262 



The Scottish Naturalist. 



Among these numerous lines of scientific investigation, re- 

 commended by the British Association, and in which the co- 

 operation of the members of Local Societies, whether collectively 

 or individually, should be of great service, we may well hope that 

 Scotland will be worthily represented. There is, at least, scarce 

 room for the plea that the range of choice is not sufficiently wide 

 to ensure enlisting the sympathies and aid, in one or more of them, 

 of almost all persons endowed with any real taste or capacity for 

 the Natural Sciences, and whose occupations will permit of de- 

 voting any time to such pursuits. 



Lichia Vadigo Risso, taken near Skye.— This fish, not previously 



recorded from British seas, is recorded in the proceedings of the Zoological 

 Society of London (June 1st, 1889, p. 50, PI. iv.), by Dr. A. Giinther, as 

 having been taken on 17th September, 1888, in herring nets off Waternish 

 Point, Isle of Skye. The specimen measured 20 inches in length. The 

 excellent figure should render easy the identification of this very rare fish, of 

 which only two examples were known to Cuvier, and only one is in the 

 British Museum Dr. Giinther states that the shape is like that of the Horse- 

 mackerel, but fuller, like the Pilot-fish, which it also resembles in its small 

 scales. The mouth is rather wide, the maxillary extending to the hind 

 margin of the eye ; and both jaws bear a series of rather strong distant teeth. 

 The dorsal spines are short and feeble, and the anterior dorsal and anal rays 

 form a separate lobe. The caudal fin is deeply forked. The upper parts are 

 greenish-black, the lower parts, silvery, these colours meeting along the sides 

 in deep indentations. Its food is chiefly fishes of the herring family. 



Deiopeia pulchella, taken near Aberdeen in 1840.— Per- 

 haps the facts contained in the following extract from the minutes of meeting 

 of the Edinburgh Royal Physical Society, held 27th February, 1850, may be 

 thought worth mention in the Scottish Naturalist : — 



" The President [Professor John Fleming, D.D.] showed a Deiopeia pul- 

 chella, Stephens, which had been found in 1840 by his son, Dr. A. Fleming, 

 near the Old Bridge of Don, Aberdeenshire." 



I am not aware of any other instance of this beautiful moth having been 

 taken in Scotland, except that captured near Kelso by Mr. W. J. Kerr in the 

 autumn of 1876, as recorded in the Scottish Naturalist, vol. v., pp. 36, 40. 



William Evans. 



