clvi GENERAL SUMMARY OF SCIENTIFIC AND 



ical Club : " The Sphserularise are not found, as is commonly the 

 case with the mature entozoa, in the interior of the alimentary canal. 

 They lie perfectly free among the viscera in the upper portion of the 

 abdominal cavity, and are bathed on all sides with the nutritive 

 fluids of the bee. They are generally more or less coiled up, and are 

 absolutely without motion. They have thus far only been found in 

 female bees. The mature female Sphaerulariae are about an inch in 

 length ; while the males, as they are regarded by Lubbock and oth- 

 ers, are very minute, being about one twentieth of an inch long, or 

 about ten thousand times smaller than the females. They seem to be 

 almost invariably attached near the head of the females. A German 

 observer (Schneider) believes the so-called female to be merely the en- 

 larged oviduct of the small worm, which he regards as the true female. 



Dr. Cobbold continues, in the Proceedings of the Zoological So- 

 ciety, his illustrated notes on the Entozoa. 



The unarmed Gephyrean worms, such as the various species of 

 Sipunculus, have been studied in part anatomically by H. Theel ; 

 while MM. Marion and Bobretzky have investigated the worms of 

 the Mediterranean Sea. 



One of the most important discoveries in zoology of the past year 

 is the curious fact regarding the development of the Salpa of our 

 coast. Mr. W. K. Brooks finds that in this animal, which occurs on 

 the southern shores of New England, and swims either solitary or in 

 chain-like aggregations of individuals, the solitary individuals are 

 females, while the individuals which make ujd the chain are males. 

 The solitary female produces a chain of males by budding, and dis- 

 charges an egg into each before birth. These eggs are impregnated 

 while the animals composing the chain are small and sexually imma- 

 ture, and develop into females, which give rise to other males by 

 budding. After the embryo has been discharged from the body of 

 the male, the latter grows uj), becomes sexually mature, and dis- 

 charges its seminal fluid into tlie water, by means of which it is car- 

 ried to the eggs within the bodies of younger chains. This is quite 

 a difierent mode of growth from that suggested over a century ago 

 by the poet Chamisso. 



A singular animal has been discovered, at the depth of fifty fath- 

 oms, by Mr. Tycho Tullberg, among the islands and fiords of the 

 western coast of Sweden. After giving a lengthy review of its ex- 

 ternal aj)pearance and anatomy, the author hesitates at present to 

 ofler any opinion as to the systematic position of the animal, though 

 he ventures the remark that the type of moUusca and that of vermes 

 seem both to claim Neomenia as a distant relation, the latter, perhaps, 

 with more right than the former. Neomenia^ however, presents con- 

 siderable deviations from both, in the absence of a radula, in the 

 structure of the alimentary canal and of the nervous system, as also 

 in other respects, as the form of the body and the sjoines on the skin. 



