1897J MICROSCOPICAL JOURNAL. 31 



MICROSCOPICAL NOTES. 



Murder. — At a small town near Pittsburg-, Alex. Killen 

 was charg-ed with robbing- and murdering- a woman who 

 had owned a jewelry store. The culprit had broken a 

 window and scraped the jewelry into a yellow satchel. In 

 the haste some g-lass was included. 



After Killen's arrest, such a satchel was found on his 

 premises and some small pieces of glass found in it. At 

 the trial, the District Attorney laid them on a sheet of 

 paper and passed them to the jury. This was not satis- 

 factory — a powerful microscope was broug-ht in and each 

 juror examined the bits of g-lass. A g-lass worker on the 

 jury was satisfied that the bits were from window g-lass 

 and not from a bottle which Killen said had been broken 

 in the satchel. The other jurors accepted his sug-g-estions 

 and convicted Killen of Murder in the first deg-ree — cir- 

 cumstantial evidence adduced by the use of a microscope. 



Distribution of Fungi by Snails and Toads. — Vog-lino 

 communicates a sug-g-estive paper to the Nuovo Giornale Bot. 

 Ital. (1895, 181), in which he demonstrates that certain 

 fung-i ( Ag-ariciniee) are distributed by snails and toads. 

 An examination of the stomachs of the snails and toads, 

 presence of the spores of various species of fung-i which 

 were seen to have beg-un their g-ermination, and culture 

 experiments with the excrements of various snails pro- 

 duced a larg-e number of g-erminating- spores of fung-i. 

 The same was observed on examining- the stomachs of 

 toads, in which the spores of Russula and Lactarius were 

 specially abundant. 



Honey Bee Secretes Fromic Acid. — A fact which is in- 

 teresting- and perhaps new to many, is that the honey-bee 

 after filling- a cell with honey and covering- it with the lid, 

 adds to the honey a drop of formic acid. This is done by 

 piercing- the lid with the sting- and depositing- a drop of the 

 poison from her sack. By numerous experiments it has 

 been shown that formic acid added to honey or any sug-ar 



