NOTES. 



43 



to exclude it in all eases of heart disease, 

 while it may be even useful where the action 

 of the heart is feeble and signs of fatty de- 

 generation are found ; that, as the action of 

 cycling tells dh-ectly upon the motion of the 

 heart, the effect it produces on that organ is 

 phenomenally and unexpectedly great com- 

 pared with the work it gets out of it ; that 

 the ultimate action of severe cycling is to 

 increase the size of the heart, to render it 

 irritable and hypersensitive to motion ; that 

 the overdevelopment of the heart affects in 

 turn the arterial resilience, modifies the nat- 

 ural blood pressure, and favors degenerative 

 structural changes in the organs of the body 

 generally ; that in persons of timid and nerv- 

 ous natures the fear incidental to cycling is 

 often creative of disturbance and palpitation 

 of the heart, and should be taken account 

 of ; that, in giving advice, it is often more 

 important to consider the peripheral condi- 

 tions of the circulation than the central ; 

 that venous enlargement is often rather ben- 

 efited than injured by cycling ; and that 

 straining to climb hills and meet head winds, 

 excessive fatigue, and alcoholic stimulants 

 should be avoided, and the proper number of 

 meals of light, suitably selected food should 

 not be neglected. 



NOTES. 



The leaves of pine and fir trees are in- 

 flammable in strong contrast with the leaves 

 of deciduous trees, which can not be made 

 to burn at all while green because of the 

 pitch they contain, which consists of fats 

 and ethereal oils, and compared with which 

 the proportion of water is small. When the 

 leaves burn, the water is at once converted 

 into steam, and causes the explosions, snap- 

 ping, and spitting of fire for which burning 

 coniferous trees are remarkable. Dry fir 

 leaves, although they burn very rapidly, do 

 not exhibit these explosions, because there 

 is no water in them. The rending of tree 

 trunks struck by lightning is in like manner 

 supposed to be caused by the steam evolved 

 from the sap suddenly heated by the electric 

 force. 



M. Saccado, a botanist of some fame, 

 computes the number of known species of 

 plants to be lYS^OO, including 105,251 

 phanerogams, 2,819 ferns, 565 other vascular 

 cryptogams, 4,609 mosses, 3,041 liverworts, 

 5,600 lichens, 39,603 fungi, and 12,178 alga? ; 

 and he guesses that the whole number of 



fungi is perhaps as much as 250,000, and 

 that of other plants 135,000. It is proper 

 to observe that the author is a specialist in 

 fungi, and is therefore perhaps predisposed 

 to make a liberal estimate of their number. 



The International Meteorological Commit- 

 tee, at its recent meeting in Upsala, Sweden, 

 decided upon the publication of a cloud atlas, 

 to be in English, French, and German. 



The educational conference of a week, 

 held last summer at the Summer School of 

 Applied Ethics, Plymouth, Mass., was so suc- 

 cessful that it has been decided to transform 

 it into a department of the school. The spe- 

 cial direction of the department has been as- 

 signed to a committee of three experienced 

 teachers, and the sessions will begin near 

 the end of July and close about August 12th. 

 This new department does not enter into 

 competition directly with existing summer 

 schools, for the aim is neither to give instruc- 

 tion in the school subjects nor in the theory, 

 history, and art of education, but to consider 

 education as a social force and its relation to 

 other social forces. 



The Deseret professorship of geology in 

 the University of Utah has been endowed, as 

 we learn in a note from Dr. James E. Tal- 

 mage, the incumbent of it, with sixty thou- 

 sand dollars by the liberality of the Salt 

 Lake Literary and Scientific Association 

 not by the city, as was stated in a recent note 

 in the Monthly. The Literary and Scientific 

 Association is a body incorporated for scien- 

 tific pursuits which has existed for several 

 years in Salt Lake City. 



Recent dispatches from Europe state 

 that argon, the newly discovered element in 

 the air, has been found by Prof. Ramsay in 

 combination in a mineral containing the ex- 

 tremely rare elements yttrium and erbium ; 

 associated with it was another gas which 

 under Prof. Crookes's spectroscope gave a 

 spectrum identical with that of the hypothet- 

 ical element helium, which has been found 

 in the spectrum of the sun and of the aurora 

 borealis, but, till this time, nowhere else. M. 

 Berthelot has, by means of the electric 

 spark, effected a combination of argon with 

 benzene. 



A new weed has become common and 

 abundant through a large part of the cen- 

 tral Southwestern States. It is described by 

 J. C. Arthur, of Purdue University Agri- 

 cultural Experiment Station, under the name 

 of Lactuca scariola wild or prickly lettuce 

 as an annual, related to the garden lettuce, 

 but bearing prickles on parts of the leaf aud 

 stem, and blossoming in July and August. 

 It has all the qualities needed to insure its 

 survival producing many seeds, feathered 

 for wind-carriage and ready to grow, sprout- 

 ing abundantly when cut, and tenacious in 

 its root hold. It is of curious botanical in- 

 terest as having, like the silphium or com- 



