NATURE 



[Dec. 13, 1888 



UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL 

 INTELLIGENCE. 



Cambridge. — It is proposed to alter the system of papers in 

 the second part of the Natural Sciences Tripos, which has 

 lasted for many years, according to which questions in each 

 subject are set in every paper. Formerly one question in each 

 subject was so set ; latterly at least two questions in each have 

 been set. It is considered that under the present system candi- 

 dates with an extensive knowledge of one subject may not have 

 time to show such a competent knowledge of a second as is 

 required to gain a first class. It is now proposed to set four 

 separate papers in each of the eight subjects, and to combine 

 them in groups of two subjects, so as to get the examination 

 over in eight days. Probably this may remedy the evil com- 

 plained o^ which can only affect a minimum of candidates ; 

 but it will re-introduce the evil which the present system was 

 intended to obviate — namely, it will give an opportunity for 

 taking a number of subjects by means of cramming. It is also 

 proposed to make the change next June, an altogether insufficient 

 length of notice. 



Prof. W. G. Adams, F. R. S., has been approved for the 

 degree of D. Sc. 



Mr, Francis Darwin, M.A., F.R.S., Reader in Botany, has 

 been elected to a Fellowship at Christ's College. 



Dr. Hill, Master of Downing College, has been appointed 

 University Lecturer in Advanced Human Anatomy, and Mr. 

 Walter Gardiner, Fellow of Clare College, University Lecturer 

 in Botany, for five years in each case. 



Dr. Guillemard has resigned the University Lectureship in 

 Geography owing to ill-health, and a fresh election will take 

 place in January, for the remainder of the term of five years, 

 ending midsummer 1893. The stipend is £"2,00 per annum. 

 Candidates must send their names, with brief statements of their 

 qualifications, and the me'.hods they propose to adopt, to the 

 Master of Caius College on or before January 8 next. 



SCIENTIFIC SERIALS. 



The Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science for October 

 1888 contains the following: — On the structure of three new 

 species of earthworms, with remarks on certain points in 

 the morphology of the Oligochoeta, by Frank E. Beddard 

 (Plates xii. and xiii.). — This paper contains an anatomical de- 

 scription of Acanthodrilus amuctens, n. sp., and Deinodrihis 

 benhami, nov. gen. et. sp., from New Zealand, and Typhcziis 

 gammii, n. sp., from Darjeeling. Amonsj the more important 

 anatomical facts detailed, are the independence of the vasa 

 deferentia and atria in Acanthodrilus ; the independence of the 

 single vas deferens and its atrium in Typhaeus ; the occurrence 

 of six pairs of setae in each (setigerous) somite of Deinodrilus ; 

 the completely double dorsal blood-vessel of Deinodrilus in a 

 separate coelomic space ; and the presence in Moniligaster 

 barwelli of an atrium consisting of a thick glandular covering of 

 peritoneum, of a layer of muscular fibres, and finally of a single 

 layer of columnar epithelium ; the atrium being similar to that 

 of Rhynchelmis. — On the development of the fat- bodies in Kana 

 temporaria ; a contribution to the history of the pronephros, by 

 Arthur E. Giles (Plate xiv.). The fat-bodies in the frog are 

 formed by a fatty degeneration, not of the anterior end of the 

 genitalia, but of the pronephros or head kidney ; it seems highly 

 probable that the structure described by Balfour in the Ganoids 

 and Teleostei as lymphatic tissue is the persistent but structurally 

 and functionally modified pronephros. — On two new types 

 of Actinaria, by Dr. G. Herbert Fowler (Plate xv.). In a 

 bottle of corals, which had been collected from the reefs off 

 Papiete during the expedition of H.M.S. Challenger, three small 

 Actinaria were found, which would seem to differ markedly from 

 all hitherto described types ; so much so as to possibly necessitate 

 the formation of a new tribe, of equal value with the Edwardsise, 

 &c. The name proposed is Thauinactis medusoides, gen. sp. nn. 

 The animal is flattened in shape, and almost medusiform ; it 

 appears to be free-swimming, for the aboral is like the oral 

 ectoderm, and there is no trace of any attachment. Fourteen 

 true tentacles surround the stomodseum, and peripherally to them 

 arethe pseudo-tentacles; thetruetentacles with thestomodseum are 

 drawn downwards and outwards into the coelenteron; in the largest 

 specimen twenty-one pairs of mesenteries, and in the smallest 

 eleven pairs were present ; no generative organs were met with. 

 The second form was found attached to a piece of Millepore and 



is called Phialactis neglecta, gen. sp. nn. In this new genus the 

 tentacles are replaced not by stomidia — slight elevations of the 

 oral disk, surounding the large opening which is homologous with 

 the pore at the tip of some no.mal Actinarian tentacles — but by 

 what the author calls " sphxridia," i.e. ampullate diverticula of 

 the inter- or intra-mesenterial chambers, devoid of an opening to 

 the exterior, and honologous, therefore, with the imperforate 

 tentacles of many genera. — Morphological studies, ii. ithe 

 development of the peripheral nervous system of Vertebrates ; 

 Part I, Elasmobranchii and Aves, by Dr. J. Beard (Plates 

 xvi.-xxi.). This important memoir has appended to it a 

 restimS of its chief results. 



Revue d' Anthropologic, troisieme scrie, tome iii. fasc. 6 

 (Paris, 1888.) — On the conver.-ion of the cephalic index into a 

 cranial index, by M. P. Topinard. This paper gives the 

 author's reply to the objections raised by M. Houze, of Brussels, 

 against his method of determining comparative cephalic and 

 cranial measurements. He explains the various methods em- 

 ployed by Broca and others, and points out the sources of error 

 dependent upon the varying length of time in which skulls have 

 been preserved owing to the gradual drying up of the cranial 

 substance after prolonged preservation in our museums. Thus 

 the craniometric determinations made under the latter conditions 

 must be different from those obtainable immediately after death, 

 or on removal from a damp humus. — Continuation of M. Boule's 

 essays on the stratigraphic palaeontology of man. The relations 

 between the Pliocene and the Glacial formations of North 

 America are here considered at length. In concluding his sum- 

 mary of the results yielded by the valuable labours of American 

 palaeontologists, M. Boule expresses his assent to the opinion 

 advanced by Mr. Putnam, that recent discoveries afford con- 

 clusive evidence that a portion of North America from the 

 Mississippi to the Atlantic was occupied by man contempor- 

 aneously with the mastodon and the mammoth, at a period 

 when all the north of the continent was covered by vast glaciers. 

 The closing part of the paper treats of the French classical beds 

 at Chelles, Saint- Acheul, &c., from which date the earliest 

 researches regarding fossil man in France. — On the concurrence 

 in certain crania of divergent characteristics as exemplified in a 

 series of Burmese skulls, by M. Hovelacque. — Kashgar and the 

 passes of the Tian-shan Range, 'by Dr. Seeland. This is the 

 first of a series of papers communicated by the doctor ap- 

 pointed by the Russian Government to institute proper measures 

 for preventing the advance into the provinces of Semiretche and 

 Ferganah of the severe epidemic of cholera, which had broken 

 out in the Kashgar dominions in 1886. These provinces, which 

 remained in a savage and uncultivated condition till they were 

 brought under Russian dominion in 1862, are necessarily almost 

 a terra incognita; and hence Dr. Seeland's narrative of his 

 travels from Vierny to Ak-su in Kashgar, by way of Naryrie, 

 which compelled him to cross the colossal range of the Tian- 

 shan range, is a valuable addition to our geographic knowledge 

 of this portion of the Russo-Chinese frontier-lands, while his 

 descriptions of their natural products, and his remarks on the 

 habits and character of the Kirghis hordes, now being thrust 

 back by the Russians, supply much information that is new to 

 science.— Palaeontology in Switzerland, by Dr. Victor Gross. 

 This is a useful summary of the large and important mass of 

 materials accumulated by recent Swiss palaeontologists. After 

 treating of the various periods of cave and lacustrine habitations, 

 and of the later pile-dwelling--, or crannoges, he considers at 

 length the character and importance of the various finds belong- 

 ing to the several stations. Of these, the Lakes of Bienne and 

 Neuchatel are remarkable, as having already yielded more than 

 19,500 complete bronze objects, of which fully three-fourths 

 were of a decorative or domestic character, rings and pins 

 numbering 4000. Important investigations are at present being 

 carried out at the La Tene station, where the finds have hitherto 

 been so exclusively connected with weapons of offence and 

 defence as to lead to the inference that its pile constructions 

 marked the site of some primitive fort. The search for lacustrine 

 graves, successfully begun in 1876 is also being vigorously 

 prosecuted. 



Memoirs of the St. Petersburg Society of Naturalists, vol. 

 TiMi.—Geology' and Mineralogy i—Dactylodus rossicus, a new 

 species of fish from the Moscow Coal-measures, by. A. Inostrant- 

 seff. — The diabase deposits of Olonets, by F. Levinson-Lessing, 

 being an elaborate work which contains a general geological 

 and geographical description of the region, and a detailed 



