G. GENERAL NATURAL HISTORY AND ZOOLOGY. 319 



color is black, and the face being greenish, it is prominent in 

 more senses than one. The species is common, living in large 

 troops in the forests of the high mountains, where snow is 

 found for more than half the year, thus demonstrating that 

 the popular idea that monkeys are necessarily confined to 

 tropical countries is fallacious. In order to support the rigors 

 of such a climate, it has a dense coat of fur, which the inhab- 

 itants use to cure rheumatism. 



The bear is a very remarkable one, and differs far more 

 from all those previously known than do any of those from 

 each other. These differences especially relate to the teeth. 

 In external appearance there is nothing so notable in form, 

 except it be the longer tail. But the color is very striking : 

 the head and body are straw yellowish or whitish, and the 

 shoulders girdled with a black band, the legs very black, and 

 the black on the fore-limbs extending upward in a narrowing 

 band, and joining its fellow on the opposite side. The eyes 

 are also surrounded by black circles, and the ears and nose 

 are black, the contrast giving a remarkable appearance. It 

 is difficult to obtain, living in almost inaccessible mountains, 

 where it subsists chiefly on roots, and especially those of the 

 bamboo. 



It need only be added that of the fifty-nine species ob- 

 tained thirty-five have been considered new, and several oth- 

 ers have not yet been identified. 



CHANGE OF COLOR IN FISHES. 



Professor Pouchet, in an investigation into the mechanism 

 of the change of color in fishes and crustaceans, remarks that, 

 as is well known, this is due to the alteration in the size of 

 the colored contractile cells placed in the skin. These he 

 found to be under the influence of nerves of the sympathetic 

 system. Upon cutting the nerve supplying a particular area 

 of the skin of the turbot he was enabled to retain that area 

 unchanged in color, while the rest changed, according as the 

 fish found itself on a light or dark surface. When the animal 

 experimented upon was blinded, no further change of color oc- 

 curred on being removed from the light to dark or dark to light 

 surroundings, from which he infers that the eye is the means 

 by which the change in its condition is communicated, and 

 that a reflex condition takes place, which works through the 



