8200 



Moll asks. 



were of an uniform dark grayish brown, the under parts in no respect differing in tone 

 of colouring from the dorsal surface. It was a two-thirds sized fish, and in very fine 

 condition. — Edward Hearle Rodd ; Penzance, September 8, i862. 



Characters of a supposed new Cyclas. — Having found a form of Cyclas in Battersea 

 Fields, with which 1 was unacquainted, I showed it to several friends, to whom it 

 seemed equally new, and as it does not entirely answer to any description that I have 

 had the opportunity of seeing, I have endeavoured to give such an analysis of it as 

 my inexperience enables me to do. The shell is small, very tumid, almost spherical, 

 edges blunt, hinge ligaments not external, umbo produced, finely, deeply and regularly 

 sulcated, occasionally iridescent, the colour also occasionally interrupted, as may be 

 often seen in C. rivicola. The hinge-margins are not at all winged as in the typical 

 form C. cornea. Colour, when young, yellowish horn, but becoming darker with age 

 until it assumes a greenish olive with a yellow margin. Animal: — foot extremely 

 long and narrow, peifectly white, no appearance of flesh-colour in any part; siphonal 

 tubes rather short, dark yellowish brown ; oral tube darkest and longest, not fimbriated, 

 but jagged irregularly. In comparison with its allies it is dull and inactive in its 

 motions, and in confinement appears to be exceedingly shy and nervous, withdrawing 

 into its shell upon the slightest motion of the containing vessel, and I have even 

 thought at times that those I had in confinement were aware of the approach of an 

 opaque object toward the side of the small glass globe in which I kept them. The fry, 

 both when expelled and in the matrix, were as large as from a large example of 

 C. cornea. It differs from C. cornea var. nuclea in being more spherical and the 

 umbos more produced. C. cornea var. flavescens 1 have not at present by me, but 

 my recollection seems to be that the shape was more rhomboidal. Habitat : — ditches 

 or field drains, black and somewhat foetid mud. The accompanying shells were 

 Planorbis cornea, P. contorta, P. complanata, P. vortex, Limnseus periger, and a single 

 example of Cyclas calyculata, but without the umbonal appendage. It may be 

 nothing new; if so I have only to offer my apologies, and plead ray inexperience to 

 yourself and your readers. —John E. Daniel; 10, Taigon Terrace, Clapham Road, 

 London, S., September 5, 1862. 



Capture of a Recent Belerophina in the Indian Ocean. — The capture of a recent 

 species of Belerophina, a genus imagined to be only found in a fossil state, and the 

 representative of those great extinct Cephalopods which formerly disported themselves 

 on the surface of primeval seas, must be an event worthy of record in the 'Zoologist/ 

 During the monotony of long tedious voyages trivial objects are often invested with a 

 strange fictitious interest. The otherwise unoccupied mind finds a dreamy pleasure 

 in contemplating the few organic phenomena which present themselves. The vigorous 

 leap of the Bonitoes, and the glittering bodies of the flying-fish as they drop exhausted 

 one after the other into the water ; the huge rolling bodies of unwieldy flack-fish, their 

 dark skins rough with barnacles, moving through the water; the pretty white boatswain- 

 bird, with his marline-spike of a tail, hovering round the glittering vane at the main- 

 mast head ; the azure glint of the dolphins shining through the deep pellucid water ; 

 a passing ship; the capture of a shark; a patch of floating gulf-weed, with its colony 

 of sailor-crabs and little fishes; the spar of some lost ship, white with clustering 

 barnacles ; the clouds, the water-spouts, the changes of the wind, are all so many 



