20 
NOTICES OF SERIALS. 
of February. We again shot a male bird on the 3rd of January, 1852, a female 
on the 27th of December in the ensuing winter, and another, also a female, on the 
26th of December, 1853. Its time for remaining with us seems very short, indeed 
usually to be limited to three months—December, January, and February; yet 
during the late winter one was killed early in November, and my brother shot a 
female as late as the 23rd of March; this may, perhaps, be owing to the long 
duration of the cold weather, or, which is less probable, we may have overlooked 
its stay in other years. With the single exception of the last-mentioned bird, all 
our specimens were shot within fifty yards of the same place—a sheltered cove by 
the Parson and Clerk rocks ; but others have met with it along the whole line of 
coast from Dawlish to Torquay and Paignton ; and as it has occurred at Plymouth, 
and, if my memory does not fail me, at Penzance, and also at the Isle of Wight, 
the probability is that it might be met with every winter along the whole south¬ 
western coast of England. Many are killed every year in the neighbourhood of 
Teignmouth and Torquay ; one was shot on the telegraph wires by the side of the 
River Teign ; but it is usually a coast bird, and haunts the cliffs. The female pro¬ 
cured on the 23rd of March was killed on some trunks of trees laid upon the beach 
near the town—a situation much resembling one in which I often remember seeing 
them in the summer months at Coblentz, where they were frequently to be found 
settled on some timber by the banks of the Rhine ; they were there abundant, and 
very tame and domestic in their habits, often perching on the low slate roof of a 
washhouse in the garden of the Hotel de Belle-Vue.” On the Transmission and 
Metamorphoses of the Intestinal Worms, by MM. Milne-Edwards and Valen¬ 
ciennes ; Note on the Trichomonas vaginilis of Donne ; On a Lunar Vapour Bow, 
by C. Clouston ; Meteorological Observations and Table for April, 1855. 
Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science. No. 11, April, 1855. 
Price 4s. With Woodcuts and Lithographic Illustrations. London: S. Highley, 
32, Fleet-street. 
No. 11, April:—(William B. Carpenter, M.D., F.R.S.) On the Development 
of the Embryo of the Purpura lapillus ; (George J. Allman, M.D., F.R.S.) On 
the Occurrence, among the Infusoria, of Peculiar Organs, resembling Thread-cells 
—with a plate. This paper was read at the meeting of the British Association, at 
Liverpool, September, 1854. It would appear that some of the continental natu¬ 
ralists are of opinion that certain long bristle-like processes, which project from some 
animalcules w hen dead, are the cilia abnormally lengthened. That these natu¬ 
ralists have erred somewhat in their explanation of these processes, Professor All- 
man, in this notice, clearly proves; and, as they have been hitherto undescribed, 
we have the following account given:— u When the animalcule” (the particular 
specimen examined was Bursaria heucas, Ehr.') “ is examined under a sufficiently 
high power, minute fusiform bodies may be detected thickly imbedded in its walls. 
These bodies are perfectly colourless and transparent; they are about the l-2500ths 
of an inch long, and may easily, even without any manipulation, be witnessed at 
the margin, where they are seen to be arranged perpendicularly to the outline of 
the animalcule, while, on the surface turned towards the observer, their extreme 
transparency and want of colour render them invisible against the opaque back¬ 
ground, and it becomes necessary to crush the animalcule beneath the covering- 
