i8 9 6. NOTES AND COMMENTS. 293 



Jones ; The Cerebral Hemispheres of Ovnithovhynchus paradoxus, by 

 Professor Sir William Turner ; A Contribution to the Comparative 

 Anatomy of the Ankle Joint, by Professor Cleland ; The Pelvis of the 

 Mammalia, with special reference to that of the young Omithorhyn- 

 chus, by Professor Howes ; The Spine of the Young Gorilla, by 

 Professor Symington. 



In addition to publishing its own proceedings, the Society has an 

 arrangement with the proprietors of the Journal of Anatomy by which 

 its chief papers are published in extenso in that work, and are illustrated 

 in a more complete way than would otherwise be possible. The 

 Collective Investigation Reports, which should prove valuable to 

 workers on variation, are also conducted by the Society ; but perhaps 

 the undertaking which is most likely to earn the gratitude of workers 

 in zoology is the publication of a very complete index to the 

 Journal of Anatomy and Physiology, an index which is already published 

 for the first twenty volumes, and of which the remainder will be ready 

 at the end of the present year. 



Economic Work of the Marine Biological Association. 



The recent number of the Journal of the Marine Biological Associa- 

 tion (February, 1896) shows that an increasing amount of work of 

 direct economic importance is being issued from the laboratory, in 

 addition to the large output of abstract scientific work. It is, of 

 course, impossible to distinguish exactly between researches that bear 

 directly upon economic matters and researches conducted in the pure 

 spirit of scientific inquiry ; for the same methods and the same 

 trained workers are required for both, and investigations apparently 

 most remote from commercial questions may come to have an 

 unexpected value. Mr. Bidder, for instance, has been pursuing 

 investigations upon the embryology and anatomy of the Porifera for 

 many years, and men of business might have looked coldly upon his 

 nice discriminations between epiblast and hypoblast, or on his curious 

 inquiries into the morphological nature of embryos. Yet when the 

 Colonial Office applied to the Marine Biological Association for 

 an opinion on the advisability of projects for improving the value of 

 sponge-fisheries, Mr. Bidder's contributions to the report proved of 

 the highest practical value. The whole report as presented to the 

 Colonial Office is reprinted in the current number of the Association's 

 journal. The Director and Mr. Bidder, on the whole, sum up against 

 the proposals to improve sponge-fisheries by planting cuttings. They 

 think that there is not sufficient evidence as to the rate of growth of 

 the sponge of commerce, and that, unless the cuttings were exposed 

 to conditions much more favourable by the construction of special 

 stages, it is unlikely that a greater weight of sponge would be got in 

 the same time from the cuttings of a sponge than from the original 

 undisturbed sponge. They suggest that fishing in deeper water 



