300 NATURAL SCIENCE. May. 



" The difficulties of these investigations on the coast of Ceylon 

 are very great. We have no tide, and specimens are only to be found 

 on isolated reefs of limited area, situated at great distances apart ; 

 these are only accessible for three or four months out of the year, 

 and at the best of times they afford but little variety. I trust that 

 other naturalists will take this subject up. The method is extremely 

 cheap, simple and effective, and I am sure that with those oppor- 

 tunities which are denied to me a certain and simple process of fixing 

 the more difficult will be easily found." 



We echo this wish. And we cannot conclude without congratu- 

 lating the Colombo Museum on having a Director who not only does 

 such excellent curatorial work, but whose zoological studies on the 

 fauna of Ceylon, numerous evidences of which appear in the Report 

 from which we have quoted, are so varied and so valuable. 



Preservation of Vertebrate Tissues. 



In connection with Dr. Haly's experiments, we may allude to a 

 method of preserving the tissues of Vertebrata, described not long ago 

 by Dr. Kaiserling in the Klinische Wochenschrift (Berlin). The method 

 has, it is stated, been tried with satisfactory results, the natural 

 colour of the blood and the transparency of most of the organs having, 

 so far, been maintained. The organ is first placed in a solution of 

 750 c. cm. of formalin, 1,000 c. cm. of distilled water, 10 gr. nitrate of 

 potash, 30 gr. acetate of potash, and allowed to remain for some 

 twenty-four hours ; it is then immersed for two hours in 80 per cent, 

 alcohol, for two hours in 95 per cent., and is subsequently preserved 

 in equal parts of water and glycerine, with the addition of 30 parts 

 of acetate of potash. Very delicate tissues are best kept in equal 

 quantities of glycerine and water, after the addition of absolute 

 alcohol in the proportion of one part of alcohol to ten of the mixture. 



Fever in Plants. 



Mr. H. M. Richards, who has previously studied the effect of 

 wounds on plant-respiration, now describes [Annals of Botany, xi., 29) 

 a course of experiments on the evolution of heat by wounded plants. 

 He finds that accompanying the increased rate of respiration is an 

 increase in the temperature of the parts affected. A kind of fever 

 supervenes, and as in the case of respiration, the disturbance runs a 

 definite course, and attains its maximum some twenty-four hours 

 after injury. It is interesting to note that the attempt to rally from 

 an injury is accompanied by somewhat the same symptoms, increased 

 rate of respiration and evolution of heat, in plants as in animals. 

 Owing to the nature of the case the reaction is less obvious in the 

 former than in the latter, and a delicate thermo-electric element was 

 required to appreciate the rise in temperature ; but compared with 

 the ordinary temperature of plants in relation to the surrounding 



