4 6o FRESH FACTS [jvne 1899 



from the intestine dissolved in a fatty medium, and is carried, either by leuco- 

 cytes or in some other way, to be deposited with the fat and perhaps other 

 reserve products in the gastric gland. Whether it is utilised for the production 

 of other pigments or not is a question for future investigation. That it is a 

 chlorophyll derivative he now believes to be proved. Its stability, as compared 

 with plant chlorophyll, is due to the fact that it has been altered by the action 

 of the digestive juices. 



Shells in Octopods. A. Appellof. " Ueber das Vorkommen innerer 

 Schalen bei den achtarmigen Cephalopoden (Octopoda)," Bergens Museum 

 Aarbog., 1899, pp. 1-15, 2 pis. It is usually said that Octopoda differ from 

 Decapoda in the absence of an internal shell. There is, however, such a 

 structure in a cavity on the dorsal surface of the mantle in the aberrant 

 Cirroteuthidae, and Appellof interprets in the same way two narrow chitinous 

 rods in Octopodidae. The cavities in which these rods lie are lined by an 

 epithelium which secretes the concentrically laminated chitin. 



A Tooth in a Testicle. A. E. Mettam. "Dentigerous Cysts," The 

 Veterinarian, lxxii. 1899, pp. 309-312. In this interesting note Prof. Mettam 

 describes inter alia a case in which the testicle of a horse, removed during an 

 ordinary castration, contained a fully developed canine tooth Avith a bony 

 alveolus enclosing its fangs. 



A Record Homer. T. Fowlie. "Vitality of Pigeons," The Veteri- 

 narian, lxxii. 1899, pp. 316-317. As surgeon for the Aburn Homing Club, 

 N.S.W., the author has seen several instances of marvellous vitality and 

 recovery from severe lacerated wounds in pigeons. One bird, " a record homer," 

 had the muscles of the neck terribly lacerated, the trachea and oesophagus ex- 

 posed from the pharynx to the clavicles, the ingluvies laid open and a third of 

 its walls destroyed. The wounds were treated and recovery was complete. 

 The bird has since reared one brood, and is going to race again. What astonishes 

 the author most is that the healed ingluvies " can be of no practical use as an 

 organ of digestion ; " but who said it ever was ? 



Geology of the Malayan Archipelago. B. Koto. " On the geologic 

 structure of the Malayan Archipelago," Joum. College of Science Tokyo, xi. 

 1899, pp. 83-120, 1 p. In this welcome contribution Prof. Koto gives a brief 

 sketch of the geologic and tectonic structure of the island-world of South-Eastern 

 Asia, usually comprehended under the name of the Malayan Archipelago. His 

 primary motive was a desire to compare the physical features of the island of 

 Taiwan with those of the Far Eastern Indies, and the inquiry has broadened 

 out. As he says, the great Viennese geologist, Prof. E. Suess, has already drawn 

 a lively picture of the structure of these islands in his "Antlitz der Erde," but 

 this account has been enlarged and modified in the paper before us. 



Pterygotus at Melbourne. F. McCoy. "Note on a new Australian 

 Pterygotus," Geol. Mag., N.S., dec. iv. vi., May 1899, pp. 193-194, 1 fig. 

 No merostomatous arthropod has previously been recorded from Australia. 

 This specimen described as Pterygotus australis n.sp., is about half a somatic 

 segment in black flaggy Silurian (s.str.) rock, from the main sewer tunnel in 

 Domain Road, South Yarra. It was collected by F. Spry, who has presented 

 it to the Melbourne Museum. 



