134 Bihh'ojrapl'ical Notices. 



though the style, racy and picturesque as it is in parts, is in others 

 somewhat strained. Such eiforts, for instance, as the description of 

 the result of a blistered back as " a complete ecdysis of the dorsal 

 integument" involve a loss of dignity to the writer. The main 

 object of Dr. Willey's expedition was the investigation of the life- 

 liistory of the Pearly Xautilus, and in pursuit of this object he took 

 up his abode first in the Gazelle Peninsula at the eastern end of Xew 

 Britain, and later in Xew Uuinea and at Lifu in the Loyalty Islands. 

 AVhilc iu New Britain he made a journey to Xew Ireland and Xew 

 Hanover, and he gives us some iuteresting remarks on the habits and 

 customs of the natives of all these places. Scattered through the 

 narrative are also paragraphs on several rare and important animals 

 met with, such as Feripatas, Stj/eloides, BJiodosoma, Astrosclcra, and 

 Ct(no2)ht)ta, and these notes are often highly suggestive and inter- 

 esting. In speaking of the last-mentioned genus. Dr. WiUey gives 

 it as his opinion that " the tentacular plane of CtcnopJana, about 

 which the aboral ciliated sensory papiUa) are disposed in paired 

 groups .... coincides with the sagittal plane of a bilateral Tur- 

 bellarian, Xemertine, or Annelid." The eggs of NaKtihis were at 

 length gotten at Lifu, but proved to be all unfertile. However, as 

 they were very yolky, the value of the development of the young 

 for information on phylogenetic points is considerably discounted. 



The Special Contribution on Nautilus is a bulky monograph of 

 ninety quarto pages, and discusses, in a series of sections, questions 

 connected with almost every part of the anatomy, physiology, and 

 natural history of the animal. There are, Dr. Willey considers, 

 three species of Nautilus — N. pompilius^ ranging from the Philip- 

 ])ines to Fiji, N. macromplialus., confined to Xew Caledonia, where 

 the preceding species is never taken, and N. urahilicatus, taken in 

 Papuan waters, but rai'e. The anatomical observations seem to 

 have been chiefly made on the first of these species, and relate to a 

 number of iuteresting points. By injecting fresh specimens infor- 

 mation was obtained as to the distribution of the blood-vessels; and 

 aoiong other details it appears that the siphuncle is not, as Owen 

 supposed, supplied by a main artery direct from the heart, but 

 receives merely a secondary and two or three tertiary ramifications 

 from the posterior pallial artery. The central hollow of the 

 siphuncle is not coelomie, as Haller states, but venous, belonging to 

 the hajmocoele. There are also intra-epidermal blood-spaces iu the 

 organ, and the author thinks that these facts throw light on the 

 function of the siphuncle, whicli, according to him, is a vascular 

 appendix employed in keeping up the pressure of the gas in the 

 chambers of the shell. 



In a section on the tentacles Dr. Willey favours Owen's view 

 of the homology of these structures -with the arms of a cuttlefish, 

 rather than that of Valenciennes that they represent suckers. The 

 arms of Cephalopods are, he thinks, homologous with the cpi- 

 podium of other nioUusks and the funnel with the protopodium. 

 The lamelligerous lobes of the iufrabuccal organ of the male arc, 



