320 JOURNAL OF SCIENCE. 
de Quatrefages gives very complete accounts of the general 
characteristics of these birds, and a historical review of the 
observations made in the last thirty years, by different authors, 
in New Zealand and elsewhere. His paper, indeed, is a concise 
summary of all the knowledge obtained up to the present time 
as to the moas, and is a valuable contribution to the naturai 
history of our adopted country. 
GENE RAL< NOLES, 
—_—_—_—- SS 
A PLAGUE OF PARAKEETS.—I have been informed by a 
runholder in the Mackenzie Country, beyond Burke’s Pass, that 
the parakeets are swarming in his garden this year. In two days 
he shot 100 with a walking-stick gun, but with no apparent 
effect. His fruit crop is doomed. A settler in the Waihemo 
district also informs me that his garden is literally alive with 
them—they are destroying everything. This correspondent has 
before told me that he loses his crop of small truit every year 
now through the ravages of small birds, and that his enemies are 
native, not English, birds. I have not yet noticed the little 
parrots about Dunedin, but there is no doubt we are to have an 
invasion. [Sa co Se 
Teraticum . typicum, Chilton—I learn by a letter from 
the Rev. T. R. R. Stebbing that this curious little amphipod 
belongs to Seba, Costa, a genus I had overlooked. To this 
genus Mr. Stebbing has added a species, Seba Saundersi, sup- 
posed to come from South Africa, which, he says, is almost too 
like mine to be distinct. The two species are certainly very 
much alike, but his descriptions and figures (see Ann. and Mag. 
Nat. Hist. March 1875) being taken from a dried specimen, are 
scarcely detailed enough to make me feel quite sure ; and, con- 
sidering also the difference in habitat, it would, I think, be 
hardly advisable to unite the two species without further evidence. 
The locality from which his specimen came is somewhat doubt- 
ful, for he says: “ My little specimen came from a lot of sponges 
and gorgonias from Algoa Bay in Africa, and from Australia. 
Your discovery makes me feel some suspicion of my correctness 
in giving South Africa as the locality for my specimen.” 
CHAS. CHILTON, 
A NEW SPECIES OF IDOTEA.—Some time ago I took at 
Sumner a single specimen of an /dotea which is quite different 
from any of the species hitherto recorded from New Zealand, and 
as I cannot identify it with any of the species mentioned in Mr. 
Miers’ elaborate “ Revision of the Idoteide’’ (Linnzean Society’s 
