336 NATURAL SCIENCE. may, 1894. 



America that combines many of the features scattered among various 

 bodies in London. This institution is the University founded in 

 Baltimore by Johns Hopkins, who died in 1837. The University 

 Circular for February of this year contains an account of the 

 foundation for the twenty years now completed, written by the 

 President, Daniel C. Oilman. The aims of this University were 

 formulated in an inaugural address by the President, as follows : — 

 *< An enduring foundation ; a slow development ; first local, then 

 regional, then national influence ; the most liberal promotion of all 

 useful knowledge ; the special provisions of such departments as are 

 elsewhere neglected in the country ; a generous affiliation with all 

 other institutions, avoiding interferences and engaging in no rivalry ; 

 the encouragement of research ; the promotion of young men, and 

 the advancement of individual scholars, who by their excellences will 

 advance the science they pursue, and the society where they dwell." 

 After paying a tribute to members of the academic staff. Dr. Oilman 

 writes : — " The first requisite of success in any institution is a body 

 of professors, each of whom gives freely the best of which he is 

 capable. The best varies with the individual; one may be an admir- 

 able lecturer or teacher ; another a profound thinker ; a third a keen 

 investigator ; another a skilful experimenter ; the next a man of great 

 acquisitions ; one may excel by his industry, another by his enthu- 

 siasm, another by his learning, another by his genius ; but every 

 member of a faculty should be distinguished by some uncommon 

 attainments and by some special aptitudes, while the faculty as a 

 whole should be united and co-operative. Each professor, according 

 to his subject and his talents, should have his own best mode of 

 working adjusted to and controlled by the exigencies of the institution 

 with which he is associated." 



About some Little-known Molluscs. 



For many years past conchologists have been accustomed to 

 reckon the three marine genera Siphonaria, Gadinia, and Amphibola as 

 Pulmonates, despite certain striking peculiarities in their anatomy, 

 on account of the common possession of a pulmonary cavity, supple- 

 mented, it is true, in the case of Siphonaria, by a gill. 



In 1892, however, Haller showed that the last-named was, in 

 point of fact, an Opisthobranch, and its true position next to Umbrella. 

 Just lately Plati has come to the conclusion, from a careful investiga- 

 tion of Gadinia, that it, too, is an Opisthobranch, so that only 

 Amphibola is left with the Pulmonates by Bouvier, who studied it in 

 1892. 



