154 Chronicles of Science. [Jan., 



excavated in the primary germ. A comparison of the two extremi- 

 ties of the developing vertebrate is also made, and some curious 

 similarities in opposite parts alluded to. Professor His is so distin- 

 guished an oLserver, that this volume cannot fail to command great 

 attention both in this country and abroad. 



Neiv Siiecies of Tasmanian Wolf — Of all mammals there is 

 perhaps not one existing which is so truly interesting, so deeply 

 significant of the history of the development and geographical 

 distribution of mammals, as the marsuj)ial dog. Mr. Gerard Kreflt, 

 of the Austrahan Museum at Sydney, has lately obtained from his 

 assistant, Mr. Masters, no less than twenty-six skulls of this rare 

 animal, which is found only in Tasmania. Two of these skulls 

 belong to a new species, distiuguished by its shorter muzzle and 

 other characters, for which Mr. Krefi't proposes the name Thylacinus 

 hrevcceps. The existence of a second Thylacine has been kno\vn to 

 old residents in Tasmania for years past, as they were in the habit 

 of distinguishing the two kinds by the names of greyhound- and 

 bulldog-tiger. A fuller account of the collection of skulls is 

 promised for a future number of the Annals of Natural History. 



Transporting Fish alive. — Mr. Moore, the curator of the 

 Liverpool Free Museum, has succeeded in importing some hving 

 fish from the Eiver Plate, the first live fish that he has received from 

 south of the Equator. Some English fish sent out by the same 

 captain arrived safely, and he left Liverpool on the 10th of October 

 wth another series of fish. They were sent out and imported in a 

 common fish-globe, suspended like a cabm-lamp in gimbals. There 

 are now exhibited in the Liverpool Museum, two Catfish, thi-ee 

 species of Pomotis, two of Cyprinus, four Axolotls, and a Proteus, that 

 were imported from New York by the same method. Dr. Perceval 

 Wright, on his return journey from the Seychelles last autumn, 

 succeeded in bringing a small Cyprinoid, Haplocliilus, as far north 

 as Paris. He found that the motion in the railways was by far the 

 hardest thing to contend with, and indeed his fish were absolutely 

 jolted to death, the churning of the water preventing respiration. 



Occihrrence of the Ground-FluJce in England. — A soft dingily- 

 coloured httle creature, not an inch long and very much Hke a small 

 slug, has lately excited a httle attention by its discovery in England. 

 Sir John Lubbock found specimens of it in his garden in Kent, and 

 mentioned Iho lact to the Linnean Society in September last, and 

 j\Ir. Houghton has seen it in Shropshire. Originally it was dis- 

 covered by Miiller in Denmark, and named by him ; it has since 

 been observed by Duges in France, and by Fritz Miiller, and IMoU 

 in Germany. In 1867, Mr. Pay Lankester drew attention to it in 

 the ' Popular Science Pevicw,' and expressed a belief that it would 

 be found in England ; shortly after this he received four living 



