226 NATURAL SCIENCE [October 
ASPIDIOTUS 
THE San José seale (Aspidiotus perniciosus) is a subject of perennial 
interest to the American entomologists. Last year the U.S. Depart- 
ment of Agriculture issued a pamphlet by Messrs Howard and Marlatt 
on the spread of the insect in the States, and now from the same 
Department we receive a bulletin (No. 6 Technical Series) on 
the systematic position of the scale, and the structural points which 
distinguish it trom its allies. This work is from the pen of Mr 
T. D. A. Cockerell, and it will prove of great value to the student 
of the coccids, as it contains not only full descriptions and figures of 
A. perniciosus and the species nearly related to it, but a geographical 
list of all the described species of Aspidiotus, with a short summary 
of their characters. 
CARE OF THE Broop IN HOLOTHURIANS 
Pror. Husert Lupwic of Bonn writes to the Zoologischer Anzeiger to 
say that he is able to record an antarctic Chirodota, in which the 
care of the brood is well marked. ‘The species is Chirodota contorta, 
was described in 1874, and forms an abundant part of the material 
obtained by the Hamburg-Magellan Collecting Expedition. Prof. 
Ludwig says that in this species he has discovered a form of care of 
the brood previously unknown among echinoderms. In the female 
(the sexes are separate in the species) the genital canals themselves 
become receptacles for the brood, and the entire development is 
passed through within them. The young at 5 mm.in length are 
born through the genital aperture; they have then seven tentacles, 
and the ‘wheels’ and ‘hooks’ are already well developed. 
Further details of this discovery of Prof. Ludwig’s will appear in 
his forthcoming memoir on Antarctic Holothuria. 
SOLIFUGAE 
WHEN revising a genus or describing a whole series of new genera 
and species, the average describer looks upon all details of habit or 
economy as beneath his notice. Not so Mr R. I. Pocock, who 
frequently appends to his papers notes as interesting to the general 
reader as important to the cabinet naturalist. In the September 
number of the Annals and Magazine of Natural History Mr Pocock 
deals with the group Solifugae, which contains arachnida of the 
genera (faleodes, Solpuga, etc., coming from tropical Africa. After 
a revision of the family and a description of the genera and species 
we find a note on the sound produced by a Natal species of Solpuga. 
