EDITORIAL GLEANINGS.
The Trustees of the British Museum have appointed Professor Ray Lankester as Director of the Natural History Department. He succeeds Sir William Henry Flower, who retires, through ill health, on Sept. 30th. The remuneration is £1200 per annum.
We recently (ante, p. 236) referred to a paper by Mr. Faxon on some "Observations on the Astacidæ, &c." Since then Dr. Emar Löonberg, in the 'Zoologischer Anzeiger,' has contributed to the same subject "Some Biological and Anatomical Facts concerning Parastacus." Parastacus hassleri, Faxon, is found in Chile, and Mr. P. Dusen has related some facts as to its life -history. This Crayfish lives in slightly sloping, moist meadows. The humidity on the surface was, however, not greater than that Mr. Dusen could walk there with dry shoes," and there was no open water, lake, or river in the neighbourhood. Here the Crayfishes had made vertical holes in the earth, and round these holes they had erected " mud chimneys " out of the clayey material which they had carried up from their burrows. These chimneys had often a height of 2-3 decm. The results arising from Dr. Loonberg's study of this species are, "that in Parastacus hassleri a partial hermaphroditism is prevailing, but male and female organs are not functionary in the same individual, neither are ripe elements of both sexes produced by the same specimen. The hermaphroditism could thus be called rudimentary." The Astacidæ seem to offer a most interesting study to zoologists, both by their functions and habits.
In the 'Western World' for May last, a correspondent writes:—"In a very few weeks the last remnant of the Buffalo tribe, so far as Manitoba is concerned, will be removed from Silver Heights, near Winnipeg, where they now are, to the National Park at Banff. They have been given by Lord Strathcona to the Dominion Government, with a view to their preservation in the park, but how long they will stay there is another question. It is only too likely that their natural instincts will, in spite of their half- tame condition, reassert themselves and induce them to wander off in any direction. The herd numbers seventeen in all. There are five pure bred males, eleven, seven, six, five, and two years old; and four pure bred females, eleven, six, four, and two years old; one aged half-bred cow about sixteen years old, one three-quarter bred heifer three years old, one
