296 General Notes. [ April, 
Uta thalassina, a very rare species, is represented by two 
specimens. 
The occurrence of Chirotes in Lower California has been pre- 
viously noted by Prof. Peters, of Berlin, but as his papers upon 
the subject are not accessible to me, I cannot be certain to which 
of the two described species the specimens belong. 
The Batrachoseps appears to be attenuatus, and if so, proves 
that species to have a more southerly range than has been hitherto 
supposed.—W. N. Lockington. 
THE GASTRULA OF VERTEBRATES AND THE GASTRÆA THEORY. 
—The amount of attention now being given to embryology is 
very great, and of papers and memoirs upon this topic there is 
no end, while the subject is still apparently in its infancy. To 
Haeckel, who first showed that all animals above the Protozoans 
pass through a so-called morula and gastrula condition, much of 
this recent activity is due. However crude and open to eriticism 
much of his work may have been, he has marked out a new line 
of investigation, and his gastræa hypothesis has been, with all its 
necessary assumptions and crudities, most fruitful in results. -His 
early generalization that most if not all many-celled animals pass 
through the condition of a two-layer sac with a primitive open- 
ing and digestive canal (his gastrula) has been sustained by Bal- 
four, Lankester, Kuppfer, Benecke, and others. The observations 
of the two last named authors on the salamanders, lizards and 
turtles have enabled them to extend the gastraa theory into the 
great division of the Amniote Vertebrata, and, it is claimed, does 
much to explain the phylogenetic history of the allantois. A gas- 
trula state is now known to be common to Amphioxus, the lam- 
prey, sharks, ganoids, bony fishes, as well as to all higher verte- , 
brates. Kuppfer and Benecke have discovered that in the em- 
bryo turtle the gastrula-cavity is continued into the intestine (or 
hind gut) and that therefore it forms the rudiment of the allantois. 
Zootocica, Notrs.—A. D. Michael states in the Journal of 
the Royal Microscopical Society that after placing some Oribati 
mites in one per cent. solution of osmic acid for several hours, 
and then putting them in fifty per cent. alcohol for several more 
hours, and finally in absolute alcohol for several additional hours, 
they came out, naturally to his surprise, “all alive and apparently 
not much the worse.” ——M. Dareste states that the amnion is OC- 
casionally absent in the embryo chick, though the germs would 
probably not live to break the shell. In a paper on the loco- 
motion of land snails, Dr. Simroth discusses the action of the 
muscles of the foot and their relation to the nerves, and draws 
attention to the interesting relations between the circulatory sys- 
tem and the locomotor muscles. It seems that thé foot of the 
slug can only contract so long as it is swollen out by blood, the 
sinus in the middle line of the foot forniing a veritable'corpus 
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