ing, rather than the ore, which may be considered as everywhere abundant. The coast plateau is destitute alike of soil and vegetation, and we must look to the east zone of the Concan near the Ghauts for a supply of fuel.

Charcoal might undoubtedly be brought down the creeks in small boats to the coast, but the most eligible locality for smelting would be where the iron and wood are found together in the vicinity of a navigable creek. These conditions are met with in the Sawunt Warree territory on the frontiers of Goa. The jungle at the foot of the Ghauts in that part of the Concan is exceedingly dense, and under proper supervision might be made to furnish a never-failing supply of charcoal for many furnaces.

It may be a question-and it is now being practically worked out at Beypoor-whether Indian iron can compete with the English for the ordinary "plant" of a railway; but I conceive, from the cheapness of labour in India, there can be no question that iron of the finer kinds, like that of Russia and Germany, may be produced in any quantity at a lower price than it can be manufactured elsewhere. And I do not despair of seeing the day when it will find its way into the markets of Europe.

Cannon Foundry.

At the last meeting of the British Association in Glasgow, Mr Fairbairn, the eminent engineer, stated that government having found that the hot-blast iron of England was unsuitable for ordnance, had sent orders to Norway and Sweden, and to Nova Scotia, for iron smelted with charcoal. This will enormously increase the cost of ordnance, and it may perhaps lead to the establishment of a cannon foundry in India to meet the requirements of our own artillery there.

Steatite. At the village of Asgunnee, about ten miles from Malwan, steatite is quarried, and turned on the native lathe, into domestic utensils and ornamental articles, such as vases, hookah bowls, and anything else of which a design may be supplied. It is a branch of industry capable of considerable development.

Manganese.-Compact manganese-ore occurs in thick veins,

with brown iron-ore, in the laterite at Rairee Point. I picked up some pieces of the black oxide on the south side.

An ore of manganese also abounds at a village near the Phoonda Ghauts.

Copper. In a quartz vein at Vingorla headland, sulphuret of copper and iron occurs. I found carbonate of copper having small cavities in a quartz vein adjoining a red felspar dyke, which traversed gneiss at the Ram Ghaut. The gneiss was immediately below greenstone porphyry. No one has yet explored the Ghauts in search of metals; the dense jungle and precipitous face of these mountains render such a search no easy matter. Even during the hot weather, when the underwood is not so close, I experienced great difficulty in exploring many hundred yards.

Such a search is however quite practicable, if systematically set about, by selecting the proper season of the year, and bivouacking in the jungle.

General Remarks.

Scenery. The view of the coast from the sea is most unpromising to the lover of the picturesque. Nothing meets the eye but flat-topped red headlands, without a trace of vegetation (except perhaps here and there a few screw pines where there happens to be a spring of water), and sandy beaches, behind which the tops of coco-nut trees are visible. But the scene is changed when the Pattemar (in which we shall suppose the observer to be) is run across the bar into any of the numerous creeks which intersect the plateau of the coast. Instead of the sterile headlands and sandy beaches which he has been witnessing from the rolling Pattemar, he finds himself suddenly introduced to a landscape of no mean attraction. The clear blue of the still creek water in which the anchor is dropped the coco-nut groves on either side-the flat ground. at the foot of the hills, now covered, it may be, with the emerald green of a second rice crop-the terraced sides of the hills, rich in mango and jack trees, the cashew-nut, the oondunee, the rutambee, and the graceful sooparee,—all these combined form a striking contrast to the monotonous and inhospitable coast line; and their beauties are perhaps more ap

preciated when the observer, as has often been the case with me, has been beating up the coast all day in a native boat against a strong breeze of the north-west monsoon, and has at sun-set been compelled to seek shelter in the creek. The thickly-wooded hills near the Ghauts, with their round and pointed outlines, form picturesque landscapes. The bamboo in all its beauty may be seen near the Ram Ghauts, growing in large clumps, with its slender stems and feathery foliage topping the vegetation around it.

Influence of the Geology on the Inhabitants.

The poverty and wretched appearance of the Concanees may be laid in a great measure to the charge of the geological structure of the country; for, as agriculture is now to India what manufactures are to Manchester and Birmingham, when the people cannot obtain employment in this sole branch of industry they must starve or emigrate. A very considerable portion of the Concan is as barren as the Suez desert. In one of the best of the revenue divisions of the collectorate, out of 900 square miles, 186 are barren.

The summit of the coast plateau, which is composed of detrital laterite, containing so much iron as to render it intractable to vegetation, is utterly sterile, except where the natives have artificially collected soil by carrying it up in baskets and blankets.

The appearance and condition of the Concan ryot, when compared with those of his brethren in Belgaum and Dharwar, form as striking a contrast as the sterile red laterite of the Concan to the rich black cotton soil of the Deccan plains.

The mineral resources of the country, when once in a fair way of development, may yet be found to afford employment, and relieve the distress of a population now greater than its agriculture can support.

On the Reproduction of Cydippe pomiformis. By T. STRETHILL WRIGHT, M.D., Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, Edinburgh.*

Accounts of Cydippe may be found in every manual of Natural History and Comparative Anatomy. Those written by British authors are generally distinguished by a singular variety in error both of description and illustration. I have, therefore, thought it necessary to give to the Society a sketch of its anatomical structure, as maintained chiefly by Agassiz in his admirable work on the Acalephæ of North America, and which my own observations assure me is correct.

Fig. 1.

a. Mouth opening into stomach, which communicates at d with bb large central canal of watervascular system. cccc Longitudinal muscular bands carrying

Cydippe (see fig. 1) may be briefly described as a transparent ovoid body of gelatinous consistence, having its surface longitudinally sulcated (like that of a melon) by eight furrows, in each of which lies a band of muscular tissue. These muscular bands serve as a basis of attachment to numerous flat paddles or comb-shaped fringes of cilia, which are ranged at nearly equal distances along the whole length of the bands, and form a locomotive apparatus by which the animal rows itself through the water with admirable swiftness and grace. In the lateral water-vascular canals. e e Transverse water-vascular canals. allied acalephs, Beroe, Alcinoe, and ƒ Receptacle of the tentacles g. f Bolina, each of these paddles is a transparent plate, more or less divided or fringed only at its extremity, while in Cydippe the plate is entirely divided to its attachment into a fringe of separate cilia. Agassiz considers that the cilia are composed of a peculiar substance, but I find that their action on polarized light is proportionate to that exerted by a plate of horn of equal thickness. The cilia are, therefore, in all probability, setæ and their embryonic development, hereafter described, * Read before the Royal Physical Society of Edinburgh, 28th February 1856.

ciliary paddles, and covering the

indicates that they are analogous to the locomotive set of the Annelides. Immediately beneath, or internal to the muscular bands, and corresponding with them in length and breadth, are eight canals excavated in the gelatinous tissue of the animal, and connected by a system of transverse branches with a much larger cavity, which occupies the axis of the body along its whole length, and admits the sea-water by two orifices situated at its inferior extremity, capable of being opened or closed at the will of the animal. The whole of these canals form a water-vascular system, through which a constant circulation of fluid takes place, urged by the fine cilia with which the cavities are lined.

The digestive system consists of a flattened sac, about twothirds the length of the animal, suspended within the large central canal of the water-vascular system. The upper extremity of this sac terminates in a linear mouth situated on the upper surface of the body, while its lower extremity opens into the large canal in which it is inclosed, so that the products of digestion are (as in Actinia) at once admitted into the main cavities of the body, in which the functions of nutrition and respiration are carried on together. There also exist two other large cavities in the body connected with the watervascular canals, which serve as receptacles for the tentacular apparatus, the use of which has caused much difference of opinion amongst writers on this branch of Natural History.

As far as I have been able to ascertain, nothing is certainly known as to the reproduction of Cydippe. Siebold (in his work on Comparative Anatomy) has stated that Mertens has observed detached corpuscles from the body of Cestum and Cydippe swimming freely about and rapidly enlarging, but that his observations were there limited. Professor Grant has imagined that he has detected ovaries, consisting of two lengthened clusters of small spherical gemmules, of a lively crimson colour, extending along the sides of the stomach; but his description of the anatomy of Cydippe is so inaccurate, that his remarks on its ovarian system are not to be relied on. Mr Robert Paterson of Belfast (who has written an excellent monograph on this Acaleph) has not been able to verify Dr Grant's observation, although he has examined several hundred speci