870 The American Naturalist. [October, 
we come to compare the characters presented on the part of the 
various bones in a typical Swift, a typical Swallow and a Humming- 
bird. Not only is this true but the same departures and agreements 
are to be found in other and quite as important systems of the 
economies of the several forms mentioned, as in the osseous system. 
It is several years ago now since I called attention to these facts, 
but they are very fully set forth in a number of papers of mine which 
have appeared from time to time in the P. Z. S.; in the Journal of the 
Linnean Society of London; in Forest and Stream and elsewhere.— 
Dr. R. W. SHUFELDT, Takoma, D. C., July 26, 1892. 
Zoological News.—Protozoa.—Schiitt describes* for almost the 
first time the protoplasmic body of the Peridiniidæ. The richness of 
the vacuolution is interesting but is not easily described without illus- 
tration. 
Greef continues’ his description of the earth Amoeba. After an 
account of the general morphology of the group follows a description 
of the species, of which two are new. 
Vertebrata.—A. H. Church has re-studied the peculiar pigment 
turacin found in the birds of the family Musophagide. He finds’ that 
eighteen out of the twenty-five species of the family constantly possess 
this copper containing pigment and that these eighteen species embrace 
all the members of the genera Turacus, Gallirex and Musophaga, while 
the other genera of plantain eaters lack it. The analysis of turacin 
proved very difficult. The best results seem to show the existence of 
7% of copper. 
Waldeyer describes’ with some detail the histology of the stomach 
and intestine of Manatus americanus. 
F. E. Schulze says” that with Golgi’s chrom-osmic-silver method 
one can readily trace free nerve ends in the epidermis of the lip of the 
fish Cobitis fossilis. In sections one can occasionally trace the deep 
black nerve fibres clear to the epidermal surface, where they end 
either abruptly truncate or with a small end knot (knétchen). 
‘Stz. k. Akad. Berlin, 1892, p. 377. 
"Stz. Gesell. Naturwiss, Marburg, 1891, p. 1 (1892). 
8Proc. Roy. Soc., li, 399, 1892. 
%Stz. k. Preus. Akad. Wiss., Berlin, 1892, p. 79. 
"Stz. k. Preus. Akad., Berlin, 1892, p. 87. 
