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alleging: that as M. Plateau has not founded his homologies on develop- 
ment, they have a very* questionable justification. The author has also 
described the phenomena of the moult, and the relations of the venous 
sinuses round the heart. He shows, too, that the form of the heart is 
not always that which M. Leydig described in Daphnia macropus. M. 
Plateau, in the third part of his memoir, goes into the morphology of 
Cyclops. He here recognises four thoracic, six abdominal, and six cephalic 
somites. Hence he differs from Huxley, Spence Bate, and other carcino- 
logists in admitting only sixteen instead of twenty-one somites. The 
author then describes the muscular system. The other details are of equal 
interest, but we have not space to reproduce them. — Vide Bulletin de V Acad, 
roy. de Belgique , 1869. 
The Formation of Coral Reefs . — In the discussion which followed Dr. P. 
M. Duncan’s paper on Physical Geography, elucidated by coral-faunas (at 
the Geological Society, Nov. 24), Professor Alexander Agassiz accounted 
for the circumscribed area of many corals in the Atlantic from the young of 
many coral species attaching themselves within a few hours of their be- 
coming pelagic. He traced to the great equatorial current, which must 
have traversed the Isthmus of Panama and the Sahara in a pre-cretaceous 
period, the distribution of certain forms, which the rising of the Isthmus of 
Panama eventually checked. He thought that the limits of the depth at 
which true reef-building corals existed would be considerably extended in 
consequence of recent discoveries by means of dredging. He mentioned 
the formation of a reef at the present time off the coast of Florida, which 
threw light on the manner in which mudflats were formed, and the sea 
eventually filled. 
Relation of the Chinese and Polynesians. — At a meeting of the Ethnolo- 
gical Society on Nov. 9, Professor Huxley, in the course of a discussion, 
referred to the similarity between certain Chinese customs and those of the 
Polynesians ; such as the exclusion of a word occurring in the name of a 
great chief. In like manner the prohibition of marriage between persons of 
the same surname is a custom common to the Chinese and the Australian. 
He also referred to the popular but erroneous notion that the Chinese are 
modified Mongols, and pointed to the fact that, although both had long 
black hair on the head and only scanty hair on the face, yet the Chinese had 
a long skull with prominent brow-ridges, whilst the Central Asiatic had a 
broad skull deficient in brow-ridges. 
The PhyUopoda in America. — At the last meeting of the American Asso- 
ciation for the Advancement of Science, Professor Verrill, who gave an 
account of the natural history of Branchipus and Artemia, stated that he 
has obtained two new species, the latter one from Mono Lake, California, 
and the other in numerous individuals from tubs of salt water on a railroad 
bridge near New Haven. 
The. Theory of Natural Selection. — Mr. Darwin’s views receive a severe 
but clever critique in a series of papers published in the Month , a literary 
journal, in the months of June, July, and August last. The papers, we have 
since ascertained, are by a most eminent naturalist, who, however, has been 
too modest to attach his name to them. 
J’angniesis has found a formidable opponent in Professor Delpino, an 
