SCIENTIFIC SUMMARY. 
223 
Death of Dr. J. E. Gray , the eminent Naturalist . — On March 7 Dr. Gray- 
passed away from us, in the 74th year of his age. The “Academy ” 
(March 13) gives the following account of his labours: — “ John Edward 
Gray, the son of Mr. F. S. Gray, of Walsall, was born in 1800, and 
educated for the medical profession. At the age of twenty-one he published 
his “ Natural Arrangement of British Plants,” a work which has the merit of 
being an early attempt to introduce the natural system to the notice of 
British botanists. Three years later he entered the Natural History De- 
partment of the British Museum, and rose in 1840 to the rank of Keeper. 
A fine series of catalogues of the collections has been issued under his 
care, many of the departments having been described by himself ; thus, only 
a few months ago he brought out his 1 Hand-List of Seals, Morses, Sea- 
Lions, and Sea-Bears.’ Bat in addition to these official publications, and to 
the large number of his communications to learned societies and scientific 
serials, he found time to write such works as ‘ A Manual of British Land and 
Fresh-Water Shells,’ ‘ Illustrations of Indian Zoology,’ and ‘The Knows- 
ley Menagerie.’ Years of concentration upon the minute shades of difference 
necessary for the identification of species scarcely tend to broaden a man’s 
views ; but it should not be forgotten that Dr. Gray, in addition to his 
labours as a systematic zoologist, exercised himself in the discussion of wide 
questions of social importance.” 
The Large Human Fluke : Distoma Crassum. — Dr. Spencer Cobbold read 
a paper on this subject before the Linnean Society at its meeting on Feb. 18, 
1875. After some details, stating the source from whence he obtained the 
specimens and the previously recorded history of this parasite, the author 
stated that he found the vitelligene glands to be largely developed ; and he 
believed that in place of there being two testes, as had hitherto been con- 
jectured, there was only one large compound gland, whose seminal ducts 
are remarkably large and conspicuous. The ducts were well seen in the 
dried specimens exhibited to the Society. The hitherto supposed upper 
testis turned out to be the ovary, and there was a special and smaller organ 
in front of the ovary, which he regarded as an unusually developed shell- 
gland. The intestinal tubes are simple and unbranched ; but, on the other 
hand, the uterine organ appeared not to consist of a single continuous tube, 
Tut to be partly branched, as obtains in D. lanceolatum and in some other 
less-known flukes. The remainder of the communication was taken up with 
remarks on the affinities of the parasite, and with a brief resume of the 
hitherto known facts of trematode development, in so far as they tended to 
throw light upon the source of Distoma crassum. From a general review of all 
the data thus obtained, Dr. Cobbold believed that the Distoma crassum had 
been obtained by the consumption, on the part of the sufferer, either of 
Ningpo oysters or of fish insufficiently cooked. 
The Flea gregariously Parasitic . — At a meeting of the Entomological 
Society, on Feb. 15, Mr. Verrall exhibited some living fleas taken two days 
previously from inside the ears of a rabbit near Lewes. They were gre- 
garious in this situation, and in such a position that the animal was unable 
to dislodge them by scratching. He alluded to a communication made to 
him by Mr. M‘ Lachlan regarding a species from Ceylon which was gre- 
gariously collected in a very limited space on the neck of a fowl, and 
