1006 General Notes. [ December, 
of birds, Mr. Henshaw mentions telegraph wires, and storms, the 
effects of which are pretty well known. Foggy and tempestuous 
weather, during which birds are dashed against lighthouses or 
are carried out to sea and drowned, cause widespread destruction 
among birds, and this occurs on the great lakes as well as on the 
ocean, and Mr Henshaw concludes that the “ ocean’s victims 
annually reach such figures as to affect the numerical relation of 
species over extensive areas.” In the same journal, Dr. Shu- 
feldt records the discovery of a supposed new bone in the wing 
of a hawk (Circus hudsonius) which he calls the os prominens, but’ 
would not consider as a carpal bone. A supposed new boring 
Annelid found injuring the iron wire of a submarine cable off Singa- 
pore, is described and figured by C. Stewart, in the Journal of the 
Royal Microscopical Society, for October. The vinegar worm 
(Anguillula aceti) and its allies have been treated monographi- 
cally, by Dr. L. Oerley; to show how little these animals need a 
special respiratory apparatus, a number of the vinegar worms 
were placed in a vessel and covered by a layer of oil an inch 
thick ; after two months the greater number were still alive —— 
The development of the liver fluke has been studied by Mr. A. 
P. Thomas, who states that the embryo can only develop ata 
temperature lower than that of the mammalian body. The num- 
ber of eggs produced by a single fluke “ may be safely estimated 
The sea-urchins are being, 1m 
part, revised by F. J. Bell, in the Proceedings of the Zoological 
Society of London. The one-celled animals, or Infusoria, 
especially, have been examined by C. Robin, to see whether the 
notion of a cell is sufficient to include everything in both elemen- 
tary anatomy and physiology, and thinks that one-celled organ 
isms “ possess other things than those which occur under the form 
of cells.” For example, Podophrya lyngbyei, in the larval stage, 1 
a good example of both an anatomical and physiological unit. But 
it is certain that by virtue of their peduncle, of their theca which 
is separable from it, and of the body, which is separable from the 
theca, the adults of Podophyra, and the Acinete, in general, are — 
_ Protozoa in which are found at least two kinds of anatomical an 
physiological units, the one of these, ‘namely the non-contractile 
- theca and its peduncle, is subordinate to the others, the sarcode 
body, and it remains essentially different from it in anatomical an 
A very full account of the Protozoa 
edition of his 
ms as constl- 
tive to light, to vibrations of any solid 
