1898] NOTES AND COMMENTS 7 
perity be able to appropriate larger sums, with greater promptness, 
to the establishment which, in virtue of its importance, is rightly 
known as the Australian Museum. 
NOTES FROM SINGAPORE 
Dr R. Hanirscu, Curator and Librarian of the Raffles Library and 
Museum, Singapore, has succeeded in obtaining from his Committee 
a sum of $500, for the purchase of zoological works, which we 
hope will enable him to continue his zoological studies with greater 
facility. He has done some collecting on the coral reefs at Blakang 
Mati, where the most striking forms are numberless Antedonidae 
(feather-stars). The sea-urchin Heterocentrotus mammiillatus, has 
for the first time been obtained in perfect specimens, although 
the thick spines of it are to be seen by sacks full in the native 
shops; some say that they are used as the mouth-pieces of pipes, 
others that they are medicine. It is interesting in this connection 
to recall the fact that spines of fossil sea-urchins pounded up 
and drunk with water were used in olden times in Europe as 
a remedy for stone in the bladder. The Museum has also been 
presented by Mr Maclear-Ladds with a perfect specimen of 
Pentacrinus (so-called); it is the first ever received by it, and 
came from the Jahal Bank, ninety miles south of Timor, depth 
110 fathoms. 
This Museum does not yet contain a typical collection of 
Malayan fauna, since the majority of specimens collected in that 
part of the world are sent to Europe and America, while the 
Curator of the Raffles Museum has succeeded in getting five 
days for collecting, for the first time for several years. Every 
museum of importance should have a collector in its own pay, 
er should give special facilities for collecting to the members 
of its staff. This is the policy of the leading museums in all 
countries, except of course our own. Under these circumstances 
it is pleasant to read that Dr G. D. Haviland has presented 
the Raffles Museum with a valuable series of ants, including 
several type-specimens collected by himself in Singapore, Perak, 
and Sarawak, and identified by Prof. A. Forel of Zurich. Several 
specimens of reptiles and amphibians have been received in exchange 
from Lieut. Stanley Flower of Bangkok Museum. The first of the 
fossiliferous rocks ever obtained from the Peninsula has come 
from a railway cutting near Kuala Lipis, Pahang, having been 
presented by Mr H. F. Bellamy, but its age is not hinted at. 
The skeleton of a large male orang-utan has been mounted, and 
its dentition has been found to be abnormal, the lower jaw 
having four well-developed molars on each side. This Museum 
has now a rival to Aaron’s Rod, for a tree trunk against which 
