May is, 1883.] 



SCIENCE. 



433 



these may yet be found to occur in the West Indies, 

 or on the mainland. One is Erigeron Darrellianus, 

 with tlie liabit and foliage of Conyza rivularis ; the 

 other, Statice Lefroyi, hitherto identified as S. Caro- 

 linlana. — (Jowni. 6oi., April, 1883.) s. w. [896 



ZOOLOGY. 



The position of Rhodope. — The views of Graff 

 [Morph. jahrb., viii. i.), referring Rhodope to tlie 

 nudibranchiate molIusliS, have received such wide 

 publicity that it is well, even if a little late, that 

 the views on tliis topic of the most eminent living 

 student of the nudibranohs should have a hearing. 

 R. Bergh of Copenhagen has examined Ehodope with 

 special reference to the views of Graft, and finds, 

 notwithstanding the fact that it is separated by 

 marlved characters fi'om the ordinary turbellarians, 

 that tlie differences between it and the nudibranchi- 

 ate gastropod mollusks are much greater. There 

 are no nudibranclis destitute of a heart, or of an 

 organ filling the office of a kidney. Few have the liver 

 reduced to a single mass. The genital organs of 

 Eliodope do not differ greatly from those of turbella- 

 rians. The form and armature of the tail resemble 

 those of many turbellarians, and nothing similar 

 is known among the nudibranclis. Certain resem- 

 blances assumed to exist between the nervous system 

 in Rhodope and Tetliys, on the basis of Ihering's 

 figure of the latter, have no force, since it appears 

 that the figure is inaccurate. Lastly, a quietus is 

 placed upon the tlieory by the fact that the larva of 

 Ehodope has neither larval shell nor velum, which 

 are universal in nudibranclis. It is therefore certain 

 that Rliodope is no nudibranch, and eminently prob- 

 able that it is nothing more than a peculiarly aber- 

 rant turbellarian. — (Zonl. anz., 123. ) w. H. D. [897 

 Fisclier's Manuel de conchyliologie. — Part 

 fifth of this excellent work is at hand, comprising 

 pp. 417-512, which carry it forward from the Asco- 

 ceratidae, concluding the Cephalopods, through the 

 Ptero|iods, and nearly through the order Pulmonata 

 in the class of Gastropoda. The latter is divided as 

 follows: — 



Class -GASTROPODA. 



i Vudrotrvni \ ^^"^^^ Pulmonata, 

 '5i,i„.i.,«o TTvivvTvr, ' ' ' OpisthobvancMata . 



OUDCI.188 UMVALMA I Heteropoda . i*f«rieo()TOnc/iiato. 



^ \ Platypoda . . Prosobranchiata. 

 Subclass MULTIVALVIA Polyplacophora. 



The author's paleontological researches have enabled 

 him to preserve a satisfactory equilibrium as regards 

 living and extinct forms. Numerous new and char- 

 acteristic figures appear in the text, in addition to 

 others not unfamiliar in the pages of Woodward; and 

 with this fasciculus is added an atlas of twenty-four 

 plates, which originally appeared in Woodward's 

 Manual, and are well known, but which have never 

 been excelled in clearness and accuracy by any purely 

 black and white conchological plates issued up to the 

 present time. The most casual inspection of the text, 

 however, will show that we are presented with some- 

 thing quite different from a merely revised edition 

 of Woodward, and that the volume when completed, 

 though doubtless open to criticism in some of its 

 details, will be by far the best text-book of the sub- 

 ject available. — w. H. D. [898 

 Anatomy of Parmacella. — H. Simroth devotes 

 a paper of forty-six pages, with an excellent plate, to 

 the elucidation of the anatomy of P. Olivieri Cuvier. 

 Its features are compared in detail with homologous 

 organs in other pulnionates; and among his deduc- 

 tions the author concludes that the slugs constitute 



the highest evolution-product of the group of Pul- 

 monata (a view in which he was long preceded by 

 A. A. Gould and others), and that Parmacella, in 

 particular, exhibits closer relations with the Patula- 

 section of Helicidai? than with the group including 

 Vitrina, etc., with which some other slugs are most 

 closely allied. — {Jahrb. deutsch. mal. geseilsch., i. 

 1883.) w. H. D. [899 



Curious slug from Madagascar. — Heynemann 

 describes under the name of Elisa bella a curious 

 slug allied to Araalia, with a spatulate internal shell, 

 dorsal keel, four retractile tentacles, a jaw resem- 

 bling that of Limax, radula like Helix, and a termi- 

 nal slime-gland accentuated by a short deep groove 

 extending backward on each side from it. It is in 

 the Senckenbergian collection. — (Jahrb. deutsch. 

 mal. i/eseUsck., i. 1SS3.) w. h. d. [900 



Crustaoeaas, 



Metamorphosis of Penaeus. — Walter Faxon 

 calls attention to the fact that Fritz Miiller did not 

 keep the supposed Penaeus nauplius under observa- 

 tion until it changed to a protozoea, as is stated by 

 W. K. Brooks in his recent account of the metamor- 

 phosis of Penaeus (Johns Hopk. univ. circ, Nov., 

 1882), and that, consequently, the rearing of the pro- 

 tozoea to the young Penaeus by Brooks proves nothing 

 new in regard to the relation of Miiller's nauplius to 

 Penaeus. Faxon, however, sees no good ground for 

 refusing to accept Miiller's reasons for believing his 

 nauplius and zoea stages to be parts of one life- 

 history. — (^juer. naL, May, 1883.) s. I. s. [901 



Copepoda living in mollusks and ascidians. — 

 C. W. S. Aurivillius has investigated the Copepoda 

 inhabiting mollusks and ascidians on the Swedish 

 coast, and published the results in two jiapers illus- 

 trated with seven double plates. Only two species, 

 both belonging to the Sapphirinidae, were found 

 inhabiting mollusks, — a species of Lichoniolgus on 

 species of Doris, and a new genus and species 

 (Modiolicola insignis) upon the branchiae of Modiola 

 and Mytilus. Twenty-one species, representing seven 

 genera and five families, were found in the bran- 

 chial sacs of ascidians, two new species being added 

 to those already described by Thorell and others. 

 Nearly all the old species are redescribed, and a 

 large p.art of them figured, and analytical tables of 

 the genera and species given. — ( Oi'vers. vet. akad. 

 Jorh., 1882, Nos. 3 and 8.) s. i. s. [902 



Life-histories of American butterflies. — W. 



H. Edwards continues his careful and valuable de- 

 scriptions of the early stages and habits of different 

 American butterflies, giving us lately those of Grapta 

 comma, G. interrogationis, and Pyrameis Atalanta. 

 The descriptions of the caterpillars lose part of their 

 value through lack of sufficiently explicit statement 

 of the precise location of the dermal appendages. — 

 (Can. eiiL, xiv. 189, 201, 229; xv. 14.) [903 



Natural history of the fig-insects. — The very 

 singular little group of fig-dwelling hymenoptera, 

 referi-ed by Westwood to the Chalcididae, is the sub- 

 ject of a recent monograph by Dr. Paul Mayer. Fig- 

 growers have for ages taken advantage of the habits 

 of Blastophaga grossorum for cross-fertilizing the 

 tame fig with the wild caprificus. Mayer describes 

 the anatomy of this species and some others, and 

 discusses the geographical distribution of all known 

 species, and their relations to the species of Ficus and 

 its allies. The amount of adaptation induced by the 

 peculiar habitat of the fig-insects varies in different 



