PKOGKESS OF MICROSCOPICAL SCIENCE. 127 



Is Guano Bird-dung or Infusorial Deposits. — Tliis question has 

 recently attracted a good deal of attention from several naturalists, 

 especially from Professor A. M. Edwards, of the Lyceum of Natural 

 History of New York. Professor Edwards says, that in California 

 there is a deposit of " Infusoria " improperly so-called, accompanied 

 by bitumen, which bitumen the gentlemen of the State Survey believe 

 has been derived from those '• Infusoria," and that contiguous thereto 

 we have guano deposits. At Payta, in Peru, Dr. C. F. Winslow dis- 

 covered an " Infusorial " deposit, almost identical in character with 

 the Californian one : near by are bitumen springs, and lying off the 

 coast are the guano islands of Lobos, Chincha, Guanape, and others. 

 AtNatanai, Japan, we have extensive " Infusorial" strata and bitumen; 

 it is not recorded whether guano occurs in that quarter. In the island 

 of Barbadoes we have " Infusorial " strata, bitumen, and near by the 

 guano islands of the Caribbean Sea ; and he is informed guano is 

 abundant on the small islands and rocks nearly throughout the West 

 Indian Archipelago. In the island of Trinidad we have " Infusorial " 

 strata and bitumen, and of course adjacent guano. At all of these 

 localities volcanic action is evident, but we have some localities of 

 guano without " Infusorial " strata or bitumen as yet recorded, while 

 we have the celebrated " Infusorial " strata of Virginia, which by a 

 little stretch of the imagination may be supj)osed to be related in 

 some way to the petroleum of West Virginia and Pennsylvania. In 

 Algeria we have " Infusorial " strata and bitumen, but he never heard 

 of guano having been found near by. However, now that attention is 

 called to this fact, it is to be hoiked that more careful observations 

 will be made connected with the subject, and he hereby calls on all 

 sciencists and travellers to do all they can to assist in the elucidation 

 of this interesting and important matter. From all of these facts, and 

 others that he has collected of no less imj^ortance, derived from 

 chemical and microscopical characters, he has come to the conclusion 

 that guano is not the excreta of birds deposited upon the islands and 

 mainland after its upheaval, but that it is the result of the accumu- 

 lation of the bodies of animals and plants, for the most part minute 

 and belonging to the group which Haeckel has included in a new 

 kingdom, separate from the animal as well as the vegetable, imder 

 the name of Protista, and subsequently upheaved from the bottom of 

 the ocean. Subsequent chemical changes have transformed it into 

 guano, or heat and pressure have so acted upon it that the organic 

 matter has been transformed into bitumen, while the mineral con- 

 stituents are preserved in the beautiful atomies that make up the 

 mass of the extensive " Infusorial" strata found in various parts of 

 the world. 



The Natural History of the Passifloracece. — Dr. Maxwell T. Masters, 

 F.E.S., who is now almost our only British physiological botanist, has 

 given the world a most valuable essay * upon the whole group of Passi- 

 floracese. In this he has devoted a special portion to the subject of the 

 minute anatomy of the group, which is of great interest. Dr. Masters 

 has not followed it out as closely as he might have done, but still his 

 * 4to, ami tw(. plates. 



