QUARTERLY CHRONICLE OF MICROSCOPICAL 



SCIENCE. 



Bibliotheque ITniverselle — " Reisen im Archipel der Philip- 

 pinen," by C. Semper.- — Prof. Claparede gives a most inte- 

 resting notice of this recently published and highly important 

 work. M. Semper has resided for seven years in the Philip- 

 pines and Carolines, and now intends publishing the scientific 

 results at which he has arrived, and the history also of his 

 travels. This publication Avill comprise naturally two parts, 

 and it is to the second, the more especially scientific, that 

 the author has first put his hand. The three first livraisons 

 of the first volume are devoted to the study of the Holo- 

 thuriae. They are accompanied by twenty-five plates, printed 

 in colour, which do the greatest honour to the chromolitho- 

 graphic studios of M. Hener at Hamburg, and of M. Bach 

 at Leipzig, as well as to the celebrated ])ublisher and true 

 protector of natural sciences, Herr Wilhelm Engelmann. 

 This first volume may Avith propriety be termed a monograph 

 of the Holothurians, for the author offers us not only a careful 

 zoological aud anatomical study of the new species which he 

 has met, but also a critical revision of the forms already 

 known, and some general considerations on the entire class 

 of Holothurids, and on the orders and families which com- 

 pose it. 



Amongst the well-known calcareous corpuscles, of which 

 the position is always in the Holothurians the coriura, 

 M. Semper distinguishes two categories : on the one hand 

 the anchors and wheels, generally known from the Synaptids, 

 as aho the very characteristic corpuscle of the proper Holo- 

 thurians, corpuscles which the author distinguishes because 

 of their form by the name "stools" (Stiihlchen) ; on the 

 other hand, the perforated j^lates, the ramified corpuscles, 

 &c., which always have their position in deeper layers of 

 the corium than the preceding. The author calls these last 

 connective corpuscles. It is these which in certain cases 

 give rise, by their union, to large calcareous plates ( P solus, 



