No. 399.] REVIEWS OF RECENT LITERATURE. 235 
little of the fossil forms of this type to form a final opinion as to 
whether, in view of the relations of the fossil forms, the family Mit- 
sukurinide can be maintained. D. S. 
The Lateral Line of the Toadfish. — Miss Cornelia M. Clapp, 
professor of zoólogy in Mount Holyoke College, presents as a 
doctor's thesis in the University of Chicago a careful study of 
“The Lateral Line System of Batrachus tau." 
Dr. Clapp concludes that the lateral line represents an organ of 
special sense. ‘The ear seems like a connecting link between the sys- 
tem of lateral line organs from which it has probably originated and 
the most highly sensory structure in Vertebrata — the eye. Ayers 
has shown that the auditory organ is in reality a series of canal 
organs innervated by two distinct cranial nerves." It seems certain 
that a more thorough knowledge of the changes in these cutaneous 
sense organs found in fishes and in the embryonic stages of higher 
types is essential to the understanding of the nervous system itself 
as developed in higher forms. 
It may be noticed that the proper name of our toadfish is Opsanus 
tau, not Batrachus tau. The name Batrachus was applied by Bloch 
and Schneider in 1801 to the scaly toadfishes of the tropics, which 
had still earlier received from Lacépède the name Batrachoides. 
The name is not, therefore, available for any other genus, and the 
second name in date, the first ever given to the type in question, 
must be chosen. This is Rafinesque’s Opsanus. ngi. 
Greene on the Lateral Line of the California Toadfish. — In 
the Journal of Morphology, Dr. Charles Wilson Greene, of Stanford 
University, has an elaborate study of the complex lateral line* of 
another species of toadfish, Porichthys notatus, of the California coast. 
This species has several lateral lines, each of the most complex char- 
acter, far more specialized than in the common toadfish. The pores 
in the genus Porichthys are accompanied by round shining bodies 
resembling the luminous spots in certain deep-sea forms, as Ster- 
noptyx and Myctophum. In Porichthys the shining bodies are not 
known to be self-luminous, and their origin is plainly in the lateral 
line.. The other genera are not related to Porichthys, and in them 
the luminous spots are not outgrowths from the lateral canal system. 
Dr. Greene makes no attempt to discuss the homology or signifi- . 
cance of the lateral line. Too few forms have yet been studied to 
make such discussion conclusive. He gives a full account of the 
