306 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



ARCHEOLOGY. 



A Whale in the Thames in 1658. — A fuller description of the 

 Greenwich Whale referred to at p. 131 as advertised in the ' Mercurius 

 Politicus,' June 3rd, 1658, will be found in the 'Diary of John Evelyn,' 

 under the same date. The Whale referred to is clearly the same in both 

 cases. — H. A. Macpherson (Carlisle). 



SCIENTIFIC SOCIETIES. 



Linnean Society of London. 



May 3, 1883— Sir Jofin Lubbock, Bart., M.P., F.R.S., President, in 

 the chair. 



Sig. 0. Beccari and Dr. J. Lange were elected Foreign Members of 

 the Society. 



Mr. William Galloway exhibited an extensive series of the osseous 

 remains of the Great Auk, Otter, and other animals, along with bone 

 implements, being part of the material dug out of the mound of Caisted- 

 nan-Gillean, in Oransay, by himself and Mr. S. Grieve in 1881-82. 



A second contribution on the Asteroidea of the 'Challenger' Expedition, 

 by Mr. W. Percy Sladen, was read. In this the author draws attention to 

 the "cribriform organs," peculiar structures associated with special functions 

 found in Porcellanaster, but as yet unknown in other Starfishes. The 

 organs in question are situated on the marginal plates in the intertrachial 

 angles, and they may vary from one to seven in number. They consist of 

 greatly compressed spinelets or lamellae ranged in vertical parallel lines, 

 and invested with a membrane, which appears to have been furnished with 

 vibratile cilia. Functionally they may act as percolators, and lie homo- 

 logous with the minute ciliary spines bordering the vertical furrows of the 

 marginal plates of Aatropeeten and other forms. In Porcellanaster they are 

 strictly lamellar, whilst they are papelliform in the allied genera Hyphaster, 

 Styracaster, and Thoracaster. Mr. Sladen further describes in detail the 

 last-mentioned three now genera — of five in all ; and of twenty-seven species 

 some twenty-one are entirely new to science. 



There followed a paper by Mr. George Brook, " A Revision of the 

 Genus Entomobrya, Bond. (= Degeeria, Nicolet)." In this communication 

 a historical resume is given of what divisions, &c, of the group of Po&ura, 

 more immediately under consideration have been made by previous observers. 

 From researches into the literature and his own observations, the author 

 arrives at the conclusion that in the genus Entomobrya we have a common 

 widely distributed form, which, at different ages and under different con- 



