otherwise very degenerate female a pair of pigment spots of irregular shape, the eyes, a pair of very minute, short, anterior,

FIG. 1.-Ventral view of female.

2

a.

extensions of pereion, drawn shorter than in reality. FIG. 2.-Dorsal view of female with lobes a, a, on the opposite side in nature from Fig. 1.

a, a, fleshy marsupial lobes; b, membranous

8.

7.

FIG. 4.-Pleon with pig

FIG. 3.-Ventral view of transparent male, legs omitted. A, pleon without pig. ment; 7, testis; vd, vas deferens; h, liver; cor, heart.

ment of male. FIG. 5.-Head of male. FIG. 6.-Thoracic leg of male. FIG. 7.Cephalic piece of female. FIG. 8.-Pigment spot of first pereiopod near its lamella and a pair of two (thrce ?) jointed, larger, posterior antennæ

of the female Bopyroides.

(Fig. 7).

The maxilla, if I properly recognized it, consists of a small flat basal piece with a rounded subtriangular flat terminal piece.

The first pair of pereiopods is provided, near the junction of its basal piece and the prolonged lanceolate lamella, with a conspicuous large peculiar pigment spot, as seen in Fig. 8.

The male of our Bopyroides is smaller but higher specialized than that of Bopyrus palaemoneticola. It is always found on the same spot-on the ventral side between the breathing appendages of the pleon of the female. It measures mm in length, and nearly 1mm in width. It is but sparingly pigmented and therefore very transparent.

The head is slightly longer than the first segment of the pereion. Two moderately large pigment eyes are situated a little behind the middle of the head. I have examined five individuals and found in every case the anterior pair of antennæ larger (threejointed) than the posterior pair (two-jointed). The oral parts are conical and not very distinct.

The first thoracic segment is sub-quadrate, the second to sixth segments are equal in length, width and shape, so is the seventh segment, but with a faint lateral emargination. The propodus of the seven pairs of legs (eight in Bopyrus, male) is sub-chelate with its inferior margin dentate, the dentation not being equally deve!oped in all the legs.

The pleon, or tail, of the male is narrower than the pereion, has six sub-segments, sixth sub-segment with a lateral short spine, an indication of which is also found on the margin of the preceding two sub-segments. The spines may be regarded as rudimentary pleopods.

The heart can be distinctly seen in the pleon, also a narrower string extending laterally from the first to the fifth thoracic segment, where an indistinct twist occurs, after which the string is somewhat flatter, reaching down into the seventh segment, where its terminus is obliterated by pigment. The part of this string anterior to the twist, I regard as the testis, while the posterior may be the vas deferens. I did not observe an anastomosis between the two lateral strings, nor have I distinctly seen the anterior terminus of the same. An elongate lobe can be noticed in the first sub-segment of the pleon, which Dr. Fritz Müller also observed in the male of Bopyrus resupinatus, and which is regarded by him as the liver.-Carl F. Gissler.

ZOOLOGICAL NOTES.-The Bulletin of the U.S. National Museum No. 11, is devoted to a Bibliography of the Fishes of the Pacific Coast of the United States to the end of the year 1879, by Theodore Gill. New birds from the Sandwich Islands, and a new species (Asio portoricensis) from Porto Rico, are described by Mr. R. Ridgway, in the Proceedings of the U. S. National Museum, who also contributes a list of the old world birds 1 Jenaische Zeitschrift fuer Med. und Naturwis., VI, I, p. 53, 1870.

A new

in the Museum, and notes on Costa Rican birds. genus of deep sea fishes (Benthodesmus) from the Banks of Newfoundland, is also described by Messrs. Goode and Bean, while Messrs. Jordan and Gilbert describe thirty-three new species of fishes from Mazatlan. To the same serial Dr. Shufeldt contributes remarks on the osteology of the glass snake (Opheosaurus ventralis). The Proceedings also contains Mr. Dall's description of certain limpets and chitons from the deep waters off the eastern coast of the United States.At a recent meeting (April 18), of the London Zoological Society, Professor Flower read a paper upon the mutual affinities of the animals composing the order of Edentata, in which the usual binary division into Phyllophaga (or Tardigrada) and Entomophaga (or Vermilingua) was shown not to agree with the most important structural characters. These, according to the interpretation put upon them by the author, indicates that the Bradypodidæ and Megatheriida are allied to the Myrmecophagidæ, and also, though less closely to the Dasypodidæ, all the American forms thus constituting one primary division of the order, from which both the Manidæ and Orycteropodide of the old world are totally distinct.—A communication was also read from Mr. Charles Darwin, introducing a paper by Dr. Van Dyck, of Beyrout, on the modification of a race of Syrian street dogs by means of natural selection.Mr. O. Thomas likewise read an account of a small collection of mammals from the State of Durango, Central Mexico, in which examples of several northern forms, not hitherto recorded so far South, and several southern forms not hitherto known so far North, occurred.In an essay on certain points in the morphology of the Blastoid crinoids, Messrs. Etheridge and Carpenter discuss in a way preliminary to their larger forthcoming work, some points which will interest our western palæontologists. Dr. J. Gwyn Jeffreys continues in the Proceedings of the Zoological Society his account of the deep sea mollusks procured during the Lightning and Porcupine Expeditions in 1866-70. In the Bulletin of the U. S. Fish Commission, Mr. J. A. Ryder has a very interesting paper on the Protozoa and Protophytes considered as the primary or indirect source of the food of fishes. He has also found that the food of the very young shad consists almost entirely of very small crustaceans, the very youngest Daphnidæ, etc. Larger shad swallow small larval Diptera, besides Entomostraca. He says that the mode in which the young fish capture their entomostracan prey may be guessed from their oval armature. Most fish larvæ appear to be provided with small, conical somewhat backwardly recurved teeth on the jaws. "Rathke in 1833 described the peculiar hooked teeth in the lower jaws of the larvae of the viviparous blenny, and Forbes has observed minute teeth in the lower jaw of the young Coregonus albus. I have also met with similar teeth in the lower jaw of the larval

Spanish mackerel." The mouth of the adult shad is practically toothless, and multitudes of small copepods are caught in the meshes of its branchial arches.-The new Acalephs from the Tortugas and Key West, and also from the east coast of New Zealand are described and well illustrated by Mr. J. W. Fewkes in the Bulletin of the Museum of Comparative Zoology. Vol. x. Nos. 7 and 8.

ENTOMOLOGY.1

REPELLING INSECTS BY MALODORANTS.-Mr. J. A. Lintner, State Entomologist of New York, has recently published an interesting paper, in which (assuming that the parent insect is guided to her food-plant, or to that destined for her offspring by the sense of smell), he advocates the use of strong-smelling or malodorous substances, as counter-odorants to prevent noxious species from laying their eggs on cultivated plants This theory is put forth as a "new principle, in protection from insect attack."

As remarked in a notice of the paper elsewhere, we have one serious criticism to make of it, viz: that it lacks both proof and substantial foundation in fact. To give force to the theory, Mr. Lintner has to assume that substances like kerosene, coal-tar, naphthaline, carbolic acid, gas-lime, bisulphide of carbon, smoke, etc., repel by their odor; whereas the ordinary belief that they repel because of their toxic properties seems to us far more reasonable. Our attempts to prevent the oviposition of the Cotton-worm moth, the Colorado potato-beetle, the apple-tree borers, and the Plum curculio, by the odor of carbolic acid and of coal-tar, of infusions of Ailanthus, Walnut, and decoctions of Horehound, or cabbage worms by the odor of creosote, have proved unavailing. Those of others in the same direction, and notably of Mr. I. W. Taylor, of Poland, N. Y., with such pungent odors as musk, camphor, spirits of turpentine, asafo dita, kerosene, etc. (Rural New Yorker, Nov. 2, 1872), used especially to prevent the oviposition of Pieris rapa, equally failed of the intended result; so that, so far as experience will warrant an opinion it is adverse to the "new principle." The senses of sight, touch, and taste, which are more palpable and readily located, play their part in insect economy, and both experiment and observation would indicate that, except perhaps for certain special families, particularly of Lepidoptera, this part is greater than that represented by the sense of smell, even in guiding the female to lay her eggs.-C. V. Riley.

HABITS OF BITTACUS APTERUS.-Baron Osten-Sacken communicates in the Wiener Entomologische Zeitung (May number, p. 123) an interesting note on the above named Neuropterous insect, which is not rare in open grassy places in parts of California. He states that the insect replaces the want of wings by a great dex1 This department is edited by PROF. C. V. RILEY, Washington, D. C., to whom communications, books for notice, etc., should be sent.

terity in climbing, swinging itself, monkey-like, from halm to halm, often suspended only by the front tarsi. One specimen was observed devouring a Tipula, and if this Dipteron should be the usual food of the Bittacus, the existing mimicry between the two insects would be significant, and in this particular case the more so as the Californian Tipula has, at least in the male, only rudimentary wings. According to Mr. H. Edwards's observations both species are frequently found in the same localities.

STRANGE HABIT OF METAPODIUS FEMORATUS Fab.-The" thickthighed metapodius" is a common insect in the Southern cotton fields, attracting attention by its buzzing flight and ungainly form. The numerous observers connected with the cotton insect investigation have observed it preying upon the cotton caterpillar, while Glover states that it has been observed to injure cherries in the Western States. Mr. Schwarz informs me that he has seen it sucking the moisture from the newly dropped excrement of some unknown bird. Its eggs, according to Glover, are smooth, short, oval, and have been found arranged around a pine-leaf like a bead necklace.

In May of the present year, while studying the Northern armyworm (Leucania unipuncia) in the wheat fields near Huntsville, Alabama, I found that among the other new natural enemies which this Southern irruption occasioned the Metapodius was very conspicuous. Immediately upon entering the fields I was struck with its buzzing flight, and it was not long before I discovered one flying with an army-worm impaled upon its beak. Watching its flight I soon saw it alight in the line of May-weed (Maruta cotula), which surrounded the field, and hastening to the point, found it busily engaged in sucking the blood of the captured worm. I was about to step closer and bottle the specimen, when it began to crawl down the branch upon which it had alighted, with that ridiculously slow and majestic motion peculiar to Reduvius and other Heteropters, until it reached a crotch. where it dropped the shrivelled corpse of the worm so that it hung exactly suspended. Up to this time I had been so interested in watching this individual that I had not looked about me closely, and now I was surprised to find that the whole long line of May-weeds was fairly garnished with the empty skins of Leucania larvæ, each one hung with great nicety in some crotch. This same field I visited for three successive days, and in that time there was quite a perceptible increase in the number of the worms so placed. The sight of these suspended larvæ was certainly one of much interest, and, without seeing the great bug at work I might have puzzled over it for a long time without any satisfactory explanation.

I shall not attempt to explain this curious procedure on the part of the Metapodii. It is seemingly as unexplainable as the somewhat similar habit of the Southern loggerhead or shrike in