4 2o NATURAL SCIENCE. Dec, 



Mr. Ernest Gedge, whose admirable letters to the Times as 

 Special Correspondent of that paper in Uganda are, doubtless, well 

 known to all our readers, has just returned to the coast, and is now 

 on his way to Matabeleland. Mr. Gedge's hasty return is to be 

 regretted, as otherwise he would, probably, have carried out his 

 original programme and visited the unknown but important region 

 between Elgon and Karamoyo on his way back to the coast. 



Mr. Herbert Ward has an article in The English Illustrated 

 Magazine for November entitled " Martyrs to a New Crusade." He 

 gives a brief sketch, with portraits, of those of Stanley's companions 

 who passed away, either during the last expedition, or from privations 

 endured while attached to it. Major Barttelot, Thomas Heazle 

 Parke, James Sligo Jameson, Robert Nelson, and Captain Stairs, are 

 pathetically sketched by their comrade, who also pays a tribute to 

 the fidelity of the black followers. 



Those interested in slugs will find in the December 21 number 

 of The Conchologist the completion of Professor Cockerell's Check-List 

 of those molluscs. It is difficult to estimate the value of these publi- 

 cations, where one can find forms described in widely-scattered 

 publications all collected together for the first time. The author 

 knows as well as his critics the weak points in his list, and offers it 

 for destruction and re-construction, until reasonable finality is reached 

 and permits of a revised edition. 



The editor, Mr. W. E. Collinge, has made sundry comments 

 upon the notes of the author, and these, though in many cases apt, 

 are testy, and do not, moreover, justify the insertion of Mr. Collinge's 

 name on the title as joint-author. One remark of Mr. Collinge's at 

 first strikes one as very sound, viz., that modern science " demands 

 a knowledge of internal as well as external morphology, and rightly 

 refuses to recognise inadequate descriptions, or descriptions of shells apart from 

 the animal, or to acknowledge genera or species founded upon purely external 

 features." But, however much w r e may deplore the naming of a shell 

 without study of the mollusc which produced it, we must not forget 

 the difficulty in most cases in obtaining the animal, and it is a 

 debatable question whether it is not better to name the shell when 

 found, rather than wait for the soft parts to be forthcoming. In any 

 case, we hope that Poli's idea of naming both the shell and the 

 mollusc will not again come into favour. 



The siphuncles, or, to speak more correctly, the siphuncular 

 tubes of the straight forms of Palaeozoic Cephalopoda present many 

 variations in structure that greatly puzzle the morphologist. In 

 some interesting " Remarks on Specific Characters in Orthoceras " 

 (Amer. Geol., vol. xii., pp. 232-236), Aug. F. Foerste adds an item to our 



