1867.] Zoology and Animal Physiology. 443 



man's fore-limb-extremity ; each differing in an exactly comparable 

 manner from the feet (fore and hind) of the bear or dog. If, how- 

 ever, man's hand is to be the anatomical standard of comparison, 

 Professor Humphry admits that there is a wide structural difference 

 between the ape's foot and a hand. He seems inclined to favour 

 the adoption of the term Chiropoda as a substitute for Quadrumana, 

 a term which comes to us from Professor Halford in Australia, who 

 has taken up this question as a strong Owenite, and has written a 

 pamphlet on the monkey's foot. 



Dentition of Marsupials. — Mr. Flower, the Conservator of the 

 Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, has quite recently com- 

 municated an interesting discovery to the Royal Society relative 

 to the teeth of the Marsupial Mammalia. The lower forms of 

 Monodelphous Mammals (e.g. Bruta) differ in their dentition from 

 the higher, in having, as a rule, but one set of teeth, which lasts 

 them for life, whilst the higher forms have a temporary set of teeth 

 when quite young, whose place is afterwards taken by the perma- 

 nent teeth — incisors, canines, and " premolars." From the examina- 

 tion of the jaws of adult marsupials, it appeared highly probable 

 that they, although so low in the scale of mammalian life, resembled 

 the higher members of the class in having a large milk or tempo- 

 rary dentition. Mr. Flower has succeeded in showing that this 

 resemblance, like many others exhibited by the marsupials in rela- 

 tion to monodelphous mammals, is merely superficial. No marsupial, 

 Mr. Flower finds, has ever more than four temporary teeth, and 

 apparently all agree in having these four — one in the molar series 

 of each half of each jaw. This tooth is succeeded by what is to be 

 regarded as a premolar, and is chiefly remarkable for this, that it 

 corresponds to that premolar (viz. the most posterior) in man and 

 all the higher mammals, whose milk-predecessor is the first to 

 develop, which appears earliest itself, and which in the various 

 modifications of the dental series in the Mammalian class is the 

 largest and most constant. 



Sowerhy's Whale. — The Ziphius Sowerhiensis, a rare whale of 

 which there are only two or three specimens in the museums of 

 Europe, is chiefly interesting as being one of the few living repre- 

 sentatives of a very considerable group of dolphins, with long, firm, 

 cylindrical snouts, called Rhynchoceti by Eschricht, and having 

 teeth only in the lower jaw, and there but two or four of large size, 

 almost like tusks. One of the known specimens of Sowerby's whale 

 was cast ashore sixty years since in Elginshire, and its skull is now 

 at Oxford. Another male specimen has lately been cast ashore on 

 the coast of Kerry, and the head and teeth were procured in a per- 

 fect condition by Mr. Andrews, of the Royal Dublin Society. At a 

 recent meeting of the Microscopical Society of LoDdon, Mr. Ray 

 Lankester read a paper on the teeth of the Oxford specimen, in 



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