330 NATURAL SCIENCE. Nov., 



the terminal or peripheral chambers of the parent. While in some 

 cases {Orbitolites) the parent of such a megalospheric young was 

 microspheric, in others (Peneroplis, Orbitolites) it was megalospheric. 



5. Foraminifera, in certain conditions, give rise to active swarm- 

 spores. 



The two forms may be safely concluded, says Mr. Lister, to be 

 distinct from their origin, and his observations leave it impossible to 

 regard the difference as sexual. Brandt has recently described a 

 similar nuclear history in Thalassicola, one of the Radiolarians, and in 

 this group the individuals of a species fall into two sets, those pro- 

 ducing isospores and those producing anisospores, which are regarded 

 as an asexual generation alternating with a sexual ; and Brandt's 

 observations present resemblances to the life-history of Polystomella 

 as observed by Lister. 



So much for the microzoa of the sea. Let us now glance at the 

 macrozoa of the land. 



The Extermination of Big Game. 



In an interesting article in the October number of the Forlmghtly 

 Review, Mr. H. A. Bryden, whose book entitled " Gun and Camera in 

 South Africa " is known to all students of African natural history, 

 laments the terribly rapid rate at which the game is being extermi- 

 nated. He reminds us of the vast herds that roamed over Cape 

 Colony in the days of the earliest Dutch settlers, when lions swarmed 

 so at Cape Town that the Governor thought one night that they 

 " would take the fort by storm " ; when antelopes ravaged the crops 

 so that some districts could hardly be cultivated. That a little further 

 inland this condition of affairs lasted till the present century, Mr. 

 Bryden shows by extracts from the journals of the great hunters. 

 Thus Dr. Andrew Smith saw not far from his waggons one hundred 

 and fifty rhinoceroses in one day, and one hundred giraffes almost at 

 the same time. At the present time many of the finest animals are 

 extinct either altogether or locally, and far up the country, frequented 

 only a few decades ago by herds of noble game. Englishmen are now 

 reduced to hunting with foxhounds the jackal and that tiny antelope 

 the "duiker." 



Mr. Bryden gives an account of the various agencies that have 

 led to this change and of the war waged against the game by 

 Dutch farmers, native hunters, and the great English sportsmen, 

 Smith, Harris, Oswell, Gordon Cumming, Baldwin, and Selous. He 

 admits that the sportsmen, though often wasteful, have been a com- 

 paratively insignificant cause of the extermination, and pays a warm 

 tribute to Selous for his merciful methods of hunting and his economy 

 of life. Mr. Bryden, is, however, quite clear that the great game is 

 doomed to annihilation, and that many species will soon share the 

 fate of the quagga, the bontebok, and Burchell's rhinoceros. He 



