NATURAL SCIENCE: 



A Monthly Review of Scientific Progress. 



No. 33. Vol. V. NOVEMBER. 1894. 



NOTES AND COMMENTS. 



Change of Address. 



WE beg to draw the attention of our readers to the notice that 

 appears under the above heading on the last page of the 

 present number. It is hoped that the new arrangement, which will 

 come in force with the new year, will have the effect of facilitating 

 our own business and our dealings with the public by concentrating 

 the Editorial, Printing, and Publishing Offices at one address, instead of 

 distributing them among three as has hitherto been the case. It was 

 well at first to place ourselves in the kindly hands of so well-known a 

 firm as Messrs. Macmillan, and we should like to take this oppor- 

 tunity of thanking them for the assistance and courtesy that they 

 have extended to us. But now that we are growing up and begin to 

 feel our legs, we are bold enough to think that we can walk alone. 

 Whether we can succeed or not must of course depend not on 

 ourselves but on the number of hands stretched out to help us. 

 Since the Review will still be conducted by the same editorial staff 

 and on the same lines as heretofore, we appeal confidently to our 

 readers, subscribers, and contributors not to desert us ; indeed, we 

 venture to hope that they will now aid us all the more both in purse 

 and person. If only their sympathy be assured, we shall step from 

 the cradle with a light heart. 



Marriage Customs of the Octopus. 



In a recent number of the Archives de Zoologie Expevimentale, Mr. 

 Emile G. Racovitza relates in a most interesting manner the obser- 

 vations that he has made on the habits of Octopus vulgaris. Some 

 previous writers, especially Dr. Kollmann, have imagined that the 

 love affairs of the Octopods are carried on in a barbarous, not to say 

 a brutal manner, and that the resistance of the female to the male 



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