SCIENTinC SUMMARY. 
335 
on our coast, but Sphcsro7na quadridentata [Say] is not uncommon on the 
coast of New England south of Cape Cod ; and, in any considerable collec- 
tion of these animals, both sexes may be easily found. — Prof. Verril in 
“ Silliman’s Journal,” April. 
The Classification of Mammals. — Mr. Theodore Gill has published a work 
on this subject in America, which has been issued by the Smithsonian 
Institution. It is yet, however, incomplete. The part published contains, 
(1) a list of the families and higher groups of mammals, with some of their 
synonyms ; (2) Bibliography of the works referred to ; (3) Synoptical 
Tables of Characters of the subdivisions of Mammals, with a catalogue of 
the Genera. The Synoptical Tables are completed only to the end of the 
Cete. This part of the work gives a very convenient epitome of the prin- 
cipal characters of the groups, and it is to be hoped that it will soon be 
completed. 
A Peculiar Degraded Race of Man has been explored, so to speak, by 
M. Lagardelle, who communicates through M. Hamy, one of the secretaries 
of the Anthropological Society of Paris, some curious information in regard 
to the habitations of the degraded people known under the names of Colli- 
berts, huttiers, &c., who for many ages occupied the marshy lands of Poitou, 
near the mouths of the Sevre, and whose descendants were known till 
recently as nioleurs. This district was occupied by Gauls before the Norman. 
Conquest, and after that event it became, from its inaccessible character, a 
place of refuge for fugitives. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries the 
Colliberts, whose special occupation was fishing, were dependent, as homines 
conditionales, on several religious houses, but were nevertheless left in a 
state of heathen, almost savage, ignorance. Their huts were made of inter- 
laced willow twigs, and their only means of locomotion before the formation 
of the network of canals, which have proved the chief agents in rescuing 
them from their isolation, were their long ash-stilts and the so-called nioles, 
or light boats, from which they took their name. 
The Ayiimals dredged in Lake Ontario in 1872. — Mr. Alleyne Nicholson, 
who lately gave a brief account in the “ Annals ” of his labours, now prints 
a fuller description of these in the “ Canadian Journal.” This is fully 
analysed in Silliman’s Journal” for May, by Prof. A. E. Verril, who says 
that the dredgings were all in shallow water as compared with those 
made by Mr. S. I. Smith in Lake Superior in 1871. The greater part of 
the species were obtained in Toronto Bay, where the depth was from 1 
to 3 fathoms. Some dredgings were also made in the open lake, where 
the water was from 8 to 40 or 50 fathoms deep. But in most of the deeper 
dredgings very few animals were found. The list of animals obtained 
includes 43 species, of which 21 are shells, and 6 fishes and reptiles. The 
minute species are omitted. The shells are all inhabitants of shallow water, 
and most of them are species that are widely distributed in the fresh ^faters 
of the northern United States and Canada. Valvata tricarinata was the 
only species found living at depths as great as 8 fathoms ; all the others 
were from less than 4 or 5 fathoms. Three species of leeches are described 
and figured as new. One of these, Clepsine patelliformis, appears to be 
perfectly identical with C. elegans, described by me in this Journal, vol. iii. 
p. 132, Feb. 1872. The colour differs slightly from the variety originally 
