688 
SUMMARY OF CURRENT RESEARCHES RELATING TO 
Growth of Taenia mediocanellata.* — From observations made in 
cases of Tapeworm ( Tsenici mediocanellata) Prof. E. Perroncito was 
enabled to determine that the average growth amounted to thirteen pro- 
glottides a day, both for the ripe and unripe parasite. In the latter case 
the increase in length would be almost less than half. This shows that 
the maximum length-growth and general development occurs in the 
second month, so that while there is in the first month a daily average 
increase of 3 cm. in length, in the second it amounts to 14 cm. a day, 
while the size of the individual joints is augmented in all directions. 
Echinoderma. 
Echinoderms of Eastern Seas.f — Prof. F. Jeffrey Bell gives an 
account of the Echinoderms collected during the voyage of H.M.S. 
‘ Penguin ’ and by H.M.S. 1 Egeria,’ when surveying Macclesfield Bank. 
The species are enumerated under three heads: — (1) N.W. Australia, 
(2) Arafura and Banda Seas, (3) Macclesfield Bank. The author states 
that the collection is remarkable for containing a large proportion of 
young specimens, and that in some cases the series have been sufficiently 
long and gradual to enable him to assign quite young examples to what 
appear to be their correct species; the conviction has been forced on 
him that Macclesfield Bank is a nursery, and he suggests that as full 
collections as possible should always be made in areas resembling the 
inside of this reef, as among other advantages, material may be collected 
which is of immense value to the morphologist. 
The point of greatest interest with regard to this collection is the 
discovery that the syzygial joints at the bases of the arms of Comatulids 
by no means exhibit the regularity which is ordinarily believed to be 
one of their chief characteristics. A discovery of great importance is 
that of a quite new type of Ophiurid, represented unfortunately by a 
single specimen ; in Ophiocrene senigma, as Prof. Bell calls it, we have 
an Ophiurid with branching arms and the habit of an Astrophytid, but 
with calycinal plates on the disc, and rounded radial shields of com- 
paratively small size ; the two halves of the oral apparatus, at each 
mouth-angle, are very distinct, and this, among others, must be supposed 
to be a primitive character. 
The group Holothurioidea is remarkable for its almost total absence 
from the collection, and Mr. Bassett-Smith, Surgeon R.N., who formed 
the collection, was much struck by this. Of the Crinoids a new species 
is added to the rare and remarkable genus Eudiocrinus ; in Antedon 
Bassett-Smithi we have, in one and the same specimen, arms with syzygies 
uniting the first and second brachials, or a syzygy on the third, or on 
both first and second, and third. Not only have we two conditions 
which were supposed by Carpenter to be mutually exclusive in different 
arms of one specimen, but these very two conditions occur on one 
arm. Attention is called to the Brisinga-like appearance of Asterias 
volsellata , and the view of Sladen that it diminishes the gap between the 
Asteriidae and the Brisingidas is accepted. There were in the collection 
numerous examples of the genus Ojphiotlirix , and reasons are given for 
* Centralbl. f. Bakteriol. u. Parasitenk., xv. (1894) pp. 800-1. 
f Proc. Zool. Soc. Lond., 1894, pp. 392-413 (5 pis.). 
