598 SUMMARY OF CURRENT RESEARCHES RELATING TO 



bird life, and so on. Among the more important discoveries empha- 

 sised in the book are those of a " solitary " coral {Ccvryophyllia ambrosia) 

 the giant Batkynomus, and the blind lobster Fhob&rus ccecus. 



Arsenic in Animals.* — Armand Grautier discusses the danger of 

 inferring the presence of arsenic in animal tissues when the quantity is 

 very minute, unless due allowance be made for the introduction of" 

 arsenic in the nitric acid or other reagents used in testing. He is 

 satisfied that arsenic is normally present in mammals in the skin and its 

 organs, in the brain, thyroid, thymus, &c, but not in the blood for 

 instance. In the muscles of mammals there is but a slight trace. 

 Gautier points out that the occurrence of arsenic in the skin of an ox is 

 physiologically more interesting than its occurrence in a sponge or a 

 holothurian or a fish, or in any animal living in sea water (which is 

 distinctly arsenical), or feeding on alga? which are rich in arsenic. 



Index Animalium.t — C.Davies Sherborn began in 1890 the gigantic 

 task of making a complete list of all the generic and specific names that 

 have been applied to animals since Linmcus inaugurated the binomial 

 system (1758), of giving, as far as possible, an exact date for every 

 quotation of a name, and of giving a reference to every name. In 

 short, he set about making the zoological homologue of Jackson's 

 ' Index Kewensis.' Mr. Sherborn is to be gratefully congratulated on 

 the completion of the first part of this great dictionary, which contains 

 the names given from the beginning of 1758 to the end of 1800. 



History of the Fauna of the Indo- Australian Archipelago. \ — 



Max Weber sketches the following possible history. In pre-Tertiary 

 times a connected land-mass, peopled by Eurasian animals, united Asia 

 and Australia. In the Eocene Age this was broken up, forming in the 

 south-east a unified region (Australia and New Guinea of to-day) and 

 in the north a shallow coral sea with a complex of scattered islands.. 

 In the former there arose Monotremes, Marsupials, and Cassowaries, in 

 the latter there arose a few primitive Rodents, Insectivores, and related 

 types. In Miocene times the deep " Einsturzbecken " were formed, 

 Celebes was upraised (" emportauchte "), and in the west a land-bridge 

 above water-level was established with the Asiatic continent, so that a 

 fresh entrance of Eurasian forms was opened to the east. Changes 

 during the Pleistocene finally led to the present state of the Archipelago, 

 which is zoo-geographically divisible into an Asiatic faunal region in the 

 west, an Australian region in the east, and a transition area between. 



Chemical Physiology of Invertebrates. § — Otto von Ftirth has 

 made a welcome contribution to comparative physiology in this volume. 

 After some general chapters on organic compounds and their relation 

 to metabolism, he discusses the blood and analogous fluids ; the chemistry 

 of digestion, respiration, and excretion ; the animal poisons ; the special 



* Comptes Eendus, cxxxvii. (190:>) pp. 295-301. 



f 'Index Aninialiurn sive Index nominum quse ab a.d. mdcclviii generibus et 

 speciebus animalium imposita sunt. Sectio prima.' Cambridge (1902) 59 and 

 1 195 pp. 



X ' Der Indo-australische Arcbipel und die Geschichte seiner Tierwelt,' 8vo r 

 Jena, 40 pp., 1 map. See Zool. Zentralbl.. x. (1903) pp. 254-7. 



§ ' Vergleichende Chemische Physiologie der niederen Tiere,' Svo, Jena, 1902, 

 14 and 070 pp. 



