230 NATURAL SCIENCE. Oct., 



Myology as an Aid in Classification. 



In future numbers of Natural Science we hope to deal 

 with a number of the interesting communications made to the 

 Zoological Section — notably, for instance, with the question of oysters 

 and typhoid. We are glad, however, to select for immediate notice 

 a short paper read by Dr. Parsons upon the value of muscles in 

 classification. Owing to the technical nature of the subject and the 

 limits of time, it did not excite so much discussion as the subject 

 requires. Muscles are structures rather neglected by most zoologists, 

 and there is a general impression that they are too variable to be of 

 much use from a systematic point of view. As we have repeatedly 

 urged, however, we believe this view to be erroneous, and that 

 zoologists will find in muscles a material as rich, from every point of 

 view, as bones. 



Dr. Parsons reviewed some of the reasons which have induced 

 systematists to place little reliance on the study of muscles. He 

 proceeded to give some account of the muscles in the Order of Rodents, 

 a subject on which he has contributed numerous important memoirs 

 to the Proceedings of the Zoological Society. He showed how closely 

 the muscles correspond in animals nearly related, and how little the 

 different modes of life of their possessors affect them. We hope that 

 Dr. Parsons' paper will shortly be published in full in Natural 

 Science. 



Tunicata. 



One of the first debates over which Professor Herdman found it 

 his lot to preside in Section D was, appropriately enough, a discussion 

 upon the classification of the group the study of which he has made 

 his own speciality. In a group of animals in which budding and the 

 formation of colonies has been carried to so high a degree as in the 

 Tunicata, it is not surprising that the tangible characters, which 

 these processes of growth supply, should have been largely employed 

 in the earlier schemes of classification. Professor Herdman's own 

 scheme, as set forth in his " Challenger " report, and recently revised, 

 is, perhaps, the most complete of these apotheoses of budding, a fact 

 which is none the less remarkable because the Professor has himself 

 acknowledged that his classification of the group involves an 

 unnatural separation of forms admittedly allied. 



Mr. Garstang, in an interesting paper, insisted upon the impor- 

 tance of the Pyrosoina-stage discovered by him in the development of 

 various fixed Ascidians. He thinks this instance of recapitulation 

 remarkably complete, and holds that it furnishes in itself ample 

 evidence for the contention that the fixed Ascidians have been 

 derived from a Pyrosonm-\ike ancestor, and not vice versa. The 

 remaining pelagic types of Tunicata also agree with Pyrosoma in 

 possessing a single row of undivided gill-slits (or protostigmata), so 



