464 Miscellaneous. 



dried specimens, they are not so regular, well-marked, and distinct 

 as in the living animal. 



The way of walking is somewhat similar to that of Tolypeutes. 

 The generality of stuffed specimens give a very wrong idea of the 

 form of the nose, dorsal shield, and of the feet. Though Xenurus 

 and Tolypeutes walk on the tips of the claws, they stand and walk 

 in a very different manner. In the Cabassou {Xenurus) the toes 

 are short, and have very strong elongate claws, which spread out 

 horizontally, and are rather divergent ; the animal walks on the 

 tips of its claws, the remainder of the claws and the soles of the 

 feet being parallel to, but raised from the soil. In Tolypeutes the 

 toes are veiy short ; the claws are slender, elongate, and bent down 

 perpendicularly, so that the animal walks on the tips of its claws, 

 as on stilts. 



Several persons to whom I have mentioned these facts doubt their 

 truth, especially in the latter genus ; but I have repeatedly verilied 

 them with my own eyes. The stuffed specimens and the figures of 

 the animals, and also the figures of the bones of the feet, though 

 very accurate in all their details, give a very erroneous idea of the 

 manner in which these animals stand and, more especially, walk. 

 The Cabassou walks about with the nostrils of his broad truncated 

 nose expanded, sniffing very much like a pig ; and from the way it 

 turns over the hay of its cage with its nose, I think that very pro- 

 bably it searches for its food in the same manner as pigs do, thereby 

 justifying the English name generally given to the armadiUoes, 

 " hog in armour." 



On the Fauna of Nowaja-Semlja, By Prof. Ehleks. 



Prof. Ehlcrs has published a list of marine animals from Nowaja- 

 Semlja, belonging to the classes Insecta, Arachnoidea, Ascidia, to 

 the Vermes, Bryozoa, Echinodermata, Ccelenterata, and Sponges. 

 He concludes it with the foUowing remarks. 



Although this catalogue cannot claim to even approximate com- 

 pleteness in the enumeration of the animals belonging to the classes 

 treated in it which occur on the shores of Nowaja-Semlja, it is 

 nevertheless large enough to show that in general the fauna is that of 

 the European north sea ; but it further shows that on these islands 

 animals occur together which we should otherwise regard as endemic 

 forms of two distinct zoogeographical provinces. Thus, if we indi- 

 cate the coasts of Spitzbergen, Greenland, and perhaps polar America 

 as parts of an arctic province, and those of Iceland and northern 

 Scandinavia as parts of a boreal province, and distinguish those 

 animals which have hitherto been found in one province or the other 

 as boreal and arctic animals, it appears that on the shores of Nowaja- 

 Semlja arctic and boreal animals occur side by side, besides those 

 animals which are distributed through all provinces of the northern 

 seas. 



It seems probable that the behaviour of the Gulf-stream has some 

 influence upon this distribution, inasmuch as a part of its current at- 

 tains the southern shore of Nowaja-Semlja, and so on this coast a 



