422 Miscellaneous. capacity of the author's mind. Mr. Gorham, however, is well known among the London entomologists as an acute and highly promising Coleopterist ; and we hope he will work up other comparatively neglected families with the same abihty he has shown in the brochure before us. We regret to see that in the preface the author complains of difficulties thrown in his way by the authorities of this Dritish Museum. There must have been some misapprehension ; Dr. Gray, we believe, is as ready now as formerly to assist any one studying the collections under his charge. MISCELLANEOUS. On the Respiratory Organs of the Araneida. By Dr. P. JBertkat:. The old division of the Arachnida into pulmonary and trachean, established by Latreille, lost all its value when Leon Dufour, Duges, and, after them, Menge and Siebold discovered that the Araneida possessed tracheae besides their lungs. One might be surprised at first to see two different aerial respi-'ratoiy apparatus existing together in the same animal ; but Leuckart soon showed that the so-called lungs ought to be considered a formation homologous with that of the tracheie, and he gives them, in consequence, the name of pulmonary tracheae {Lxingentracheen). This interpretation has been generally accepted ; and the new obser-vations of M. Bertkau go also to confii-m it. The author describes the structure of the lungs, for which he pro-poses on his part the name of laminar tracheae (FacJiertracJieen) and that of the tracheae properly so called. From these investigations, which have been directed to a great number of genera and species, he deduces a grouping of Araneida based on the modifications that these animals present in their respiratory organs. We shall not follow him in the description that he gives of the lungs, because it contains nothing but well-known facts. We may recall only that the two stigmata which admit the air into these organs are situated on the lower surface of the abdomen, immediately behind the peduncle which unites that region to the cephalothorax. In some genera there is behind these pulmonary stigmata, and quite close to them, another pair of stigmata. It is only in the MygaHdse that these orifices lead, like the anterior ones, to a second pair of lungs. In Dy sclera, Segestria, and Argyroneta they give access to a trachean system. A very short canal, starting from each of them, leads to a wide, compressed, principal trunk, of which the wall is strengthened by chitinous rods, which are either irregularly placed (Bysdera) or united into a spiral thread exactly as in the trachea; of insects {Segestria and Argyroneta). The greater portion of the trachean trunk inclines forward ; a little bursiform appendage is directed backward. In Dysdera and Argyroneta each of the two anterior or
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