564 
POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
argue a lower position for this race than it is thought to hold now, and the 
extreme voracity of the Esquimaux races in the north of North America 
could then be associated with this peculiarity. 
Natural Selection. — In a paper read before the Anthropological Society 
by Mr. A. R. Wallace, the following statements occur, which as they help 
to account for the variation and transmutation of species, we here tran- 
scribe : — (1) Peculiarities of every kind are more or less hereditary. 
(2) The offspring of every animal vary more or less in all parts of their 
organization. (3) The universe in which these animals live is not abso- 
lutely invariable. (4) The animals in any country (those at least which 
are not dying out) must at each successive period be brought into harmony 
with the surrounding conditions. These are all the elements required for 
change of form and structure in animals, keeping exact pace with changes 
of whatever nature in the surrounding universe. Such changes must be 
slow, for the changes in the universe must be very slow ; but just as these 
sIoav changes become important, when we look at results, after long periods 
of action, as we do when we perceive the alterations of the earth’s surface 
during geological epochs ; so the parallel changes in animal form become 
more and more striking, according as the time they have been going on is 
great, as we see when we compare our living animals with those which 
we disentomb from each successively older geological formation. — Vide 
the Anthropological Review , May. 
Poison Organs in a Fish . — Dr. Gunther has discovered in a new species 
of fish ( Thalassophryne reticulata) a peculiar organ for the infliction of 
poisonous wounds. It consists of four hollow spines, two of them being 
dorsal, and the others formed by the acute termination of the operculum 
posteriorly. The canal in the interior of the spine terminates in each case 
in a sac, in which the poisonous fluid is collected — the sac in question 
being connected by a small tube with the mucus-forming system of the 
cutis. In the specimen examined by Dr. Gunther, which had been in 
spirits nine months, the slightest pressure on the sac, seated on the oper- 
culum, caused a whitish fluid contained in it to flow freely from the 
hollow extremity of the opercular spine. The discoverer is of opinion 
that this organisation cannot be construed otherwise than as a poisonous 
organ, though it still remains to be proved — by actual experiment upon 
the living fish — that this is really the case. — Vide Natural History Review, 
April. 
The Egg of jEpyornis Maximus lias had a pamphlet devoted to it by Mr. 
G. D. Rowley, who is the possessor of the only specimen ever brought to 
this country. The colossal bird which deposited this ovum was formerly 
a native of the island of Madagascar. In shape it is an ellipse ; its 
greater axis is about 12^ inches, and its lesser one 9f inches ; its great 
circumference is estimated at 34-^ inches, and its lesser at 29-g- inches, 
while it weighs no less than 3 lb. 11 oz. avoirdupois. Of course, such 
weight is no indication whatever of the weight of the egg in its natural' 
state. M. Geoffrey St. Hilaire, who has examined both eggs and bones of 
this bird, supposes the creature, when living, to have been about 12 feet 
high. The contents of the eggs would be about 7 quarts 1 pint, or a 
volume equal to the contents of about 148 hen-eggs. 
