1894. NOTES AND COMMENTS. 415 



a beetle, there a caterpillar crawling." To the second type belong 

 the striking productions of the modern impressionists ; to many 

 these appear chaotic daubs ; an increasing number of people 

 believe that the impressionists alone have the secret of producing by 

 their canvases the same impressions that Nature produces. The 

 third type, which is that most astonishing to the Western mind, 

 consists of the strange Art of China and Japan, an Art so incongruous 

 with our ideals that, at the first seeing, we hold it a fantastic per- 

 version of the real. Yet these yellow artists would say " lying prone 

 on the ground we draw things as we see them, and the lines and 

 marks of our patient brushes show our brothers what we have 

 seen." 



Leaving aside all questions of art and technique, it is plain that 

 the same things appear in different ways to different men, and to 

 different races of men. Some of these differences may depend upon 

 difference in structure of the optical apparatus, and so may have a 

 physical explanation ; many of them seem more likely to depend 

 upon differences in mind or brain, and are matters for the psycho- 

 logist. 



Physiological Apparatus for Plants. 



Workers in plant-physiology will find a description of several 

 new and useful pieces of apparatus in a recent number of the 

 " Minnesota Botanical Studies " (Bulletin no. 9, part iv.), a publication 

 of the Geological and Natural History Survey of Minnesota. The 

 first, devised by A. P. Anderson, is a balance with a self-registering 

 mechanism for recording the rate of transpiration and its periodicity 

 (if any) during a certain time. It consists of a balance, one arm of 

 the beam of which is lowered by the increase in weight of a calcium 

 chloride absorber. The lowering of the arm closes a circuit, and an 

 electro-magnetic mechanism releases a weight which falls into the 

 scale-pan attached to the other arm. The scale is thus balanced 

 automatically after an increase equal to the weight used has taken 

 place. At the instant the weight is released it is recorded on the 

 registering cylinder of a recorder. The whole is enclosed in a case, 

 for protection from falling moisture. 



A new electrical auxanometer and a continuous recorder are 

 described by W. D. Frost. The former was devised for such delicate 

 measurements as of growth in thickness of stems and fruits, but is 

 equally efficient in measuring growth in length, while its extreme 

 lightness and delicacy make it especially useful in measuring the 

 growth of small plants. The frame-work of it is made of aluminium, 

 and the whole instrument weighs fifteen grams. For measuring 

 growth in thickness it may be attached to the plant, increase in size 

 of which unwinds a thread from a pulley, while the turning of the 

 latter, by means of a ratchet-wheel, alternately opens and closes 

 an electric current. The recorder and the auxanometer may be 



