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other advantages, it possesses the faculty of spawning several times in the 
year. — Comptes rendus, December 4, 1876. 
Digestive Organs of the Phalangida . — M. Felix Plateau describes these 
organs as follows : — The digestive tube consists of a short oesophagus, 
followed by an immense median sac, into which open dorsally about thirty 
voluminous caeca, which occupy nearly all the cavity of the body ; and 
lastly, of a short terminal intestine, which receives the malpighian tubes. 
The caeca opening into the middle intestine are identified by M. Plateau 
with the voluminous organ commonly called the liver in the true spiders, 
and not, in accordance with the opinions of previous writers, with the caeca 
at the hinder part of the sucking oesophagus of those animals. He also 
holds that the denomination liver cannot properly be applied to these organs, 
either in the arachnida or in the Crustacea, but that their office is the 
secretion of the principal digestive fluid. — Ann. and Mag. Nat. Hist., March, 
1877. 
Development of Tcenia inermis. — The prevalence of Tcenia inermis at 
Montpellier, Cette, and Marseilles, led MM. Masse and Pourquier to endea- 
vour to ascertain the history of that tapeworm. They administered 
numerous segments of the worm to two lambs, and a calf, a rabbit, and a 
dog. The lambs, the rabbit, and the dog did not appear to suffer from the 
experiment; and when killed and examined at the end of about seven 
weeks, no traces of cysticerci could be found in them. The calf, on the 
contrary, showed symptoms of inconvenience in about a fortnight, and these 
increased until, two months after the administration of the joints of the 
tapeworm, he was in a condition that showed he could not long survive. 
On examining the tongue, there was found near its base on the left side a 
swelling about the size of a small haricot bean, under the mucous mem- 
brane. The animal was then killed, and about forty cysticerci were found 
in the muscles of various parts of the body, but none in the heart, brain, 
liver, or any of the other viscera. The cyst first observed on the tongue 
was nearly three-fifths of an inch long ; those of the muscles were only 
about half this size. The cysts were clear, and allowed the heads of the 
future Tcenice to be recognised within them ; these presented the characters 
of Tcenia inermis. These experiments confirm the results obtained by 
Leuckart, Cobbold, Enock, and Saint-Cyr, and the author supposes that it is 
to the importation of cattle from Africa that the prevalence of Tcenia 
inermis on the Mediterranean coasts is to be ascribed. The existence of the 
cysticercus in the living animal may be recognised by the presence of small 
tumours under the tongue. — Les Mondes , December 28, 1876. 
Podophrya fixa motile. — A communication made by M. E. Maupas to the 
French Academy of Sciences ( Comptes rendus , November 13, 1876) will be 
interesting to microscopists. He finds that Podophrya fixa belies its name, 
and can at pleasure pass from a fixed to a motile state and vice versa ; in fact, 
as he says, it is the most vagabond of Acinetina. Whether free or fixed, the 
author says, the body of the Podophrya is always nearly or quite spherical, 
with the suckers distributed pretty regularly over the whole surface, except 
on a small peripheral region corresponding to the part where the contractile 
vesicle is situated. After watching some of them for a time, M. Maupas 
saw the suckers slowly retracted into the body, whilst at the same time the 
