HARBWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



137 



plate" cemented on with marine glue or other sub- 

 stance.— 7^. Z. 



Blood Crystals. — After liaving made a slide 

 of the blood-corpuscles of a blind-worm {Atigiiis 

 fragilis), I observed in a day or two that some 

 crystals had formed. They had congregated 

 together in the form of crosses, stars, &c. Tliere 

 was no single crystal by itself. They came 

 naturally by themselves, without any artificial means 

 on my part. Can any of your readers inform me if 

 this is a common occurrence ? — E. G. S. 



ZOOLOGY. 



ZoNiTES GLABEK (Studer). — I have pleasure in 

 recording a iresh locality for this beautiful little 

 shell, so recently added toourfauna by Mr. Rogers, of 

 Manchester. Mr. S. Tuke and myself took several 

 specimens on the 30(h nit., in woods near Hitciiin, 

 where it is found under long damp moss, associated 

 with Z. alliarius, Z. nitidulus, and Z. cellarins. The 

 shells taken are much darker than specimens I have 

 received from Cheshire, being of a reddish-brown 

 colour -jind extremely glossy. Zonites cjlaber has 

 evidently a wide range in this country, and it seems 

 strange that so conspicuous a shell should have 

 remained so long unknown. Those who are 

 interested in our land shells should look for it in 

 their various localities, and record their observa- 

 tions in SciENCE-GossiP. It does not appear to be 

 confined to any particular geological formation, 

 having been taken near Manchester, Doncaster, 

 Plymouth, and Ilitchin, — sometimes under stones, 

 sometimes under moss, or [among moist dead 

 leaves in woods. Its distinctive characteristics are 

 thus pointed out by Mr. Jeffreys : — "This shell is 

 three times the size of that of its nearest congener, 

 Z. alliarius, and is of a reddish-brown or waxy 

 colour; the whorls are more convex or swollen, the 

 lower part of the shell is not so much arched, the 

 mouth is larger, the umbilicus is smaller and 

 narrower, and tlie colour underneath is sometimes 

 whitish." Animal, " dark bluish-grey, striped like 

 a zebra on each side in front, and irregularly 

 mottled behind." It sometimes emits a slight 

 smell of garlic— C Ashfonl, Tottenham. 



Shape or the Nucleus of the Red Elood- 



COKPUSCLES OF PyEEN^MATOUS VERTEBRATES. — 



Mr. GuUiver, F.R.S., exhibited at the last meeting 

 of the East Kent Natural History Society, specimens 

 of the red blood-corpuscles of birds, in order to 

 show that the nucleus is regularly an ellipse, the 

 length of which is from twice to thrice its breath. 

 This demonstration, though long ago made by him 

 seemed to demand new examination, since tiie 

 German histologists and their disciples are now 

 citing birds as an example of a class in which this 



nucleus " is more or less circular." Tlie results of 

 the new observations by Mr. Gulliver prove the 

 general accuracy of his former ones, published 

 upwards of a quarter of a century since ; and the 

 only explanation of the German error seems to be 

 that the physiologist (A. Rollett, in Strieker's 

 "Human and Comparative Histology") had confined 

 his observations to the blood of the common 

 domestic fowl. In this bird, curiously enough, as 

 long before proved, the nucleus differs, in being 

 merely suboval, from that of the class generally, in 

 which the nucleus is a more elongated ellipse than 

 that of the entire envelope, or than is to be found 

 elsewhere in tiie corresponding nucleus throughout 

 the vertebrate sub-kingdom. 



Mtriotrochus. — Can any of your readers 

 inform me where ]\Iyriotrochus Rinkii, one of the 

 Holothuriads allied to Synapta, lives, and what are 

 tlie best means to take to obtain the wheel-like 

 spicules ?— (r. 



New Species of Erogs. — Dr. Giinther has de- 

 scribed, in the May number of the Annals and 

 Magazine of Natural History, two new species of 

 frogs from Australia. The first also belongs to a 

 new genus, named Notadeii Bennetii. It comes from 

 the Castlereagh River, and Dr. Giinther describes it 

 as very remarkable. The second species is Chiroleptes 

 platycephalus, from Port Bourke. 



The " Challenger " Expedition.— Professor 

 Wyville Thompson has just sent another communi- 

 cation to Nature. A new Gephyrean was dredged 

 up off the island of Teneriffe, on which Dr. Wille- 

 moes Suhm, proposes to establish the genus 

 Leiderma, which will represent a family intermedi- 

 ate between the Sipunculids and Priapulids. Off 

 the island of Eerro, another dredge was made at a 

 depth of 2,200 fathoms, and attached to the branches 

 of a dead coral were found several specimens of a 

 magnificent sponge, belonging to the Hexactinellidae. 

 One specimen, consisting of two individuals united 

 together by their bases, was about sixty centimetres 

 across, and had very much the appearance of a large 

 example of "tinder fungus" attached to the trunk 

 of a tree. Both surfaces of the sponge were 

 covered with a delicate net-work of square meshes, 

 closely resembling that of Uyalonema, and formed 

 by spicules of almost the same patterns. The 

 sponge was bordered by a fringe of line spicules, 

 and from the base a large brush of strong, glassy, 

 anchoring spicules project, fixing it to its place of 

 attachment. The form of the barbed end of the 

 anchoring spicules is as yet unique among sponges. 

 The sponge, when brought up, was of a delicate 

 cream-colour. A number of small examples of this 

 sponge, some of them not much beyond the condi- 

 tion of gemmules, were also brought up, so that 

 the naturalists will have an opportunity of studying 



