Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 1 (1897).djvu/516

488 animal to be met with south of the Zambesi. It is particularly rich in horns of the Koodoo, Eland, Klipspringer, and Gemsbok, or Oryx, which some identify with the Unicorn, its two horns often resembling in profile a single horn.—('Daily News.')

to the 'Globe,' a subterranean laboratory has been opened at the Museum of Natural History, which is situated in the Jardin des Plantes, Paris. It has been created in order to study the influence of darkness on animals, and discover by experiment how animal species are thus modified. In short, it is an attempt to apply the doctrine of evolution by experiment; and as such must be regarded as unique in the world—a new departure, in fact. The idea seems to have originated in the researches made not long ago on the animals of the Catacombs of Paris.

In the 'Records of the Australian Museum,' vol. iii. No. 2, is a description, by Mr. R. Etheridge, Jun., of "An Australian Sauropterygian—Cimoliosaurus—converted into Precious Opal." The search for Opal in the Upper Cretaceous at the White Cliffs Opal-field on Momba Holding, about sixty-five miles north-north-west of Wilcannia, Co. Tungnulgra, has been signalized by the discovery of many beautiful examples of the entire conversion of the shelly envelopes of Pelecypoda and Gasteropoda, the internal shells of Belemnites, and Reptilian remains into precious opal by a process of replacement. Among other examples, and pre-eminent for its beauty, is a bivalve in the possession of a jeweller of Melbourne, and "without exception one of the most beautiful conditions of fossilization I ever beheld." The Survey Collection, previous to the Garden Palace fire, contained an ammonite wholly converted into precious opal, six inches in diameter.