EDITORIAL GLEANINGS.
We have received the Annual Report and Transactions of the "North Staffordshire Field Club" for 1897–98. In Sectional Reports, and under Zoology, Mr. Masefield reports as follows:—"It is frequently said by our landowners who are Fox-hunters that Badgers kill or drive away Foxes. Now the Badger still survives in our county, as is shown by the frequent reports I receive from different localities of Badgers having been observed, dug out, or shot, and therefore I am glad to be able to state, on the authority of Mr. Heinman, of Porlock, who has had exceptional opportunity of studying the ways of Badgers, that equally in Devonshire, Somersetshire, and Northamptonshire he 'has constantly found full-grown Foxes and Badgers dwelling together in unity.' This statement will, I trust, dispel the fears of Fox-hunters for ever, and should cause them to extend 'neutrality,' at all events, to our local Badgers in future."
We are all cognisant that light attracts fishes as well as many other animals. We have been much interested in the accounts of the new French naval destroyer 'Gustave Zédé.' Anything more unlikely to produce a zoological observation than this proposed navy annihilator is difficult to imagine. Still, the unexpected always happens. We learn that the destructive powers of this new terror are limited, not alone by naval science, but by natural causes, and by fish. "As for the telescopic mirror arrangement which was to enable her to direct her course from under water, it failed, not for one but for several reasons; while her 'electric eye,' or searchlight, so far from enabling her to see anything ahead of her through the water, rather rendered the sea ahead more opaque, as it attracted shoals of fish, which hovered round the brilliant disc, like moths round a candle."—Westminster Gazette.
At a meeting of the Zoological Society of London, held on Feb. 7th, Mr. G.E.H. Barrett-Hamilton read a paper on the Mice of St. Kilda, of which he recognized two species—Mus hirtensis, sp. nov., a representative of M. sylvaticus, and M. muralis, sp. nov., representing M. musculus. Both of these species showed good distinctive characters from their well-known prototypes.
