SCIENTIFIC SUMMARY. 
331 
can be elevated to a biglier platform. Minute details were given of tbeir 
anatomical character and measurements, and the gronp of crania are to be 
added to the valuable collections of the Anatomical Museum of the 
University. 
The Atlantic Sea-bottom. — On June 6, the Porcupine, then in charge of 
Mr. J. Gwyn Jeffreys, put into Galway Harbour, and news was received of 
some of the results. These are briefly stated in a note in a weekly contem- 
porary. The weather had been fine, and dredgings had been made at depths 
from 80 to 808 fathoms. Soundings, too, have been taken in places where 
previous soundings were few. The 808 fathom dredging, which took 1,200 
fathoms of line, brought up two hundredweight of Atlantic mud. The 
winding in ” of this find occupied an hour, the donkey-engine doing its 
work to full satisfaction. In a haul at 110 fathoms 408 large specimens of 
Echinus Norvegicus, and a living mollusk, with eyes, were brought up. But 
in addition to natural history, the expedition has demonstrated that a new 
kind of thermometer for indicating the temperature at any depth gives satis- 
factory results. If this thermometer is trustworthy, then all previous ther- 
mometers used in deep-sea soundings are wrong, for at the 808 fathoms 
depth it showed four degrees lower than the thermometer usually employed, 
and the same at 723 fathoms. And further, Mr. W. L. Carpenter, who is 
with the expedition, writes concerning the experiments on water taken at 
different depths, that the bottom water does not appear to differ from surface 
water in the quantity of contained gases, nor in specific gravity ; the latter at 
60° F. being always 1-0278. But the proportions of oxygen to carbonic acid 
and nitrogen differ greatly, for ^bottom water contains from two to three 
times more carbonic acid than surface water. And as regards the tests for 
organic matter in the water, there is an almost total absence of decomposing 
organic matter ; but of matter in a condition ready to decompose there is a 
nearly constant quantity whether at bottom or surface. 
The Organ-pipe Coral. — Dr. Perceval Wright, Professor of Botany in 
Trinity College, Dublin, states as the result of his observations on this 
Coelenterate that the details given in Kolliker’s leones are in some respects 
incorrect. — Annals of Nat. Hist, May. 
The British Nemerteans. — The structure and arrangement of these animals 
have been stated in a paper read before the Koyal Society of Edinburgh, 
but only published in abstract in its Proceedings. The anatomy is minutely 
gone into, and forty new species are described. 
The Hanger of Microscopic Methods .'^ — M. Bobinski, in a memoir 
published in the Comptes-Rendus for April, calls attention to the errors in 
interpreting structure caused by using reagents. He alleges that the lym- 
phatics which Herr Eecklinghausen has discovered in the epithelium are 
mostly the result (artificial) of the use of nitrate of silver, which stains the 
outside of the cells more than the inside and thus leads to the notion of the 
existence of a number of communicating canals which are really not present 
at all. 
A nexo Siliceous Sponge which was taken at Santa Cruz, and which has 
been examined by Dr. Leray, an American naturalist, is described at con- 
siderable length in the Monthly Microscopical Journal for June. The genus 
Pherojiema has been founded for its reception, and it is said to resemble 
