SCIENTIFIC SUMMAET. 
445 
Las not been witnessed within man’s memory at this time of the season ; 
moreover, heavy storms, accompanied by deluging rains and seriously destruc- 
tive hail, have occurred in many parts of France while near Paris, at St. 
Germain en Laye, he found the temperature was —3-5° on May 18, in the 
morning, at a height of 33 centimetres above the soil (a meadow). 
ZOOLOGY AND COMPAEATIVE ANATOMY. 
North American Phyllopoda . — A series of notices of several new 
species appears from the pen of A. J. Packard, M.D., in “ Silliman’s 
American Journal” for August and the earlier months. We merely 
-call attention to them because, of course, it would be out of our power to 
reproduce them here. 
A Grand Dredging Exploration . — Professor Agassiz has accepted an invi- 
tation extended to him by the American Coast Survey Bureau to take pas- 
sage on the iron coast-survey steamer, which has recently been built at 
Wilmington, Delaware, and which was to sail for the Pacific coast in Sep- 
tember. The expedition will take deep-sea soundings all the way, and 
extensive collections of specimens will be made for the Museum of Com- 
parative Zoology at Cambridge. Secretary Boutwell has written to the 
Secretaries of State and the Navy, asking that naval and other officers may 
he instructed to afford such courtesy and assistance to the exploring party 
as may be desirable. We learn also that Count Pourtales, of the Coast 
Survey, and Dr. Hill accompany the expedition. 
The Brachiopoda obtained hy the United States Coast Survey Expedition . — 
This expedition was in charge of L. F. ae Pourtales. The report is pub- 
lished in the Bulletin of the Museum of Comparative Anatomy (vol. iii. 
No. 1), and is by Mr. W. H. Dale. In this paper all the species dredged by 
Count Pourtales are fully described, and the synonymy of these and other 
species and genera is well worked out. The anatomy of several of the 
species is described at considerable length. Two lithographic plates, chiefly 
anatomical, illustrate this paper. 
The Development of a Giant Gregarine . — The anatomy and development 
of G. gigantea, an enormously large species, has been worked out by M. E. 
Yan Beneden, who has published a long and important memoir, accompanied 
by a plate, on the subject. He has found in the lobster’s intestine multitudes 
of small protoplasmic masses resembling the Protamceha primitiva of Haeckel, 
with certain distinctions from it, however. They are distinguished from 
the true Amoeba by the absence of a nucleus and a contractile vacuole. 
These have no projections from them. There are, however, others which 
have one, or more frequently two, prolongations in the form of arms, which 
M. Van Beneden says resemble the mobile stem of Noctiluca, and these 
forms he calls generating cytodes. He then describes the movements of 
them, one of the arms or projections of which is motionless. After a time 
the other increases in length till at last it breaks away, and having specially 
an undulating motion, it is like a nematoid worm. Curiously enough, when 
