SCIENTIFIC SUMMARY. 
Ill 
fwiformis, Terebella jlexuosa , Stylarioides moniliferus, Audouinia Jiligera, 
Chaetopterus variopedatus , Aricia fcetida, Telepsavus costarum, Braiichiomma 
vesiculosum, and Nerine cirratulus. 
Death of Albany Hancock, F.B.S . — There has hardly been a naturalist in 
these countries whose labours both in zoology and geology have been so 
vast and numerous, and withal have been carried out with such excessive 
modesty, as those of Mr. Albany Hancock, who passed away from among us 
on October 24th last, at the age of about sixty-eight years. To cite a list of 
his works would be merely vain. Everyone who has even glanced at 
zoology must be familiar with them, and the learned know well how accu- 
rate and painstaking they were. His life, says the “ Geological Magazine,” 
“was, in the ordinary sense of the term, singularly uneventful. Scarcely 
ever did he leave his birthplace, which, with the dales and fells in its neigh- 
bourhood, he loved as North-countrymen can — never did he forsake his pure 
naturalist’s work. Each year of his manhood was marked by the discovery, 
accurate observation, and ever modest publication of new and important 
facts in biology. His work speaks for itself ; but the spirit in which he 
worked, his intense love of Nature for her own sake, his unaffected shrinking 
from honours which were forced upon him, his readiness to impart his 
knowledge or to give all help to the humblest beginner who was willing to 
work, his life-long friendships — all these must not pass away unrecorded. 
They cannot pass away unremembered by any one who knew him.” 
Substances which Prevent the Development of Protoplasmic Life . — M. A. 
Bechamp has presented a paper on this subject to the French Academy 
(“ Comptes Rendus,” September 8th). He says that there are at least three 
distinct albumenoid matters in the white of eggs ; in the yolk, besides the 
microzymas, insoluble in water, there are two bodies soluble in that liquid. 
He maintains that albumen, gelatin, infusion of yeast, with or without 
sugar, may be preserved easily in free contact with air. Urine and blood 
are easily preserved by creosote or phenol. Blood is one of the liquids 
where bacteria appear the least readily. 
The Development of Polyps. — This has been investigated for some years, but 
it has never been completely made out till M. Lacaze-Duthiers has recently 
studied the subject most carefully in the course of a series of experimental 
researches which he carried out on board the “ Narval,” a French ship, which 
was sent by the Government for the purpose of making soundings, &c. 
along the African coast of the Mediterranean. These researches, which 
have been most minutely carried out, explain the whole matter without 
doubt, and have been published to the French Academy by the author on 
November 24th last. M. Lacaze-Duthiers seems surprised that English 
naturalists should have considered the Mediterranean a rather barren sea ; 
for, according to his investigations, it is full of marine life. The memoir is 
worthy of perusal, for from it alone can be gathered the author’s ideas. He 
considers that the observations hitherto made have failed because they 
were not carried out sufficiently early ; and, indeed, he shows that it is 
alone by watching the embryo step by step that anything can be done. 
With regard to the tentacles he says: “It is thus that the tentacles of 
Actiniae that one finds disposed so regularly, sometimes in successive cycles 
of the type 6 : 6 of the first, 6 of the second, 12 of the third, 24 of the fourth, 
