1826.] Scientific Notices — Miscellaneous. 46& 



and Sappan, presents also a species, the leaves of which are 

 almost as sensible to the touch as the sensitive plants at Ma- 

 labar ; it is the C(Esalpinia mimosoides, Lamarck. — (Journ. de 

 Pharra.) 



5. On the Poisoning of Plants. 



Plants are liable to lose, as Carradori has seen, by distilled 

 oleander water, their power of contraction; thus this water, or, 

 even better, the volatile oil of oleander, extinguishes all the power 

 of contraction of the capsule of momoidica eiaterium, and of bal- 

 samina impatiens. Mr. Marcet, of Geneva, having soaked sensi- 

 tive and other plants in an aqueous solution of opium, remarked 

 that it also extinguished the action of vegetable hfe. Thence 

 Carradori concludes, that plants have contractable muscular 

 fibres. Mr. Marcet has thought that vegetables also possess 

 something analogous to a nervous system, since the first of these 

 poisons acts on contraction, the second on the sensibility in 

 animals. — (Journ. de Pharm.) 



6. Distribution of Land and Water. 



From the unequal distribution of the continents and seas, the 

 southern hemisphere has long been represented as eminently 

 aquatic ; but the same inequaUty makes ils appearance, when 

 we consider the globe divided, not in the direction of the equa- 

 tor, but in that of the meridians. The great masses of land are 

 collected between the meridians of 10° to the west, and 150° to 

 the east of Paris ; while the peculiarly aquatic hemisphere com- 

 mences to the westward with the meridian of the coasts of 

 Greenland, and terminates to the east with the meridian of the 

 eastern shores of New Holland and the Kurile Isles. This 

 unequal distribution of the land and water exercises the greatest 

 influence upon the distribution of heat at the surface of the globe, 

 upon the inflexions of the isothermal lines, and upon the pheno- 

 mena of climate in general. With reference to the inhabitants 

 of the centre of Europe, the aquatic hemisphere may be called 

 western, and the terrestrial hemisphere eastern; because in pro- 

 ceeding westward, we come sooner to the former than to the 

 latter. Until the end of the 15th century, the western hemisphere 

 was as little known to the inhabitants of the eastern hemisphere 

 as one-half of the lunar globe is at present, and probably will 

 always remain to us. Hiimboldc. — (Edin. Phil. Jour.) 



7. Corrigenda. 



M. Del Rio has had the goodness to point out one or two 

 errors in the translation of his paper, " On the Analysis of an 

 Alloy of Gold and Rhodium, i'rom the Parting House at 

 Mexico,* which we are anxious to correct. For " from the 



• Annals, yol, x. New Series, October, 1825. 



