1894. SOME NEW BOOKS. 463 



Coralline zones of the old Neocomian Seas. The part concludes 



with a paper by Mr. Gresley on Cone-in-Cone structure, as it occurs 

 in the Devonian series of Pennsylvania. 



The September number of The Journal of Marine Zoology and Microscopy 

 is in our hands, and appears to be fully up to the standard of other 

 numbers of this useful periodical for the sea-side naturalist. There 

 are four plates dealing respectively with the development of the 

 Balanns, Alcyonium, and larval Ascidians, the anatomy of Polynoe 

 propinqna, and the life-history of Obelia genicnlata. 



Dr. Packard sends us a paper, anatomical and systematic, upon the 

 Siphonaptera, more generally known as Fleas {Proc. Boston Soc. 

 Nat. Hist., vol. xxvi.). The paper is largely a resume of the work of 

 others, but it contains some original matter. The fleas, like most 

 other animals, have been tossed about in the system. The general 

 opinion about them, however, at the present day is that they are 

 closely allied to, if not forming one order with, the Diptera. Pro- 

 fessor Packard puts them a little further away from the two-winged 

 flies than many do. But he decidedly thinks that " they stand 

 nearer to the Diptera than to any other order, and that they must 

 have diverged from the ancestral dipterous stem before the existing 

 forms of Diptera had become so extremely specialised as we now 

 find them to be." The paper, which occupies 43 pages, is copiously 

 illustrated by cuts. 



Dr. a. G. Butler records, in the Annals and Magazine of Natural 

 History for November, an amusing case of Walkerism — if we may 

 so call it. It is the case of an unfortunate moth from Venezuela, which 

 was described by Walker in vol. xv. of the British Museum Catalogue 

 of Lepidoptera Heterocera under the name of Cclana diffundens. 

 This same insect was described by the same author no less than six 

 different times under six different specific names, and actually 

 described under four of these names in one volume of the Catalogue 

 (xxxiii.). As Dr. Butler truly says, " This kind of work needs no 

 comment." But it is not an isolated instance. 



In the Geological Magazine for November Dr. Henry Woodward 

 describes an interesting series of Carboniferous Trilobites from the 

 upper Limestones, Bank of the Hodder, near Stonyhurst, Lancashire. 

 These include two new species of Phillipsia [P. vandergrnchti and 

 P. polleni) and the types have, by the generosity of the College 

 authorities and the discoverers, been placed in the British Museum. 

 The same number of the Geological Magazine contains a photograph of 

 an erect tree, Sigillaria, in the Coal-measures of the valley of the 

 Roach, Rochdale, contributed by Mr. J. C. Brierley and Sir Henry 

 Howorth. 



Dr. L. Rhumbler has a note in the Zoologischer Anzeiger (September) 

 in which he shows that Peneroplis belongs to the perforate rather than 

 to the imperforate Foraminifera. 



Dr. Jentink has published a catalogue of the Crommelin collec- 

 tion of Dutch Birds, now in the Leyden Museum. Full records as 

 to age, sex, and locality are given, and the book should therefore be 

 of considerable value. 



