106 
figures of the stuffed skin and egg of the great auk, 
which form two of the chief treasures of the museum. 
To Prof. McIntosh we are indebted for a copy of a 
reprint of his sketch of the Natural History Museum 
of the University of St. Andrew’s, originally published 
in the Museum’s Journal. 
AccorDING to the report of the Madras Museum 
for the past year (issued by the Educational Depart- 
ment), a large collection of marine organisms has 
been obtained from the coral reef at Kilaharai, in the 
Ramanad district, the examination and classification of 
which are expected to occupy a considerable period. The 
superintendent also records the third or fourth speci- 
men (it is not quite clear which) of the great snipe 
(Gallinago major) killed in India; all these appear to 
have been obtained since the publication, in 1898, of 
the fourth volume on birds in the ‘‘ Fauna of British 
India,” as the species is not mentioned in that work. 
In an article on the ancestry of Edentate mammals 
published in a recent issue of the American Museum 
Journal (vol. xii., pp. 300-303), Dr. Matthew, after 
mentioning that armadillos are probably the most 
primitive existing members of the group, and that 
“armadillos without armour” occur in the early N. 
American Tertiary, observes that although the latter 
and the teniodonts of the N. American Eocene cannot 
be regarded as direct ancestors of the typical S. 
American edentates, yet they suggest the possibility 
that the group originally came from N. America, and 
penetrated to S. America about the beginning of the 
Tertiary, where it developed into a host of new forms. 
Great interest attaches to the description by Dr. 
W. D. Matthew in vol. xxxii., art. 17 (pp. 307-314), of 
the Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural His- 
tory, the imperfect skull of a new genus and species 
(Palaeoryctes puercensis) of the so-called zalamdodont 
insectivorous mammals from the Puerco, or Basal, 
Eocene of New Mexico. At the present day that 
group is represented by the Solenodontidz of Haiti and 
Cuba, the Potamogalidz of Equatorial (Dr. Matthew, 
judging from his map, seems to be unaware that the 
“‘otter-shrew ”’ occurs in the eastern as well as in the 
western part of the forest-zone) and the Chryso- 
chloridz, or golden moles, of southern, eastern, and 
central Africa, and the Centetidz, or tenrecs, of 
Madagascar. In 1891 the extinct genus Necrolestes, 
more or less nearly related to the Chrysochloride, was 
described from the Patagonian Miocene. At that time 
fossil forms were unknown from the northern hemi- 
sphere, which led to the suggestion that the group 
was essentially southern; but between 1903 and 1907 
five extinct genera were recorded from the N. 
American Tertiary. The new genus now described 
serves to show the great antiquity of the tritubercular 
type of molar characteristic of the zalamdodonts; and 
also, if rightly associated with that family, indicates 
‘that the Centitidz are the oldest existing group of 
»placental mammals. 
Amoncst the familiar sporozoan parasites known as 
-gregarines, one genus, Porospora, has always stood 
apart from all others by reason of the possession of 
ypeculiar and anomalous characteristics. The genus 
NO, 2291, VOL. 92] 
NATURE 
[SEPTEMBER 25, 1913 
comprises species parasitic in Crustacea, and P. 
gigantea, parasite of the lobster, is the largest gre- 
garine known. Recent researches have shown that 
the peculiar ‘‘gymnospores,”’ so-called, of these gre- 
garines are not true spores at all, but clusters of 
merozoites, and that the apparent sporogony of these 
parasites in their crustacean hosts is really a process 
of non-sexual schizogony, different from that of all 
other gregarines. The question then arose: Where 
and under what circumstances does the true sporogony 
take place? The answer has now been given by the 
distinguished French investigators, Messrs. Léger and 
Duboscq, who have discovered that the sexual cycle 
and sporogony of Porospora takes place in bivalve 
molluscs, and is no other than that of the curious 
parasite described many years ago by Aimé Schneider 
under the generic name Nematopsis, a genus of which 
the systematic position has been hitherto quite uncer- 
tain. Thus Porospora portunidarum, parasitic in 
crabs, has its Nematopsis-phase in Cardium edule, the 
common cockle, in which host the parasite produces a 
single spore, containing a single vermiform sporozoite, 
in the gills of the mollusc. A preliminary account of 
the development of this species, illustrated by nineteen 
text-figures, is published in the Comptes rendus des 
séances de la Société de Biologie (vol. Ixxv., p. 95). 
WE have received the concluding numbers of the 
sixteenth volume (for 1912) of the Bollettino of the 
Italian Seismological Society. The complete volume 
contains eleven papers, the more important of which 
deal with the recent eruption of Etna, the luminous 
phenomena associated with the Valparaiso earthquake 
of 1906 (NATURE, vol. xc., p. 550), and the sea-waves 
of the Calabrian earthquake of 1907 (vol. xci., p. 327). 
The greater part of the volume, however, consists of 
the notices of earthquakes observed in Italy during 
the year 1909, compiled by Dr. G. Martinelli. These 
notices oecupy more than six hundred pages, and their 
value has been increased by several improvements 
recently made. The constants of the seismographs 
used in twenty-nine Italian observatories are given in 
an appendix; the notices relating to different earth- 
quakes are separated by a space (it would be still 
more useful if they were numbered); the earthquakes, 
with the exception of those recorded by a single 
instrument or from one place only, are named accord- 
ing to the districts chiefly affected by them, and of 
these an alphabetical index is added. 
A RECENTLY issued Bulletin (No. 54) of the Bureau 
of American Ethnology, by Messrs. Hewett, Hender- 
son, and Robbins, deals with the Rio Grande valley, 
an arid region in New Mexico. The bulletin con- 
tains three papers; the first two, on the physio- 
graphy and general geology respectively, are more or 
less introductory to the third, which deals with the 
climate and climatic changes. The evidence for the 
latter is (1) archeological, (2) botanical, and (3) geo- 
logical. (1) There are great numbers of ruins in the 
country, many of them far from present known sources 
of water, and even as late as the coming of the Spaniards 
the population seems to have been denser than now. 
| (2) Study of the trees shows that the rock pine and 
| the pifion pine are the most widespread, the latter 
