NOTES. 



43 



and glaucous underneath." The white or 

 silver maple is also named as a tree pro- 

 ducing effects nearly similar. 



NOTES. 



Professor Angelo Heilprin has de- 

 scribed, in the Academy of Natural Sciences 

 of Philadelphia, a species of cat-fish from 

 Lake Okeechobee, Florida, which differs in 

 several well-marked characters from other 

 described North American species. It is 

 most nearly related to the cat-fish of the 

 lakes, and greatly resembles it. The largest 

 specimen caught was about twenty inches 

 long. The name Iclnlurus Okeechobensis is 

 proposed for it. 



Dr. Daniel Wilson, of University Col- 

 lege, Toronto, said in a paper read before 

 the Royal Society of Canada, that he had 

 concluded, after long research and discus- 

 sion, that left-handedness is due to an ex- 

 ceptional development of the right hemi- 

 sphere of the brain. Being left-handed him- 

 self, he hopes that when he is dead his own 

 biain may be examined for the help it may 

 give in settling this question. 



Mr. J. II. Kerry Nichols, who is well 

 acquainted with the ground, supposes that 

 the volcanic outbreak of June, 1886, in New 

 Zealand, was caused by the subsidence of 

 the crust and the sinter accumulated upon it 

 into the vast caverns which had been exca- 

 vated beneath by the solvent action of the 

 water that brought the deposits to the top. 

 The whole being in a superheated condition 

 and favorable to strong chemical action, a 

 vast explosion was the immediate result. 



Dr. Klein recently exhibited to the Roy- 

 al Society under the microscope, in illustra- 

 tion of a paper on the etiology of scarlet 

 fever, gelatine cultivations of the Micrococ- 

 cus scarlatina, an organism which has been 

 proved to be present in a certain disease of 

 the cow and in human scarlatina. 



The programme of the coming exposition 

 at Ekaterinburg, Russia, promises a very 

 interesting representation of the produc- 

 tions and life of Siberia and the Ural. We 

 are informed that the best time to visit the 

 exhibition will be during July and the first 

 half of August. A special committee will 

 attend at the railway-station to receive vis- 

 itors and give them such information as will 

 make their expenses as light as possible. 



Mr. W. A. Carter, in a recent lecture on 

 " Marine and Fresh-Water Fishes," said that 

 fish have the power of influencing one an- 

 other by sounds and action. He had ob- 

 served a shoal of carp following the lead 

 of a single one which conducted them to a 



quantity of food at a considerable distance 

 away. He had also n oticed that certain fresh- 

 water fish, such as trout, were subservient 

 to a ruler, which might be seen swimming 

 at, the head of his tribe. The same was 

 possibly the case with some marine forms, 

 like the herring and bass. 



A new and complete edition of the works 

 of Galileo is to be published, in twenty quar- 

 to volumes of five hundred pages each, at 

 the expense of the Italian Government. 



The sectional presidents of the Manches- 

 ter meeting of the British Association, to 

 be held August 31st, will be: Section A, 

 Mathematics and Physics, Sir Robert S. 

 Ball ; B, Chemistry, Dr. Edward Schunk ; 

 C, Geology, Dr. Henry Woodward ; D, Bi- 

 ology, Professor A. Newton ; E, Geography, 

 General Sir Charles Warren ; F, Economic 

 Science, Dr. Robert Giffen ; G, Chemical 

 Science, Professor Osborne Reynolds. The 

 President of the Anthropological Section 

 has not been designated. Professor H. B. 

 Dixon will deliver a public lecture on " The 

 Rate of Explosions in Gases." The lect- 

 ure to the working-classes will be given by 

 Professor George Forbes. 



The stories, once so current, that seeds 

 taken from ancient Egyptian tombs have 

 grown, are believed, if not demonstrably 

 false, to lack the guarantees of truth that 

 tales of the kind should require ; and noth- 

 ing as to the vitality of seeds can be built 

 upon them. But Dr. Lindley tells of rasp- 

 berries that were raised in the gardens of 

 the Horticultural Society from seed taken 

 from the stomach of a man who was buried 

 in a barrow near the time of the Empe- 

 ror Hadrian ; and Professor Duchartre and 

 others tell of seeds, whose identity is prop- 

 erly vouched for, taken from under the 

 foundations of an old house in Paris, prob- 

 ably from the original soil of the island, 

 and therefore coeval with the city, which 

 germinated and proved to be seeds of Juncus 

 bufonius, an indigenous plant of that soil. 



In dealing with a cellar in springy ground, 

 the first thing to be done to make it dry, 

 says " The Sanitary Engineer," is to pro- 

 vide some chance for the water to run away 

 before getting into the cellar. This may be 

 done by laying a two-inch tile drain-pipe in 

 a trench dug all around the foundation out- 

 side of the walls, and from one foot to two 

 feet below the cellar floor. Put this pipe 

 together without mortar, and cover it with 

 cobble-stones to keep out the dirt and sand. 

 If it is not practicable to lay the drain out- 

 side, it may be laid inside of the cellar-walls, 

 directly in the cellar-floor ; but the opera- 

 tion of such a drain is less efficient. The 

 back-filling of the cellar-walls should be 

 porous enough to allow the water to go di- 

 rectly into the drain. 



