316 ANNUAL RECORD OF SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY. 



acid. This question has been the subject of much discus- 

 sion between rival experimenters. According to Professor 

 Wurtz, when lactic acid is met with in the stomach it is the 

 result of an impaired digestion. 2 A, February 26, 1875, 154. 



RESEARCHES ON THE SECRETION OF HONEY. 



Dr. Reichenau has been engaged in an inquiry as to whether 

 honey and other industrial products of the bees are obtained 

 directly from the food of the insects, or are products elab- 

 orated by the organism. He has not completed his research ; 

 but as of three albuminoid, nitrogenous substances found in 

 the honey, one, coagulable by heat, does not occur in the 

 juice of the flowers, he infers that it is a true secretion by 

 the bee, which becomes mixed with the nectar. Honey 

 is, therefore, strictly a nitrogenous body, and not simply a 

 carbo-hydrate. In purified beeswax nitrogen was found to 

 the extent of 0.597 per cent. 15 A, February 6, 1875, 196. 



ELECTRIC CURRENTS AND THE FERTILIZED EGGS OF FROGS. 



M. Onimus, in a communication to the Biological Society 

 of Paris, has made known the results of experiments on the 

 effect of the opposite poles of the electric current in the ger- 

 mination of the fertilized eggs of the frog, from which it ap- 

 pears that those which were placed on the side of the nega- 

 tive pole are developed more speedily than those by the side 

 of the positive pole. He also found that, by the use of elec- 

 trodes other than platinum, metallic salts were deposited in 

 the eggs. 



LEUCITIIINE AND CEREBRINE. 



Gobley has published an account of a renewed examina- 

 tion of two bodies named leucithine and cerebrine, found to- 

 gether in the yolk of egg and in brain substance, leucithine 

 being subsequently detected in human venous blood, eggs, 

 milt of carp, and in milk. It appears that the substance ob- 

 tained by Liebreich, of Berlin, in brain matter, containing 

 phosphorus and nitrogen, and to which he gave the name of 

 protagon, is really composed of these two substances ; while 

 the organic base found by treatment of this brain matter, 

 and called by him neurine, is simply the product of the de- 

 composition of leucithine, which when separated is a homo- 



