606 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. IV. No. 95. 



ilies and genera, and the most importaat 

 results verified. The experiments upon 

 medusae were confined to the genus Goni- 

 onemua, members of which from physiolog- 

 ical habit loaned themselves quite readily 

 to such work. "While the series of experi- 

 ments have not been completed, enough 

 has been done to establish the capacity of 

 even such specialized forms to regenerate 

 various parts and organs with great readi- 

 ness, and that both centrifugally and cen- 

 tripetally. Indeed, an apparent capacity 

 for considerable heteromorphism. 



22. The President of the Association read 

 the next paper on ' The Penial Structures 

 of the Saurians,' which was printed in ab- 

 stract in the last number of this Journal. 



23. ' The Relationships of the North 

 American Fauna,' was then presented by the 

 chairman of the section,Yice-President Gill, 

 and discussed at length by Prof. E. D. Cope 

 and others. In the course of his reiiiarks 

 the author said : " The question of the ex- 

 tent and relationship of the North American 

 Fauna have been several times discussed 

 recently and very different conclusions de- 

 duced. I do not feel inclined to recede from 

 the position taken years ago. It depends 

 upon the reliance which is placed upon a 

 special group whether we are lead to one 

 view or another ; for example, if we take the 

 birds alone we may acknowledge the bonds 

 that bind temperate northern America and 

 Eurasia ; if we take the lizards, the North 

 American Group is simply an extension of 

 the Southern ; if we take the mammals, the 

 reality of an Arctic region may be insisted 

 on. But the acceptance of an Arctic region 

 by no means clears away the difiiculties ; it 

 rather doubles them, for we have then the 

 task of defining the boundaries between 

 that Arctic region and the North American, 

 on the one hand, and the Eurasiatic, on the 

 other. It seems best then to consider the 

 Arctic lands as neutral territory and to 

 correlate zoogeographical and geographical 



data, recognizing the regions admitted by 

 Sclater, Wallace and most other zoogeog- 

 raphers. The most significant evidence in 

 favor of the distinction of the North Ameri- 

 can and Eurasiatic faunas is furnished by 

 the fishes. Certainly the ichthyologist can- 

 not subscribe to the union of the two into a^ 

 single Holarctic region." 



The Vice-Presidential address, ' On some 

 Points in Nomenclature,' was read Monday 

 p. m. and appears in full in the present num- 

 ber of this Journal. 



D. S. Kellicott, 



Secretary. 



State University, Columbus, O. 



THE GEOGRAPHICAL SECTION OF THE BRIT- 

 ISH ASSOCIATION. 



Meeting in a great commerical center 

 like Liverpool, and in a city which is the 

 seat of a young but vigorous geographical 

 society, it was to be expected that the Geo- 

 graphical Section of the British Association 

 should be neither less active nor less popu-^ 

 lar than in former years. It may, perhaps,, 

 be the case that the large audiences, on 

 several occasions approaching a thousand^ 

 were attracted by an unwontedly liberal 

 use of the lantern for illustration, but no 

 single slide was shown which was not 

 either exhibited for the first time, or was 

 not in a very special manner calculated to 

 fix the impression produced by the papers. 

 The Section met on five days, in the course 

 of which 34 communications were made, 

 almost all of them longer than the average of 

 papers read in other sections. Limitation 

 of discussion was therefore inevitable, and 

 several points which might have led to 

 lively debates had to be passed by in 

 silence. There was no lack of variety in 

 the program ; indeed, the difficulty was tO' 

 secure any sort of logical order in the 

 nature of the papers read on a given day. 

 The provisional program which provided 

 for some such order had to be abandoned 



