corneum attached to the toes of newts at Farington, Lancashire. The late Mr. W. Jeffery told me that ever since he was a boy dabbling with aquaria he had occasionally met with this bivalve clinging to newts; the same has been frequently observed by Mr. L. E. Adams in ponds in the South of England, and Mr. Hardy, during his long experience as a collector, has FIG. 4. Sphærium corneum upon the foot of a newt. Preserved in the Manchester Museum. observed many instances (Fig. 4), as also has Mr. Standen, who informed me in 1890 that for many years he had not missed taking either smooth or great warty newts (Molge vulgaris or M. cristata) with shells of this species upon their feet. In 1890, in ponds in the neighbourhood of Manchester, he met with four instances, three with M. vulgaris and one with M. cristata: in one case, in a pond at Birch, a newt had four shells clinging to it, two on one hind foot, and one on each of the fore feet. A specimen with four shells attached had been previously taken in 1883 in a ditch at Goosnargh, the creature being so much encumbered that it stumbled along with difficulty.' The entrapped toes, according to this naturalist, are frequently much swollen, which seems to show that the shells often remain attached for a considerable time. In 1881, Mr. Norgate informed Mr. Darwin that the newts in his aquarium frequently had one foot caught by a small fresh-water bivalve (S. corneum ?); this, he said, made them swim about in a very restless manner, both day and night, for several days, until the toe to which the shell was fixed was completely severed. Mr. Jenkins states that he also has seen newts caught in this way in aquaria. The taking of a newt, the lower jaw of which was firmly clasped by the valves of a Pisidium, was recorded by Mr. Heynemann in 1870.3 Mr. J. T. Riches, in a note published in 1877, mentioned that he once received a living frog (which had been found upon a bank by the side of a canal) with a fullsized shell of Cyclas cornea [=S. corneum] upon one of its toes. The shell remained attached until, after two days, it was removed by the observer. A recently killed ' R. Standen, "Science Gossip," xxi. (1885), 281.' * Darwin, “Nature,” xxv. . (1882), 529-30. 3 D. F. Heynemann, "Bericht über die Senckenbergische naturforschende Gesellschaft," 1870, p. 130. 4 J. T. Riches, "Science Gossip," xiii. (1877), 93. frog with a shell of the same species attached to the outer toe of one of its hind legs was found by Mr. Crick, in the spring of 1882, by the side of the pond, presumably near Northampton, in which, a fortnight before, he had taken the water-beetle and shell referred to above. The frog's leg was cut off, and the shell continued to cling for two days, during which it was kept in water, but, on being left in the air, the leg soon became shrivelled, and the shell, being still alive, detached itself. Mr. Goulding, in 1884, found a frog with the shell of a Cyclas (probably S. corneum) upon one of its toes in a pond near Louth. Mr. Hudson tells me that he once saw one, swimming in a pond at Redcar, with two shells (which were found to be those of S. corneum) upon the toes of its left hind foot; and another, having an immature Sphærium upon one of its toes, was seen by the Rev. S. Spencer Pearce, in 1885, at low water on the south bank of the Thames between Putney and Hammersmith Bridges. Mr. Standen, in a letter published in 1885, mentioned that he had often found these amphibians with shells of S. corneum attached,' and he has favoured me with a note of a case observed subsequently in a lake at Drinkwater Park, near Prestwich. Mr. Hardy in the course of his collecting has observed 1 See "Nature," xxv. (1882), 529-30. 66 2 R. W. Goulding, Science Gossip,” xxi. (1885), 238-9, and see also p. 249; a statement by me, in the " Naturalists' World," iii. (1886), 61, that a newt and a frog had been noticed in the neighbourhood of Louth each with a Sphærium attached is based upon Mr. Goulding's observations. 3 R. Standen, "Science Gossip,” xxi. (1885), 281. several similar instances. While writing (March) I received a living frog from Lincolnshire (through the kindness of Mr. Davy) together with a specimen of S. corneum, which when packed up was clinging to one of the toes, but had become detached during the journey the specimens had been obtained by Mr. Woodthorpe, one of the members of the Naturalists' Society at Alford, from a batch of frogs which were spawning in a ditch in that parish; five or six other frogs similarly encumbered had been seen in the ditch, all the shells being attached to toes of the hind legs. Sphærium corneum upon the toe of a Toad; taken from a pond on Hampstead Heath, and now in the British Museum. The Rev. R. C. Douglas, in 1851, recorded the finding of a toad, in June, crouching on the marshy edge of a fish-pond, with the middle toe of one of its hind feet held between the valves of a "mollusk about half an inch in diameter, Cyclas cornea, I think;" locomotion on the part of the toad, he says, was effectually impeded.1 Mr. J. Peers, who wrote from Warrington in 1865, while dredging in April in a pond in which both toads and 1 R. C. Douglas, "Zoologist," ix. (1851), 3210. Cyclas cornea abounded, observed a number of the shells clinging "with the greatest tenacity" to the toads, some of which had no less than three shells on each of the hind feet, while instances in which the toes were entirely free were very rare. None of the shells were attached to the fore feet. Mr. Standen, according to his published note of 1885, has also seen the toes of toads firmly grasped by these shells, and in April, 1892, when a number of toads were spawning in the "leg-of-mutton" pond on Hampstead Heath, I fished out an individual with a fine shell of the same kind on a toe of one of the hind legs (Fig. 5). These cases, it will be seen, furnish no actual evidence of dispersal, for the amphibians, I believe, were all caught in water or in its immediate vicinity. It is obvious, of course, that such animals can never carry shells to great distances, and if we are to form an opinion as to the extent to which they have affected local distribution, we ought to know something of their habits, whether they often journey from one piece of water to another, etc., but as to this I have little or no definite information. Some edible frogs (Rana esculenta), turned loose by Mr. Henry Doubleday near a pond by his residence, it is said, "soon migrated to another pond; "3 Mr. Darwin gives a statement, on the authority of Mr. Norgate, that newts migrate at night from pond to pond, and can cross over obstacles which 1 J. Peers, "Zoologist," xxiii. (1865), 9697-8. |