1899] NEWS 377 



including a donkey brought back from the Soudan in 1885 by the New South 

 "Wales Infantry. Prof. W. B. Spencer presented several specimens of Central 

 Australian Muridae. Mr. "Waite is making a card catalogue of the mammals, 

 and finds the plan exceedingly convenient. A new spirit house has been built, 

 and thousands of specimens in spirit have been safely transferred to it. The 

 detrimental practice of keeping birds' skins in spirits has now been stopped. 

 The skeleton of a large sunfish, Orthagoriscus viola, is being prepared by the 

 method used for cartilaginous skeletons. It is worthy of note that the exhibited 

 shells have to be pi-otected by movable covers, since their colours are bleached 

 by the strong light. The Tunicata of New South Wales have been studied by 

 Prof. Herdman, who has compiled a " Descriptive Catalogue of the Tunicata in 

 the Australian Museum, Sydney, N.S.W.," printed in Liverpool, and published 

 about midsummer last. This gives to the Museum some fifty types. Under 

 Palaeontology it is stated that Mr. C. W. de Vis of the Queensland Museum 

 has continued the determination of the extinct marsupial remains. The more 

 important donations were : Mesozoic, Carboniferous, and Silurian fossils of 

 Tasmania, by T. Stephens ; Cretaceous reptilian and fish remains from the 

 Flinders river, by J. B. Nutting ; and Prof. B. Tate's co-types of Ordovician 

 fossils from Central Australia, by W. A. Horn. The collection of meteorites 

 has been added to by casts, slices, and a small iron meteorite from West 

 Australia. Many Australian minerals have been presented, and among them a 

 fine series of native copper from Broken Hill. These excerpts by no means 

 exhaust the interest of the Report. The amount of work done under discour- 

 aging circumstances is highly creditable to the staff. It is clear they do not go 

 to sleep, for sixteen telephones have been distributed throughout the building, 

 "and have already proved a source of great convenience and saving of time." 



Science notes that the last report of the Royal Zoological Society of Amster- 

 dam commemorates the sixtieth year of its existence. Besides the well-known 

 zoological garden, the Society maintains a fine aquarium, a zoological museum, 

 a geological and palaeontological collection, a library, etc., a combination which 

 affords fine facilities for scientific work. It will be remembered that Fiirbringer's 

 monumental work on the morphology of birds was among the publications of 

 this Society. 



On September 11, Alderman George Collard, Mayor of Canterbury, opened 

 in that town a new institute, library, and museum, in great part the gift of the 

 late Dr. Beaney of Melbourne. 



We learn from Nature that a commencement has been made with the new 

 Geological Museum at Oxford. The Museum will cost about ,£44,000, the 

 fund raised at a memorial to Prof. Sedgwick supplying .£27,000. 



Science for September 22 quotes from the report of the Australian Museum 

 for 1897 an interesting observation in regard to a specimen of the Galapagos 

 tortoise, Testudo nigrita, brought to Sydney in 1853. It then weighed 53 

 pounds, while at the time of its death, in 1896, its weight had increased to 

 368 pounds, "a more rapid rate of growth than such animals are usually credited 

 with." It is now mounted in the Museum. 



Science reports the following gifts and bequests : — $300,000 given by Mr. 

 Edward Tuck of New York to Dartmouth College ; 860,000 bequeathed by 

 Mrs. Mary D. Goddard to Tufts College; 810,000 bequeathed by Richard B. 

 "Westbrook of Philadelphia to the Wagner Institute of Science, to endow a 

 lectureship for " the full and fearless discussion by the most learned and dis- 

 tinguished men and women in our own and other countries of mooted or disputed 

 questions in science, and especially the theories of evolution." 



W 7 e have already alluded to the fact that during last year Mr. E. R. "Waite 

 of the Australian Museum accompanied H.M. Col. S.S. Thetis on a trawling and 



