^ The West American Scieyitist. 



say that the snakes feed only on human beings — those only, who 

 from cupidity or malice, attempt to disturb them. 



At the base of the mountain a large Indian burying ground is 

 said to exist. Upon a death in a camp the body would be placed 

 in the sand, and then a large and heavy stone would be placed 

 on the dead person's breast. After that every relative or friend 

 \\ould break an olla on the stone, thus forming a mound of broken 

 pottery to mark the spot, and to prevent either coyotes or the 

 strong winds from exhuming the body. The largest of these 

 cemeteries is reported as about one hundred feet in circumference. 

 These Indian tribes have now virtually passed away, and to day 

 the places which knew them is an uninhabited waste of sand. 



C. R. OrcHtl. 



CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE SAN DIEGO BIO- 

 LOGICAL LABORATORY. 



IsESTHES GiLBERTi JoRDAN. — The eggs of this species are 

 quite remarkable in structure and coloration. To the unaided 

 eye they appear opaque, of a purplish pink, inside which is a 

 spot of brownish red and upon this a dot of white. The greater 

 portion of the egg is covered by a simple thin, transparent mem- 

 brane, but at one pole of the ^^'g the membrane is provided with 

 a white cushiony cap formed of numerous filaments which are 

 slightly thickened at their tips and woven together at their free 

 ends. In the small size of these filaments, their great number 

 and aggregation at one pole, they differ from all other appenda- 

 ges of fish eggs yet described. The q^^ fastens itself to foreign 

 bodies by means of this cushion; when once fastened the &^^ be- 

 comes depressed, the longer and shorter axis measuring .8 and 

 .5 mm, respectively. The yolk is composed of rather large 

 spheres; on its upper surface are imbedded an equal number of 

 pale yellow and bright purple oil globules, in the midst of which 

 is the white body referred to above. Younger ovarian eggs are 

 entirely purple, while still younger ones are colorless. The ger- 

 minal disk invariably lies beneath the cushiony cap, whether the 

 cap lies above, below or at one side of the ^'gg. The relative 

 specific gravity has, in this case therefore, nothing to do with the 

 position of the germinal disk. 



The first segmentation is completed in about ten hours and re- 

 sults in much elongated elliptical cells. Most of the stages are 

 obscured by the peculiar cap. After one hundred and thirty-two 

 hours the eyes are well formed and the embryo embraces about 

 one-half the yolk; several pigment cells are formed on the yolk 

 at this time. On the sex'enth day the heart beats slowly, the pig- 

 ment spots have increased considerably and the embryo has be- 

 come independent of the "cap." The embryos were kept sixteen 

 days when" they died. 



