1883.] Zoology. 981 
position cannot be satisfactorily assigned them at present. He 
then quotes as follows from a letter from Professor W. F., Bundy: 
“Crayfish feed on worms, small mollusks, insects that fall in 
their way, small fish, and in general any kind of animal food, 
especially carrion. They are industrious scavengers. This lat- 
ter item, with the additional ones that they form a not incon- 
siderable part of food for fish, and their damage to meadows 
by burrowing, indicate where they come in the most direct rela- 
tion to human interests.” The river species, adds Mr. King, he 
regards as beneficial. Those which burrow in the meadows, 
building mud chimneys which become sun-baked and interfere 
quite seriously with mowing, he is in doubt in regard to, but in- 
clines to the opinion that their services as scavengers more than 
offset the damage they do. Crayfish are preyed upon to a con- 
Eoee extent by various species of herons and some other 
irds. 
Tae Borrie-nose WnALe.— There has been considerable con- 
fusion respecting the species of genus Hyperodon, since Dr. Gray 
described and figured H. /atifrons from a skull found at the Ork- 
ney islands. The chatacters upon which Dr. Gray’s species, 
afterwards made into a genus entitled Lagenocetus, was founded, 
certainly seemed important enough to be specific, since the 
ascending part of the maxillary, which in skulls referred to H. 
rostratus were thin, were in the type of H. latifrons very thick, 
nearly touching each other in front of the blower, and higher 
than the hinder part of the skull. Nevertheless Professor Esch- 
richt expressed his opinion that Æ. /atifrons was only an old male 
of the ordinary rostratus, bidens, butskopf, etc. (as it had been 
variously called). Dr. Gray, in rejoinder, asserted that the fisher- 
man who procured the head had assured him that it was that o 
a female gravid with young, Thus the matter rested until last 
year, when the second species was definitely disposed of by the- 
observations of Captain Gray, before whom the subject was 
brought by Professor Flower. 
Captain Gray, observing the frequency of this Ziphioid in the 
Seas between Iceland and Spitzbergen, harpooned several and 
brought back their oil. This, upon analysis, proved to so closely 
resemble that of the sperm whale as to be probably of equal 
value for the special purposes for which sperm oil is used. , 
with the discovery that spermaceti existed in the head, induced 
Captain Gray to devote himself to the capture of bottle-noses. 
angular box-like form, squarely truncate in front, but differing 
of the sperm whale in the presence of a small be 
