1896. NOTES AND COMMENTS. 229 



have suffered, and almost equally, from a lack of opportunity to study 

 nature alive."' 



We have before us vol. iv. of the Bulletin issued by the State 

 Laboratory. It is largely occupied by a first paper on the Ento- 

 mology of the Illinois River and adjacent waters, by C. A. Hart. 

 This consists of the notes, provisional classifications, and drawings of 

 a working naturalist. There are many facts useful to the expert, but 

 the paper must be looked upon as an instalment of a piece of work 

 which is still tentative and exploratory. Mr. Hart seems to go about 

 his business in a sensible way; he is quietly gaining knowledge; he is 

 really studying five animals, and not merely cataloguing alcoholic 

 specimens. Of course, the best part of his work is still in the future. 

 We trust that he will gain experience without losing breadth, and 

 that he will not fall into any of the mechanical ways of working 

 which are deadly to scientific inquiry. Ten years of such work 

 would furnish materials for a treatise of the greatest possible value to 

 natural history. We look forward with high hopes to the future of 

 this important enterprise. 



America is taking the lead in State-encouragement of natural 

 history. Her entomologists and agriculturists are collecting informa- 

 tion and prosecuting experiments with unprecedented activity. It is 

 instructive to note that public money is liberally provided, and that 

 the money comes back in the form of devastation averted from 

 valuable crops. The encouragement of agricultural, and especially of 

 entomological, research by the United States is an object-lesson to 

 the whole world. 



The Coelomic Fluid of the Earthworm. 

 In a recent issue of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal 

 Society of London (vol. clxxxv., pp. 383-399), Dr. Lim Boon Keng 

 has published the results of an interesting investigation he has made 

 into the nature of the fluid occupying the body-cavity of the earth- 

 worm. The large cavity in the "earthworm between the alimentary 

 canal and the outer body-wall, and communicating with the exterior 

 by the nephridial tubules and by a small dorsal pore in each segment^ 

 is filled with a milky alkaline fluid containing albuminous and saline 

 substances in solution, and numerous amceboid corpuscles. Large 

 numbers of bacteria, some protozoa, and little nematode worms are 

 familiar inhabitants of the coelomic fluid. Many of the bacteria are 

 apparently harmless. Pure cultures of one set of them had the 

 characteristic smell of earthworms, and Dr. Lim Boon Keng suggests 

 that these, at least, may be symbiotic bacteria. The amceboid cells 

 were not usually found attacking the bacteria, but when anthrax 

 bacilli were injected into the coelome, the cells at once set about 

 destroying them. When attacking a large parasite, numbers of cells 

 combined to form a huge plasmodium, within which the parasite was 

 1 Biennial Report, Illinois State Laboratory, 1894. 



