Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 1 (1897).djvu/176

148 before the next year's visit, and yet would not cost more than having down three lecturers for the local institution or society, apart from this work."

of the Royal College of Science, London, has recently been investigating the African Lake Fauna. In a recent number of 'Nature' it was announced that he had made the apparent discovery of dimorphism in the Tanganyika medusa, with active budding in both forms. Further interesting particulars have been extracted from the ' Central African Gazette,' published at Zomba.

"Mr. Moore verified the report, which travellers on Tanganyika have heard from time to time, that there is a large fish in the lake which rushes at the paddles of a canoe passing through the water. He actually saw this take place. He also discovered a large electric fish which gives a severe shock on being touched. Tanganyika, indeed, appears to be full of fish. By trailing a line with an artificial minnow behind the boat, Mr. Moore caught enormous numbers of fish, some of them up to sixty pounds in weight—bright clean fish with silvery scales. The heaviest fish which was seen in the lake weighed over ninety pounds; this was a sort of mud-fish. Sponges were also discovered in Tanganyika, which though of no great size were undoubtedly real sponges. On the east side of the lake, in a bay where the striped leech was very common, Mr. Moore found a small fish about the size of a small minnow, whose back was striped in imitation of the leech, and this seemed to protect it against the raids of the kingfishers, which, while constantly picking up other small fish, avoided this particular one."

a January meeting of the "Caradoc and Severn Valley Field Club," as reported in the 'Shrewsbury Chronicle,' Mr. H.E. Forrest exhibited, on behalf of Mr. Harold Peake, of Ellesmere, three young Vipers, which were taken out of the parent, and remarkable for each having two small legs, These were believed to be unique, and as probably an instance of "reversion to an ancestral type." We are indebted to Mr. R.H. Ramsbotham for the above cutting, and that gentleman writes that he had an opportunity of examining the three young Vipers referred to preserved in spirit—"said to be part of seven taken from a female Viper before birth, and which distinctly exhibited two small feet protruding from the lower portion of the belly."