496 



Bibliographical Notices. 



it accords well with some of the Asiatic species, and in form ap- 

 proaches Euchlora aureola of Hope. 



In concluding the species of new Lamellicorns, I add an 

 extract of a letter lately received from Mr. Savage of Cape 

 Palmas, respecting the Goliath Beetles. u As to Goliathus Ca- 

 cicus these regions abound with them, and after a year's 

 watching I have obtained the flower and know botanically the 

 tree from which they derive their food. It is a syngenesious 

 plant belonging to Jussieu's Composite, Corymbifera?. As a 

 genus it appears to be undescribed, though I have not as mi- 

 nutely examined it as I intend to do when I have more leisure. 

 As soon as able I shall describe and send it through you to the 

 Linmcan Society. The Cacicus inhabits no other tree, as it is 

 said. The Mecynorhina torqvata inhabits two kinds of tree, one 

 a magnificent Mimosa, a Goliath of its kind ; I have not yet 

 obtained the blossom ; it is now in seed, which I have. The 

 G. Drurii is not found in the locality of Cape Palmas ; it has 

 been taken at Bussa, near Montserrado, and the specimen I 

 now send is from Cape Coast. I lately saw Professor Klug's 

 regius, which is no more nor less than the female of Drurii. 

 Of this I am as certain as that the princeps of Hope is the 

 female of Cacicus. The Gold Coast would seem to be the 

 locality of Drurii, and the Grain Coast that of the Cacicus and 

 torquatus." 



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTICES. 



A History of British Sponges and Lithophytes. By George Johnston, 

 M.D. Lizars, Edinburgh ; Highley, London : 1842. 



There is no branch of natural history which has been so much 

 neglected as that of the sponge tribe. Situate as it were in the 

 debateable ground between the animal and the vegetable kingdoms, 

 naturalists appear to have considered themselves justified in looking 

 upon the sponges as scarcely w r orthy of notice, and it was not until 

 Dr. Grant published, in the Edinburgh Philosophical Journal, the ac- 

 count of his valuable investigations of the anatomy and physiology 

 of some of the British species, that they were determined with any 

 degree of certainty to be members of the animal kingdom. We were 

 then, for the first time, made acquainted with the true purposes and 

 modes of action of the incurrent and excurrent canals which per- 

 meate their substance in every direction, and of the manner in which 

 some of the species are propagated by the ejection of ciliated gem- 

 mules or ova from their large oscula. Dr. Grant also described se- 

 veral new British species, and these, in addition to what had been 

 previously described by Montagu and others, formed the ground- 

 work for the arrangement and brief descriptions presented to us by 

 Dr. Fleming in his ' History of British Animals.' The whole of our 



