1890.] Zoölogy. | 969 
The Brain-Weight of Birds. —In preceding pages of the 
AMERICAN NATURALIST (see Vol. XXI., p. 389, and Vol. XXII., pp. 
537-539) I have given my results attained by an investigation into the 
relative weight of the brain to the body in birds, As an addition to 
the ones already given I have made the following new relative weights: 
Weight Weight Relative Weight of Date Specimen 
Name of Bird, of Body. of Brain. Sex. in to Body. was taken. 
Spizella monticola. 299 1234 & 1-23 Mar. 15, 1889 
Junco hyemalis. 310 1234 t$ 1-25 " 
= ds 28214 1154 5 1-24 won 
Melospiza fasciata. — 343 14 L 1-25 TFC 
Troglodytes hiemalis. 145 9 & I-I ” T 
Parus atricapillus. 184 II 9 1-17 Mar. 23, 1890. 
Staha sialis. 638. t3 $ 1-42 e 
The above weights are given in grains, and the specimens were taken 
at Chicago, Ill. —Dn. JoserH L. HANCOCK. 
Zoological News.—Vertebrata.—Sir William Turner has had 
an opportunity to study the placentation of dugong. He finds,’ con- 
trary to Harting, that the placenta is zonary, and probably is non- 
deciduate. His material was older than that of Harting. 
J. S. Kellogg has studied the development of the primitive kidney 
of Amblystoma, In his preliminary paper ® he finds that the pronephric 
duct is first to be formed, and, contrary to what has been described in 
other vertebrates, this arises not from the ectoderm, but from the 
somatic portion of the mesoderm. The tube is cut off from the rest 
of the calomic epithelium except at two points, where the connection 
persists as the nephratomes. With growth the funnels and their ducts 
become greatly convoluted. 
* Proc, Roy. Socy. Edinburgh, XVI., p. 262. 
® Johns Hopkins Univ. Cire., IX., p. 59. 1890. 
