44 The West American Scientist. 
say that the snakes feed only on human beings—those only, who 
from cupidity or malice, attempt to disturb them. 
At the base of the mountain a large Indian burying ground is 
said to exist. Upon a death in a camp the body would be placed 
in the sand, and then a large and heavy stone would be placed 
on the dead person’s breast. After that every relative or friend 
would break an olla on the stone, thus forming a mound of broken 
pottery to mark the spot, and to prevent either coyotes or the 
strong winds from exhuming the body. The largest of these 
cemeteries is reported as about one hundred feet in circumference. 
These Indian tribes have now virtually passed away, and to-day 
the places which knew them is an uninhabited waste of sand. 
(Gy sg Orcutt. 

CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE SAN Di GO mame - 
LOGICAL EAB OF TOs 
ISESTHES GILBERTI JORDAN.—The eggs of this species are 
quite remarkable in structure and coloration. To the unaided’ 
eye they appear opaque, of a purplish pink, inside which is a 
spot of brownish red and upon this a dot of white. The greater 
portion of the egg is covered by a simple thin, transparent mem- 
brane, but at one pole of the egg the membrane is provided with 
a white cushiony cap formed of numerous filaments which are 
slightly thickened at their tips and woven together at their free 
ends. In the small size of these filaments, their great number 
and aggregation at one pole, they differ from all other appenda- 
ges of fish eggs yet described. The egg fastens itself to foreign 
bodies by means of this cushion; when once fastened the egg be- 
comes depressed, the longer and shorter axis measuring .8 and 
.5'mm, respectively. The yolk is composed, Of eather mance 
spheres; on its upper surface are imbedded an equal number of 
pale yellow and bright purple oil globules, in the midst of which - 
is the white body referred to above. Younger ovarian eggs are 
entirely purple, while still younger ones are colorless. The ger- 
minal disk invariably hes beneath the cushiony cap, whether the 
cap lies above, below or at one side of the egg. The relative 
specific gravity has, in this case therefore, nothing to do with the 
position of the germinal disk. 
The first segmentation is completed in about ten hours and re- 
sults in much -elongated elliptical cells. Most of the stages are 
obscured by the peculiar cap. After one hundred and thirty-two 
hours the eyes. are well tormed and the embryo embraces about 
one-half the yolk; several pigment cells are formed on the yolk 
at this time. On the seventh day the heart beats slowly, the pig- 
ment spots have increased considerably and the embryo has be- 
come independent of the “cap.” The embryos were kept sixteen 
days when they died. | ; 
