318 
SUMMARY OF CURRENT RESEARCHES RELATING TO 
have not, the author believes, been hitherto recorded from the United 
Kingdom, and the other five are new. The latter are called G. fusca, 
plena , Jiabita , angusta, and eremita. 
Echinoderma. 
Echinoderms of North-Eastern America.* — Prof. A. E. Verrill con- 
tinues his account of the Echinoderms of North-Eastern America. The 
total number of species of Starfishes found in this region is 76, of which 
7 are found at a depth of more than 2000 fathoms, while the largest 
number of species is found in the zone between 50 and 100 fathoms. 
In the family Pterasteridae he makes a new genus, Lophopter aster, 
characterised by the possession of a very prominent solid crest on the 
centre of each jaw. L. abyssorum sp. n. was taken from 2021 fathoms. 
As may be supposed, additions are made to the genus Aster ms. 
Sexually produced Organisms without Maternal Characters.! — 
Dr. O. Seeliger has repeated the experiments of Boveri on bastard larvae 
formed by the sperm of one and the eggs of another species of Echinoid. 
Boveri, it may be remembered, maintained that the male sperm nucleus 
could be shown to have transmitted paternal characters, while the 
egg protoplasm, deprived of its nucleus, gave none of the maternal 
characters to the offspring. Seeliger points out that many bastards 
from whole eggs resemble the father, and there is therefore no proof 
that the bastards from broken eggs were not also from nucleated pieces. 
As to the small size of the nucleus in the dwarf larvae, Seeliger points 
out that there is a great deal of variation in the size of the nuclei in 
normal bastards ; and again, bastards of the whole eggs vary much in 
size. The conclusion would appear to be that though the specialisation 
of non-nucleated egg fragments may not be impossible, it is probable that 
the dwarf larvae obtained by Boveri were merely the results of specialisa- 
tion of broken eggs or egg-fragments still retaining their nuclei. 
Coelentera. 
Sense of Coelentera.! — Dr. W. A. Nagel has investigated the 
influence of mechanical and other stimuli on the senses of Coelentera. 
Beroe ovata was found to be most sensitive in the centre of the polar 
area, where there appears to be a true specific sensory organ of the 
mechanical sense. The surfaces of the umbrella and the velum of 
Carmarina hastata were found to be quite insensitive to mechanical, 
chemical, or thermal stimuli. Chemical or mechanical irritation of a 
tentacle is succeeded by merely local shortening and thickening of the 
filaments, or by swimming movements of the whole umbrella. The 
lower surface of the umbrella is sensitive to quite slight mechanical 
stimuli, but not to chemical. Six species of Anemones were examined ; 
in them the tentacles are the most important seat of sensibility, the rest 
of the covering of the body exhibiting only feeble sensibility. In some 
* Amer. Journ. Sci., xlix. (1895) pp. 199-212. 
f Arch. f. Entwicklungsmechanik, i. (1894). See Amer. Natural., xxix. (1894) 
pp. 286-7. 
X Pfluger, Arch. Ges. Physiol., lvii. (1894) pp. 495-522. See Zool. Centralbl., 
ii. (1895) pp. 13-6. 
