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EDITORIAL GLEANINGS. 
THe Trustees of the British Museum have appointed Professor Ray 
Lankester as Director of the Natural History Department. He succeeds 
Sir William Henry Flower, who retires, through ill health, on Sept. 30th. 
The remuneration is £1200 per annum. 
WE recently (ante, p. 236) referred to a paper by Mr. Faxon on some 
*‘ Observations on the Astacide, &c.” Since then Dr. Emar Léonberg, in 
the ‘ Zoologischer Anzeiger,’ has contributed to the same subject “Some 
Biological and Anatomical Facts concerning Parastacus.” Parastacus 
hasslert, Faxon, is found in Chile, and Mr. P. Dusén has related some 
facts as to its life-history. This Crayfish lives in slightly sloping, moist 
meadows. The humidity on the surface was, however, not greater than 
that Mr. Dusén could walk there with dry shoes,” and there was no open 
water, lake, or river in the neighbourhood. Here the Crayfishes had made 
vertical holes in the earth, and round these holes they had erected “ mud 
chimneys” out of the clayey material which they had carried up from their 
burrows. ‘These chimneys had often a height of 2-3 decm. The results 
arising from Dr. Loonberg’s study of this species are, “ that in Parastacus 
hasslert a partial hermaphroditism is prevailing, but male and female organs 
are not functionary in the same individual,-neither are ripe elements of 
both sexes produced by the same specimen. The hermaphroditism could 
thus be called rudimentary.” The Astacide seem to offer a most interesting 
study to zoologists, both by their functions and habits. 
In the ‘Western World’ for May last, a correspondent writes ;— 
“In a very few weeks the last remnant of the Buffalo tribe, so far as 
Manitoba is concerned, will be removed from Silver Heights, near Winnipeg, 
where they now are, to the National Park at Banff. They have been given 
by Lord Strathcona to the Dominion Government, with a view to their 
preservation in the park, but how long they will stay there is another 
question. It is only too likely that their natural instincts will, in spite of 
their half-tame condition, reassert themselves and induce them to wander 
off in any direction. ‘The herd numbers seventeen in all. There are five 
pure bred males, eleven, seven, six, five, and two years old; and four pure 
bred females, eleven, six, four, and two years old; one aged half-bred cow 
about sixteen years old, one three-quarter bred heifer three years old, one 
