf, fox, 
wolverine and the fur animals, and the raccoon and bear a 
described with many new facts or corrections of popular errors; and 
common notion that it is due to temperature, and sug 
that it is due to falls of snow,the change sometimes ta 
place within forty-eight hours after the ground becomes COV 
with snow. The series, when completed, will be a fresh an 
uable contribution to our knowledge of the wild animals 
birds of the Eastern United States. a 
A Curious Nuprprancu Mottusx.—A very singular am 
which lives in green ulvz, on the shores of the Mediter 
and which was regarded as a flat-worm by Schultze, has! 
lately shown by L. Graff in the Morphologisches Yahrbuch, t 
be really not a Turbellarian worm, but “the very lowest 
known Nudibranchs,” and identical with what Kölliker lo 
the present specialized Dendroccela, but from a group of 
doccelida. Professor Graff does not suggest that this 
degraded Nudibranch, which has lost its gills, buccal 1 
radula, but may this not be the case? In that event it 
be a stem-form. This could be readily tested by a study © 
embryology. The ordinary Nudibranchs seem rather tO 
