PROGRESS OF MICROSCOPICAL SCIENCE. 297 
Dr. Young, Dr. Hodgkin, and Mr. Lister, maintained that there is no 
nucleus. But the subsequent researches of Mr. Gulliver had proved 
that the disputants on both sides were, as in the fable of the chame- 
leon, both right and wrong; for the regular blood-disks of mammals 
are destitute of a nucleus, while those of the lower vertebrates are 
regularly nucleated. And hence his two great divisions of vertebrates 
—Apyrenemata and Pyrenemata. 
The Blyborough Tick.—At the above Society, referring to the plates 
and engravings of this tick, lately published with descriptions in the 
‘Journal of the Quekett Microscopical Club,’ and in ‘ Science-Gossip,’ 
it was stated that specimens received from Blyborough had been for- 
warded from Canterbury to Oxford, and declared at that University to 
be identical with a species described and named Argas pipistrelle, by 
Professor Westwood, in the ‘ Proceedings of the Entomological Society 
of London,’ for the year 1872. 
The Microscopical Active Principle of the Cobra Poison.—An inter- 
esting paper in which the chemistry of cobra poison is exhaustively 
dealt with, appeared lately in a paper termed the ‘ Analyst, from the 
editor of which we have obtained the blocks used to print the figures 
over leaf. These representations are figures magnified 250 diameters 
of cobric acid, of which the following account is taken from an essay by 
Mr. W. Blyth, M.R.C.S., that appeared in the ‘ Analyst’:—“On the 
1st of January of this year, I succeeded in obtaining a crystalline, acid, 
extremely poisonous substance, which appears to be contained in the 
venom to the extent of 10 per cent.; this substance, there is every 
reason to believe, is the sole and only active principle. It may be 
obtained by coagulating the albumen with alcohol, filtering, driving 
off the alcohol at a gentle heat, concentrating the liquid to a small 
bulk, precipitating with basic acetate of lead, collecting the precipi- 
tate, washing it, and subsequently decomposing it in the usual way by 
SH.,, removing the sulphide of lead, evaporating to a small bulk at 
a gentle heat, and finishing the evaporation spontaneously or in a 
vacuum, or it may~be obtained by coagulating and separating the 
albumen as before, shaking up in a tube with ether, removing the 
ether in the usual way, evaporating the ether off, redissolving in 
water and passing through a wet filter to separate fat, and evaporating 
as-before; in either case the result is microscopic needles, dissolving 
in water with an acid reaction and possessing highly poisonous pro- 
perties; they appear to be identical with the needles obtained by 
sublimation. 
“For this substance I provisionally propose the name of cobric acid. 
I have not been able to go as yet any farther in the investigation of 
this interesting substance, for the simple reason that my two very 
small supplies are now exhausted, and I must wait for a third packet, 
but it will not be uninteresting to pause for a moment to consider 
what a terribly active substance this cobric acid must be, for sup- 
posing Nicholson’s data are correct, and that the whole of the average 
quantity of the venom (that is 6 grains, containing 2 grains of solids) 
