292 NATURAL SCIENCE [Noveniber 
observations on the koala (Phascolarctos) show its average tempera- 
ture to be 36°4° C. The range in any one individual at different 
times is generally proved to be very small. Mr Sutherland, how- 
ever, observes :—‘“I have often known healthy specimens (of Phas- 
colarctos) that had been for a while in the sun stand as high as 
37°9°, while on a cool day, or in a very shady place, the same indi- 
viduals would be only 35°3°,a range greater than we would find 
under the same circumstances in any of the higher mammals. The 
highest register I ever obtained for a thoroughly healthy koala was 
38°4°, which is a degree and a half above the normal temperature of 
man; the lowest was 34°9, or nearly two degrees below man’s 
normal. The former temperature would in man imply some con- 
stitutional derangement, a distinct case of feverishness; in the 
koala it denotes only that it has been out in the sun. The lower 
temperature, though common in the koala, is never met with in man 
except in rare pathological conditions.” 
It is clear, therefore, that there are grades of temperature, and 
that the mammals which are classed lowest on anatomical grounds 
are not only of the lowest temperature, but also of the greatest 
range, and they are likewise, of all mammals, those which are under 
the strongest and most direct influence of the temperature of the 
environment. Similar, though more incomplete, connecting links 
may also be noted in the case of birds. 
In a very general way (concludes Mr Sutherland), and not 
forgetting numerous limitations and contradictions, it may be said 
that bodily activity depends on body temperatures, that creatures, 
such as insects and reptiles, are active only when warmed up from 
without, but become torpid with decreasing temperature. The type 
in which activity is generally habitual, maintains its own body 
temperature. This is seen in the mammals, but more still in the 
birds. But this warm-blooded active condition was produced by no 
sudden emergence ; the monotremes and marsupials form a gentle 
gradation between the reptile and the carnivore or ungulate; while, 
so far as indications point, there is reason to believe that the lower 
birds still are reminiscent of a once existent chain of links which 
equally joined the cold-blooded lizards to those warmest-blooded of 
all creatures, the passeriform and fringilliform birds. 
ENTOMOLOGY IN AUSTRALIA 
Mr W. W. Froceatt has published (Proc. Linn. Soc., N.S. Wales, 
1896, pp. 510-552) the second part of his work on the termites of 
Australia. A short account of the life-history and’ social economy 
of the insects, unfortunately written without reference to Grassi’s 
recent researches, is followed by a revision of the genera, which 
