No. 515] NOTES AND LITERATURE 



697 



K. Brooks; "Notes on the Medusae of the Western Atlantic," 

 by H. F. Perkins; "Helminth Fauna of the Dry Tortugas," by 

 Edward Linton; "A Variety of Anisonema vitrea," by C. H. 

 Edmondson. 



A sad interest attaches to the paper by Professor Brooks, it 

 having been published after its author's death. Fitting indeed 

 it is that some of the last works from Brooks's masterly hand 

 should be on the group of animals on which his most distin- 

 guished observational researches were made. A few unim- 

 portant inadvertencies occur in the paper due to the fact that 

 illness prevented the author from putting his manuscript in 

 final form for publication. Some of the figures of Plate I are 

 labeled 8. florida, and some 8. floridana. Floridana is the right 

 name. The title is somewhat misleading since no general treat- 

 ment of the tunicate fauna of the Gulf Stream is contained 

 in the paper. As a matter of fact "observations on certain 

 morphological points in the subgenus Cyclosalpa" would have 

 been a better title for the first and second parts of the paper. 

 Perhaps the most important general point discussed by Pro- 

 fessor Brooks is that of the similarity between the muscle bands 

 of Salpa and Doliolum. He had previously tried to dispel the 

 erroneous distinction, as he believed, between the two that is 

 suggested by the terms Hemimyaria as applied to Salpa, and 

 Cyclomyaria as applied to Doliolum. 



In a third section of the paper written in collaboration with 

 Carl Kellner, a new appendicularian, Oekopleura tortugensis, is 

 described. Some "Notes on Embryology" add a little to our 

 meager knowledge of the development of this group of animals. 



Perkins's paper on Medusa? is by no means a faunistic study 

 in the narrow sense, it containing quite as much that would 

 come under the head of animal behavior as under that of faunal 

 zoology. One of the new species, Cladonema mayeri, is treated 

 at length, not only the hydroid, and medusa forms being fully 

 described, but as well various activities and attitudes being dwelt 

 upon in a lively, appreciative manner. There may be a little 

 danger in speaking of a jelly-fish as "evincing the keenest inter- 

 est in the prospect of a meal," but such expression has at least 

 the merit of recognizing the coordinated though complex and 

 characterizing activities of the organism under a special stim- 

 ulus; and at the present time the tendency is to allow lower 

 organisms too little rather than too much of psychic life. 



