THE MIcroscopr. 330 
until the rapid motions of the rotifer were stopped. This did not 
prevent them from keeping up their ciliary action, and the liquid 
remained sufficiently transparent to make observation quite easy. 
The quantity of the syrup to be added should depend upon the 
size of the cell. His plan is merely to mix loaf sugar and water 
until a syrup is produced about as thick as treacle, and then to 
add this drop by drop to the water in the cell until the rotifer is 
fairly fixed. The syrup simply quiets the animals without kill- 
ing them, and their freedom of action could be afterwards re- 
stored by the addition of more water. 
For the same purpose Dr. Hudson recommends a weak solu- 
tion of salicylic acid, in which the rotifers would swim and live 
for about six hours when they would slowly die and be pre- 
served by the acid. 
Do nor WASTE ALCOHOL.—The alcohol used in washing sec- 
tions, and many other operations, should not be thrown away, 
but placed in a bottle labeled “old alcohol,” and used in the alco- 
hol lamp, for washing balsam off of slides, hardening animal 
specimens, and numerous other purposes which will suggest 
themselves.—Prof. H. M. Whelpley. 
NEW PUBLICATIONS. 
THE PiEasuRES OF Lire, Part I1.—By Sir John Lubbock, 
Bart.—The Humboldt Publishing Co , New York. Cr. 8vo., pp. 58. 
Cheered by the thirteen editions through which Part I. of “The 
Pleasures of Life” has passed, and by the gratifying notices re- 
ceived from friends and critics, the author has prepared this 
second volume on subjects similar to those in the first, treated 
in asimilar manner. This, like the first part, consists of many 
quotations linked together by comment and criticism and sug- 
gestive hints, the whole forming a kind of ethical common-place- 
book with the opinions of the compiler acting the part of a cord 
to bind together the clippings. It seems to have been prepared 
upon the principle of the childish game in which one sentence 
suggests the next until the last player in the line finds his re- 
marks so remote from the starting point that to retrace its ad- 
vance would be impossible. When the book was in the process 
of formation an interesting, pretty or poetical quotation appears 
to have suggested an idea to the compiler, this has brought up 
