On an Insect Feeding on the Ordeal or Poison Bean. 347 



kills its prey. The bird is said frequently to impale its prey 

 on a thorn, and pull it to pieces as it devours it. In this case, 

 however, the small gold crest was quite entire, the legs and 

 wings being perfect, the larger feathers even not being re- 

 moved. From the feathers and other parts of the bird being 

 swallowed, it is plain that the shrike must cast up the indi- 

 gestible parts of its food in pellets, like the owls, hawks, 

 and many other birds. 



No less than five or six of these shrikes have been noticed 

 this winter — a very unusual number ; several of these 

 instances were referred to at the last meeting of the Society. 



IV. Note of a Bone of the Bos primigenius,/owncZ near Dunse, Berwick- 



shire. By George Logan, Esq. 



Mr Logan stated that the bone of the Bos primigenius 

 exhibited was found in the course of operations for deepen- 

 ing the river Leet, near Swinton Mill, Berwickshire. It 

 was found in the alluvium, a little below the surface. 



Mr Wm. Turner said he had examined the bone, and be- 

 lieved it to be part of the right humerus of a young animal, 

 and the locality was apparently a new one for this species 

 of ancient ox. 



V. Notes on the Discovery, by the Rev. Alexander Robb, in 1863, of 



an Insect feeding on the Esere, the Ordeal or Poison Bean of 

 Old Calabar. By John Alex. Smith, M.D. 



Dr Smith read extracts from a letter, dated Old Calabar, 

 30th August 1865, which he had recently received from the 

 Eev. Alex. Eobb, mentioning, among other things, that a 

 friend had sent him a London newspaper containing the 

 following statement : — 



" It is said that a species of Toucan lives upon the fruit 

 which produces strychnia, but an equally strange announce- 

 ment has just been made by Dr Fraser with regard to one 

 of the Lepidoptera. It has been found by this well-known 

 physician that the larva of a species of moth lives upon the 

 Calabar Bean, a drug now much in vogue among ophthalmic 

 surgeons, and whose action on the eye causes rapid diminu- 

 tion in the size of the pupil. — London Review." 



