446 THE AMERICAN NATURALIST. [VoL XXXIII. 
hours a large number of sperms are thus slowly ingested, and the egg 
will take no more till the following day, when a second feeding may 
occur if sperm is offered; even a third was once accomplished when 
the eggs were kept alive long enough. 
From preserved eggs the author gathers that the ingested sperms 
pass slowly through the egg into the nucleus, and are there resolved 
into granules distributed along the nuclear network. 
The inference is drawn that normal maturation, the formation of 
polar bodies, by removing nuclear matter, lessens the digestive power 
of the egg, so that it takes in but one sperm and does not digest it! 
The chematropism of egg and sperm is but a form of that of animal 
for food. We are even asked to follow the idea that all psychic 
processes are but expressions and consequences of nutritional 
processes. EAN 
Zöological Notes. — R. Collett (Bergens Museums Aarborg for 1897) 
gives an interesting account of the present and past distribution and 
of the habits of the beaver in Norway. A summary in English and 
numerous photographs of beaver lodges, nests, and young make the 
results accessible to the general reader. Owing to the protection 
furnished by the game laws, these animals increased in number from 
60 in 1880 to 100 in 1883, and have since held their own, or perhaps 
gained. 
In the last number of the Archives de Parasitologie, Blanchard 
presents a valuable and interesting summary of the cases of pseudo- 
parasitism in man on the part of various Myriapods. All of the 35 
authentic cases, among them 6 entirely new, are reported in full. In 
27 cases the animal was located in the nasal fosse or their connect- 
ing cavities, while in 8 cases it came from the alimentary canal. In 
about half the instances the species was accurately determined. 
G. Schwalbe (Morph. Arbeiten, Bd. VIII, Heft 2, p. 341, 1898) gives 
an account of his studies on the supposed open rudimentary marsupial 
pouches of certain ungulates. His attention was directed to the 
embryos of the sheep and a species of antelope. He concludes that 
these pockets, which are quite well developed in sheep embryos, are 
in no sense homologous with the true marsupium, but that they have 
a very different origin. 
The Graeffe-Saemisch Handbook is announced in a revised edition 
by Engelmann under the editorship of Professor Saemisch of Bonn. 
The first part of the new work is to consist of three volumes on the 
