Ix PKOCEEDIKQa OF THE 



incomplete and unmethodical, containing chiefly detached sketches 

 of the contents of tlie works sent to the Society, with occasional 

 mention of such as may otherwise have been brought under the 

 editor's notice, 



Denmahic. 



Professor Steenstrup, of Copenhagen, has published, in the Bulletin 

 de la Societe Ornithologique Suisse, a valuable dissertation on the 

 Great Auk, entitled " Materiaux poixr servir a I'histoire de VAlca im- 

 pennis," in which he has brought together all the accessible particulars 

 as to the former distribution and history of this interesting bird, now 

 believed to be extinct. It is followed by a supplementary note, by 

 M. Y. Fatio, on the extant specimens of the bird and its egg. 



Professor Schiodte has published a paper, translated in the 

 Annals and Magazine of Natural History, on the mode in which 

 one of the eyes is transferred from one side of the head to the other 

 in the young of Pleuronectklce, confirming to a certain extent the 

 views of Dr. Traquair, published in the 25th vol. of our Trans- 

 actions. He has observed the eye, in the course of transfer, passing 

 round the upper surface of the head, thus disposing of the opinions 

 of those writei-s Avho have maintained that the eye passes as it were 

 directly through the head ; but at the same time he affirms that the 

 eye passes always in front of the dorsal fin, and afterwards glides 

 backward upon the surface so as eventually to lie behind the com- 

 mencement of the dorsal. The same Professor's treatise on the 

 sucking mouth of the Cymothoae is an important contribution to 

 the morphology of the mouth of Crustacea. Messieurs Bergsoe and 

 Meinert have drawn up a joint monograph of Danish Geophilidae ; 

 Professor Meinei-t alone has given an excellent memoir on the 

 Campodeae, as he calls the family to which Mr. Halliday's genus 

 lapyx belongs, containing observations of importance on general en- 

 tomology. M. H. Krabbe has published the results of some experi- 

 mental researches upon Helminthology made at Copenhagen and in 

 Iceland, which are particularly valuable in a statistical point of view. 



In Botany, M. (Ersted has published, in the Eoyal Danish Trans- 

 actions, a detailed account of the experiments by which he proved 

 that Roestelia canceVata and Podisoma Suhini were successive states 

 of the same fungus on different plants, and he has since carried out 

 his experiments as to two other species of the same supposed two 

 genera. He has also continued some descriptions of his Central- 

 American plants, and attempted a new classification of the genera 



