156 Miscellaneous. 



years he regarded the castor-oil plant, Richms communis, as a 

 genuine case of parthenogenesis, the past years experience still 

 leaves the matter open to doubt. If it be true that the female 

 flowers of Cifcas revoltita can generate spermatozoids in their ovaries, 

 and thus self-fertilize the ova, the occurrence must be rare. In this 

 vicinity old specimens of this plant are frequently seed-bearing 

 apparenthi ^ but in every case examined by the author they were 

 found to have only empty capsules. 



It seems to the author that tlie subject of parthenogenesis is by 

 no means thoroughly " threshed out," and the gbject of this paper 

 is to encourage continued observations. — Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci. 

 Philad. 1899, pp. 97-99. 



Relations of the Land-Molluscan Fauna of South America. 



At a meeting of the Academy of Xatural Sciences of Philadelphia 

 on the 23rd May, 189.9, Mr. H. A. Pilsbry spoke of the extrinsic 

 i-elations of the land-raolluscan fauna of South America, recounting 

 and commenting upon the various theories advanced to account for 

 the relations existing between the South-American, African, and 

 Australo-Zealandic faunas. The evidence of former Austral land 

 connecting South America with. Australasia, derived from a study of 

 the Bulimulidag, the Macroogona, &c., was detailed. The speaker 

 gave his reasons for preferring the hypothesis of a former extension 

 of Antarctic land to that of a South- Pacific continent, as advocated by 

 Prof. Hutton* and some others. He claimed that the present fauna of 

 Southern Polynesia was not consistent with Hutton's supposition 

 that these islands had been submerged, and thus their fauna 

 destroyed, on the sinking of the supposed Pacific continent entirely 

 below the sea, the present " islands being merely outgrowths on its 

 submerged back." Some Polynesian groups, such as Partula, 

 belong to very primitive, and therefore ancient, groups, unknown in 

 any other area, and indicating great antiquity for the Polynesian 

 archipelagos f. Xeitlier is the present fauna of Polynesia consistent 

 with the hypothesis that these islands are unsubmerged remnants of 

 a Pacific continent. 



The enigmatic relations of the freshwater fishes, snails, and the 

 terrestrial Streptaxidte of tropical South America with the African 

 fauna were discussed. 



The speaker considered the neotropical region of Wallace to bo 

 composite, the Antillean and Southern Mexican area representing 

 a tract independent from North and South America in Mesozoic and 

 perhaps earlier time, on which the faunal problems had been inde- 

 pendently worked out. — Proc. Acml. JS'al. Sci. Philad. 1899, p. 226. 



* See Proc. Linn. Soc. New South Wales, 1806, p. 36, for an able 

 paper advocating Prof. Hutton's views, an abstract of which appeared in 

 the ' Annals ' for .July 1890, p. 120. 



t Partula, like the allied Avhatiuella of the Hawaiian grouji, has a 

 bottle-shaped kidney with direct, not reriexed, ureter, as in Limnrea. 

 These forms have no relations with the Iiulimulid;e and Achatinida), ^vith 

 which conch. ilogists associate them, but lie at the base of the terrestrial 

 pulraouate tree. 



