Reptiles — Crustacea. 



6565 



The Toads in Clay.— To the notice, in the ' Zoologist ' (Zool. 6537), of the occur- 

 rence of live toads underneath a bed of clay, a note is subjoined by the Editor, asking 

 the name of any scientific man who was present at the exhumation. I am unable to 

 give such a name, further than as the intelligent foreman of the brickyard, Thomas 

 Duddridge (who witnessed the exhumation by one of the labourers of the yard), may be 

 entitled to the appellation ; but no one, however high his scientific attainments, could 

 be more careful than he was to give me correct information, or more exact in his 

 statements; and if, after minute inquiry, I had not been fully satisfied of the correct- 

 ness of his account, I should not have sought to occupy the page of the 'Zoologist' 

 with its recital. On showing him the notice in the ' Zoologist,' he said it was im- 

 possible for anything to be more correct; and he added that the little cavity which 

 the toads occupied was quite smooth in every part, apparently by their long-continued 

 movements, — as smooth, to use his own illustration, as the inside of a china bowl. — 

 Thomas Clark; Halesleigh, May 10, 1858. 



The Edible Frog long a Native of Foulmire Fens. — In reply to Mr. Alfred 

 Newton's query, in the last number of the * Zoologist,' I have to remark that the 

 fact of the esculent frog being indigenous to this country appears to me to rest 

 on irrefragable testimony. My father, who was a native of Cambridgeshire, has often 

 described to me, as long ago as I can recollect, the peculiarly loud and somewhat 

 musical sound uttered by the frogs of Whaddon and Foulmire, which procured for 

 them the name of ' Whaddon Organs." My father was always of opinion that they 

 were of a different species from the common frog, and this opinion of his, formed 

 nearly a century ago, was confirmed by Mr. ThurnalPs discovery that the frogs 

 of Foulmire are of the species Rana esculenta. — Thomas Bell ; Broad Street, May 

 J, 1859. 



On Squilla Desmarestii. By P. H. Gosse, Esq., F.R.S. 



For the last six weeks I have had a living specimen of that pretty 

 and rare Crustacean, Squilla Desmarestii {Risso). It was taken 

 by means of the dredge from deep water, off Torquay, about the 

 middle of April, and has lived in one of my aquariums until yesterday 

 morning, when I found it dead. 



This individual agreed accurately with Professor Bell's diagnosis 

 (Brit. St.-Eyed Crust. 354) and figure. It measured, from the front of 

 the eyes to the spines of the last abdominal segment, exactly 

 two inches. Its colour while alive was a pellucid white, freckled all 

 over with wood-brown or pale sepia ; these frecklings or cloudings 

 under a lens resolved themselves into groups (constellations, so 

 to speak), more or less dense and more or less extensive, of very 

 minute stars; the whole bearing a close resemblance to the colouring 

 of Crangon vulgaris. The hands were white (ivory-like, but scarcely 

 so opaque) without freckles. The yellowish hue (a warm buff) of the 

 body, and the rose tint of the edge of the hand and of some other 



