206 NATURAL SCIENCE [September 



be ascertained by a careful study of these pages. The most valuable 

 piece of work which poor More accomplished during his later years 

 was undoubtedly the official list of Irish Birds ; the second revised 

 edition of which appeared in December 1889, and is now reproduced, 

 with footnotes by the Editor and Dr Scharff, which bring it fairly up 

 to date. The statement (p. 368) that the specimen of Turdus migra- 

 torius procured in Ireland in 1891 was the first obtained in Europe is, 

 of course, a mistake, at least five examples having been proved to have 

 strayed across the Atlantic previously, one of the number having 

 occurred in England in 1876 ; but this is a venial fault. The Shear- 

 water, catalogued as a specimen of Paffinus obscurus, obtained off the 

 Kerry coast in 1853, has recently proved to be Puffinus assimilis ; but 

 in other respects this catalogue of Irish birds is invaluable for refer- 

 ence purposes. The smaller papers on Irish zoology cover a variety 

 of ground, and the index has been carefully compiled. H. A. M. 



Some Jamaican Jelly-fish 



The Cubomedusae. By Franklin S. Conant. Memorial Vol., with Biographical 

 Sketch. Mem. Biol. Lab., Johns Hopkins Univ. IV. Part 1, xvi + 62 pp., viii. 

 pis. and frontispiece. Baltimore, 1898. 



The friends of the late Dr Conant, with the aid of the Johns Hopkins 

 University, have printed in the form of a memorial volume his disser- 

 tation on the anatomy of the Cubomedusae. 



There is no group of the Coelentera which needed the careful 

 investigation of a clever student more than the one which Conant 

 chose for the subject of his thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philo- 

 sophy at the John Hopkins University. 



The Cubomedusae present so many features of exceptional interest 

 that zoologists have felt very keenly that a reinvestigation of their 

 anatomy and a study of their development were among the most 

 important pieces of work yet to be done in the group of the Coelen- 

 tera. The investigations of Claus and Haeckel, who were able to 

 study preserved material only, are necessarily incomplete and unsatis- 

 factory, and Conant seized the opportunity which the discovery of 

 large numbers of the living medusae on the coast of Jamaica gave 

 him of reinvestigating the whole subject. There can be no doubt in 

 the minds of those who read the volume which records the results of 

 his labours, that this contribution to science is a solid and valuable 

 one. His descriptive writing is remarkably lucid, his reasoning clear, 

 and at the same time cautious, and the numerous illustrations to the 

 memoir are admirable. "With such impressions framing themselves as 

 we read the pages, there comes the feeling that in Conant we have lost 

 a zoologist who had every prospect before him of a brilliant career in 

 the scientific world. His patient and noble devotion to the cause he 

 had at heart demands our admiration, and calls out our sympathy for 

 his friends and fellow-workers in America who mourn his untimely 

 death. 



The species that Conant had to work upon were Charybdca 

 xaymacana and Tripedalia cystophora, both of which were found in 

 Kingston Harbour, Jamaica, the latter being the sole representative 

 of the new family Tripedalidae. The habit of these two species is 



