ZOOLOGY AND BOTANY, MICROSCOPY, ETC. 669 



S. Arachnida. 



Are Solpugids Poisonous?,* — E. Lonnberg has made careful obser- 

 vations on Galeodes araneoid.es in the neighbourhood of Baku, on the 

 Caspian. The animal did not poison the insects and other animals on 

 which it preyed. " In attacking a small scorpion, it crushed one of the 

 slender joints of the abdomen and then the segment containing the 

 poison-sac. It next attacked the larger abdominal segments, working 

 its jaws into the interior and devouring the flesh. During this whole 

 tim? the scorpion struggled and fought, moving freely and showing no 

 sign of being poisoned. It could not penetrate the skin of a frog, 

 although it attempted to bite it several times." It could not penetrate 

 the human finger-tips. Flies which were bitten, but had not the nervous 

 system injured, were able to crawl about for a long time. These facts, 

 along with the absence of openings in the chelae, through which poison 

 could escape, led Lonnberg to the conclusion that Galeodes at least is 

 not poisonous, in spite of its reputation. 



e. Crustacea. 



Fresh-water Entomostraca from Celebes.f— Dr. Theodor Stingelin 

 has studied a collection made in a pond near Macassar, and finds that it 

 contains the following forms : — three species of Copepods represented 

 only by a few adults but by many larvae ; three species of Cladocera 

 present in small numbers ; two species of Ostracoda abundantly repre- 

 sented both as larvae and adults. In addition, the material contained 

 two unrecognisable insect larvae, a Hydrachnid larva, and fragments of 

 a Eotifer. The Entpmostraca include such widely distributed forms as 

 Moina paradoxa and Cyclops leucJcarti, as well as peculiar forms such as 

 the Further Indian Diaphanosoma sarsi and its varieties. It is to be 

 noted that when European and tropical fresh-water forms are identical, 

 the latter are not larger or more luxuriant, but actually smaller than the 

 northern forms. 



Heliotropism of Cypridopsis.f — Elizabeth W. Towle shows that in 

 the case of this Crustacean and of Daphnia the direction of movement 

 in response to light does not result from the effort on the part of the 

 animal to reach a certain optimum intensity. It is determined (1) by 

 the direction of the impinging rays, and (2) by their relative intensities. 

 The animal (Cypridopsis vidua) may be at one time " positive," at another 

 time " negative " in regard to light, and one cause of this variation 

 is contact. Contact with the sides of the trough or pipette or with ob- 

 structions therein causes a change from negative to positive, whereas 

 the reverse change takes place independently of external conditions. 



Plates and Scales of Cirripedes.§— A. Gruvel notes that the question 

 of the relation of the scales of the peduncle to the capitular plates in 

 Scalpellum or Pollicipes has never been adequately discussed. The 

 evidence, palaeontological, embryological, and morphological, seems to 

 him to lead to the following conclusions : — The ancestral Cirripede was 



* Ofversisjt K. Akad. Stockholm, lvi. (1900) p. 977. See Amer. Nat., xxxiv 

 (1900) p. 673. t Rev. Suisse Zool., viii. (1900) pp. 193-207 (1 pi.). 



t Amer. Journ. Physiol., iii. (1900). See Amer. Nat., xxxiv. (1900,) pp. 603-4 

 § Proc-Verb. Soc. Sci. Bordeaux, 1899. pp. 118-24. 



Dec. 19th, 1900 2 Z 



