1897. NOTES AND COMMENTS. 159 



of Rain's Cave, near Brassington, in Derbyshire. The excavation 

 was of a thoroughly systematic nature and yielded an abundance of 

 prehistoric remains, but nothing of an earlier date than neolithic 

 scrapers and other implements, and bones of Urns and the wolf. The 

 early discovery of a skeleton showed that the cave had finally been 

 used as a cemetery. 



In the same work there is a note on Carn Brea, in Cornwall. 

 Some of these hut circles have recently yielded scrapers, arrow and 

 spear heads, a diallage celt, and a small stone evidently used as a 

 muller for grinding grain. 



Has the Lamprey a Supra-renal Body ? 



We have received an interesting paper by W. E. Collinge and 

 Swale Vincent on the structures in the cyclostome fishes hitherto 

 regarded as the supra-renal bodies (Anaiomischer Anzeiger, xii., pp. 232- 

 241). The authors have made a most careful survey of the earlier 

 literature on the subject, and the historical summary which they give 

 should prove of great value to all students of ichthyotomy. The results 

 of their investigations go to show that supra-renal bodies proper are 

 not present in cyclostomes ; that they first appear in the true fishes 

 and acquire an increased importance in air-breathing vertebrates. 

 They consider that the supra-renals are not degenerate structures 

 " with a past," but that they have been independently evolved to 

 fulfil certain functions which it remains for future physiologists to 

 demonstrate. Whether anatomists generally will agree with the 

 authors that there is not the homology between the pronephros of 

 cyclostomes and the supra-renal bodies of gnathostomes that was 

 maintained originally by Rathke and more recently by Weldon, time 

 alone will show. Deeply rooted notions, whether based on incontest- 

 able observations or not, require very convincing arguments to 

 overthrow them, and these latter are not furnished in the paper under 

 consideration. 



Sergestes. 



An important contribution to our taxonomic knowledge of 

 the marine Crustacea was made to the Zoological Society on 

 December ist, when the Rev. T. R. R. Stebbing communicated a 

 paper by Dr. H. J. Hansen, of Copenhagen, on the species of the 

 genus Sergestes. Dealing with the sixty hitherto described species, the 

 author succeeded in reducing them to twenty, showing that previous 

 observers had, from insufficient material, described as new, males and 

 females, and young and adult stages of the same forms. His researches 

 went so far as to render it very probable that there are trustworthy 

 characters by which adults can be distinguished in future from 

 immature forms, and it is to be hoped that the confusion that has 

 arisen in the past will not be found a difficulty to future zoologists. 



