NATURE 



409 



THURSDAY, MARCH 4, 18S6 



THE ZOOLOGICAL RESULTS OF THE 

 ''CHALLENGER" EXPEDITJON 

 Report on the Scientific Results of the Voyage of H. M.S. 

 " Cliallenger" during the Years \?riy]i) under the Com- 

 mand of Capt. G. S. Nares, R.N., F.R.S., and Caft. F. T. 

 Thomson, A'. A'. Prepared under the Superintendence of 

 tlie late Sir C. Wyville Thomson, F.R.S., &c , and now 

 of John Murray, one of the Naturahsts of the Expe- 

 dition. Zoology— Vols. XL, XII., and XIII. By N. 

 Polejaeff, M.A., P. Herbert Carpenter, D.Sc, Frank E. 

 Beddard, M.A., Prof. William C. Mcintosh, Edgar A. 

 Smith, Dr. E. Selenka, and Prof. G. O. Sars. (Pub- 

 lished by Order of Her Majesty's Government, 18S5.) 



TOURING 1885 three new volumes of the Zoological 

 Series of Reports have been published. Of these. 

 Part 32 of Vol, XI., " On the Stalked Crinoidea," by Dr. P. 

 Herbert Carpenter, has already been noticed in our pages 

 (Nature, vol. xxxi. p. 573). The others we now proceed 

 to notice. 



Part 31 is a " Report on the Keratosa," by N. Polejaeff, 

 M..A., of the University of Odessa. The Keratose sponges 

 do not belong to the deep-sea fauna. It is therefore not 

 to be wondered at that the total number of species col- 

 lected during the cruise of the Challenger should have 

 been only 37. It is, howe'-er, a little surprising that of 

 this number 21 should be new. The collection embraced 

 forms belonging to almost all the genera of the Keratine 

 sponges hitherto distinguished, and the specimens were 

 for the most part well preserved. 



The Report opens with a chapter on the organisation 

 and classification of the group. The subject of the classi- 

 fication of the group is undeniably a difficult one. In no 

 section of the animal kingdom is there a greater danger 

 of describing individuals instead of genera and species. 

 The student has no palaeontological data to refer to ; 

 embryological details so far as these are known do not 

 help him much ; minute anatomy gives but few distinctive 

 characters, and so he is obliged to depend on general 

 anatomical details. When the author acknowledges, as 

 he freely does, that this is so, one is not surprised 

 to find the writers of the past — Duchassaing and 

 Michelotti, Gray, Hyatt, and Carter — depending for their 

 divisions on the properties of the skeleton ; nor does one 

 wonder that in their attempts they so often went astray. 

 The division of the Keratosa into two groups, differentiated 

 by having homo- and heterogeneous skeletal fibres, is 

 characterised as thoroughly artificial. The subject of the 

 presence of filaments is capable of no systematic applica- 

 tion (the extremely interesting question of what these 

 filaments are is discussed at length, no definite conclusion 

 being come to ; it is strange that they never seem to 

 have been examined by a botanist). The presence of 

 true cells in the walls of the skeletal fibres cannot at 

 present be defined as of systematic value. Dr. Vosmaer's 

 arrangement of a division into families, characterised by 

 the properties of both the skeleton mass and of the soft 

 parts is selected as the best possible for the present. 



The history of these families and of the various genera 

 placed therein is written with the greatest care and fair- 

 VoL. xxxiii. — No. 853 



ness. In agreeing with Hyatt (1875) that Ceratella and 

 Dehitella of Gray are thoroughly sponge-like forms, and 

 not, as Carter (1873) would have them, " nothing but hy- 

 droids or coral-like skeletons," he overlooks the fact that 

 in the Q,uarterly Journal of Microscopical Science for 

 January 1870 it is stated that the CeratellidEe were undoubt- 

 edly a " family of arborescent Keratose sponges." The 

 descriptions of the species are accompanied by ten plates 

 of figures. This able Report concludes with a few pages 

 on the subject of the affinities of the group. 



Mr. Herbert Carpenter's "Report on the Crinoidea"forms 

 Part 32, and is followed by a " Report on the Isopoda " 

 (part i), by Mr. Frank E. Beddard, forming Part 33 of the 

 series. This portion of Mr. Bedd.trd's Report relates to 

 the genus Serolis, which occupies a foremost place among 

 the Isopods collected. Of the 16 species collected nine 

 are new. A discussion of the systematic position of the 

 genus within the order Isopoda is postponed until the 

 next Part of the Report, but with regard to the alleged 

 affinity of the genus and of the Isopods generally to the 

 extinct Trilobites, as insisted on by A. Milne-Edwards, 

 the author has nothing to add to what has already been 

 said ; the examination of the species found during the 

 Challenger Expedition having brought to light no facts 

 which tend to show any close resemblance between the 

 two groups. Of the 22 known species all but four are found 

 at a depth of from 5 to 150 fathoms. Of the four deep-sea 

 forms one is found at a depth of 675 fathoms, a second at 

 depths between 400 and 1600 fathoms, a third between 

 400 and 1975 fathoms, and a fourth at depths of 600 and 

 2040 fathoms. In the two species from the latter depth the 

 genus attains to its greatest size. It has evidently had 

 its origin in the Southern Hemisphere^ probably around 

 the shores of the south polar continent. While the great 

 majority of the species live in shallow water, the deep- 

 sea forms are in all cases strongly marked ; they also 

 show certain peculiarities, notably in the structures of 

 their eyes, which are often absent, but, when present, 

 show great evidence of functional degeneration ; indeed 

 none of the deep-sea species possess well-developed eyes. 

 The eye-structure of some of the species is given in 

 great detail and is well illustrated on Plates IX. and X. 

 Ten plates accompany this memoir. 



Part 34 of the Zoological Series forms Vol. XII., a 

 portly volume of over 550 pages illustrated by 93 plates. 

 This valuable Report is by Prof William C. Mcintosh. 

 It is on the Annelida Polychasta, and marks quite an 

 era in the history of this group. In a short notice it is 

 impossible to do justice to this laborious work, and we 

 must content ourselves with briefly marking our admira- 

 tion of the care and research that have been bestowed 

 upon it. Of the species collected no less than 220 are 

 described as new. It is noteworthy that the formation 

 of no new family was required ; all the forms fall into 

 groups already constituted, and which have been so satis- 

 factorily diagnosed by Malmgren that the diagnoses have 

 not here been repeated, but a most useful synopsis of the 

 families, genera, and species described is appended to the 

 Report, with references both to the pages and plates. In 

 many cases the food of the Annelids has been examined, 

 and in the case of abyssal forms, it throws some light on 

 the food-resources of the great depths of the oceans. 

 In the North Atlantic Region a large number of forms 



