ON THE NEITEOPTEEA OF MADEIHA ETC. 149 



As animals descend in the scale, the instinctive or reflex actions 

 of the nervous system predominate over those that are "willed," 

 or the voluntary actions. 



In both Vertebrates and Invertebrates, as a rule, the parial 

 limbs diverge from their arches nearer the neural than the haemal 

 sides of the trunk — nearer to the centres whence their nerves 

 originate. In Vertebrates the joints or segments of the limbs 

 bend toward the haemal aspect ; in Invertebrates they bend from 

 the h^mal aspect : and thus the most frail and precious of the 

 organic systems, namely the neural axis, is brought in Arthropods 

 towards the least exposed and safest surface of the body, that, 

 viz., which is downward, next the ground — therefore called the 

 " belly," or ventral surface or aspect. "When the myelencepha- 

 lous tract runs along the most exposed, dorsal, side, it receives an 

 immediate protection by a vertebral column. But the surfaces 

 or aspects of the body which are truly homologous in the Snake 

 and Caterpillar are the neural and the licemal, not the dorsal and 

 the ventral. 



The Neuroptera of Madeira and the Canary Islands. 

 By EoBEET M'Lachlan, E.E.S., F.L.S., &c. 



[Eead December 1, 1881.] 



It has always appeared to me that attempts to work out, group 

 by group, the fauna or flora of special countries or districts 

 are duties to which the attention of naturalists should be espe- 

 cially directed. It is by means of such attempts that Ave are 

 enabled, little by little, to grasp broad generalizations on the 

 probable origin of the productions of certain districts, to ascer- 

 tain the geographical distribution of species, and to form some 

 idea of the possible means whereby, through a process of evolu- 

 tion, certain forms have acquired their existing characteristics as 

 distinguishing them from others to which they are most closely 

 allied. 



cord" (p. 165), "Annelid nervous cord" {ih.) ; also, as synonjins of " myelonal 

 canal "— " medullary canal "(p- 128), " neural canal " (p. 100), " central canal of 

 the nervous system,'" equivalent to " myelencepbalous canal;"' "spinal canal" 

 (p. 99), which, in surgery, is a synonym of "vertebral canal."' Tlie pages here 

 quoted refer to the ' Elasmobranch Fishes ' of Balfour. 



