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The Sapphirine Gurnard (Trigla hirundo).—A specimen of this fish, about ten inches long, lived in the Hamburg aquarium all last summer (1864), in a sea-water tank containing over a thousand gallons. It was a fine and attractive fish for exhibition, on account of its unusual form, bright colours, enormous pectoral fins, and its open daylight character, not hiding itself in a hole and only making its appearance at night after visitors have left, after the fashion of many animals in zoological gardens, but boldly swimming about with a gentle sailing motion like that of a swallow, as it curves through the air with outspread wings. Indeed, the pectorals of the fish were very similar to the wings of the bird, though at other times their fine blue colour, edged with brilliant yellowish-white, and their broad "hovering" character, reminded one of the wings of a great butterfly. The general colour of the body of the fish was a rather cloudy or dusky brick-dust red, very different to the red of a gold-fish. It had very large and intelligent-looking eyes and that they were far-seeing eyes I am convinced of, as it used to perceive its food dropping through the water at a remote corner of the tank, ten or twelve feet away. This food was exclusively living shrimps, and it would cat nothing else whatever, not even living prawns. As the double handful of shrimps went tumbling down towards the bottom of the tank, the Gurnard would dash into the midst of them, and would snap them up right and left with much quickness, so long as they were free above the sand with which the base of the tank is covered to the depth of two or three inches. But if the shrimps got into the sand, then the fish began to use its curious "fin-rays," of which it possessed six, three at the base of each pectoral fin. These fin-rays were, in fact, fingers; only, as they were not intended to grasp, but only to feel and to touch, they were not articulated into joints, like the fingers of a man or a monkey, but were composed of a series of minute pieces of bone united by cartilage, forming a stiff wire-like structure, having an abrupt curve downwards. Each fin-ray was made up of two of these wires (so to speak) enclosed in a sheath consisting of a continuation of the skin of the fish, and the two wires were connected at their tips within the sheath. The other ends of the two wires were each attached to a separate muscle, and as the pair of wires were free from each other except at their tips, and slid freely over each other in the sheath, it followed that a very accurate fingering motion (something like that of a pianoforte player's) could be given by the alternate pullings of the muscles, above or below. The extremities of the finger-rays were smoothly rounded and very slightly knobbed; therefore, whenever a shrimp was buried out of sight in the sand, the Gurnard would disturb it by feeling, poking, and prodding above it; on which the shrimp would fly out of the sand (as shrimps will do when alarmed), and would be caught and swallowed instantly. In this manner the fish would consume from twenty to thirty shrimps twice or three times a week, and between the feeding days it would employ itself in searching for stray shrimps all over the bottom of the tank, until not one was left. At length, in late autumn, the supply of shrimps from Cuxhaven failed, and I could get none alive from England or elsewhere, nor could I induce the Gurnard to eat anything else. I am sorry now that I did not return it to the sea; for its hunger became distressing to behold. Its head looked unnaturally big in contrast with its attenuated body; its eyes were sunk into deep pits, and its once magnificent pectoral fins became split up into shabby rags, and so, when on one Saturday afternoon in October it turned over dead, I was not sorry to see it out of its misery, and I then dissected it. I think this was the first specimen ever kept in an aquarium.—W. Alford Lloyd, Zoological Gardens, Hamburg.

Eels and Dew-worms.—I was removing some eels from an eel-trap, where they had been caught the night before. One of them had a substance, the size of a goose egg, about four inches down it, which I concluded was a disease. On opening it, I found it caused by a great number of dew-worms, which it must have taken very shortly before entering the trap; and to get them it must have been out in the meadows during the night. It was very showery weather at the time, and the river swollen, but not over the banks. Dew-worms are generally found in grass fields early in the mornings in wet weather.—P. P.

The Torpedo.—On the 20th July, I saw one of these fish at Budleigh Salterton, on the south coast of Devon, which had been caught in a Brixham trawl. The lads who showed it called it an "electrified ray;" and said the fisherman who caught it, though he only touched it with one finger, received a severe shock, "his arm was left quivering for ten minutes." When I saw it, it had been exenterated, and weighed about 25 lb. Its colour was black and shining above (skin like shagreen) and white below; tail large and flapping; spinal column heavy, seemingly with a great plexus of nerves attached to it; fins chiefly on the margin of its cylindrical outline. Having no book of reference with me, I could not at the time determine its species; from its colour, however, I take it to be the Torpedo nobiliana, of Yarrell, rather than the other which is given as a British species, the Torpedo marmorata, or "old British Torpedo."—Rev. M. G. Watkins, Barnoldby-le-Beck, Grimsby.