Miscellaneous. 263 



Description of Sigerpes occidentalis, the Type of a new Qenus of 

 Mantodea from West Africa. By J. Wood-Mason. 



In this short paper a new species of Mantodea closely related to 

 the East-African Sibylla tridens, Sanssure, is described and made 

 the type of a new genns, Sigerpes, which must be placed in the sub- 

 family Harpagidae next to the genera Oxypilus and Ilestias. 



The cephalic horn, as was suspected by the author (P. A. S. B. 

 1876), turns out to be rudimentary in the males. 



The new species, described from a fine dried female specimen in 

 the British Museum from the neighbourhood of Sierra Leone, differs 

 from Sigerpes (olim Sibylla) tridens 2 in having the cephalic 

 horn somewhat longer and without lateral lobes and teeth, the base 

 of the wings greenish yellow, the fore tibiae more numerously 

 toothed, the fore femora on the inside red tipped with black, and the 

 extremities of the organs of flight not so obviously truncate. — Proc. 

 As. Soc. Beng. November 1879. 



The Cseciliae. By Prof. W. Peteks. 



Professor Peters has published an important paper on this curious 

 group of Amphibians, in which, after discussing certain critical 

 points, he gives a new division of the known forms into genera, and 

 describes several new species. He finds that his Gymnopis multi- 

 plicata (Monatsber. Berl. Akad. 1874) is generically identical with 

 Dumeril's Rhinatrema unicolor, and that the characters given by 

 the latter author for his genus Rhinatrema are erroneous as applied 

 to this species ; while the Ccecilia bivittata of Cuvier, which was 

 referred by Dumeril to the genus Rhinatrema, is founded upon 

 immature examples of the Linnean Concilia glutinosa. Accordingly 

 he sinks the genus Rhinatrema altogether, and retains his own 

 name Gymnopis for the genus including his and Dumeril's species. 



For the division of the Caeciliae into genera he considers that the 

 position of the tentacular pore alone leads to very unsatisfactory 

 and unnatural results, as, independent of the structure of the skull 

 and viscera, the structure or absence of the dermal scales, the denti- 

 tion, especially of the lower jaw, and the differences in the form of 

 the tentacle, seem to him to be of much greater importance. The 

 tentacle occurs under three different forms, namely: — dagger- 

 shaped (cultratum), which occurs in Ichthyophis (Epicrium), lies 

 freely in the sheath and can be pushed out like the point of a 

 trocar ; valve-like (valuation), placed at the orifice of the sheath and 

 united to its hinder margin, so that it moves round upon this fixed 

 basal part like a flap upon its hinge, although when protruded it 

 appears somewhat spindle-shaped, as in Ccecilia tentaculata ; and 

 globular (globosimi), which occurs in Gymnopis, and in which the 

 thin basal part is situated in the bottom of the sheath. An inter- 

 mediate form occurs in Ccecilia (Herpele) squalostoina ; it appears 

 globular externally, but is attached by its extremity to the wall of 



