1883. ] Zoology. 1185 
The gasteropods die when the water in the creek dries up, but 
each flood stocks the creek again by bringing down young ones 
which one can see in all stages of growth in the flood water. 
The Anodonta lives all the time. When the water dries up it 
buries itself in the mud, going deeper and deeper. I have seen 
the natives dig them out alive from a depth of four or five feet 
eight months after the water had disappeared from the surface. 
The natives eat them, and large heaps (kitchen-middens) consist- 
ing mainly of their broken shells mixed with the bones of ani- 
mals, are common along the creek. I have eaten them and found 
them to be remarkably tough— Edward B. Sanger. 
NOTE ON THE OCCURRENCE OF TWO GENERA OF BRANCHIOPODA 
IN THE AUSTRALIAN DESERT.—The sandhills and stony plains that 
cover the greater part of the interior are but seldom visited by 
rain, Sometimes not for a period of two or three years, Conse- 
quently all animals living habitually in this region are capable of 
doing without water for long periods. After a rain the water col- 
lects in shallow pools on the clay-pans and in hollows on the 
stony table-lands, but it is soon evaporated by the fierce sun. 
One day after a shower (the first in two years), as I was riding 
across a clay-pan, I observed a strange rippling of the water in 
one-of the shallow puddles. On examination I found the water 
to be swarming with a species of Apus. They were of a large 
size, measuring about an inch across the carapace. Now the as- 
tonishing part is, that the rain had fallen two days before and © 
that that was the first time it had so done for certainly two years. 
The clay-pan was in the sandhill country, sixty miles away from 
any watercourse, and, moreover, there had been no flood for two 
years in any of the watercourses. And anyway a flood would 
never reach this spot. There that clay-pan had been baking in 
€ sun, swept by the hot wind, covered and uncovered with drift 
Sand, and yet two days after a slight shower the pools were 
Swarming with full-grown specimens of Apus. 
A few miles further on I camped on the stony plains by a small 
Pool of water collected from this same rain; in this I found doz- 
“ns of a species of Limnetis, a great number of tadpoles and a 
Joung fish about an inch and a half long, which I vainly endeav- 
ored to catch. Now this seemed to me more wonderful than the 
erence of Apus. How could the egg of a fish exist that 
“ngth of time in earth baked like a cinder? How could any 
ving egg exist? It seems impossible, but I can conceive ss 2 
oer explanation. The eggs must have been buried e 
deeply and then when the moisture reached them developed rap- 
is again how did the fish eggs get there È 
y by some bird during some previous rain: 
— like these we must a that animal germs have we ar 
ity than we are accustomed to grant them.— Edw. B. ger. 
