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1. 1. It is shown that Purpura lapillus and Murex brandaris are capable of synthesizing sterols from mevalonate and acetate. The biosynthesis of sterols from acetate proceeds only at a slow rate. This phenomenon is compared with that observed in Natica cataena . 2. 2. The composition of the sterol mixtures of P. lapillus and M. brandaris is determined by means of gas-liquid chromatography. 3. 3. In both animals cholesterol is the principal sterol making up 77 and 59 per cent of the total sterols respectively. The sterol composition of Murex differs rather strongly from that of other prosobranchs.

This journal article identifies Sumer as a center for the bleaching, dyeing and weaving of wool. According to accounts clothing was brightly colored and patterned. Variegated hues were obtained by substantive, vat and mordant dyes. Black was derived directly from iron oxide or from plants such as Cassia bark used with iron sulphate. Blue likely came from Indigo prepared perhaps with lime or potash. Woad may have been used. Saffron and Tumeric provided rarer yellow dyes. Red was favored in many shades. Sumerian and Akkadian texts refer to blood red, rose color and russet. Kermes is identified as one red dye. Murex brandaris and Murex arunculus yield purple. The dyeing process as practiced by the Mesopotamians is little known. Scant information is provided by the Talmud and from comparison with Babylonian tablets on tanning. Fat, alum and gall were used as mordants for tanning and dyeing. Thread or yarn was dyed in vats. These vats and winding bobbins are described from archaeological finds in Palestine. Wooden vats were likely used in Mesopotamia.

THIS remarkable and well written memoir was published before the recent celebration at Pompeii of the eighteenth centenary of its destruction by a volcanic eruption of Vesuvius. It is the work of an excellent naturalist, who lives at Resina, close to the site of the ruined city, and who is especially conversant with the shells of the Mediterranean. The point of view to which he directs our attention is very different from that which has been taken by the geologist, antiquary, artist, or architect. He treats of the shells found in the ruins, and which had served for food, or been used by the Pompeians for ornament and other purposes. Indeed we know from Athenasus and other ancient authors that mollusca were then relished quite as much as they are at present by the inhabitants of Italy. I have been unable to discover in the loose and incorrect twaddle of the younger Pliny, who lost his life in the eruption, any mention of shells having been collected by his countrymen for the study of natural history. It is a pursuit or amusement of comparatively modern times. Dr. Tiberi gives a list of all the shells which he has noticed as Pompeian, belonging to no less than 44 species, with particulars of their relative abundance at Pompeii, as well as of their distribution and economy. Some were of eatable kinds, as the common oyster and mussel, Pecten Jacobaeus, Venus chione, Tapes decussatus, and several species of Helix. Others adorned fountains, as Haliotis tuberculata, Murex trunculus, and M. brandaris. The oriental pearl-shell (Meleagrina margaritifera) was represented only by a single valve. But the ladies of Pompeii seem to have attached considerable value to the Cypraea or Cowry, as amulets or charms to prevent sterility; and among these shells were some of species from the Red Sea and Persian Gulf. A single specimen of another exotic shell (Conus textilis) must have been kept for its great beauty as an object of curiosity. All the shells used in the ornamentation of fountains, five in the city and one in the suburbs, are of species which still are common in the Gulf of Naples; these shells are separately distinguished and named. Le conchiglie Pompeiane. Descritte dal Dott. Nicola Tiberi. 4to, 12 pp. (Napoli, 1879.)