912 General Notes. [November, 



with the nourishing fluid of the pervisceral cavity, but also to 

 draw the blood from the arms into the peristomatic portion of 

 that cavity, and force its return. 



The blastosphere stage of the embryo is not followed by an invag- 

 ination, as is usually supposed to be the case in all echinoderms, 

 but by the delamination of the ectodermal cells to form the walls 

 of the digestive cavity. 



Zoological Notes.— The publication of the Bulletin of the 

 U. S. Geological and Geographical Survey of the Territories ends 

 with the issue of No. 3 of vol. 6th. The contents are purely 

 zoological. Mr. J. A. Allen publishes a preliminary list of the 

 works and papers relating to the mammalian orders of Cete and 

 Sirenia ; unfortunately owing to the author's poor health, the 

 article is incomplete, the bibliography being only brought down 

 to the year 1 840. Two papers on new moths and notes on other 



species by A. R. Grote close the number.; Apropos of whales, 



Professor G. O. Sars gives, in the Forhandlingar i Videnskabs- 

 Selskabet i Christiania, for 1880, most excellent figures of Megap- 

 tera boops, ,Vnat. size; and of the finwhale, Balcenopteramusculus 



■fa nat. size ; the sketches will be of standard value. Professor 



Sars has also issued a well illustrated third part of his Carcino- 

 logical Contribution to the Norwegian fauna, comprising his 



voluminous monograph of the Mysidae. The anatomy of the 



oyster, with two excellent figures, is described by Mr. Ryder in 

 the last report of the Fish Commissioners of Maryland. How an 

 oyster fattens, and the nature of its food and its mode and rate of 

 growth, with figures, are given at length in Mr. Ryder's interest- 

 ing report. Professor Verrill gives, in the Transactions of the 



Connecticut Academy of Sciences, a historical sketch of New 

 England Annelida, with annotated lists of the species hitherto 



recorded. Nine excellent plates accompany Part 1. Bulletin No. 



11 of the U. S. National Museum is a very complete bibliography 

 of the fishes of the Pacific coast of the United States to the end 



of 1879, by Dr. Theo. Gill. M. Fischer recently gave before 



the Paris Academy of Sciences a resume of his studies of the 

 malacological fauna of the Mediterranean. The number of species 

 obtained from all the deep dredgings (555 to 2660 metres) was 

 about a hundred and twenty, every one of them common to the 



Mediterranean and the ocean. M. Leopold Maggi, a disciple 



of Haeckel, in that he retains the sub-kingdom Protista for the 

 reception of the lowest forms of life, shows that osmic acid will 

 at once reveal the presence of protozoa in drinking water by 

 causing their deposition at the bottom of the vessel. The micro- 

 graphic analysis of the waters by this simple method may prove 

 highly useful, since diarrhoea, dyse'ntery, goitre, snd other diseases 



are thought to depend on this protozoan life. Herr Jickeli Has 



discovered in Eudendrium and some other hydroids histologica 

 elements which seem to prove the existence of a nervous system. 



