May 9, 1878] 



NATURE 



53 



always subsists in such numerous meetings of lively and eager 

 youths, of submitting to certain restrictions calculated to pre- 

 serve the tranquillity of their comrades and that of the citizens. 

 It is to this necessity that, in cases of conflict, the disciplinarj 

 jurisdiction of the University authorities responds. However, this 

 end is still more surely attained by the sentiment of the honour 

 of the body, and it is gratifying to have to acknowledge that 

 this consciousness of their moral solidarity, and of the obligations 

 of honour in the case of every one resulting therefrom, remains 

 alive among German students. I do not mean by this to approve 

 of all the special prescriptions of the code of honour of students. 

 There are among the number certain remains of the middle ages 

 of which it would be good to get rid, but this is a thing which 

 can only be done by the students themselves. 

 ( To be continued. ) 



STRIDULATING CRUSTACEANS 



A T the November meeting of the Entomological Society of 

 ■*^ London, the president. Prof. Westwood, directed the atten- 

 tion of the Society to a letter in Nature (vol. xvii. p. ii) from 

 Mr. Saville Kent, on the above subject, hpropos of Mr. Wood- 

 Mason's recent discovery of the existence of stridulating appa- 

 ratus in scorpions. 



Mr. Wood-Mason remarked that structures in Crustacea, some 

 of which certainly, and all of which probably, are for the pro- 

 duction of sounds, were first brought to notice by Hilgendorf — 

 in V. der Decken's "Reisen in Ost- Africa (Crustacea)" — but 

 had been independently observed by himself in a number of 

 species during his dredging excursion to the Andaman Islands 

 in 1872. They were paired organs, as in scorpions, the Mygale, 

 and the Pkasma to be brought to notice that night — that is to say, 

 organs working perfectly independently of each other were on each 

 side of the body. In some forms (I. ) they were seated partly 

 on the body (carapace) and partly on a pair of appendages ; of 

 these some {a) had the scraper on the body and the rasp on the 

 appendages — e.g. Matuta, in which the organs are developed in 

 both sexes ; and others (b) had the rasp on the body and the 

 scraper on the appendages — eg. Macrophthalmus et affinia, in 

 which the scraper was formed by a sharp-edged lamellar projec- 

 tion on the meropodite of each of the chelipeds, and the rasp 

 was the crenulated infraorbital margin ; in these the apparatus 

 could only be developed in the males, the females having short 

 and small and quite inconspicuous chelipeds, which hardly 

 reached so far as to the margins of the orbits. In others (II. ) 

 they were seated wholly on the appendages ; in the males of the 

 species of Ocypode the rasp was on one and the scraper on 

 another part of the same appendage ; in those of Pldtyonychus 

 hipustulosus the rasps were on one and the scrapers on another 

 pair of appendages ; the walking-legs of the second pair were 

 here very long and robust, and their third joint (meropodite) had 

 its upper margin produced upwards at apex into a sharp crest 

 (the scraper) ; both Dana and Milne-Edwards had noticed the 

 remarkable length and structure of this pair of legs, but the 

 former alone had mentioned, in his description of the species, 

 the regular transverse plication of the under surface of the pro- 

 podite of the chelipeds, which constituted without doubt the 

 rasp. The above did not pretend to be a complete account of 

 stridulating apparatus in Crustacea ; but separated as he at 

 present was from notes, drawings, and specimens, he could not 

 go into greater detail. The cases of Macrophthalmus and of 

 Platyonychus had not, he believed, been previously recorded. 

 In the forms alluded to by Mr. Kent, no special sound -producing 

 apparatus seemed to be developed. Everybody who had searched 

 for animals on coral-reefs or had dredged in tropical seas was 

 familiar with the " clicking " sounds emitted by ^zAlpheiixA 

 their allies. The sounds which here always accompanied so 

 sudden an opening of their claws to their fullest extent that dis- 

 location seemed imminent each time, might be caused either by 

 the impact of the dactylopodite upon the joint to which it is 

 articulated, or by the forcible withdrawal of the huge stopper- 

 like tooth of the dactylopodite from its pit in the immovable arm 

 of the claw ; in which latter case the noises might be susceptible, 

 mutatis mutandis, of the same physical explanation as that pro- 

 duced by the withdrawal of a tightly-packed piston from a 

 cylinder closed at one end. These were the explanations that 

 occurred to him while watching a small species that lived in 

 force amidst the branches of the zoophytes called Spongodes, the 

 masses of which crackled all over when brought to the surface. 

 The sounds in this case resembled very closely those made when 



sparks were taken by the knuckles from the prime-conductor of 

 a small electrical machine. The sounds emitted by the Sphsero- 

 miJ might possibly be produced by the impact of the terga of 

 the posterior somites upon one another at the end of each move- 

 ment of extension. 



Mr. Wood-Mason then announced the discovery of stridulating 

 organs in Fhasmidce, in a species of Pterinoxylus, and in illustra- 

 tion of his remarks exhibited an impression of Westwood's plate of 

 Serville's species, P. difformipes. Here, as in'Crustacea and some 

 other Arthropods, an apparatus working perfectly independently 

 of its fellow was developed on each side of the body. The rough 

 prominent basal portion of the costal nervure of the wings formed 

 the rasp, in connection with which was developed a large oval 

 "speculum," "talc-like spot," or "mirror." The rasps were 

 scraped by the sharp and hard front edges of the tegmina, the 

 dome-like form of which seemed admirably adapted, and pro- 

 bably did, to some extent, serve to increase the sound by reson- 

 ance. In Serville's species, according to Westwood's figure, 

 the stridulating apparatus appeared to be more highly developed, 

 the " mirror " being more distinct, and the tegminal cavities 

 more spacious. The males of the Pterinoxyli were unknown. 

 We had here another case in which functional stridulating organs 

 are present in females. The only other insects known to him in 

 which stridulating organs were seated partly on the wings and 

 partly on the tegmina were the orthopterous (Edipoda, which, 

 according to Scudder {Amer. Nat. ii. 113), stridulate during 

 flight, in connection with which fact it was interesting to observe 

 that the female Pterinoxyli, though incapable of flight, needed 

 to expand their organs of flight in order to bring their similarly 

 situated apparatus into play. 



UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL 

 INTELLIGENCE 



Oxford. — At Queen's College, James Henry Hickens, Epsom 

 College, has been elected to a Natural Science Scholarship. 



Cambridge. — The Rede Lecture will be delivered by Prof, 

 Clerk-Maxwell, in the Senate House, on Friday, May 24, at half- 

 past 2 o'clock, on the Telephone. 



Owens College. — Should this institution ever be trans- 

 formed into the University of Manchester, it will only be after 

 overcoming a good deal of strong opposition. The Liverpool 

 Town Council are to petition in favour of a new corporation with 

 power to incorporate Owens College and other institutions, and 

 that the new University do not bear any merely local or personal 

 appellation. Naturally, also, the Yorkshire College does not 

 look kindly on the proposal, although until Owens College 

 resolved to take this step the two institutions were on very 

 friendly terms. We tnist some arrangement will be come to 

 ultimately that will satisfy all concerned. 



Working Men's College. — The Science Classes at the 

 Working Men's College, which, during the last three years have, 

 under Mr. Dunman's teaching, have become so popular and useful 

 a feature of that institution, assembled on Saturday, last at the 

 Broad Street Restaurant to celebrate -the termination of a very 

 successful course by a dinner. Mr. Thomas Hughes had pro- 

 mised to be present, but in his compulsory absence Mr. Dunman 

 himself occupied the chair. A pleasing feature of the evening 

 was the presentation to Mr. Dunman, by the students in these 

 classes, of a handsome despatch box as a token of their apprecia- 

 tion of the thoroughly eflicient manner in which he has dis- 

 charged the duties of science teacher. 



Strassburg. — The Extraordinary Professorship of Petro- 

 graphy, lately occupied by Prof. Rosenbusch, is to be filled by 

 Dr. Cohen, of Heidelberg. 



SCIENTIFIC SERIALS 



The Journal of the Russian Chemical and Physical Societies of 

 St. Petersburg (vol. x. No. 3) contains the following papers : — 

 On the mono- and dioxymalonic acids (Part 2), by R. Petrieff". — 

 Researches on the transformation of diethylcarbinol into methyl- 

 propylcarbinol, and on the synthesis and the properties of 

 diethylacetic and methylpropylacetic acids, by A. Saytzeff. — 

 On the synthesis of diphenylenephenylmethane and of dipheny- 

 lenetolylmethane, by V. Hemilian. — On the falsification of butter, 

 by P. Koulechoff. — On the elementary law governing the reci- 

 procal actions between currents and magnets, by A. Socoloff". 



