894 General Notes. [September, 
plained of in the neighborhood of Perovsk, while a third kind 
called “ pruss ” have been destructive in the Zarafshan valley. 
In the Annales des Sciences Naturelles for Dec., 1884 (received in 
July, 1885). M. Viallanes publishes an important paper on the 
optic ganglion of Æschna maculatissima, illustrated by three pho- 
totypic plates. He also is working at the nervous centers of the 
Orthoptera ——A Naturalist’s. Wanderings in the Eastern Archi- 
pelago, by Henry O. Forbes, contains many interesting notes 
regarding the insect life of Java, Sumatra and the Moluccas, as 
well as Timor, It appears from the report of Professor Snow, 
entomologist of the State Board of Agriculture of Kansas, that 
the Hessian fly has greatly increased in that State, having appeared 
in fifty-seven of the eighty-one organized counties. This increase 
in area of distribution is to be accounted for from the fact that 
the species is two-brooded, and that the second or spring brood 
made its presence felt in many counties in which the first brood 
was not sufficiently numerous to attract attention. A new de- 
structive insect is the web-worm, a pyralid caterpillar whose rav- 
ages have been thus far confined to Kansas, and has been inju- 
rious to corn and potatoes. It is said to occur in Texas, where 
it is known as the cotton-worm. 
ZOOLOGY. 
THE SKELETON OF THE MarsIPOBRANCHI.—Mr. W. Parker con-. 
tributes to the Transactions of the Royal Society, 1883, a study 
of the skeleton of the marsipobranchs. At the outset he states 
that the hag and Bdellostoma are a greatly modified and arrested 
sand lance or Ammocete, and that a larval frog is also a marsi- 
pobranch. He remarks: I feel satisfied that the Anura have 
only gradually become metamorphosed, and I doubt whether a% 
the larve of Pseudis undergo that change, even now.” The adult 
lamprey, like the tadpole, is truly suctorial, but the mouths of 
the Ammocete or larval lamprey, and of the Myxinoids, are not 
modified into a circular sucking ring, but remain as a small 
hooded opening fringed with short barbels. 
All the cartilage of the hag fish is cephalic, for even the far- 
thest rudiment of the dorsal part of the branchial basket 1s 
supplied by the vagus nerve, and the spinal region is only sup- 
ported by membrane or fibrous tissue. No cartilaginous rudi- 
ments of vertebral arches can be found. Notwithstanding the 
ammocetine type of the Myxinoids, they come near to the lam- 
ry es: 
the cartilaginous 
