Cerylon histeroides and picipes. Under bark of horn-beam in similar situations to the above, November and December. Lyctus oblongus. In dead hornbeam. Rhyzophagus ferrugineus and bipustulatus. Abundant under bark of dead hornbeam, October to December. Anthophilus sulcatus. In dung, May. Dendrophilus punctatus. Under bark of whitethorn in May. Cucujus dermestoides. Beneath the bark of recently felled oaks, near where the separation has taken place. I never found them on standing trees but once, and then only a solitary specimen on the trunk of a hornbeam, where a limb had been lopped off. Pretty common in May; I have taken thirty or forty in one day. Dorcus parallelopipedus. October, in rotten hornbeam. Lucanus Cervus. June. Onthophagus nutans. Common in dung. from the oak in June. præustus. Oaks in June. Ctenicerus sanguinicollis. Oak, June. and June. Opilus mollis. April. Whitethorn, May —J. S. Norman; Rider St., New North Road, October 26, 1843. Description of Anchomenus picticornis, a new Beetle belonging to the stirps Nematocera, and the natural order Carabites. General colour dark brown, with the palpi and the margins of the prothorax and elytra paler, the basal and second joints of the antennæ are pitchy red, the third is of the same colour at both its extremities, but nearly black in the middle, the fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh joints are black, and the remaining four white. There are two deep longitudinal furrows on the anterior part of the head, and a deep, short and somewhat lunulate furrow on the prothorax immediately behind the head: each elytron has eight very distinct striæ, besides an abbreviated one at the base, between the first and second, the exterior furrow is interrupted by many large irregular coarse punctures. This little beetle is 3 inch in length, and 125 in. in breadth, and closely resembles in size and appearance the well known Anchomenus albipes of this country. It was found by Mr. E. Doubleday, near St. John's Bluff, in East Florida, and the specimen, which is unique, is now in the cabinet of the British Museum. -Edward Newman; Hanover St., Peckham, November, 1843. Description of Hermerius impar, a new Beetle belonging to the stirps Macrocera and the natural order Cerambycites. I propose the new genus Hermerius as distinct from the other Australian Prionidæ, on account of some discrepancies which will be sufficiently manifest in the description. The head is small, and bends downwards almost in a vertical position, and it has a deep median longitudinal groove, which terminates just above the mouth: the eyes are large and oblong, and are scarcely at all indented at the insertion of the antennæ: the antennæ in the female are scarcely half so long as the body, in the male they are rather more than half as long, they are slender, and composed of eleven joints, the first and third of which are the longest, the second very short, and the remaider of nearly equal length, the tenth and eleventh are somewhat flattened, and are impressed with numerous irregular longitudiual furrows, and a few furrows also appear on the eighth and ninth joints; the other joints are cylindrical and shining, and have many large, deep, punctures: the prothorax is gibbous, rough, uneven, and deeply, irregularly, and confluently punctured; its lateral margins are armed with a few irregular and unequal teeth, one of which, much larger than the rest and somewhat spine-like, is placed at the posterior angle and near the base of the elytra : the scutellum is large, triangular, smooth and shining the elytra are much wider than the prothorax, very long and rounded at the apex, without any anal tooth or spine: all the tibiæ are without external spines or serratures, a character which will at once distinguish this genus from Cnemoplites, Sceleocantha, and the allied forms of Australasian Prionidæ; the femora have a few minute but distinct teeth beneath. The colour of H. impar is that pitchy brown so common among the family Prionidæ, the elytra being paler than the other parts: on the elytra are two indistinct longitudinal ridges; the head, prothorax and sternum are very hairy, especially in the male: in the under side of the abdomen of the two sexes there is a very remarkable difference, that of the female being perfectly smooth and very glabrous, while that of the male has a large lunulate depression in each segment, occupying the greater part of its surface, and completely filled with a dense mass of yellowish hairs. The female is rather more than 2 inches in length, the male rather less; the breadth of the female is 7 inch, of the male 6 inch. The only specimens I have seen were sent to me from Kanguroo Island by Mr. Davis, and are now in the cabinet of the British Museum.—Id. Note on the occurrence of Echinodermata at Ramsgate. In the spring of the present year, namely from February to May, I visited Ramsgate, and did not fail to examine the shore between high and low water mark, my search being greatly facilitated by the spring tides, which gave me a more extended range. The following are my remarks. The common cross-fish (Uraster rubens, Forbes) and the common sun-star (Solaster papposa, Forbes), were the only two species I found; they appear to inhabit different localities; the former are found nearer high-water mark than the latter, as well as being left dry by the tide, whilst the sun-stars are always found in the small pools left by the tide, not attached to anything, but lying on the sand at the bottom; the cross-fish, on the contrary, were invariably found firmly attached to the rocks: I should doubt whether they can move equally easy with the sun-star, or whether they have even a voluntary or a moving power within themselves at all: what would favour this supposition is the fact that several of the number I found were deformed in consequence of the arms suiting themselves to the shape of the crevices in which the fish had located them selves. The above opinion that they have no free motion, was further confirmed by my detaching certain fish with peculiarities of form, which I threw to a moderate distance from the shore, and which were thrown up the next tide. After storms great quantities are thrown up. I do not mean to insist that they always remain stationary, but that they do in the spring months I have not the least doubt. The anemones prey on the cross-fish indiscriminately with shell-fish. I could find neither cross-fish, sunstars, nor anemones on the Pegwell side of Ramsgate; but on the western side the anemones were very plentiful and very large, and some of them were embedded in the sand to the depth of four inches; in digging down you find them attached to the rock or some stone; they evidently adapt themselves by elongating their bodies as the sand rises above them.-W. Thompson; London, November, 1843. Note on an unusual Snow-storm. We were visited here, in Yorkshire, on the 17th of October, by an unusually early and severe snow-storm, the effects of which were very curious, for the leaves being at that time still on the trees, they held up the snow in a remarkable manner, till the superincumbent weight became more than the branches and boughs could support, and one by one they gave way, till the whole country in every direction was strewed with them. But it is an ill wind that blows nobody good, and the poor have obtained a windfall in an unwonted supply of the needful article of firewood. The ash trees sent their top-gallant yards down on deck, as if they had, for once, adopted the motto, "frangas non flectes,” but the oaks, in many instances, still suspend their fractured and twisted branches between sky and sod, like Mahomet's coffin, and so they will doubtless remain for some time longer. The sound of the branches cracking and giving way on all sides, had a very singular effect. The wind was not high, at least in sheltered places, and the first crash I heard was caused, I thought, by a tree being felled; but reflecting, the next moment, that it was not a likely day for that operation, I looked round, and soon had ocular and auricular proof from various quarters of the 1eal cause. The fields were strewed in all directions with boughs already broken, and every few minutes others might be heard or seen following their downward course.— "How bowed the woods beneath their fleecy weight!" It was remarked to me by an observer, how melancholy an appearance the green trees presented when covered with this unusual and unseasonable mantle, quite a contrast to their cheerful aspect when" Gaffer Winter" has stripped off their leaves : "When the hoar frost is chill Upon mountain and rill,” And when the smallest sprays and twigs of the forest glitter and twinkle in the sun, with their temporary covering. Not only has every season its beauties, but any anachronism destroys the harmony of their good keeping. The 17th of October, 1843 I shall not soon forget, nor will, I think, a mare I rode that day, for I set out in the midst of the storm, but though well becoated, I soon found that I had better return, unless I wished to sit in wet clothes all the day. The mare was much frightened, but notwithstanding her shying we did not part company.-F. O. Morris; Crambe Vicarage, York, November, 1843. PROFESSOR OWEN, proceeding to a detailed description of the skull, gives a minute and elaborate analysis of the malar bone: this remarkable bone projects from the skull somewhat in the manner of a small elk-antler; it commences with a short thick stem, somewhat flattened above, where it forms the floor of the orbit, and there expands into a broad vertical trilobed plate, as represented in the above figure. In no family of existing or extinct animals, besides the sloths, do we find any approach to this extraordinary formation: though the more lengthened and straightened skull of the Mylodon, and its more complete zygomatic arch, are characters possessed more fully by the armadilloes than by the sloths. With all other mammals it were useless to compare the skull now before us: once place it beside that of the horse, ox, elk, tapir, rhinoceros, dugong, or any other herbivorous animal of equal bulk, and we shall not only be struck with the manifold discrepancies, but at once conclude that the Mylodon obtained its food in a manner no longer practised by living animals. The extinct Megatherium, however, presents us with a conformation similar in many respects to that of the Mylodon, and more especially in the possession of that singular descending process of the malar bone, which so peculiarly characterizes the sloth, and which alone is sufficient to show the close affinity of these gigantic antediluvians with our existing sloths. The teeth of the Mylodon are eighteen in number, five on each side above and four below: they are simple, long, fangless, of uniform substance and nearly straight, with the exception of the first tooth in the upper jaw, which is slightly curved each has a central body of vascular dentine, enclosed in a cylinder of hard unvascular dentine, which forms a prominent ridge, and which is again cased in a covering of cement. The inference the author derives from the structure of the teeth, is that the Mylodon fed on the leaves or slender terminal twigs of trees, in this respect resembling the giraffe, the elephant and the sloth. The extraordinary stature of the giraffe raises its mouth to the immediate vicinity of its food; the trunk of the elephant conveys the food to its mouth; and the light figure of the sloth enables him to run along the under side of the boughs, till he finds he has reached a commodious feeding-place but the Mylodon and his congeners possessed short and massive necks, no trunk, and the bulk of a Hippopotamus or Rhinoceros; so that to obtain their food in the same manner as either the giraffe, the elephant or the sloth, appears decidedly impossible, unless, with Dr. Lund, we imagine a vegetation gigantic in proportion; but even granting this, it is difficult to believe that creatures rivalling the Hippopotamus in bulk, would approach the leaves, which are usually placed on the most slender twigs. Professor Owen, after alluding to the very perfect clavicles of the Mylodon, which have been received alternately as evidence of the burrowing and climbing hypotheses, does not necessarily imply the faculty of climbing or burrowing, since the bear, a climbing, and the badger, a burrowing animal, are perfectly destitute of them: but from a comparison of the hand of the Mylodon with that of certain ant-eaters, he thinks it may be inferred that it was an instrument employed in digging or displacing the earth. The author considers the unequalled bulk of the posterior extremities, and the corresponding excess of muscular power, as shown by the spinal crest of the sacrum, and the broad, rugged, and anteriorly produced margin of the ilium, as further evidence against the climbing theory; and he regards the hind legs as uniting with the enormous tail in forming a tripod, which supported the weight of the animal, leaving the hands at liberty. "If the foregoing physiological interpretation of the osseous frame-work of the gigantic extinct sloths be the true one, they may be supposed to have commenced the process of prostrating the chosen tree by scratching away the soil from the roots; for which office we find in the Mylodon the modern scansorial fore-foot of the sloth modified after the type of that of the partially fossorial ant-eater. The compressed or subcompressed form of the claws, which detracts from their power as burrowing instruments, adds to their fitness for penetrating the interspaces of roots, and for exposing and liberating them from the attached soil. This operation having been duly effected by the alternate action of the fore-feet, aided probably by the unguiculate digits of the |