NOTES. 



575 



boniferous and flourished most in the Ter- 

 tiary. Dicotyledons began in the Lower 

 Jurassic, and ai'e enjoying their maximum 

 in the present age. The earliest appearance 

 of them is in the Urogonian of Kome, 

 Greenland. 



NOTES. 



The Italian Alpine Club is laboring to 

 reafPorest the mountains of the peninsula, 

 and is having a measurable degree of suc- 

 cess. In 1882 it had made plantations of 

 greater or less extent, which were thriving, 

 on the Piano del Re, near the sources of the 

 Po ; on Lake Como and Lugo Maggiore. 

 Plantations had been made in twenty-eight 

 communes by twenty-one private persons, 

 one of whom alone had set out 15,000 trees. 

 Large plantations were laid out near Son- 

 drio to resist the ravages of the wild mount- 

 ain brooks. In the Apennines, Professor 

 Magni, rector of the University at Bologna, 

 had planted out 50,000 fir-trees near Speda- 

 letto. These are only beginnings. The club 

 is supported in its work by the people of 

 the north, but the people in the southern 

 part of the peninsula oppose it. 



M. DE Lacerda has presented to the 

 French Academy through M. de Quatrefages 

 a paper relative to an organism — a fungoid 

 — which he has found abundantly in the 

 organs of persons who have died from yel- 

 low fever, and which his experiments have 

 led him to regard as the active agent in the 

 production of that disease. He fortifies his 

 opinion by showing that several peculiarities 

 of coloration displayed by this plant during 

 its growth agree exactly in appearance with 

 the vomited matters and with the color of 

 the liver and the skin. lie proposes to 

 make experiments in cultivating the organ- 

 ism and in inoculations with it. 



MM. Henry, of the Paris Observatory, 

 have discovered two narrow and parallel 

 bands on Uranus located in a symmetrical 

 relation to the center of the planet's disk. 

 Between them is a bright zone probably 

 corresponding with the equatorial region. 

 The poles arc comparatively dark, but the 

 southern pole is lighter than the northern 

 arc. M. Perrotin, of Nice, has been able 

 with his equatorial to follow at intervals 

 the movement of a spot on the planet, and 

 has deduced from it a period of rotation of 

 about ten hours. This agrees well with M. 

 Flammarion's theoretical computation of the 

 period of rotation of Uranus. 



Professor Leidy recently called the at- 

 tention of the Academy of Natural Sciences 

 of Philadelphia to the evidence of the pres- 

 ence of living organisms in ice. What 



appeared to be living worms had been ob- 

 served in the sediment taken from a water- 

 cooler. Upon melting some of the ice, 

 Professor Leidy was surprised to find a 

 number of worms among some flocculent 

 sediment, consisting mainly of vegetal hairs 

 and other debris, that settled from it. Be- 

 sides the worms, there were also immature 

 Anguillulas and a number of Rotifer vulga- 

 ris, all living. It appeared that these ani- 

 mals had all been contained in the ice, and 

 had been liberated on its melting. The 

 worms belonged to the family of LurnbricidcB. 

 Dead worms and infusorians were also found. 



M. Balbiani has reported, agreeably to 

 a commission given him, to the French Min- 

 ister of Agriculture, on the best means of 

 destroying the winter eggs of the phylloxera. 

 The three methods in use were all found ob- 

 jectionable ; that of rubbing the bark of the 

 vines with steel-chain gloves, because it can 

 only be applied to the old wood ; the appli- 

 cation of boiling water, because it is likely 

 to be used carelessly ; and that of washing 

 the vines with a mixture of oil and coal-tar, 

 because the mixture was too thick in cold 

 weather to be used. M. Balbiani has tried 

 with much success a wash of oil, naphtha, 

 quicklime, and water ; and it has the ad- 

 vantage of being cheap. 



The story is published, respecting the 

 origin of balloons, that Madame Montgolfier 

 had washed her petticoat to wear to a great 

 festival on the next day, and hung it over a 

 chafing-dish to dry. The hot air, swelling 

 out the folds of the garment lifted it up, 

 and floated it. The lady was astonished and 

 called her husband's attention to the sight. 

 It did not take Montgolfier long to grasp 

 the idea of the hot-air balloon. 



Dr. Unna, of Hamburg, has introduced 

 a new medicament which he calls ichthyol. 

 It is distilled from a bituminous rock of the 

 Tyrol, the bitumen of which, it is evident 

 from the fossils, is derived from the remains 

 of marine fauna. Ichthyol differs from the 

 coal-tars in its peculiar color and physical 

 properties. It forms an emulsion in water, 

 is partially soluble in ether and in alcohol, 

 and wholly soluble in a mixture of the two 

 liquids. It is very rich in sulphur, contain- 

 ing about ten per cent of that substance, 

 and this makes it very useful in skin-dis- 

 eases ; for, while just as effective, it does 

 not irritate the skin as do other prepara- 

 tions of sulphur. It also contains oxygen, 

 carbon, hydrogen, and traces of phosphorus. 



M. Perrotin, director of the observatory 

 at Nice, France, has been enabled by a 

 happy accident, to make an astronomical 

 observation of an earthquake. Being en- 

 gaged at the moment of the shock in an ob- 

 servation of Hyperion, he observed the Sa- 

 turnian satellite to make an oscillation of 



