With regard to the supposed impossibility of water penetrating to the depths at which these inflammable substances may be imagined to exist, and likewise to the improbability of air finding admittance to the same spots, I shall be ready to discuss the reasonableness of such a conjecture, when the facts, that volumes of steam are constantly issuing from all volcanoes, and that azotic gas, either pure or combined with hydrogen, is so generally present during all the phases of volcanic action, are shown to be referable to other causes than the presence of water and air at the spots in which volcanic action occurs. I have, however, neither time nor inclination at present to go over the details of the argument a second time, especially as the curiosity of those of your readers who may feel an interest in the discussion may be gratified very speedily, if you will only transfer to the pages of your Magazine some few paragraphs of the article on volcanoes, which will appear in the Encyclopædia Metropolitana; and this, probably, quite as soon as any remarks with which I might at present trouble you would find their way into print. Oxford, Sept. 17. 1834. I am, Sir, &c. CHARLES DAUBENY. ART. X. Short Communications. MAMMIFEROUS ANIMALS.- Species of Animals of which Individuals with their external Covering of an anomalous Colour, permanent, have been known.-It is not improbable that the registering instances of this anomalousness may avail, when the facts registered shall have become numerous, some lucid general inferences regarding it. As we entertain this opinion, we shall be happy to insert all notices of marked cases which may be sent to us; and shall feel additionally interested, as our readers, doubtless, will also, if any facts appertaining to what we may call the physiological conditions, parentage, &c., of the creatures noted on be supplied in connection. A curious Variety of the Human Race was lately to be seen in my parish. The two parents, who were negroes, had several children of their own colour, but the one alluded to had a skin uniformly as fair as that of the European. The child's hair was white, but curly, as in the negro race; the nose and lips were European, and the iris of the eye blue. It was a healthy, fine child. These varieties, which depend on some disease or thinness of the rete mucosum, are some times only partially affected, and are then spotted and disgusting objects. Lansdown Guilding. St. Vincent, May 1. 1830. [For a notice of three instances of unusual conditions of the exterior of the human person, see I. 286.] The common Hare, White. - Instances of this are given in 504, 505. The common Hare, Black. - Examples of this are registered in I. 84.; VII. 505. See in p. 505. The common Hare, Brown and White. The common Rabbit, Black, in a wild State. See in V. 579.; VII. 505, 506. Wild rabbits, perfectly black, I have occasionally met with in the woods about Gloucester.Lansdown Guilding. St. Vincent, May 1. 1830. The common Mole of a Cream Colour. found noted in the Number for December. - Instances will be The common Mole of a White Colour. — See p. 143. A Mole of a Silvery Ash-Grey Colour with an Orange Mark under the Lower Jaw, and a Line of the same Colour down the Belly. See in p. 143. The Porpoise, White.-On Monday forenoon, a porpoise was shot off Millport, and brought on shore. It was pure white. (Morning Herald, Aug. 29. 1825.) The common Ass, White, and nearly White.-See VI. 67., for interesting particulars on one "perfectly white." We add notices of two others nearly white. About a month ago, a common English ass, the property of Mr. Watson of Green Hammerton, foaled a colt foal, which is perfectly white, with the exception of a red tinge near its tail, and another near one of its shoulders. It is a very large one, and likely to live. What is very remarkable, it is without those stripes on its shoulders which are seen on all other asses. (Tyne Mercury. Bury and Suffolk Post, June 26, 1833). A Donkey almost wholly White. The mention (VI. 67.) of a white donkey induces me to state that, on July 6., myself and companions observed, on Hampstead Heath, a donkey milkwhite all over, with the exception of a trifling sprinkling of light brown upon its back. Did the unusual colour of these individuals originate in disease, as is stated to have been the case of the king of Siam's White Elephant, described and figured in the Menageries, vol. ii.? James Fennell. Leytonstone, July 11. 1833. Crawfurd gives, in his Embassy to Siam and Cochin-China, an account of four of the six white elephants then kept by the king of Siam, and says of them, "they showed no sign of disease, debility, or imperfection.". . . . "Two of them were ... described as so vicious, that it was considered unsafe to exhibit them." These, we presume, are the two which, added to the four mentioned, constitute the six. . . . “Each of those which we saw had a separate stable, and no less than ten keepers to wait upon it," &c. ... "In the stables of the white elephants we were shown "Two [white] Monkeys, whose presence, the keepers insisted, preserved their royal charges [the white elephants] from sickness. These were of a perfectly pure white colour, and of the tribe of monkeys with long tails. They were in perfect health, and had been long caught; but we were advised not to play with them, as they were of a sullen and mischievous disposition. These were both taken in the forest of Pisiluk, about ten days' journey up the Menam. On enquiry, we found all the white elephants were either from the kingdom of Lao or Kamboja, and none from Siam itself, nor from the Malay countries tributary to it; which last, indeed, had never been known to afford a white elephant." In England it is believed that allowing a goat to subsist among horses promotes the health of these. Species of Birds, of which Individuals in Plumage of a Colour anomalous to that of the Species, and permanent, have been known. See in p. 593-598. The Stoats seen in White Fur are Individuals of a Whitefurred Variety. (V. 77. 293–295. 393. 718.)- Zoophilus states, in V. 718-722., that stoats change their colour at a certain period of the year, and become white. I am convinced that this is a mistake, and that the white is a distinct variety. I have seen them of this colour in every season of the year, on what are called the mosses, on the western coast of Lancashire; and I particularly recollect that, while resident in Worcestershire, one of these white animals seldom allowed a week to pass without showing himself in front of my house, while threading the mazes of a fence, which he entered from the nearest point of a coppice from which he always sallied. This animal would not have excited so much attention, but that he invariably pursued his course over a gate-post which stood in the fence; and this constant observance of a singular practice obtained him the honour to be distinguished as "the stoat." The common stoat abounded in the same neighbourhood; and I, with a clever terrier, captured them at all seasons, and always of the same colour. It is possible that the stoat changes colour; but, if he does, I am convinced that it is purely an occasional and rare occurrence. - Henry Berry. Bootle, near Liverpool, August 27. 1834. The Stoat in its White Garb not frequently seen near Stam ford.-I was rather surprised to see, last winter (1832), which was a remarkably mild one, a stoat (Mustèla ermínea) which had donned its snowy garb. I had never seen a white one here before.-A. Clifford. Near Stamford. [Received Dec. 13. 1833.] The Otter domesticated in a Degree, and employed by Man in capturing Fish." We passed, to my surprise, a row of no less than nine or ten large and very beautiful otters, tethered with straw collars and long strings to bamboo stakes on the bank (of the Matta Colly). Some were swimming about at the full extent of their strings, or lying half in and half out of the water; others were rolling themselves in the sun, on the sandy bank, uttering a shrill whistling noise, as if in play. I was told that most of the fishermen in this neighbourhood kept one or more of these animals, who were almost as tame as dogs, and of great use in fishing; sometimes driving the shoals into the nets, sometimes bringing out the larger fish with their teeth. I was much pleased and interested with the sight. It has always been a fancy of mine that the poor creatures whom we waste and prosecute to death, for no cause but the gratification of our cruelty, might, by reasonable treatment, be made the sources of abundant amusement and advantage to us. The simple Hindoo shows here a better taste and judgment than half the otter-hunting and badgerbaiting gentry of England." (Bishop Heber.) [For information on the habits of the otter, wild in Britain, see p. 507, 508. 538. A fine otter was killed on Jan. 1. 1828, in the old river Deben, at Letheringham, after seven hours' hunt by a bull terrier and a spaniel: its weight was 29 lbs.; length, 4 ft. 2 in.; girth of neck, 1 ft. 2 in.; pads, or feet, 3 in. wide. (Bury and Norwich Post, Jan. 9. 1828.)] Perforation of a Leaden Pipe by Rats (455).-E. S. has been, surely, too inattentive to proportions: there is an inconsistency in the dimensions of "a leaden pipe about 1 in. in external diameter, with a bore of about in. in diameter; thus leaving a solid circumference of metal varying from toin. in thickness." (p. 455.)-J. R. Sept. 1834. in. [Rats will pass under Water upon the Mud at the Bottom of the Water. I have seen several instances of this, not in the water rat or water campagnol only, but some in the field rat as well. The instance which I more particularly remember relates to two or three of the latter kind of rat, which had sheltered among the large roots, &c., of a couple of elm trees which were growing beside a watercourse, of, say, about 10 ft. wide. The rats, on being disturbed in the elms, crossed the stream beneath the water, and were both visible in their course, and traceable by the track of stirred mud which they had occasioned.] BIRDS. [Shakspeare was an exact Observer of Nature: his Notice of the Owl's Manner of Flight.-Mr. Bree had sent us the following note for insertion in the proof of his communication, in p. 548., but want of space excluded it there.] Though the remark may be here somewhat out of place, I cannot resist the inclination I feel to draw attention to one instance out of very many, in proof of the exquisite accuracy and exactness, with which Shakspeare observed objects of natural history. The passage I allude to occurs in Part iii. of Henry VI., where Warwick is narrating to Edward the disastrous result of the battle of St. Albans, and the little effect which his troops made on those of Queen Margaret: "Our soldiers' [weapons]-like the night-owl's lazy flight, Or like an idle thresher with a flail, Fell gently down, as if they struck their friends." None but a nice observer of nature could have made such a simile (the force of which lies, too, in a single epithet), nor can any reader fully enjoy the passage, who has not noted the owl's flight, and the slow, soft, faint strokes of her wings. W. T. Bree. Oct. 8. 1834. Species of Birds of which Individuals in Plumage anomalous to that of the Species, and permanent, have been known. A White Coalhood (Densiróstra atricapilla W.).—On Sept. 5. 1834, a bird of a very unusual appearance was observed in a hedge near the house, which was at first taken for a canary finch (Fringilla canària L.), but on a nearer approach he proved to be a coalhood (Lóxia Pyrrhùla of Linnæus). A gun was speedily procured and he was shot. He was pure white, without a single feather of any other colour, not even on the head, the fine glossy black of which gives rise to the expressive name "coalhood." [See p. 148., note *.] Bewick mentions a similar case, and Selby records an instance of one with white wings. There are also instances of White Yellowbills [Blackbirds] (Túrdus Mérula L.).—In our collection here, we have one with as much white as black. I have also seen - A Wren (Anorthùra communis Rennie) Streaked with White. - A friend of mine informs me that some time since he saw A Wagtail (Motacilla) pure Snow-White: he joined with me in regretting that he had not his gun with him at the time. With regard to the Scientific Name of the Coalhood, I have ventured to suggest Densiróstra atricapílla, as being more definite and expressive than either the name of Linnæus, Lóxia Pyrrhula, or that of Temminck, Pyrrhùla vulgàris. The |