Miscellaneous. 487 
moving, while each worker comes between the soldiers and deposits 
its load, returning until the breach is closed. 
Besides the above- described forms, there are always a la 
number of immature termites all over the nest, from the tiny larve 
just hatched from the eggs to the pupz with their wing-cases 
reaching down to the middle of the back.— Agricultural Gazette of 
New South Wales, May 1897, pp. 297-300. 
Care of the Brood in Psolus antarcticus. 
By Prof. Huserr Lupwie, of Bonn. 
1 am already once more able to report a hitherto unknown case 
of care of the brood in Holothurians, and again it is a question of 
an antarctic species and of a form of care of the brood which is new 
tor Holothurians. Although since its first description by Philippi 
(1857) Psolus antarcticus has been on several occasions the subject 
of observation and study, for it has been investigated by Studer 
(1876), Théel (1886), Lampert (1889), and myself (1886), nothing 
whatever had been learnt of the existence of care of the brood in 
this species. It 1s true that we have been told by Wyville Thomson 
(1876) that another antarctic Psolus, Thomson’s P. ephippifer, brings 
up its young beneath the dorsal plates modified for this purpose ; 
but that the longest-known antarctic species of Psolus—P. ant- 
arcticus (Phil.)—the range of which extends from Payta (Peru) 
southwards as far as Cape Horn, also belongs to the forms which 
care for their brood is an unexpected discovery. The score of large 
and small specimens that Dr. Michaelsen has brought home from 
the Hamburg-Magellan Collecting Expedition * imelade ten small 
and ileus game examples sli were collected on July 9, 1893, 
in Smyth Channel (north-east of the Straits of Magellan); among 
these I met with two which to my surprise carried their young on 
the ventral side, which is flattened to form the creeping sole. 
In the specimen which is the better preserved of the two and 
measures 12°5millim. in length by 8:5 millim. in breadth I find almost 
one half of the creeping sole occupied by young animals (twenty-two 
in number), which are all in the same stage of development and are 
attached by their pedicels to the area of the sole which is bare or 
devoid of pedicels. The pedicels of the adult animal are not 
touched by the young; moreover, no young are to be found on the 
outside of the maternal pedicel-zone. While care of the brood is in 
progress the mother can move about as freely as ever or can attach 
itself and adhere firmly to its support. Contrary, therefore, to what 
* It was in the material obtained by this expedition that I also dis- 
covered care of the brood in the case of Chiridota contorta, as recently 
reported by me (‘Zool. Anzeiger,’ Bd. xx. 1897, no. 524, pp. 217-219 
[Ann. & Mag. Nat. Hist. ser. 6, vol. XX. 1897, pp. 327 -328)). 
