468 General Notes. [May, 
the teleosteans. The ancestral part of the primitive streak in Sau- 
ropsida represents the ancestral blastopore, while the posterior 
part represents the coalesced uninflected part of the blastodermic 
rim in the elasmobranchs——The fish fauna of Lake Balkhash, 
according to M. Nikolsky, numbers fourteen species, viz., Perca 
schrenkii, Phoxinus (two sp.), Barbus platyrostris, Schizothorax 
(five sp.), Diptychus dibowskii and three species of Diplophysa. 
All but one of these are new, and none are found either in the 
Aralo-Caspian basin or in the system of the Obi. Five genera 
are common to Lake Balkhash and the Central Asian lakes. In 
all these lakes Cyprinidæ and Cobitide predominate, and two 
species are common to Lob-nor and Lake Balkhash. Three spe- 
cies, the two Phoxini and the perch, are the only ones which ally 
the fauna of the latter lake to that of the Obi. From these facts ~ 
the first was separated earlier than the others. 
Goode and T. H. Bean describe sixteen new species of fishes 
Proc. U. S. Nat. Mus., Oct., 1885) obtained by the U.S. Fish 
Commission mainly from deep water off.the Atlantic and Gulf 
. coasts. The species include five Heterosomata (Aphoristia two, 
_.. Hemirhombus one, Citharichthys one, Etropus one), two species 
of Macrurus, one of Coryphznoides, one of Malococephalus, . 
three of Bathgadus, one of Neobythites (nov. gen.), one of Poro- 
gadus (n. g.) and two of Bathyonus, which last name is a sub- 
stitute for Bathynectes Gnthr., preoccupied in Crustacea. 
port on the 
us Mollusca obtained during a dredging excursion in the 
$ l 1 d ; ry 
= Robert MacAndrew. Republished, with additions and correc- 
_ tions, by Alfred Hands Cooke (Ann. and Mag. Nat. Hist, Feb. 
1886). 3 
Echinoderms—M. G. Cotteau has put forth a preliminary but 
important paper upon the Eocene Echini of France, containing 
_ descriptions and figures of the species belonging to the genera 
_ Spatangus, Maretia, Euspatangus and Hy psospatangus.— How- 
ard Ayers, as a result of studies of the structure and function ° 
(Quart. Jour. Micr. Soc., Nov., 1885), arrives at the conclusion 
that these organs possess the double function of taste and 
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