226 NATURAL SCIENCE [October 



ASPIDIOTUS 



The San Jose" scale (Aspidiotus pemiciosus) is a subject of perennial 

 interest to the American entomologists. Last year the U.S. Depart- 

 ment of Agriculture issued a pamphlet by Messrs Howard and Marlatt 

 on the spread of the insect in the States, and now from the same 

 Department we receive a bulletin (No. 6 Technical Series) on 

 the systematic position of the scale, and the structural points which 

 distinguish it from its allies. This work is from the pen of Mr 

 T. D. A. Cockerell, and it will prove of great value to the student 

 of the coccids, as it contains not only full descriptions and figures of 

 A. pemiciosus and the species nearly related to it, but a geographical 

 list of all the described species of Aspidiotus, with a short summary 

 of their characters. 



Care of the Brood in Holothurians 



Prof. Hubert Ludwig of Bonn writes to the Zoologischer Anzeiger to 

 say that he is able to record an antarctic Chirodota, in which the 

 care of the brood is well marked. The species is Chirodota co7itorta, 

 was described in 187-4, and forms an abundant part of the material 

 obtained by the Hamburg-Magellan Collecting Expedition. Prof. 

 Ludwig says that in this species he has discovered a form of care of 

 the brood previously unknown among echinoderms. In the female 

 (the sexes are separate in the species) the genital canals themselves 

 become receptacles for the brood, and the entire development is 

 passed through within them. The young at 3 mm. in length are 

 born through the genital aperture ; they have then seven tentacles, 

 and the ' wheels ' and ' hooks ' are already well developed. 

 Further details of this discovery of Prof. Ludwig's will appear in 

 his forthcoming memoir on Antarctic Holothuria. 



SOLIFUGAE 



When revising a genus or describing a whole series of new genera 

 and species, the average describer looks upon all details of habit or 

 economy as beneath his notice. Not so Mr E. I. Pocock, who 

 frequently appends to his papers notes as interesting to the general 

 reader as important to the cabinet naturalist. In the September 

 number of the Annals and Magazine of Natural History Mr Pocock 

 deals with the group Solifugae, which contains arachnida of the 

 genera Galeodes, Solpuga, etc., coming from tropical Africa. After 

 a revision of the family and a description of the genera and species 

 we find a note on the sound produced by a Natal species of Solpuga. 



