,3^. NOTES AND COMMENTS. 7 



There is more news concerning the dentition ot the Duck-bill 

 (Ornithorhynchus anatinus), the discovery of which by Messrs. E. B. 

 Poulton and O. Thomas excited so much interest three or four 

 years ago. Professor Charles Stewart has met with a very young 

 specimen in the stores of the Royal College of Surgeons, London, 

 showing the three teeth in position in each jaw. The teeth are firmly 

 implanted in the gum by two irregular, ridge-shaped roots, which 

 had become absorbed in the more nearly adult specimens in the 

 British Museum described by Mr. Thomas. Beautiful figures by 

 Hollick accompany Professor Stewart's short paper in the first part of 

 the new volume of the Quart. Joiirn. Microscopical Science (vol. xxxiii.). 



A writer in the current number of the Cornliill devotes some 

 pages of a very readable article to arguing for the high position of 

 the Parrot tribe among birds. The power of imitation, he thinks, puts 

 them at the very summit of the feathered race. If Mr. Grant Allen 

 (who is, we presume, the author of this article) has ever heard the 

 Indian IVIyna at the Zoological Gardens, he should have considered 

 its claims to represent the aristocracy of birds. For clearness ot 

 enunciation the Parrot is far inferior to the Myna ; and the Starling 

 and Crow tribes generally share its capacity for imitating sounds. 

 Professor Newton, in common with many other Ornithologists, puts 

 these birds in the foremost place; and so far as the faculty of 

 mimicking the human voice is a test of ornithic excellence they are 

 justly so placed. 



Surgeon-Major A. S. G. Jayakar, stationed at Muscat, at the 

 mouth of the Persian Gulf, has for several years been making large 

 collections of fishes. He has presented these to the British Museum, 

 where they have been worked out by Mr. Boulenger. Through the 

 exertions of Dr. Jayakar the fish-fauna of that part of the Indian 

 Ocean where he has been stationed is now better known than that of 

 many points on the coasts of India. Nearly 300 species are already 

 on record from Muscat, among which are many described as new, or 

 belonging to forms not before recorded from the Indian Ocean. At 

 the last meeting of the Zoological Society a third report was read by 

 Mr. Boulenger on the collections of fishes made by Dr. Jayakar. 



Though Malta has for so long a period belonged to the British 

 Crown, its geology is still imperfectly known. A good deal of con- 

 fusion has been caused by want of exactness in the determination of 

 the fossils ; still more by mistakes as to the horizons and localities 

 from which they were obtained. At last, however, the careful 

 observations and the fine collection of Maltese fossils made by Mr. 

 J. H. Cooke, are providing material. for a better understanding of the 

 Geology of the Island ; and i-n a memoir just issued by the Royal 

 Society of Edinburgh (" Transactions," vol. xxxvi., pt. iii.), Mr, J. W. 



