i ee NOTES AND COMMENTS eee 
phases no longer overlap and thus present two well-marked periods of 
sexual maturity, one male and the other female (JZ 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 JZ. 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 '—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 ery 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 «Ta vie sur les hauts plateaux,” pp. 790, 18 tables, numerous plates. Mexico, 1899. 
