SCIENTIFIC SUMMARY. 
109 
microscopic structure of the shell of Crustacea. He'refers to the inquiries 
of Williamson, Carpenter, and Huxley, and agrees Tvith the latter in deny- 
ing the cellular character of the uppermost of the inner layers. This quite 
agrees with our own observations on this point. It is to he regretted that 
no illustrations are given. 
Deep-sea Dredging. — On Thursday, December 17, Dr. B. W. Carpenter 
read the report of his researches in the North Atlantic, undertaken under 
the direction of the Government. It would be impossible to give anything 
like a satisfactory summary of the results he has arrived at in the short 
space of a paragraph. We may, however, mention one or two facts ascer- 
tained by Dr. Carpenter and Professor Wyville Thompson : 1. They have 
found at a certain point between the north of Scotland and the Faroe 
Islands that the water at the sea-bottom, at a depth of 500 fathoms, has a 
temperature of 32° Fahr., while the surface temperature was, as usual 52°. 
From the bottom of the sea were dredged up several boreal species and a 
large quantity of mud containing the peculiar protoplasmic substance which 
Professor Huxley has termed Bathyhius. 2. They have found that (so far 
as their researches went) the sea-bottom over which the Gulf-stream flows 
consists of a calcareous mud composed of living and dead Globigerinse, and 
coccoliths, and coccospheres embedded in Bathyhius, and seeming to have the 
same relation to it that the spicules of sponges or of Eadiolaria do to the soft 
parts of those animals. 3. That vegetable life is entirely absent at these 
depths, the Bathyhius seeming to be a sort of Protozoan of low type, and 
capable, like plants, of sustaining itself on the mineral kingdom alone. 
4. That dredging may, with suitable apparatus, be carried on at almost any 
depth in the ocean. Dr. Carpenter is disposed to look on the cretaceous 
sea-bottom as the still-existing Chalk-formation, and he thinks this view 
flnds support in the fact that its basis is nearly the same as that of the creta- 
ceous deposits, that certain shells common to both exist, and that siliceous 
sponges are extremely abundant. Dr. Carpenter is now busily engaged in 
preparing an account of the Ehizopods collected during the expedition, and 
Professor Wyville Thompson is equally busily occupied with the siliceous 
.sponges. Professor Huxley and Professor Frankland have also special sec- 
tions allotted to them. Among the novelties we may state that these 
researches have clearly demonstrated the sponge character of Hyalonema. 
The Fauna of the Montana Territory in the Rocky Mountains has been 
dealt with by Dr. J. G. Cooper in the American Naturalist for December. 
Dr. Cooper’s paper is more general than technically zoological, but will be 
read with interest. 
The Ilahits of Spidei's have been very well and graphically described in 
this journal by Mr. J. H. Emerton. He takes as instance the Epeira vulga- 
ris, and gives the details of his numerous observations of this Arachnid. 
The Colorado Potato-Bug (Doryphora 10 lineata) is the subject of a very 
long paper, accompanied by numerous woodcuts, in the American Ento- 
mologist for November. This, the third number of the journal, seems to 
contain a good deal of gossiping information of interest to entomologists 
generally. 
The ciliary Muscle in Fish, Birds, and Quadnipeds is the title of a paper by 
Mr. R. J. Lee, in the Journal of Anatomy for November. We must say that 
