liberal offer could not induce the possessor to part with it to send to England.

Another letter from Melbourne, Australia, written to Gould, informs us that the nestling bird is extraordinarily helpless; when taken forcibly from the nest, it walked most awkwardly, with its legs bent inwards, frequently falling, apparently from want of strength to move the large and heavy bones of its legs properly, and this at a time when its height was sixteen inches, and when its wings and tail were already furnished with feathers, although the body was still clothed with down, which, as well as the feathers, was of a dark brown color. When taken from the nest, the bird screamed loudly, and the mother, notwithstanding the proverbial shyness of the species, actuated by her maternal fondness, tried in various ways to deliver the captive. A shot was the reward of her devotion, and with its mother near it, the young Menura soon became silent and quiet. Afterward its cries for its natural protector being answered by an imitation of the mother's voice, it was easily led by the sound and soon became very tame. It was exceedingly voracious, but ate wholly in the manner of the Passeres, the nestlings of which hold the open beak in a vertical position, requiring food to be dropped therein. It was sustained principally by worms and the larvæ of ants, and when occasionally it picked up the latter for itself it never was able to swallow them, the muscles of the neck not having gained sufficient power to effect the required jerk and throwing back of the head. Remaining for an unusually long time in the nest, the young Menura, like the passerine birds in general, possesses the instinct of cleanliness.

The habits of Menura Albertii are very similar to those of its better known relative; the former, like the latter, being famous for its most extraordinary mocking capabilities. Commencing his song before the dawn of day, in fact being the earliest of song-birds, he continues till about an hour after sunrise, besides his own peculiar note imitating the

cries of all the birds in the bush. He then becomes silent and remains so during the day until about an hour before. sunset, when he again commences singing and playing about until it is quite dark.

This species chooses sandy localities and feeds wholly on insects, mingled with a considerable proportion of sand, but is without the crop found among the gravel-using Rasores.

It commences building in May, lays its eggs in June, and hatches its young in July. Choosing some bare rock where there is a sufficient shelter for a lodgement, it builds an oven-shaped nest, outwardly constructed of sticks or roots, tendrils, or the leaves of palms, and lined with soft green mosses, or the skeleton leaf of the parasitical tree ferns,a substance almost as elastic as horse hair. This nest is completely rain proof and has the entrance on one side.

A nest of this species, with two eggs, is deposited in the British Museum. The nest is about two feet in length, by sixteen inches in breadth, and is domed over except at one end. The eggs, about the size of those of the common fowl, are of a deep purplish chocolate, irregularly blotched and freckled with a darker color.

The nestling is covered with white down and remains six weeks in the nest.

In this species the male bird is about four years old before he acquires his full tail; the two centre curved feathers are the last to make their appearance.

Of the nest of M. superba we find no equally clear description, but it appears very nearly to resemble that of M. Albertii. The eggs of the former species are said to be of a lighter color, and the young to be blind as well as helpless.

The method of nest building, the helplessness of the young, and their passerine manner of feeding, taken in connection with the structure of the Menurida, all point to a position considerably higher than the Megapodes. It is true, the young are covered with down, but exceptions occur among the Fissirostral birds, as for instance, the Night Hawk

and the Whip-poor-will of the Caprimulgida, both of which are downy at birth; and the Menurida may present a similar exception in the group of the Passeres, where the young are nearly if not entirely nude.

Gray placed Menura among the Wrens. Jerdon assigned it a position intermediate between the Walking Birds,—including the common fowl and the Pigeons and Doves, — and the higher Land Birds.

Most ornithologists of the present day unite in considering it as a member of the Passeres, that group which includes our Thrushes, Wrens, Pewees, Humming Birds, Sparrows, Crows and all the multitude of their kind.

Professor Huxley has examined a portion of its anatomy with care, and while referring Menura to a group equivalent to the Passeres, sees so many distinctions between this and all other passerine genera, that he places it in a section of this group alone, no other birds in the world answering to the Lyre Birds.

Nitzsch, who with equal care, examined Menura in reference to plumage, reaches the same conclusion, that it is undoubtedly a passerine genus, but that in certain respects it differs from every other, while manifesting a relationship to the Wrens, the Thrushes, the Dippers and several other allied families.

From all these considerations the probabilities of the case seem to be, that the Lyre Birds are neither Wrens nor Thrushes, nor members of any other family to which they appear to be most nearly allied; but that they may be the living representatives of a group which preceded one, or either, or all of these various families; and, that under a passerine form, they repeat some of the peculiarities of the Megapodes and of their near connections, in the line of ascent, the Cracida and Penelopidae; at the same time reasserting, in a general way, their resemblance to the Walking Birds, while exhibiting a fundamentally passerine nature. In the same manner does each of the vertebrate classes repeat,

within its own type, characteristics of lower forms of life; and thus do all the higher animals in their embryonic condition, pass through stages representing the lower vertebrates.

CAN any one see a snail travel, and not ask mentally, "how it does it?" The method certainly is curious. A fleshy disk is protruded, and caused to project in the direction of locomotion; it is then spread out flatly, and while slightly adhering to the object over which it is passing, a contractile energy is exerted, and the little animal bearing its house is drawn onward. Thus by the repeated protrusion, expansion, and contraction of this soft organ, in due time its journey is accomplished. Because of this method of progression on a ventral disk, all those shell-fish, or properly speaking, molluscan animals, so constituted, are called by the systematists, gasteropods, a term which means ventral-footed. And in rank these gasteropods stand next to the most highly organized of the mollusca. But some of these shell-encased creatures do not travel at all. Take, for instance, the oyster, called a monomyary, because the valves are held together by a single muscle. This sedate bivalve once settled, probably never moves from that spot. But all

the dimyaries, or two-muscled bivalves, well represented by the common edible mussels, possess a foot, which is not greatly unlike that of the snails. The mussel's foot, however, presents in its class, the least developed condition of this organ, for it is a spinner, rather than a walker; or, as Owen says, "it is subservient to the function of a gland, which secretes a glutinous material analogous to silk, the filaments of which are termed the byssus," which often serves for attachment to rocks. He farther says, "in most dimyary bivalves the foot is an organ of locomotion." Some of the river mussels in babyhood spin a byssus with which to moor themselves against the currents of the stream. When older grown this necessity is overcome, and the capacity just mentioned is lost. Then the adult turns its foot into a plow-share, and is dragged along in the furrow it makes in the mud. The razor-shell alternately bores downwards and propels upward, the foot doing all the work. With the foot as an elastic spring the heart-shell leaps along. But the common black mussel, Mitylus edulis, and its despised neighbor, the brown horse mussel, Modiola plicatula, who ever saw them walk? Propulsion is not always walking. The scallop with its large adductor muscle, by snapping together its light valves, thus forcibly ejecting the water within against the water without, flits through, and sometimes even skips upon its native element, like an aquatic butterfly. But no pedestrian does so in all Mollusca-dom. Why then should not these pedate bivalves, the mussels, walk as others of their own people do? "For want of brains!" says one. You are mistaken, sir. They have brains, the right kind too, and in the right place,—a real pedal nerve-mass, or ganglion; a little bilobed brain at the very base of the "understanding" itself, that is, exactly under the foot, as was fabled of a very agile dancer, that his brains were in his heels.

Now, if seeing is believing, mussels can walk. We once saw a young brown mussel, of the species Modiola plicatula,