XLii SCIENCE PROGRESS. 



and the introduction into it of modern methods of technique by 

 Professor C. O. Whitman. Passing to subsequent years, he naively 

 veils reference to his own share in the work in delicate allusions to his 

 confreres ; and it is for us to add that he will rank as the one man who 

 gave the movement the final impetus which ensured success, and that 

 no name will be more memorably associated with its history than his 

 own. The body of the Aniwtationes contains six papers, of which three 

 are wholly systematic, illustrated by three plates which, though some- 

 what crude, are truthful and expressive {i.e., they are Japanese !) and 

 by woodcuts, and there follow some " Miscellaneous Notes " and a 

 report of the monthly meetings of the Zoological Society of Tokyo. 

 The appearance of the names Mitsukuri, Ijima, Ishikawa, Goto and 

 Kishinouye, among contributors and responsible promoters, is a suffi- 

 cient guarantee of the value of the work ; and the record of new 

 and remarkable species of Chastognatha, of experiments on the ac- 

 commodation of Infusoria to certain solutions, of the changes with 

 advancing age in the calcareous deposits of Sticlwpus, with a revision 

 of Hexactinellids with discoctasters, is a sufficient testimony to its 

 breadth and novelty. The growth of holothurian " spicules " is a 

 subject which has already occupied the attention of Japanese zoologists, 

 and the afore-mentioned paper on the process in Stichopus, which 

 is by Professor Mitsukuri, has an especial interest, since it furnishes 

 support with extension to Australian forms to Theel's conclusion that 

 Holothuria armata (Sal.) is but a form of 5. japonicus, and suggests 

 that the biche-de-iiier question would appear destined to final solution 

 at the hands of an eastern zoologist. 



The publication is a legitimate outcome of noble work performed 

 for its own sake, and we wish it the success and support it deserves. 



It is moreover anticipatory, as we gather from Professor Mitsukuri's 

 remarks, to the transfer of the Marine Observatory at Misaki, which is 

 now famous in the annals of Zoology in the Far East, a couple of miles 

 northwards, with considerable enlargement. 



For several years past the activity of Japanese biologists has 

 been a subject for comment and admiration by the world, and be it 

 remembered that it has lately yielded us one of the most im- 

 portant among post-Darwinian discoveries in Botany. From recent 

 events the zoologists would appear to be following closely in the wake 

 of their American brethren on the opposite shore of the North Pacific, 

 in a manner amounting to friendly rivalry. Recent work upon the 

 chimgeroid fish Harriotta, the deep-sea gastropod Pleurotoinaria, and 

 the remarkable cephalopod OpistlioteutJi is, justifies this assertion; and 

 in view of it no little interest attaches to an announcement from the 

 United States, which followed close on the publication of the Anno- 

 tationes, that there would appear in June of the present year in connec- 

 tion with the American Journal of MorpJiology a Zoological Bulletin. 



Professor Mitsukuri remarks in his introduction that the Annota- 

 tiones will for the present be issued quarterly, and the editors of the 

 American Bulletin anticipate that material will be forthcoming " for at 



