1883.] Physiology. 215 
descended from shelled mollusks, as the embryos are provided with 
a temporary shell and vellum. At the same time we grant that 
mollusks and Turbellarian worms may have arisen from the same 
stem-form. 
ZootocicaL Notrs.—Dr. C. F. Holder is authority for the state- 
ment he makes in the Scientific American that a basking shark 
(Cetorhinus maximus) about seventy feet long was caught off 
Block island. Sir Charles Lyell records one nearly fifty-five feet 
ong that came ashore at Rathesholm Head, at Stronsa, parts of 
which are now in the British museum. ——Mr. W.A. Stearns on his 
return from histripto Labrador, wrote us that the polarbear had not, 
so far as he could ascertain, been seen this year below Rigoulet. 
“Year before last (1880) a walrus was killed at Fox harbor, 
St. Lewis sound. One of our young men secured the tusks, and 
has them now in his possession. The people there say that they 
see them frequently, but rarely get them. One was caught three 
years ago (1879) also at the same place.” An apparently new 
species of dog, supposed to have been received from the Upper 
Amazons, has been described in the Proceedings of the Zodlogi- 
cal Society of London under the name Canis microtis. Profes- 
sor Flower also exhibited and remarked on the skull of a young 
chimpanzee from Lado, in the Soudan, which exhibited the de- 
formity called acrocephaly, associated with the premature closure 
of the fronto-parietal suture —-Mr. Dobson maintains that the 
Dipodide belong with the hystricine, and not to the murine ro- 
ts———The genus Psolus has been divided into three sub- 
genera by Professor Bell——M. Jourdain, of Marseilles, has re- 
cently published in the Comptes Rendus of the French Academy, 
an abstract of his studies on the finer structure of the male sexual 
organs and the Cuvierian organs of Holothurians, also on the his- 
tology of the digestive canal, nervous system and polar vesicles 
of these Echinoderms; his researches, made at the marine z06- 
$ i culatory apparatus of these animals. A crinoid was 
G ined emg the voyage of H. M. S. Alert, which was referred 
by Professor ell to a new variety of Antedon eschrichtii of the 
arctic seas, ; 
| Se PHYSIOLOGY.'! 
on Tue RECENT ACCESSIONS TO OUR KNOWLEDGE OF THE Puys!- 
: OLOGY OF THE Heart.—The heart in its final function is simply a 
- ic 0 it would no doubt be possible to remove this organ 
woe -in the ci culation of the blood. As the circulation of the 
-c +> every instant necessary to vital activity, and as, other 
remaining the same, any change in the force or frequency 
"This depariment is edited by Professor Henry SEWALL, of Ann Arbor, Michigan. 
YOL. Xv11,—no. 11, 
15 
