ZOOLOGY AND BOTANY, MICROSCOPY, ETC. 61 



structures as passive, some of them probably olfactory. They are 

 described as touch and smell organs by Dr. Paul Schiemenz,* in a 

 contemporaneous paper, which Mr. Briant has since seen. 



Sense of Hearing in Ants.f — That ants have a more than 

 rudimentary sense of hearing is forcibly suggested by the Kev. E. C. 

 Spicer's observations on an unnamed Australian ant, which produces 

 " a series of rapid, jerky, hissing and chirping sounds quite easily heard 

 three inches from the human ear." It remains, however, to demon- 

 strate in this species auditory organs better developed and less 

 problematical than those as yet known. 



Origin of Endoderm in Lepidoptera.j — Mr. A. T. Bruce, working 

 on Thyridopteryx, confirms Kowalevsky's opinion on this point. 



After describing the formation of the amnion and embryo, he 

 describes the appearance of the shallow longitudinal groove (blasto- 

 pore) along the ventral surface : the cells at each side of this proli- 

 ferate and divide into an outer and an inner layer ; the latter will 

 enclose the yolk and is the endoderm : the yolk takes no share in the 

 formation of the intestinal epithelium. 



Generative Apparatus of Nematois inetallicus.§ — M. N. Cholod- 

 kovsky has investigated the generative organs of this small lepido- 

 pterous insect ; the abdomen is remarkably large, owing to the 

 presence of a number (not less than twelve) of ovarian tubes in each 

 ovary ; all known Lepidoptera, with the exception of Psyche helix, 

 which has six, have four tubes in each ovary ; in N. metallicus the 

 majority have twenty tubes. The bursa copulatrix is very feebly 

 developed, and the ordinary spiral efferent canal connecting it with 

 the vagina is wanting; this arrangement corresponds exactly with 

 some of the phases in chrysalid development. Seven segments can 

 be made out externally in the abdomen of the female, but if the 

 abdomen is slightly compressed, a -whitish cone is protruded, which 

 consists of a compact chitinous membrane, and has the generative 

 orifice at its tip ; the vagina likewise consists of a whitish chitinous 

 tubule, which is imbedded in the cone, and fused with its walls. 

 On the ventral surface of the cone there are two pairs of chitinous 

 setae which are directed backwards ; to these, muscles are attached, 

 and by their contraction, the membranous cone and its setae are 

 protruded, so as to apparently form an ovipositor ; the setae, as it 

 seems, bore into various substances, in which the eggs are deposited. 

 The inner lip of each seta has a small transparent finely dotted 

 chitinous disc ; the outer end is pointed, and just behind it, each of 

 the two lateral setae has a flattened lateral enlargement, which is partly 

 fused with the chitinous plate of the vagina. 



The accessory internal organs of the male are excessively short ; 

 each half of the apparently azygous testis consists of about twenty 

 tubes, or, in other words, corresponds with the number of the female 



* See this Journal, iii. (1883) p. 364. 

 t Proc. Roy. Soc. Queensland, i. (1884) pp. 79-81. 

 i Johns-Hopkins Univ. Circ, v. (1885) p. 9 (2 figs.). 

 § Zeitschr. f. Wiss. Zool., xli. (1885) pp. 559-68 (1 pi.). 



