May 1, 1868.] 



HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



105 



Mr. Atthey's arduous and long-continued re- 

 searches have been attended by most unexpected and 

 unequalled success. He has now— I think it may be 

 said without controversy— the best private collection 

 of fossil carboniferous fauna in the world, and 

 several of his specimens are absolutely unique, being 

 new to science, and the only specimens of the kind in 

 the possession of any geologist. Besides Mr. Atthey, 

 there have been other labourers in the same depart- 

 ment, but their discoveries are entirely eclipsed by 

 those of their predecessor and co-labourer, whose 

 object in collecting was not merely to extend know- 

 ledge by fragmentary descriptions, or surprise the 

 scientific world by publishing at frequent intervals 

 a succession of beautiful but unconnected dis- 

 coveries, but to proceed with his investigations, and 

 increase the stores in his museum until be could 

 from them prepare a full and nearly exhaustive 

 description of the carboniferous fossil fauna. Mr. 

 Atthey has recently seen the importance of 'pub- 

 lishing as speedily as possible the results of his 

 researches, as to a slight extent the ground he so 

 fully occupied in private has been preoccupied by 

 the publication of a paper on the teeth of fossil fish 

 from the Northumberland coal measures, read by 

 Professor Owen before the members of the Odonto- 

 logical Society. 



Professor Owen's paper is based upon micro- 

 scopical preparations of fossil teeth found by Mr. 

 Craggs in the coal shale overlying the Low Main 

 seam of coal at Cramlington colliery, Northumber- 

 land. The paper contains a description of twelve 

 new genera, all of which, or nearly all of which, have 

 been in the possession of Mr. Atthey for years, and 

 the whole of which certainly do not form the one- 

 hundredth part of his vast collection. The publica- 

 tion of the paper referred to has apparently roused 

 Mr. Atthey to the importance of at once describing 

 his numerous discoveries ; and the two papers read 

 before the members of the Tyneside Naturalists' 

 Eield Club — one of which was published in the 

 Annals of Natural History for Eebruary, and the 

 second will probably appear in the same magazine 

 in April — gave but a faint idea of the numerous and 

 remarkable discoveries made by this indefatigable 

 labourer in a comparatively neglected field of 

 scientific investigation. 



I am informed that the whole of Mr. Atthey's 

 admirable papers descriptive of his collection will 

 appear in the Transactions of the Tyneside Natu- 

 ralists' Pield Club, and that they will be fully 

 illustrated by drawings that are now in the hands 

 of the engraver. It is almost impossible to give a 

 brief written description of the skulls, jaws, teeth, 

 vertebra;, ribs, &c., of the fish and reptiles referred 

 to that would be at all satisfactory to the general 

 reader without the aid of illustrations ; and so far as 

 I know at present, illustrations will only appear in 

 the Transactions of the Tyneside Field Club. 



Mr. Atthey's first paper contains a description of 

 seven species of fish of the genus Ctenodus, which 

 was founded by Agassiz upon a very imperfect 

 specimen. Until the publication of Mr. Atthey's 

 paper, only one species of this genus was known, 

 Ctenodus cristatus, to which Mr. Atthey has added 

 six, founded upon an extensive collection of spe- 

 cimens, viz., Ctenodus tuberculatus, Ctenodus 

 corrugatus, Ctenodus obiiquus, Ctenodus elegans, 

 Ctenodus imbricatus, Ctenodus ellipticus, nearly all 

 of which have been found in the shale overlying the 

 coal in Newsham Colliery, Northumberland. 



The second paper contains an exhaustive descrip- 

 tion of two new genera of reptiles, one having two 

 species, and the other one. Of one of these species, 

 Mr. Atthey has the skull, jaws, ribs, vertebrae, and 

 other bones ; and the length of the creature must 

 have been considerable — probably from ten to fifteen 

 feet. It may with propriety be termed the 

 crocodile of the carboniferous period. It is the 

 intention of Mr. Atthey to proceed with the 

 description of his entire collection as rapidly as 

 possible, and we may trust that before another year 

 has passed away a dozen papers at least will be in 

 the nands of the printer. All who are interested 

 in palaeontology are recommended to peruse Mr. 

 Atthey's valuable papers, which will from time to 

 time appear in the pages of Annals of Natural 

 History. Mr. Sim, a working collier at West 

 Cramlington colliery, has also discovered and pre- 

 pared for the microscope several interesting remains 

 of the fauna of the coal measures. 



T. P. Barkas. 



SPIDERS' WEBS. 



I~F we take an open forceps, and wince off on it 

 -*- the central nets of half a dozen newly spun 

 spiders'iwebs, and then, bringing the points together, 

 pass the finger and thumb over them, we obtain a 

 little dark-coloured bead of viscid gum, like bird- 

 lime, in which the fines of the web form so small a 

 part, that they can be found only by stretching the 

 gum bead. It will thus appear that the web is 

 mainly a delicate structure of gum suspended on 

 the radial lines. The elastic cross-bars are in fact 

 gum-drops drawn out, and are formed, there can be 

 little doubt, by means of the large open tubes on 

 the spinnerets ; the fine tubes, common to all net- 

 weaving spiders, are not so well suited to the 

 deposition of gum -drops as to the spinning of 

 threads. The figure of a spinneret, given in.next 

 page, was drawn under the microscope with the aid 

 of the camera lucida, from a specimen taken from a 

 very large garden spider, and mounted in fluid. It 

 is much flattened and distorted by the pressure of 

 the covering glass, which, however, happily dis- 

 plays the two kinds of tubes to better advantage. 



