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These young birds were not albinos, as shewn by the colour of their beaks and legs, which nearly resembled the same parts in the adults. 'Bulletin de la Soc. Vaudoise des Sc. Nat. vol. x. 1869, p. 132. The young of the Polish swan, Cygnus immutabilis of Yarrell, are always white; but this species, as Mr.
He must have been at least ten or twelve years ahead of Yarrell; and he saw the whole significance of it, too he saw where it led to. As I understand it, he actually anticipated in his pamphlet Saint Hilaire's theory of the universal type, and supported the hypothesis by describing the notochord of the amphioxus as a cartilaginous vertebral column.
KIRBY, Bridgewater Treatise, vol. i. p. 143. YARRELL, vol. ii. p. 384. The class of fishes endowed with this power are chiefly those with labyrinthiform pharyngeal bones, so disposed in plates and cells as to retain a supply of moisture, which, whilst they are crawling on land, gradually exudes so as to keep the gills damp.
I have not generally thought it necessary to point out these changes, but in this instance it seemed necessary to do so, as in the former edition of 'Yarrell' the Chiffchaff was called by the name Sylvia rufa, and this might possibly have caused some confusion unless the change had been pointed out.
French, "Fauvette grise," "Bec-fin Grisette." The Whitethroat has hitherto perhaps been better known by the name used in the former edition of 'Yarrell' and by Messrs. Degland and Gerbe, Curruca cinerea, but in consequence of the inexorable rule of the British Association the name "rufa," given by Boddaert in 1783, has now been accepted for this bird.
MISTLETOE THRUSH. Turdus viscivorus, Linnaeus. French, "Merle Draine," "Grive Draine." I quite agree with the remarks made by Professor Newton, in his edition of 'Yarrell, as to the proper English name of the present species, and that it ought to be called the Mistletoe Thrush.
It is highly probable that the termites are endowed with some such faculty: nor is it more remarkable that an insect should combine the gases of its food to produce water, than that a fish should decompose water in order to provide itself with gas. FOURCROIX found the contents of the air-bladder in a carp to be pure nitrogen. Yarrell, vol. i. p. 42.
Indeed, this sometimes leads to their own destruction; and when their teeth do not deliver them from their difficulty, the blue sharks, which hover about the coast of Cornwall during the pilchard season, roll their bodies round so as to twine the line about them in its whole length, and often in such a way that Mr Yarrell has known a fisherman give up as hopeless the attempt to unroll it.
Yarrell, examining, with the author of this work, one that had died, certainly not more than five years old, found that it had neither incisors nor canine teeth, and that the molars were reduced to one on each side, the large tubercular tooth being the only one that was remaining.
The Nightjar occasionally remains very late in the Islands, as Miss Carey records one in the 'Zoologist' for 1872 as occurring on the 16th of October; and I have one killed as late as the 12th of November: this bird had its stomach crammed with black beetles, not our common domestic nuisances, but small winged black beetles: these dates are later than the Nightjar usually remains in England, though Yarrell notices one in Devon as late as the 6th of November, and one in Cornwall on the 27th of November.
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