October, 1902.] 



KNOWLEDGE. 



233 



former. Now, as the large tropical centiperiea — Scolo- 

 peiulra and allies — have twenty-one (or twenty-three) 

 le^-beanns; segments, ^[r. Pscoi-k eoncliiJes that this 

 Ta'imaniaii t'oriu represents a eonnei'ting-link between tho 

 Scolopendrids and the Litliobiids, six sternites, with their 

 accompanying pairs of legs, havini; vanished, but the 

 termites still remaining. We get thus a most suggestive 

 due to the method of evolution among the centipedes. 



An .account of tho life-history of the beetle I'hjthrit 

 iliniilripitiictata is aiven bv Mr. IT. St. .1. K. Douisthorpe 

 {Traim. Ent. So,: Loud.,' 190-2, j)p 11-25). The female 

 beetle drops her eggs on the ground near nests of the 

 Wood .Ant (Foymica riifa), and as the eggs are enclosed in 

 cases formecl of the mother's excrement, which give them 

 the appearance of small bracts, the ants carrv them into 

 their n-'sts. The grubs feed on vegetable substances con- 

 tained in the nesr. protecting themselves by building up 

 hard, insoluble cases of excrement. When a beetle emerges 

 from the case at the end of the pupal stage, it creeps 

 stealthily out of the nest, stopping and " feigning death " 

 if approached by the ants, which seem to behave in an 

 unfriendiv wav to this "guest" both in the larval and 

 perfect states."— G.H.C. 



Zuor.oGic.vi,. — Professor Kay Lankester's long-expected 

 memoir on the okapi of the Semliki Forest has been issued 

 in the Traiifntcflonn of the Zoological Societv, forming the 

 sixth part of Vol. XVI. It is illustrated by a coloured 

 plate drauTi from the presumably immature specimen in 

 the British Museum, and numerous text figures of skulls, 

 etc. Fortunately, the Belgian specimens, which prove 

 the occurrence of horns in the okapi, arrived in this country 

 in time to receive a brief notice in Prof. Lankester's 

 memoir. The probable affinities of the animal are dis- 

 cussed in considerable detail by the author. It may be 

 well to notice that in the fourth line from the bottom of 

 page 287 the word iiicii'iir should be ratline. 



To the Proceedingit of the Royal Society (Vol. LXX., 

 \o. 46.5) Messrs .Alcock and Rogers communicate an 

 interesting paper showing that the saliva of many reputedly 

 harmless Indian sntikes has poisonous effects when injected 

 into the blood of small mammals. And they are enabled 

 to indicate a gradation, so far as toxic properties are con- 

 cerned, from species like the rat-snake, in which the teeth 

 are solid cones, through other kinds with teeth channelled 

 behind, to the deadly cobra and its kindred, in which the 

 fangs have assumed the form of hollow cones for the 

 conveyance of the venom from its receptacles. 



Dr. R. Lehmann-Nitsche, of the La Plata Museum, has 

 recently pubbshed in the German Archiv fur Anthropologie 

 (Vol. XXVIL, Art. 19) the evidence for regarding the 

 extinct Patagonian ground-sloth, of which the skin and 

 other remains were discovered a few years ago in a cavern 

 at Last Hope Inlet, as a contemporary of the ancient 

 cave-dwellers of the country, by whom indeed these 

 animals appear to have been domesticated. 



With the exception of a few elephants' teeth and bones, 

 vertebrate remains appear to have been hitherto unrecorded 

 from .Japan. The appearance of a memoir in the Journal 

 of the Tokio College on a fossil Japanese mammal of pre- 

 sumably Miocene age is, therefore, a matter of considerable 

 interest, more especially as the remains appear to indicate 

 a form quite unlike any known from other parts of the 

 world. The authors of the memoir regard the fossil as 

 referable to the elephant group, but it is quite likely that 

 this determination may be called in question. 



Dr. .1. Wortman has been re-examining the magnificent 

 series of American Eocene camivora collected by the late 

 Prof. 'Marsh, and has published the results of his myesti- 



gations in the American Jnnrnal of Science. He is of 

 opinion that the primitive mammals known as creodonts 

 should be included among the carnivora, and also that 

 they are closely related to the marsupials. But he refuses 

 to accept the modern view that marsupials themselves are 

 tho descendants of placcntals ; and inclines to the opinion 

 that both creodonts and modern marsupials are derived 

 from .1 iion-placent.al stock. How, on this view, we are 

 to explain tho occurrence of a vestigial placenta in the 

 bandicoots, the author does not say. 



In a memoir issued by the Survey Department at Cairo, 

 Messrs. Andrews and Beadnell give a preliminary descrip- 

 tion of new forms of extinct mammals from the Fayum 

 district of Egypt. Perhaps the most remarkable is an 

 imperfect lower jaw furnished with a pair of serrated and 

 recumbent incisor teeth, which they regard as probably 

 representing a new type of carnivora, and name Phiomia 

 serridetiK. To the same is provisionally assigned the front 

 part of an upper jaw with a single pair of large tusk-like 

 incisors. Very interesting is part of an upper jaw described 

 as Sayhafherinm urdiquum, which seems to indicate the 

 oldest representative of the hyrax group at present known. 

 A nother mammal from the same deposits is assigned to 

 the widely-spread Tertiary genus Ancodus — one of the 

 transitional forms between pigs and ruminants. The 

 authors are now of opinion that the beds containing 

 remains of the genus last mentioned, together with 

 Arsinotherium, Palmomastodon, etc., are of Upper Eocene 

 age, while the underlying deposits with Moeritherium, 

 Bahyfherium, etc., are Middle Eocene. Below the.se come 

 other beds from which have been obtained remains of tho 

 primitive cetacean Zenglodon. 



THE BIOGRAPHY OF A SNOWFLAKE. 



By Akthur H. Bell. 



It is one of the most interesting things in connection with 

 the subject of the weather that all its phenomena are so 

 closely in touch with one another, and that in order to 

 explain any one of them it is necessary to take account 

 of all the rest. A further fact is that the various 

 phenomena have a power of transforming themselves very 

 quickly as it were into something else, so that it is often 

 a long process to hunt down and discover what is the 

 fundamental structure of these fugitive shapes. A snow- 

 flake, for instance, at first sight might be thought to have 

 a separate existence from any of the other children born 

 of aqueous vapour, but on attempting to follow up the 

 history of these " frozen Howers," as Professor Tvndall 

 called them, it is found that the attention is at once 

 directed to the consideration of such things as rain, hail, 

 sleet, mist, dew, hoar-frost, and clouds. Hail, rain, sleet 

 and snow are, of course, very nearly related indeed, but 

 similarly to the other phenomena they are all built uj> 

 out of aqueous vapour, and when vapour is condensing 

 out of the atmosphere it is, at some seasons of the year, 

 quite as likely to take one shape as another. Of the 

 phenomena mentioned above hail is probably the most 

 noisy in its descent from the atmosphere to the earth, and 

 this more especially when it happens to be accompanied by 

 a thunderstorm. On the other hand hoar-frost and snow 

 are probably the quietest of all the children of the air, 

 wliile as regards their picturesque effects, who would 

 venture to decide between two such skilful artists ? Snow, 

 wliich is the parent of the grinding glacier and the 

 stupendous iceberg, has, however, such notable effects on 

 climate and on weather that few meteorological phenomena 

 can compare with it for interest. 



