75 o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



furnished with a muscular stalk ; the other, Hhynconella, having a 

 shell-closure and a fibrous, but not further contractible, stem. Most 

 of the genera living to-day can boast of a high age. Terebratida traces 

 its race-stock back to the Devonian system, as does also Crania, while 

 Argiope, Megerlea, and Terebratulina derive their ancestors from the 

 Jurassic. 



Our oldest vertebrate is a rare fish called Ceratodus, which lives in 

 some of the Australian rivers. It has a few relatives living in the 

 rivers and marshes of Central Africa and South America, and is 

 adapted to breathe in the air through lungs and in the water through 

 gills. Teeth of species of Ceratodus, clearly recognizable by their 

 peculiar formation, appear in the muschelkalk of Wiirtemberg and 

 Central Europe. Old as the race of the Ceratodus may be, it can not 

 compare with that of the primeval genus Lingula. 



I told my coral-fishers a falsehood in my story of the bet, but, 

 as in every fiction there is a grain of truth, there is in this one the 

 fact of the existence, in the present animal world, of a family of ex- 

 tremely anciently descended nobles, whose ancestors were members of 

 the first animal creation visible to our eyes. Translated for the Popu- 

 lar Science Monthly from Ueber Land und Meer. 



STRANGE MEDICINES. 



By Miss C. F. GORDON CUMMING. 



QUICKLY by far too quickly for the sake of the student and the 

 archaeologist is the wave of foreign influence over-sweeping 

 Japan, ruthlessly effacing all the most marked characteristics of native 

 manners and customs, and substituting the commonplaces of everyday 

 European life. 



Already this tendency to exalt and to adopt foreign novelties meets 

 the traveler at every turn, and only he who turns aside from the 

 tracks most subject to foreign influence can hope now and then to find 

 some stanch conservative who, in that nation of ultra-radicals (albeit 

 most loyal imperialists*), has the courage to adhere to his own old- 

 fashioned ways. 



I had the good fortune to meet with such a one in the very inter- 

 esting old city of Osaka a compounder of just such strange medicines 

 as were administered to our British ancestors in the middle ages. So 

 rapidly has the scientific study of medicine been taken up by the 

 Japanese medical practitioners, that the survival of such a chemist of 

 the pure and unadulterated old school is quite remarkable ; and I was 

 greatly struck by the evident annoyance of a Japanese gentleman to 

 whom I expressed my interest in this mediaeval chemist, and who 



