No. 559] NOTES AND LITERATURE 



445 



In the Proc. Boy. Soc. Queensland, A. R. McCulloch describes 

 some new Atherinidte from Australia. 



In the Bee. West. Austr. Mus., Mr. McCulloch publishes notes 

 on various fishes from western Australia. 



In the Records of the Canterbury Museum, Mr. Waite de- 

 scribes the many species, some of them of remarkable interest, 

 obtained by the trawling expedition of New Zealand. 



In the Bevuc Institute d'Aynmomir, Montevideo, Professor 

 Andre Bouyat gives popular accounts in Spanish, with photo- 

 graphs, of the principal food fishes of the coast of Uruguay. 



In the Zooloyisclu n Anzeiyrr. George Wagner discusses the 

 possibility of the existence of the species of Gar pike described 

 from a Chinese drawing under the name of Lepisosteus sinensis. 

 No naturalist has ever found a gar pike in China and the ques- 

 tion of where this specimen was obtained from which this draw- 

 ing is made is still uncertain. 



In the Bull. Soc. Zool. de France, Mr. F. Priem describes the 

 fossil fishes of the Argentine Republic. 



In the Field Mus. Nat. Hist., Dr. Seth E. Meek describes new 

 fishes of numerous species from the rivers of Costa Rica. Dr. 

 Meek and S. F. Hildebrand also describe a number of new spe- 

 cies from Panama. 



In the Trans, Amer. Fish Soc, at St. Louis, are numerous val- 

 uable papers relating chiefly to the culture or to the diseases of 

 fishes. One of the many papers of practical value is an account 

 of the fur seal herd of the Pribilof Island and the prospects for 

 its increase, by C. H. Townsend. The sole cause of the reduction 

 in numbers of these animals has been the killing of females at 

 sea, known as pelagic sealing. In the early Russian days before 

 the present methods of removing the bristles from seal skins, 

 leaving the soft underfur, was discovered in London, the most 

 valuable fur was that of the young animals at the age of four 

 months when they change the black coat for the silver gray of the 

 first year. In those days these silver-gray pups were killed in- 

 discriminately on land without regard to sex, a matter which 

 naturally rapidly reduced the herd. But so long as the females 

 are protected, both on land and sea, there is no reason why the 

 herd should not enormously increase, probably in time with 

 proper management on the land, so as to yield even more than 

 the 100,000 skins of superfluous males which were taken each 

 year during the lease of the Alaska Commercial Company. 



