G. GENERAL NATURAL HISTORY AND ZOOLOGY. 265 



storm, in order to prevent being knocked about too merciless- 

 ly by the waves. A writer in Land and Water suggests, as 

 a more plausible explanation of their origin, that upon these 

 stones are affixed barnacles and other marine animals and 

 shellfish, and that they are swallowed for the sake of their 

 attachments. These being digested by the fish, the stones 

 of course remain, and perhaps can not be ejected without dif- 

 ficulty. 



The same writer refers to the relations between the codfish 

 and the hermit-crab, namely, that the former feed upon the 

 winkle and other large univalve shells, and, digesting the soft 

 parts, throw out the shell, which is very soon seized by the 

 hermit-crab and taken possession of for its habitation. 2 A, 

 February 17,1872,113. 



BLUEFISH ON THE SOUTHERN COAST. 



The Norfolk papers report the occurrence, off the coast of 

 North Carolina, of very large schools of immense bluefish, 

 averaging twelve pounds each in weight. The steamer Cyg- 

 net brought in from Currituck Inlet, on the 20th of Novem- 

 ber, 3000 fish, which were taken in nets, and weighed nearly 

 eighteen tons. Norfolk Paper. 



DARWINIAN IDEA OF THE ORIGIN OF INSECTS. 



At a meeting of the Linnoean Society of London on No- 

 vember 2, Sir John Lubbock, Bart., F.R.S., read a paper on 

 the origin of insects, which has always presented one of the 

 most difficult problems to the Darwinian theory of evolution. 

 There is great difficulty in conceiving by what process of 

 natural selection an insect with a suctorial mouth, like that 

 of a gnat or butterfly (Diptera or Lepidoptera), could be de- 

 veloped from a powerful mandibulate type like the Orthop- 

 tera, or even the Neuroptera. M. Brauer has recently sug- 

 gested that the interesting genus Cambodea is, of all known 

 existing forms, that which most nearly resembles the parent 

 insect stock, from which are descended not only the most 

 closely allied Thysanura, but all the other great orders of in- 

 sects. In these insects we have a type of animal closely re- 

 sembling certain larvae, which occur in both the mandibulate 

 and suctorial series of insects, and which possess a mouth nei- 

 ther distinctly mandibulate nor distinctly suctorial, but con- 



M 



