avoid threads stretched across it. This faculty he attributed to some highly developed sense of touch possessed by the wing. Dr. Schbbl has repeated these experiments; but for the putting-out of the eyes he has substituted the less painful method of covering them with sticking-plaster. He has kept Bats thus treated for a year alive in his room, and has entirely confirmed Spallanzani's results. To account for these phenomena, the wings of Bats have been examined for peculiar nerve-endings by Cuvier, Leydig, and Krause, but without any success. The author's discoveries are therefore quite new to science." I cannot give at length Dr. Schöbl's proofs that the sense of touch is obtained "through hairs, the bulbs of which widen out and enclose certain organs (the 'Tastkorperchen'), one of which is connected with each hair," but must refer the reader to the original. After the above, the numerous long hairs of the Apteryx are quite understood. Mr. Potts says ('Transactions of the New-Zealand Institute,' 1872, vol. v. p. 192), "It is probable that, as in the case of Struthious birds, the gizzard-stones are disgorged; but we have no evidence thereof; it would be most interesting to ascertain if such regurgitation takes place." That the extinct Dinornithidæ swallowed stones is well known to the New-Zealand naturalists. These pebbles are seen in little heaps by the side of the bones; such a lot found together, and therefore, we may suppose, belonging to one bird, I have in my possession, by the favour of Dr. Haast, who sent them, at my request, to me direct. They are beautifully polished, pretty, and fifty in number, and vary in magnitude—the largest being one inch and three eighths long by three quarters of an inch wide and in weight half an ounce, and the smallest the size of a pea. I have the contents of the gizzards of various birds, notably of the King Penguin (Aptenodytes pennantii), through the kindness of Mr. Bond; but I must reserve my observations on this subject, and will only remark that the Struthionidæ sometimes pick up, when stones are not at hand, various deleterious substances—for instance, the unfortunate Ostrich who died at the Zoological Gardens from the effects of the copper pence so cruelly given by the unthinking visitors, who, if they had witnessed the
