January 10, 1896.] 



SCIENCE. 



61 



distributed specimens of Demodex and Coc- 

 cidium parasites for class work, and made 

 a plea for a more adequate study of para- 

 sites in college work as a preparation for 

 medical studies. 



Dr. Bigelow (Institute of Technology) 

 described observations on the budding of 

 the scyphistoma ofCassiopea, which tend to 

 uphold the views of Claus and are opposed 

 to those of Gotte. The bud forms in the 

 plane of one of the principal radii as an 

 evagination of both layers. It is set free as 

 a ciliated free-swimming planula and the 

 mouth is afterwards developed, not at the 

 distal, but the proximal or basal end. No 

 stomodseal invagination of ectoderm occurs, 

 and the proboscis is therefore lined by ento- 

 derm. The gastric pouches do not arise as 

 evaginations, but by the inward growth of 

 septa from the mesogloea. The first tentacles 

 to be formed are the four per-radial ; the 

 numbers in following stages are normally 8, 

 16 and 82. 



CURRENT NOTES ON PHYSIOGRAPHY. 

 TOPOGRAPHICAL MAP OF ITALY. 



Four sheets (Nos. 7, 18, 33, 46) of the to- 

 pographical map of Italy — 1 : 100,000 — pub- 

 lished recently by the Istituto geografico mil- 

 itare, cover a stretch of country fi'om the 

 crest of the Alps in the Bernina group, with 

 many glaciers, to the northern side of the 

 plain of the Po, where the river Adda 

 emerges from the foothills. The northern- 

 most sheet includes the divide between the 

 Maira and the Inn, separating the waters 

 of the Po and the Danube ; here the north- 

 ward migration of the divide, as described 

 by Heim, has caused the formation of 

 the little lakes of the Engadine (Die Seen 

 des Oberengadin, Jahrb. Schw. Alpenklub, 

 XV, 429); certain back-handed branches 

 of the Maira, once tributaries of the Inn, 

 are clearly shown. The second sheet ex- 

 hibits the deep longitudinal valley of the 

 Adda about Sondrio, 2,000 meters beneath 



the mountains on either side, the stream 

 being continually thrown to one t)r the 

 other side of its well-graded floor by the 

 large alluvial fans of lateral streams. The 

 two southern sheets show a number of tor- 

 rential streams with tangled channels flow- 

 ing southward in almost parallel courses 

 across the great alluvial plain, whose slope 

 is here about twenty feet to the mile ; the 

 banks of the streams often being somewhat 

 higher than the ground between them, and 

 thus indicating that portions of the plain 

 consist of numerous alluvial fans, conflu- 

 ent laterally ; a form very well adapted to 

 the construction of the numerous canals 

 that are led from the streams to the fields. 

 The maps being printed in a single black 

 impression, it is often difficult to distin- 

 guish streams and canals from roads. 



MAP OF THE GERMAN EMPIRE. 1 : 1,000,000. 



Several interesting features appear on 

 certain sheets of the German topographical 

 map, published last year and this. One of 

 the broad dry valleys cut in the Piedmont 

 slope of Bavaria by some extinct glacial 

 streams, is exhibited on the Mindelsheim 

 (636) and Burgau (622) sheets. The tan- 

 gled channel of the torrential Inn and a 

 glimpse of the shallow canyon of the Dan- 

 ube below Passau are found on the Neu- 

 haus-a-Inn, sheet (628). Further up 

 stream the Inn manifests a peculiarly strong 

 tendency to follow the right-hand side of 

 its broad valley floor, here at least two 

 miles from side to side (Landau sheet 612). 

 The great north-facing Jurassic escarpment 

 of the Swabian Alp in Wurtemburg, is in 

 part shown on the Aalen sheet (592), east 

 of Stuttgart ; the location of Aalen at the 

 northern base of the escarpment, and of the 

 road and railroad southward across the 

 Alp from it, depend on the occurrence there 

 of one of the several notches in the rim of 

 the upland, representing the trough of a 

 beheaded river, whose winding lower course 



