BIOLOGICAL TRAINING AND STUDIES. 875 



neither enjoying a Wanderjahr nor possessing a chorda dorsalis. We 

 are not surprised after this that M. Lacaze-Duthiers observes that 

 ' although embryology may and must furnish valuable information 

 by itself, it may also, in some cases, lead us into the gravest errors.' 

 Mr. Hancock, of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, has sent us a paper upon 

 this subject, which will be read duly and duly noted by us. 



Leaving Malacology, which has not in the United Kingdom 

 obtained the same hold as yet upon the public mind that it has on 

 the Continent, where, like Entomology, there and here, it has a 

 periodical or two devoted to the recording of the discoveries of its 

 votaries, I have much pleasure in directing attention to two short 

 papers by Siebold in the ' Zeitschrift fiir wissenschafbliche Zoologie ' 

 (xx. ^5 1870), on parthenogenesis in PoUstes gallica v. diadema, and 

 on paedogenesis in the Strepsiptera, In each of these short papers 

 Siebold informs us that adequate room and time could not be given 

 them in the Innsbruck meeting held just a year ago, or in the 

 report of the meeting. It is to me a matter of difficulty to think 

 what there could have been of greater value than those papers in 

 a section of Wissenschaftliche Zoologie ; it will be to all present a 

 matter of congratulation to learn, from the venerable professor's 

 papers, that he will shortly favour us with a new work on the 

 subject of parthenogenesis. A fresh instance of parthenogenesis in 

 Diptera, viz. in Chironomus, has just been put upon record in 

 the St. Petersburg Imperial Academy's Memoirs (xv. 8, January 

 13, 1870). 



The subject of the geographical distribution of the various forms 

 of vegetable and animal life over the surface of the globe, and in 

 the various media, air, earth, water — fresh and salt, whether deep or 

 shallow — has always been, and will always remain, one of the most 

 interesting subsections of biology. It was the contemplation of a 

 simple case of geographical distribution in the Galapagos archi- 

 pelago which brought the author of the ' Origin of Species ' face to 

 face with the problem which the title of his work embodies ; and it 

 is impossible that sets of analogous and of more complicated facts 

 (many of which, be it recollected, such as the combination now 

 being effected between our own fauna and flora and those of 

 Australia and New Zealand, are patent to the observations of the 

 least observing) should not, since the appearance of that book, 

 force the serious consideration of the explanation it offers upon the 



