92 THE AMERICAN MONTHLY [May, 



matter worthy of consideration by every citizen of Rochester. Certainly the 

 building of a railway to Hemlock lake and the making of a public pleasure 

 resort would be in the fullest sense a public calamity, and it cannot be 

 possible that the eminent citizens who have advocated such a road really 

 understand the tendencies of their project. Rochester already has abundant, 

 pleasure resorts at Lake Ontario with every facility for unlimited extension 

 in that direction, and in the interest of sound public health it is to be hoped 

 that if additional pleasure roads are required they will be built in the direc- 

 tion of Ontario rather than of Hemlock. 



Reports of recent articles. 



Snake Poison. — Dr. H. C. Yarrow, of Washington, D. C, has been ex- 

 perimenting with a view to determining the value of certain reputed antidotes 

 to serpent venom. All of them thus far in his hands have proved valueless 

 with the exception of the fluid extract of jaborandi. which seems to possess 

 antidotal powers, at least in the case of mammals, but upon fowls it appears 

 to have no such effect. He has given hvpodermically to rabbits fourfold 

 lethal doses oi crotaliis (rattlesnake) venom, and then, by the administration 

 of 35 minims of fluid extract of jaborandi, serious results were prevented. 

 The use of jaborandi as an antidote to venom poison was first suggested by 

 Dr. Tosso, of Paris, in 1SS2. He reported a case of viper bite cured with an 

 infusion of the leaves. 



The Parietal Eye in Fishes. — This is the title of a communication made 

 by Mr. J. Beard to N^atui'e. It follows up the researches of Spencer and 

 DeGraaf on the third eye in the lizard (^Hatteria punctata) . Petro7tiyzon 

 planeri^ P. mar/nus and BdellostoTtia were the species examined. The con- 

 clusive summing up is this : — ' From the start of my investigations I was fully 

 convinced that the evolution of all three eyes must be viewed from one com- 

 mon starting-point. The fact that, as Wiedersheim states, e\en in man nerve- 

 fibres have been traced from the optic tlialami to the pineal gland is sufficient 

 evidence for this, even if we did not know that all three eyes arise in connec- 

 tion with the same portion of the brain. The hypothesis is an extension of 

 that given by Wiedersheim, Carriere. Dohrn, and others, to account for the 

 evolution of the paired eves. The starting-point is a dorsal optic plate before 

 the neural folds begin to form. This gives us a dorsal eye on the so-called in- 

 vertebrate type. When the neural folds begin to form so as to evolute the 

 brain and spinal cord the optic plate was, of course, being part of the brain, 

 involved in the involution. With the progression of the latter it probably in- 

 creased in size, and extended somewhat over the lateral margins of the neural 

 folds. When the neural folds close and shut in that which forms the optic 

 vesicles, part of the optic plate was left, forming the rudiment of the parietal 

 eye. This, just as all known sense-organs tend to get involuted, got also 

 secondarily involuted, and that but slowly, so that the outside wall of the in- 

 volution had time to become a lens, an eye being just formed on the inverte- 

 brate type. The parietal eye, being closely bound up with the paired eyes, 

 got secondarily involuted with them ; and losing its primary mode of origin 

 by delay in its development, it now appears as a secondary outgrowth ot the 

 brain, in which the lens is still formed from the outer wall. The lens, more- 

 over, possibly retains traces of an involution.' 



Parasitic Fungi of Illinois, Part II, Erysipheal. — This is one of the 

 bulletins of the Illinois State Laboratory of Natural History, at Champaign, 

 by T. J. Burrill and F. S. Earle. It treats of the ' white mildews ' or ' blights,' 

 a coating on the leaves of many plants. The genei-al biology of the fungus. 



