156 Miscellaneous. 



years he regarded the castor-oil plant, Ricinus communis, as a 

 genuine case of parthenogenesis, the past year's experience still 

 leaves the matter open to doubt. If it be true that the female 

 flowers of Ci/cas revoluta can generate spermatozoids in their ovaries, 

 and thus self-fertilize the ova, the occurrence must be rare. In this 

 vicinity old specimens of this plant are frequently seed-bearing 

 apparently, but in every case examined by the author they were 

 found to have only empty capsules. 



It seems to the author that the suhject of parthenogenesis is by 

 no means thoroughly " threshed out," and the object of this paper 

 is to encourage continued observations. — Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci. 

 Philad. 1899, pp. 97-99. 



Relations of the Land-Molluscan Fauna of South America. 



At a meeting of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia 

 on the 23rd May, 1899, Mr. H. A. Pilsbry spoke of the extrinsic 

 relations of the land-molluscan fauna of South America, recounting 

 and commenting upon the various theories advanced to account for 

 the relations existing between the South-American, African, and 

 Australo-Zealandic faunas. The evidence of former Austral land 

 connecting South America with Australasia, derived from a study of 

 the Bulimulidae, the Macroogona, &c., was detailed. The speaker 

 gave his reasons for preferring the hypothesis of a former extension 

 of Antarctic land to that of a South-Pacific continent, as advocated by 

 Prof. Hutton * and some others. He claimed that the present fauna of 

 Southern Polynesia was not consistent with Hutton's supposition 

 that these islands had been submerged, and thus their fauna 

 destroyed, on the sinking of the supposed Pacific continent entirely 

 below the sea, the present " islands being merely outgrowths on its 

 submerged back." Some Polynesian groups, such as Partula, 

 belong to very primitive, and therefore ancient, groups, unknown in 

 any other area, and indicating great antiquity for the Polynesian 

 archipelagos f. Neither is the present fauna of Polynesia consistent 

 with the hypothesis that these islands are unsubmerged remnants of 

 a Pacific continent. 



The enigmatic relations of the freshwater fishes, snails, and the 

 terrestrial Streptaxidse of tropical South America with the African 

 fauna were discussed. 



The speaker considered the neotropical region of Wallace to be 

 composite, the Antillean and Southern Mexican area representing 

 a tract independent from North and South America in Mesozoic and 

 perhaps earlier time, on which the faunal problems had been inde- 

 pendently worked out. — Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci. Philad. 1899, p. 22Q. 



* See Proc. Linn. Soc. New South Wales, 1896, p. 36, for an able 

 paper advocating Prof. Hutton's views, an abstract of which appeared in 

 the ' Annals ' for July 1896, p. 120. 



t Partula, like the allied Achatinella of the Hawaiian group, has a 

 bottle-shaped kidney with direct, not reflexed, ureter, as in Limntea. 

 These forms have no relations with the Bulimulid<e and Achatinidoe, with 

 which conchulogists associate them, but lie at the base of the terrestrial 

 pulmonate tree. 



J 



