1885.] . Zoology. 199. 
urus; while Gray’s name, Panulirus, is retained for the longicorn 
species. All the species of Jasus (omitting P. longimanus and 
P. frontalis, of which no definite information could be obtained), 
are confined to the southern hemisphere, those of Palinurus to > 
the northern, while those of Panulirus occur in both. _ . 
Fishes—Mr. R. M. Johnston, in the Proc. Roy. Soc. of Tas- 
mania, enumerates 188 known species of Tasmanian fishes. Of 
these about one-third are good edible fish, though only twenty- 
one are sufficiently abundant to be of importance. ates colon- 
orum, a well-known species in Australia, seems, in Tasmania, to 
be confined to one small river on the north-east of the island. 
Mammals—Mr. G. E. Dobson states that many of the most 
characteristic species of Australian Chiroptera have their nearest 
allies in the Ethiopian region. Thus Chalinolobus and the sub- 
genus Mormopterus are South African and Australian. Mega- 
derma gigas, of Queensland, has its nearest ally in JZ cor from 
Eastern Africa, and Trizenops, a remarkable leaf-nosed bat found 
in Madagascar, Eastern Africa, and Persia, has its nearest ally in 
the Riinonycteris aurantia of Australia. Finally, Australia agrees 
much more closely with Madagascar, and the Mascarenes than 
with the oriental region, in the species of Pteropus, eighty per cent ` 
of which inhabit the Australian region and Madagascar, with its 
islands. r. G. E. Dobson (Proc. Zool. Soc., April, 1884) de- 
scribes the myology and visceral anatomy of Capromys melanurus. 
The specimens on which the description is based were from the 
mountains of the southern end of Cuba, and appear to be the first 
of which the complete bodies preserved in spirit have reached 
Europe. The four known species of Capromys, pilorides, brachy- 
urus, prehensilis and melanurus are confined, so far as known, to 
the islands of Cuba and Jamaica, where they are the only indig- 
enous rodents. C. drachyurus is limited to Jamaica, the others 
to Cuba. The liver of this species differs remarkably from that 
of C. pilorides, in the absence of that sub-division of the hepatic 
lobes, which has been described in the latter species, and has been 
thought a generic character. M. Testut (Bull. de la Soc. Zool. 
de France, vil, 1883) has observed in twenty subjects the 
fusion of the flexor muscle of the thumb with the general 
flexor of the digits. As the presence of a separate muscle 
for the flexure of the thumb, causing that digit to be perfectly 
independent in its movements, is one of the characters made 
much of by those who wish to find a broad difference between 
man and the apes, it is significant to find this character so 
often absent. In three cases the two flexors were completely 
united into a single muscle. To meet with this. character it is 
necessary to go back to the Cercopitheci, for in the anthropoid 
apes the muscles have a greater or less tendency to separation. 
In the gorilla, the flexor muscle divides into two parts, one of 
which goes to the thumb and first finger, the other to the re- 
