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 leathers 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. 
P 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,/oun(^ near Dunse, Berwich- 
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, hy the Rev. Alexander Hobb, 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 w^hose action on the eye causes rapid diminu- 
tion in the size of the pupil. — Lo7idon Review." 
