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CHAPTER OF VARIETIES. 



enabled to perform those sudden turns and evolutions in the air which 

 render their flight so remarkable. I observed that in the living bird 

 the eye did not appear to be placed so far back in the head as it does in 

 dead specimens, and as it has generally been represented in drawings. 

 The markings of the plumage also, in the living bird, are beautifully 

 regular, forming a well-defined pale brown or cream-coloured line along 

 the crown of the head, and three similar lines down the back, which are 

 never the least discomposed. This disposition of the snipe's plumage 

 should be carefully attended to in stuffed specimens. 



E. Blyth. 



Feb. 5th, 1834. 



On the notions of P. W. — In your Chapter of Varieties for last 

 month, a letter (signed P. W.) is introduced, which, as it contains 

 notions that I can hardly conceive any one can seriously entertain, I 

 would rather suppose is meant as a joke on the numerous theories that 

 start up daily, or to see if persons can be found credulous enough to 

 believe any absurdity, so that it possesses originality and a seeming 

 plausibility. As coming from a correspondent in the Magazine, some 

 few may, without examination, and without perceiving the writer's 

 intention, think the ideas good, and attach more weight to them than 

 they deserve ; for their sakes I will treat the letter as one which gives 

 P. W.'s opinion truly, and I hope in a few lines to show the utter 

 fallacy of such notions. Granting that the sea is two or three miles 

 deep, that an observer might have every favourable opportunity, that 

 the sea should be clearer than crystal, and telescopes more perfect even 

 than any yet invented, still do I assert that P. W.'s ideas cannot be 

 supported, for these few, but, as they appear to me, important reasons : 

 that the Megalosaurus, Icthyosaurus, &c, were firmed for breathing 

 air, and that though they might continue under water for some time, 

 yet sooner or later they must come up to respire ; that the Pterodactyli, 

 or Ornithocephali,y?eM; in the air like bats ; and that the Mammoth was 

 in every respect a land animal. The latter part of P. W.'s letter, is, I 

 think, rather obscure. Does the writer suppose that there is a stratum 

 of air under the mass of water three miles deep? If so, I would ask 

 him how it is retained there? how prevented from ascending through the 

 heavier liquid above ? or, granting that it could be retained, how would 

 it be renewed ? for so many large animals would surely soon destroy 

 its purity. If, as P. W. imagines, these living beings are to be'found at 

 the bottom of the sea, and my idea of his stratum of air be correct,' they 



