688 General Notes. [ November, 
A Sprper FISHERMAN. — Just before the late war I was at Col. Oak- 
ley Bynum’s spring, in Lawrence County, Ala., near the town of Court- 
land, where I saw a school of minnows playing in the sunshine near the 
edge of the water. All at once a spider as large as the end of my finger 
dropped down among them from a tree hanging over the spring. The 
spider seized one of the minnows near the head. The fish thus seized 
was about three inches long. As soon as it was seized by its captor it 
swam round swiftly in the water, and frequently dived to the bottom, 
yet the spider held on to it. Finally it came to the top, turned upon 
its back and died. It seemed to have been bitten or wounded on the 
back of the neck near where the head joins. When the fish was dead 
the spider moved off with it to the shore. The limb of the tree from 
which the spider must have fallen was between ten and fifteen feet above 
the water. Its success shows that it had the judgment of a practical 
engineer. — T. M. PETERS. (Communicated by the Smithsonian Insti- 
organisms are on the border land of the plant world, and in some cases 
form protoplasmic nets (plasmodia) like the plant Myxomycetes. These 
plasmodia have the function of falling apart into ameeba-like forms, 
which have hitherto been regarded as independent animal organisms} 
hence he thinks that many Amæbæ do not represent independent forms, 
but belong to the developmental cycle of other and plant-like organisms. 
Among the monads, Cienkowski, according to a German correspondent 
of Nature, has observed forms in various stages of encystment, self- 
division, and formation of colonies. But the most remarkable series Of 
changes were observed in Diplophrys stercorea, an extremely small cell- 
like organism with a yellow spot and pseudopodia at two opposite ends 
of the body. These little bodies, observed in moist horse-dung, multiply 
by division, and form by union of the pseudopodia long strings in which 
" separate individuals can glide to and fro. “Thus the boundary lines which 
it has so long been usual to draw between plant and animal organisms, 
and between the individual groups of those lowest forms of life, appeat 
more and more illusory, and the supposition is recommended of a com- 
mon lowest kingdom of organisms, that of Protista (Haeckel), out of 
which animals and plants have by degrees been differentiate P: j 
MAYERS ONTOGENY AND PHYLOGENY or Insects.’ — “ Ontogeny 
is a term devised by Haeckel, and means the develop 
and post-embryonic changes of the individual; “ phylog 
to its English equivalent, “ ancestry,” while the present essay is an at- 
tempt to explain the origin and ancestry of the six-footed insects (Hexa- 
poda) from embryological and anatomical data. No new facts, 80 far as 
1 Ueber Ontogenie und Phylogenie der Insekten. Eine akademische Preissebrife 
Von Dr. Paul Mayer, in.Jena. Jenaische Zeitschrift far Naturwissenschaft. X- 
2. Jena. 1876. With four plates, pp. 125-221. 
