ZOOLOGY. 53 
the public, and extensive rooms for naturalists of every country. 
Dr. Dohrn, with two or three other German zoologists, will settle 
there and conduct the administration of both the aquarium and 
the laboratories. He wishes that information regarding this pro- 
posed laboratory be widely extended in America, and earnestly 
invites all who may go to Naples to visit the aquarium. An an- 
nual report of the work done and progress made at the zoologi- 
cal station will be published. A committee has already been 
formed to give farther dignity and importance to the project, con- 
sisting of Messrs. Hemholtz, Dubois-Reymond, Huxley, Darwin, 
Heckel, Leuckart, Van Beneden, etc., and in this country Professor 
Agassiz. 
Hysrivs.—[Simply remarking that we strongly suspected that 
the supposed hybrid between the cat and raccoon was nothing more 
than a cross between an Angola and a common gray cat ; a variety 
that is well known in this vicinity and in every way corres- 
ponding to the description given; and that we thought it best to 
let the communication printed in the October number call forth 
comments on this oft recurring question of hybrids ; we accordingly 
give the following careful summary of the subject with thanks 
to Dr. Gill for treating it in so concise a manner.— Eps. ] 
To the Editors of The Naturalist. —I find in the number of 
“ The Naturalist” for October (p. 660) which, has just come to 
hand, a notice by Col. Higginson, endorsed by Prof. Jenks, of an 
alleged hybrid between a raccoon and cat, which is extremely tan- 
talizing. No information as to the structural characteristics of the 
animal is given, and scarcely any as to other points, and yet it is 
not too much to say that the authentication of such hybridity would 
revolutionize physiology, for certainly nothing like it has hitherto 
been made known. Remarkable as is the hybridity of the ram 
and doe roe-buck (Capreolus Europeus) recorded by Hellenius, it 
pales into insignificance when compared with hybridity between 
the cat and raccoon. We have, in the last mentioned animals, not 
only representatives of distinct genera and families, but of pri- 
mary groups (Superfamilies) of the fissipede carnivores, charac- 
tized by differences of as great morphological value, as, for exam- 
ple, those between the horse and rhinoceros: those differences, in 
the animals in question, are exhibited especially in the osseous, 
digestive, and generative systems, and it is therefore desirable to 
