1896. NOTES AND COMMENTS. 373 



The crustaceans have been named by J. E, Benedict Pala;monetes 

 antvonim, Civolanides texensis and Craugonyx flagellatus. It is an 

 interesting fact that the nearest relative of the new genus Cirolanides 

 is a salt-water genus, Cirolana, and this raises the question of a possible 

 former connection of the subterranean stream with the ocean. 



The interest of these communications is great, but is it sufficiently 

 great to necessitate the publication of these new names without 

 figures and with descriptions professedly incomplete ? Mr. Benedict's 

 word may be taken for the fact that the mouth-organs of Cirolanides 

 are those of the family ; but in view of the varying meanings attached 

 by systematists to the name Craugonyx, we must deplore that this 

 preliminary notice contains nothing by which Mr. Benedict's accuracy 

 in calling the new species a Cratigonyx can be tested, while there is, 

 moreover, nothing to show what definition of that genus he accepts. 



The New Photography and Natural Science. 

 Hitherto we have not said much about the X-rays, chiefly 

 because in their physical aspects they lie outside our scope. It is 

 partly for this reason, and partly because we prefer in such cases to 

 wait for the publication of the complete work, that we refrain from 

 discussing a vorldufige Mittheilung " Ueber einige Eigenschaften der 

 Rontgen'schen X-Strahlen," by |Drs. A. Winkelmann and R. Straubel, 

 extracted from the Jena Zeitschvift and kindly sent us by Mr. Gustav 

 Fischer. The time is, however, come when something should be said 

 about the application of skiagraphy to anatomical purposes. At the 

 recent soiree of the Royal Society, the walls of the Council Room were 

 almost entirely papered by a series of skiagrams exhibited by Mr. 

 Sydney Rowland. These illustrated the considerable use that 

 surgeons have already made of this new method of research. About 

 20 per cent, of them included the discovery and location of foreign 

 bodies, needles, bullets, etc., lodged in soft tissues, and in one case 

 of a coin lodged in the intestine, which had caused troublesome 

 symptoms. In one of these cases two fruitless operations had already 

 been performed. Fifteen per cent, of the cases were instances of patho- 

 logical conditions of the elbow joint of more or less obscurity, on 

 which new and unexpected light was thrown by the diagnosis thus 

 obtained. In 10 per cent, of the cases the object was the determina- 

 tion of the extent and distribution of tuberculous lesions in bone. 

 The same enterprising gentleman is the editor of a new serial entitled 

 " Archives of Clinical Skiagraphy," of which the first number has 

 lately been issued by the Rebman Publishing Co., London, price 4s. 

 The plates include one of the skeleton of a living child, and five showing 

 injuries to the knee. The Phofogravi, however, points out that, 

 although many of the skiagrams undertaken for surgical purposes 

 have been successful, in others, with conditions apparently the same, 

 the results have been very disappointing. Photographers and 

 physicists will have to do much more work on the subject before the 



