SCIENTIFIC NOTES.

Press, Volume L, Issue 8589, 16 September 1893, Page 4

SCIENTIFIC NOTES.

_*. Weekly Press and Referee. The first consignments of the fossils from Lake Muihgau (South Australia) has reached the Adelaide Museum. Unfortunately it does not include a perfect skeleton of any of the animals, bat the separate parts prove- to be of very great value. Among them are the feet, poach, marsupial bones and tail of the Dlprotodon ; these bones had never previously been found, and their discovery will de much towards clearing up the anatomical relations of this very strange beast Equally interesting are some bones of * giacantic extinct bird, which is new to science. Its size may be gathered from the fact that the thigh-bone is larger than that of a ten-year-old elephant. This breaks the record established by the extinct moa of New Zealand, and leaves the ostrich and emu practically nowhere. The Zoological-gardens at Londoa possess a " butterfly farm." This consists of an apartment in which the temperature and conditions of life of various insect* can be pretty fairly reproduced, so as to allow of the cocoons maturing in captivity. Within the last few months a large cumber of very beautiful forms have been hatched oat. The great attraction at preseft* i* aCeylonese beetle, for which the zoologists have not yet found a nam-?. On looking into the case, a number of—to all apappearance—embossed gold sleeve buttons are seen, the centre being dark-red gold, surrounded by lighter gold, set in a transparent ring of what looks like yellow talc. If watched, the buttons begin to move about on invisible legs, and perhaps on* of them splits, pats forth a pair of wing*, and begins to fly The gold buttons are, of coarse, the wing-cases of the insect, which is one of the handsomest among the many handsome beetles known to science.