1898] NOTES AND COMMENTS 7 



perity be able to appropriate larger sums, with greater promptness, 

 to the establishment which, in virtue of its importance, is rightly 

 known as the Australian Museum. 



Notes from Singapore 



Dp. R. Hanitsch, Curator and Librarian of the Rallies Library and 

 Museum, Singapore, has succeeded in obtaining from his Committee 

 a sum of $500, for the purchase of zoological works, which we 

 hope will enable him to continue his zoological studies with greater 

 facility. He has done some collecting on the coral reefs at Blakang 

 Mati, where the most striking forms are numberless Antedonidae 

 (feather- stars). The sea-urchin Heterutrntvotus viammiUatus, has 

 for the first time been obtained in perfect specimens, although 

 the thick spines of it are to be seen by sacks full in the native 

 shops ; some say that they are used as the mouth-pieces of pipes, 

 others that they are medicine. It is interesting in this connection 

 to recall the fact that spines of fossil sea-urchins pounded up 

 and drunk with water were used in olden times in Europe as 

 a remedy for stone in the bladder. The Museum has also been 

 presented by Mr Maclear-Ladds with a perfect specimen of 

 Pentacrinus (so-called); it is the first ever received by it, and 

 came from the Jahal Bank, ninety miles south of Timor, depth 

 110 fathoms. 



This Museum does not yet contain a typical collection of 

 Malayan fauna, since the majority of specimens collected in that 

 part of the world are sent to Europe and America, while the 

 Curator of the Raffles Museum has succeeded in getting five 

 days for collecting, for the first time for several years. Every 

 museum of importance should have a collector in its own pay. 

 or should give special facilities for collecting to the members 

 of its staff'. This is the policy of the leading museums in all 

 countries, except of course our own. Under these circumstances 

 it is pleasant to read that I)r G. D. Hayiland has presented 

 the Kafrles Museum with a valuable series of ants, including 

 several type-specimens collected by himself in Singapore, Perak. 

 and Sarawak, and identified by Prof. A. Forel of Zurich. Several 

 specimens of reptiles and amphibians have been received in exchange 

 from Lieut. Stanley Flower of Bangkok Museum. The first of the 

 fossiliferous rocks ever obtained from the Peninsula has come 

 from a railway cutting near Kuala Lipis, Pahang, having been 

 presented by Mr H. F. Bellamy, but its age is not hinted at. 

 The skeleton of a large male orang-utan has been mounted, and 

 its dentition has been found to be abnormal, the lower jaw 

 having four well-developed molars on each side. This Museum 

 has now a rival to Aaron's Pod, for a tree trunk against which 



