i6 4 NOTES AND COMMENTS [September 



phases no longer overlap and thus present two well-marked periods of 

 sexual maturity, one male and the other female (M. pulvinar)." This 

 Mr. Wheeler regards as a simpler and more satisfactory " explanation " 

 (or rather description) of the sexual peculiarities of Myzostoma than 

 has been offered by Beard or any other author. He proceeds to 

 criticise Beard's critique, and ends up by expressing the hope that 

 " every fair-minded zoologist will be convinced that the complemental 

 male of M. glabrum is one of those tenuous and fanciful creations for 

 which one could have wished that euthanasia, that silent death so 

 becoming to pet speculation when they have ceased to afford either 

 amusement to their originator or edification to their readers." The 

 temperature of Chicago is high ! 



Life High and Low. 



A sumptuous French translation has been published of an essay by 

 Prof. A. L. Herrera and Dr. D. Vergara Lope, on life on the high 

 plateaux l — an essay which gained honourable mention and a silver 

 medal in the competition for the Hodgkins prize of the Smithsonian 

 Institute in 1895. After a general discussion of plateaux, the authors 

 consider the vertical distribution of plants and the adaptations exhibited 

 by those living at high altitudes. They then pass to the vertebrate 

 animals composing the plateaux-fauna, and show that here also special 

 adaptations may be detected, especially perhaps in the function of 

 respiration. Man's life on the heights is then considered, and many 

 facts are cited and suggestions offered as to the therapeutic value of 

 a residence on the plateaux. The work is laboriously erudite and 

 carefully planned, and will be a welcome addition to the consulting 

 library of biologist and physician alike. Against the old theory that 

 life at high altitudes is too difficult both for man and beast to be 

 healthful, and that it brings about degeneration of body and mind, 

 the authors argue most strenuously. Their central thesis is that plants, 

 animals, and man may become acclimatised to high altitudes, and 

 live a life of full vigour " obeying the eternally true law : Semper 

 ascendens." 



It is a far cry from the Mexican plateaux to thirty fathoms below 

 the Eddystone lighthouse, but the naturalists' problem is the same : 

 how are the organisms adapted to the peculiarities of their environ- 

 ment ? Mr. E. J. Allen, director of the Plymouth Laboratory, has 

 been investigating for some years the distribution of the fauna on the 

 sea-bottom along the thirty-fathom line from the Eddystone Grounds 

 to Start Point, with the particular object of ascertaining and, where 

 possible, explaining the changes which take place in the animal 



1 " La vie sur les hauts plateaux," pp. 790, 18 tables, numerous plates. Mexico, 1899. 



