1885.] Zoblogy. gor 
Pierce, published in Forest and Stream for June 25, 1885, as fol- 
lows: “ Hybrid wolves have always been very common along 
our Western frontiers. I have seen several of them, sired both by 
dogs and wolves, and all I have seen have resembled wolves rather 
than dogs.” It is to be hoped that our mammalogists may col- 
lect and examine this subject, particularly the skulls and skins of 
numerous specimens both of dogs and wolves and of the hybrids 
between them. Farther observations are also needed as to the 
fertility of the hybrids—A. S. Packard. 
ZOOLOGICAL News.—General—-MM. G. Pouchet and T. de 
Guerne have examined the organisms taken by net in the Baltic, 
in 1884, by the Prince of Monaco. The region fished over ex- 
tended from 54° 590’ N. lat., at 14° 48’ long. W. of Paris, to the 
end of the Gulf of Finland. It seems that the pelagic fauna of 
this gulf resembles that of the great lakes of Europe, as made 
known by Forel, Lilljeborg, and others. Certain species of 
Cladocera are very common, and, as in the lakes, are attacked by 
parasitic cryptogams. Numerous Infusoria and rotifers of the 
enus Anuræa augment the resemblance to the fauna ef the 
Scandinavian lakes. The central basin of the Baltic offers char- 
acters transitional between those of fresh and salt water. 
Sponges. —Mr. H. I. Carter (Ann. and Mag. Nat. Hist, Febru- 
ary, March and April, 1885), describes numerous new species of 
sponges from the neighborhood of Port Philip Heads, South 
Australia, and also contributes a note upon the mode of circula- 
tion in the Spongida. 
Celenterates—Professor Allman recently read before the 
innzan Society descriptions of thirty-eight new species of hy-: 
droids, belonging to twelve genera. The plumularian genus 
Podocladium is very remarkable, not onl by the possession of 
both fixed and movable nematophores, but by the fact that every 
hydrocladium is supported on a cylindrical jointed peduncle. 
Thuiaria heteromorpha combines upon one hydrophyton no less 
than three morphological types, yet Mr. Allman regards the 
generic position as determined by the one which most decidedly 
prevails in it. 
Mollusks—M. Lacaze Duthiers has instituted a comparison be- 
tween the ordinary slugs and the genus Testacella. Especially he 
has compared the nervous systems and traced out the homologies _ 
of the nerves. In the slug the rudimentary mantle is situated 
upon the back, while Testacella carries its small shell and under- 
lying mantle on the under side of its posterior extremity, yet the 
innervation of these parts is the same. The Testacella is not a 
vegetable eater, but searches for and devours worms by following 
them into their holes, and M. Lacaze Duthiers believes it to be a 
slug gradually altered and transmitting its altered characters by 
redity.—W, E. Hoyle (Ann. and Mag. Nat. Hist, March, 
