Miscellaneous. 511 



cxcentrical positiou, on the side of the spot where the old nucleus 

 was. This shows that the liquid of the nucleus has the same double 

 origin as the aggregations themselves. 



We must therefore regard these phenomena of cell-division as 

 occasioned by a fusion between the protoplasm and the nucleus of the 

 cell, a fusion which commences at the opposite poles of the nucleus. 

 The nucleus only occupies the centre of the cell during periods of 

 repose ; as soon as the activity of reproduction is manifested, the 

 nucleus ceases to be the centre of the system, and the points of 

 fusion become the places of convergence for the currents of sarcode 

 which travel from all sides towards these new aggregations. The 

 new nuclei result from a partial liquefaction of these aggregations ; 

 they are therefore composed of a mixture, in very ditferent propor- 

 tions in ditferent cases, of the sribstance of the old nucleus and the 

 protojDlasm of the cell. — Comptes liendas, October 2, 1870, p. 0G7. 



On a Species of lapyx. By Prof. J. Wood-Mason. 



Prof. Wood-Mason exhibited specimens of a species of Inpi/.v which 

 he had recently found amongst the decaying leaves and fungi at the 

 foot of a bamboo-clump in his own garden at Calcutta, and said : — 



" This remarkable form of Arthropoda, which has not hitherto been 

 met with in India or, indeed, in any part of Asia, is of the greatest 

 interest, as belonging to a group the members of which are considered 

 by Sir John Lubbock to be the living representatives of a primajval 

 form from which the great orders of insects have all originated. 

 Discovered many years ago in Algeria by M. Lucas, the eminent 

 French entomologist, lapyx soUfiu/us, the type of the group, was 

 only made known to science in 1864, when Mr. Haliday described 

 and figured it in the ' Transactions of the Linnean Society of London.' 

 In the following year it was submitted to a more careful examination 

 by Meiuert, who detected a pair of rudimentary appendages on each 

 of the seven anterior segments of the abdomen, just as in its allies 

 Campodea and Nkoletia, in which latter, however, all the abdominal 

 segments appear to be thus furnished. Four species of the genus 

 have already been described, viz. : — lapyx solifiiyxs, Haliday, from 

 Algeria, Switzerland, and various parts of Italy ; /. Sanssurii, 

 Humbert, from Mexico ; /. gigas. Brauer, from Cyprus ; and /. Wol- 

 lastoni, Westwood, from Madeira and an adjacent island. A fifth 

 has now been discovered thousands of miles from the nearest of 

 these localities, in association with a large bright crimson -coloured 

 species ofA)ioura, two species of Springtails, two or three Pselai^hidoe, 

 and five or six Myriopods, amongst which a Puhjxenus (differing from 

 the European F. lagurus in having one iiistead of two pencils of silvery 

 hairs at the end of the body) and a species of the very remarkable 

 genus Scolopendrella especially merit attention." — Proceedings of the 

 Asiatic Society of Bengal., August 1876. 



" On the Fecundation of the Egg in the Common FoivL" 

 In the 'Annals' for N'ovember, p. 369, an unfortunate erratum 

 has occurred — the name of the author of the paper under the above 

 title being printed P. Tascher ; it shoidd 1)e P. Taubek. 



