Page:The Annual Register 1899.djvu/535

 1899.] SCIENCE. Ill

adjacent gill-clefts ; but supposes them to be homodynamous with the somatic or true external gills.

The function less eye of the New Zealand sphenodon is, though buried deeply in the integument, a highly developed organ. It has been regarded as unpaired, but Dr. Dendy gives reasons for his conclusion that, like other sense organs, it was originally dual ; that the parietal eyes were once serially homologous with the functional pair now possessed ; that the surviving eye belongs to the left side ; and that its fellow is represented by a structure known as the parietal stalk.

Some years ago an artesian well was bored in Texas to the depth of 188 feet, when there came up, with the water, a number of living animals including some crustaceae and a salamander. The former are colourless and sightless, the eye stalks being empty. Two of the salamanders have now been brought alive to Washington. They es- tablish a new genus. The Typhlomolge is about four inches in length and has a large head with a long snout. Its tail is flattened and ends in a fin like the eel's. The skin is a dingy white, and round the neck is a fringe of scarlet gills. The eyes can be recognised through the integument which completely covers them. The creature crawls about on four long slender legs, which it swings in irregular circles at each step. The front feet have four toes and the hind feet have five. Its natural food has not been ascertained since what is proffered it refuses to eat.

A chimpanzee, under the observation of Dr. Keith, completed her dentition by the appearance of all the canines and molars in her twelfth or thirteenth year. Menstruation, with a term of three days, began in her tenth year and recurred every twenty-third or twenty- fourth day.

The new calcareous sponge, Astro8clera toilleyana, has a continuous branched skeleton which is formed by the union of numerous polyhedral spicules of aragonite and which supports the soft parts, the canals and minute ciliated chambers.

A new alga, Plewro-coccus srdphurarius, has been described by Dr. Galdieri, which grows round the fumaroli of the Solfatara near Naples, and which has acquired a remarkable resistance to heat and to sulphuric acid.

An investigation into the causes of malaria, carried on independently by Professor Grassi and Dr. Dionisi in Italy, and by Major Ross in India and Africa, has led to important practical results. These observers agree that the intermediary of the disease is the spotted- winged mosquito Anopheles claviger which breeds only in small stag- nant pools. To fill these ponds up, or to drain them off, or to destroy any larvee by treating the water with kerosene or permanganate of potash, is to eradicate this pestilent fever. The hetersecic organisms, accumulating in the salivary glands of the insect, are introduced by puncture into the human body. In the blood corpuscles of man, the parasitic hoemosporids of malaria go through endless life cycles by cellular reproduction ; but they remain sterile until drawn from a subject of malaria into the mosquito's intestine, when they become sporozoa and give rise to countless sporozooYds. But the matter is not