522 
ZOOLOGICAL LITERATURE. 
tion of the Lamarckian and other systems into British concho* 
logy j also critical notes on the Cumingian Collection, and the 
creation of new species through the agency of dealers. Proc. 
Zool. Soc. pp. 726-732. 
CEPHALOPODA. 
The centres of tlie nervous system and the auditory organ of 
the Cephalopods have been investigated by Ph. Owsjannikow 
and Dr. A. Kowalewsky. The species examined are principally 
Sepia officinalis and Octopus vulgaris. Besearches made upon 
Loligo vulgaris f Sepiola, and Eledone moschata render it probable 
that the differences observed between Sepia and Octopus are 
typical for the families of ten-armed and eight-armed Cephalo- 
pods. 
In Octopus the cartilaginous capsule of the head contains, be- 
side the nervous ganglia, a considerable quantity of a pellucid 
fluid, comparable to the cerebrospinal fluid of the Vertebrataj 
in Sepia the capsule is comparatively smaller, and filled by the 
ganglia themselves and a mass of capillary vessels and lymphatic 
corpuscules, comparable to lymphatic glands, but improperly 
named adipose mass by others. The brain contained in this sort 
of skull is composed of several ganglia or lobes, one more on each 
side in Octopus than in Sepia ; each consists in its peripheric 
parts of grey, and in the centre of white Substance, as in the verte- 
brata ; the largest of these lobes is even provided with five fur- 
rows in Octopus, in which the grey substance penetrates deeper 
into the interior, and which may safely be compared with the 
gyri of the brain of higher animals. The course of the medul- 
lary fibres has been traced with considerable care by the authors ; 
the largest or chief ganglion is united by radiating medullary 
fibres to each of the other ganglia (lobes) ; and it is that from 
which the optic as well as the acoustic nerve takes its origin, the 
latter traversing only the inferior ganglion. Reaching the audi- 
tory vesicle, the acoustic is divided into two branches, one of which 
terminates in a prominent disk of the inner walls of that 
vesicle, the other in a j)rominent semicircular ridge, provided 
with vibratory cylindrical epithelial cells; the continuity of primi- 
tive nervous fibres with those cylindrical epithelial cells has been 
ascertained by the authors. The otolith is always placed near 
to the ridge. 
A more detailed record of J. Cheron^s paper on the same 
subject, the nervous system of the Cephalopods (see Record'’ for 
1866, p. 175) is given by P. Fischer in Journ. Conch, xvi. 1868, 
pp. 212-217 ; bandelettes of Avhite and others of grey sub- 
stance have been observed by Cheron in the Octopodidee, but 
neither in Sepia nor Loligo. 
For E. Mecznikow’s paper on the development of Sepiola 
(written in the Russian language, 1867, St. Petersburg), see the 
