146 REPORTS OF INVESTIGATIONS AND PROJECTS. 



In this review it will be impossible to do full justice to the published 

 papers, owing to limitations of space, and I will confine the presentation of 

 results to include only the more important laws and facts discovered. The 

 studies of Messrs. Brooks, Edmondson, Hartmeyer, Linton, Osbum, Per- 

 kins, Pratt, Treadwell, and Wallace have been in systematic zoology and have 

 resulted in the discovery of many new and interesting species, but it will be 

 impossible to review them in this brief report. 



Brooks and McGIone find that there is no reason to believe that there is 

 any ancestral connection or relationship between the lung of the prosobran- 

 chiate gastropod Ampullaria and that of the pulmonates, although the em- 

 bryonic history of the lung of Ampullaria shows that the origin of the lung 

 of the pulmonates through the modification of a gill is not impossible. 



Dr. Frank M. Chapman discovered that the booby {Sula fiber), which 

 nests upon Cay Verde, Bahamas, between February and April, lays two 

 eggs, but rears only one young bird. His observations and collections upon 

 Cay Verde have led to the construction of a group in the American Museum 

 of Natural History illustrating the nesting-habits of the frigate-bird and the 

 booby. 



Prof. Edwin G. Conklin finds that the tgg of the scyphomedusa Linerges 

 consists of a peripheral layer of clear protoplasm, an intermediate shell of 

 densely-packed yolk-spherules, and a central sphere of dissolved yolk. The 

 peripheral layer of the egg forms the peripheral layer of the gastrula and 

 blastula and gives rise to the cilia of the ectoderm. The middle layer con- 

 stitutes the principal part of all of the cells of the body, while the central 

 yolk serves for nourishment. Thus animals so low as the medusae show the 

 beginning of that differentiation of organ-forming substances in the egg 

 which Professor Conklin discovered was so characteristic of the eggs of 

 higher forms. 



Dr. R. P. Cowles carried out a very extensive series of observations upon 

 the habits and reactions of the ghost crab (Ocypoda arenaria), which lives 

 upon the sandy beaches of the Tortugas. It will be impossible to do more 

 than present a few of his most important results. He finds that this crab 

 can not detect color, but is sensitive to large differences in the intensity of 

 light, and it readily perceives a moving object. The color-pattern of the crab 

 changes under different conditions of light and temperature, becoming dark 

 and mottled in dull light and low temperature. It can not detect sound- 

 waves traveling through air, and its so-called "auditory organs" are actually 

 organs of equilibration. The crab has memory, is able to profit by experi- 

 ence, and can form habits. 



