,8^. NOTES AND COMMENTS. si 5 



remark of Sinclair's in his Hortus Gramineus Wohui nensis is also against 

 Dr. Fream, for " rye-grass," he says, " is but a short-lived plant . . . 

 continued by its property of ripening an abundance of seeds." He 

 also draws attention to the fact that the seed-stalks of rye-grass form 

 a large proportion of the bents in an old grass-land. 



As regards other grasses, dog's tail, barley-grass, yellow oat- 

 grass, sweet vernal grass, and the different kinds of agrostis cannot 

 be reckoned among the valuable grasses in a meadow. On the other 

 hand, cocksfoot, fox-tail, meadow fescue, tall fescue, and timothy are 

 eaten down so closely as to be scarcely discernible by an ordinary 

 observer, and wherever one or more of these form the bulk of a pasture 

 it has a high character. The meadow grasses may also be classed 

 with these. In the case of grasses that are equally palatable to 

 stock, the amount of nutritious food produced is an important 

 consideration in estimating their value. 



The paper concludes Avith a table of results obtained by Mr. 

 Wilson bearing on this aspect, from which it appears that the feeding 

 value of the produce of a given area in cocksfoot is twice as great as 

 in rye-grass, and more than three times as great as in sheep's fescue. 



Lamarck's doctrines are still in the ascendant in America, and 

 the latest contribution to philosophy of this kind has reference to the 

 mechanical origin of the scales of fishes {Pvoc. Acad. Nat. Set. Philad., 

 1892, pp. 219-224). Professor J. A. Ryder, in treating of this subject, 

 points out that the scales are primitively arranged in direct relation to 

 the muscular segments of the trunk ; and he believes that the earliest 

 scales were rhombic, because the connection between the muscle- 

 plates and the lower layer of the skin is such, that the integument 

 would be thrown into rhombic areolae during contraction. 



An interesting case of commensalism is recorded by Mr. A. Alcock, 

 in the September number oi the Annals and Magazine of Natural History. 

 In 1889 two specimens of a small scorpaenoid fish [Minous inermis) 

 were dredged oflF the Godavari Delta, on the Coromandel coast, one 

 of which was covered with a fleshy colony of polypes, since determined 

 as new and named Stylactis minoi. The same association of fish and 

 polypes was again observed in a haul off the Malabar coast in 

 November, 1891, and also in January this year, when a single speci. 

 men of Minous was taken between the Deltas of the Ganges and the 

 Mahanadi. Although numerous other fishes were hauled at the 

 same times, only the Minous was found to be infested with the polypes. 

 Mr. Alcock inclines to the belief that this investing growth assists the 

 fish to obtain food by giving it a deceitful resemblance to the incrusted 

 rocks of its environment, while the polypes obtain in return a more 

 abundant supply of food than if stationary or independent. 



