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THURSDAY, APRIL 26, 1894. 



BIOLOGY AT THE ANTIPODES. 



The " Macleay Meinorial Volume^ Published by the 

 Linnean Society of New South Wales. (London : 

 Dulau and Co., 1893.) 



THE " Macleay Memorial Volume," dated September 

 1893, is a handsome work of 308 pp. quarto, with 

 42 plates and woodcuts. It contains a biography, by 

 the editor, Mr. J. J. Fletcher, Secretary of the Linnean 

 Society of New South Wales, with an accompanying 

 portrait, and a series of thirteen representative memoirs, 

 which deal chiefly with certain indigenous worms, mol- 

 luscs, crustaceans, fishes, and mammals. Botany and 

 vegetable palaeontology are duly represented ; and the 

 claims of anthropology as a branch of biological science 

 are rightly recognised, in the incorporation of an article 

 by Mr. R. Etheridge, jun., on a series of exhibits for- 

 warded by the Commissioners for New South Wales to 

 the Chicago Exhibition of last year. The class Aves is, 

 curiously, unrepresented ; and we could have wished that 

 Prof. Parker's revisionary monograph of the Dinornithidas 

 might have been reserved for its pages. 



The project, which is commemorative of the work of 

 the man who, as the scientific world knows well, has done 

 more than all others for the furtherance of biology at the 

 antipodes, emanated with Prof. Haswell, of the Sydney 

 University, himself a contributor of two of the most im- 

 portant monographs, and it was carried into effect by a 

 small committee, of which he and the editor were 

 members. 



William Macleay was born at Wick in 1820, and edu- 

 cated at the Edinburgh Academy. He emigrated in 

 1839 ; and, after spending fifteen years as a squatter, and 

 thirty-five as a politician (serving under seven successive 

 parliaments), he retired, to devote the rest of his life 

 wholly to biology. As a politician he appears to have 

 been neither a mere jobber nor an office-seeker, 

 and he will be long remembered as the friend of 

 the inland districts, and the foremost advocate of 

 railway extension. The connection of his family with 

 scientific progress in Australia is now historical ; his own 

 work in the same field dates from the year i860. His 

 ■entomological collection, originally associated with the 

 foundation of the Entomological Society of New South 

 Wales, became in time the nucleus of the Macleay 

 Museum, which has now reached famous proportions. 

 Having founded the Linnean Society of New South 

 Wales, he proceeded to develop it, chiefly in association 

 with the labours of a personally equipped and conducted 

 •expedition to the north-east coast of Australia and New 

 Cuinea, in the working out of the results of which he 

 was materially assisted by others whose latent enthusiasm 

 and abilities he aroused by his influence and example. 

 The purchase and presentation of the Linnean Hall, to 

 make good the loss by fire of its predecessor, the Garden 

 Palace, set the seal to his life's labours, his total bene- 

 fices being estimated at a value of /ioo,ooo. His work 

 for the University has since his death entered upon a 

 new phase, by his having bequeathed the sum of ^12,000 

 ior the endowment of a chair of bacteriology, and one of 

 NO. ! 278, VOL. 49] 



;/^35,ooo for that of four research fellowships in natural 

 science, open only to members of the Sydney Uni- 

 versity, on the condition that they reside in New South 

 Wales and publish their work in its Linnean Society's 

 volumes. The energy and enthusiasm of professional 

 workers in biological science at the antipodes is now 

 sufficiently evident, although perhaps insufficiently re- 

 cognised at home ; and that of more private inquirers, 

 such as is associated with the names of Bracebridge 

 Wilson, Chilton, G. M. Thomson, Maskell, and others, 

 has been already productive of most interesting and im- 

 portant results. The "Linnean Macleay Fellowships," 

 indeed worth the having, cannot fail to inspire investiga- 

 tions of a high order ; and owing to the conditions of 

 their tenure, they must ever remain peculiarly suggestive 

 of a welding together of the highest aims of their founder, 

 in a manner destined to keep his memory green. Zoo- 

 logy is especially favoured; and the great desideratum 

 of the moment is the fuller cultivation of the bo- 

 tanical field, which is wide enough for an army 

 of workers, and, in consideration of the localisa- 

 tion of the various climatic conditions under which 

 the colony is placed, must abound in treasures perhaps 

 undreamt of. The investigation of this on broad 

 morphological lines is imperative. 



The first monograph which the volume contains is by 

 Prof. Spencer, "On the Blood-vessels of CVrcz/^c/z/j," and 

 he incidentally records some observations upon the 

 habits of that animal. His confirmation of Giinther's 

 discovery of its vena cava inferior, and that of its pul- 

 monary artery, of its anterior abdominal venous system, 

 of its circulus cephalicus, and of the origin of its hyoidean 

 artery from the first efferent branchial, are all of intense 

 interest and very welcome, especially in anticipation of 

 Prof. Semon's work upon the development of the fish, 

 now progressing. This is followed by a monograph upon 

 the " Pliocene MoUusca of New Zealand," by Prof. F. W. 

 Hutton. Prof. Haswell contributes a " Revisionary 

 Monograph of the Temnocephalese," in extension of his 

 well-known work upon the type genus ; and it heightens 

 the interest in these anomalous animals at all points. 

 The discovery of a ciliated integument and of other fea- 

 tures of a unique order for the Trematoda, leaves him 

 still in doubt as to the affinities of these worms, and of an 

 equally remarkable proboscis-bearing ally {Actinodac- 

 tylella)^ leading the life of a scavenger on the burrowing 

 crayfish, Efigmcs fossa, which he describes as new. Not 

 the least generally interesting of Prof. Haswell's inci- 

 dental discoveries are those of the behaviour of the 

 Temnocephalan in relation to the surface film of water, 

 of the presence of a series of ciliary flames within the 

 substance of a single cell, and of the apparent passage of 

 chromatic substance into the tail of the developing 

 spermatozoon. Prof. Parker and Miss Rich contribute 

 an elaborate monograph upon "The Myology of the 

 New Zealand Sea- Crayfish {Palinurus Ediuardsii)" and 

 it is in the spirit suggestive of Dr. Johnson's famous 

 remark that easy reading is precious hard writing. 

 The discovery that Milne-Edwards' flexor abdominis 

 is in part an extensor is apparently perfectly sound ; and 

 that of vestigial muscles in relation to the bases 

 of the antennules and their sterna with which they 

 are continuously calcified, is particularly welcome, 



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