36 



ANGLICAN CHURCHES. 



ANIMAL-PLANTS, ETC. 



capital sum ot upward of 7,000,000, the in- 

 terest of which forms the yearly endowment 

 of the Church. The General Synod of the 

 Irish Episcopal Church met at Dublin on April 

 22d. The most important discussions referred 

 to the condition and relations of the Divin- 

 ity School of Trinity College. The friends 

 of the College moved for a declaration of the 

 Synod that it is not advisable that it should 

 cease to teach theology to the members of the 

 Church of Ireland, or that its control should 

 pass out of the hands of the provost and fel- 

 lows. The Bishop of Meath moved a resolu- 

 tion expressing the desire of the Synod that 

 the bill introduced by Lord Belmore for the 

 future management of the Divinity School 

 might speedily become a law, so that the due 

 maintenance and government of the school in 

 accordance with the recommendations of the 

 late University Commission might be secured. 

 The mover stated that the disposition of this 

 question was the last special difficulty arising 

 out of disestablishment. Lord Belmore ex- 

 plained his bill, which, he contended, did not 

 contemplate any practical separation of the 

 school from the University. The archbishops 

 and bishops were requested by the Synod to 

 confer with the Board of Trinity College, with 

 a view to promote an arrangement with the 

 authorities of the University and the Synod. 

 The Senate of the University having at its meet- 

 ing on the 1st of May refused to approve the 

 bill, and having adopted a motion to the effect 

 that means could be found by which the con- 

 nection of the Divinity School and the College 

 can be maintained, and the welfare of the 

 school, under the conditions as altered by re- 

 cent legislation, can be better provided for 

 than under its provisions, the Synod, on the 

 2d, referred the whole subject with the bill 

 back to the archbishops and bishops, request- 

 ing them to summon the Synod again if an 

 agreement of terms should be reached. It was 

 always to be understood that the connection 

 between the Divinity School and the College 

 should be as close as possible. Petitions were 

 presented against a screen which had been 

 erected in the cathedral. A proposition to 

 remove the screen was rejected, but leave was 

 given to introduce a bill declaring that in future 

 it should not be lawful to erect any screen or 

 partition separating the officiating clergy from 

 the congregation. This was lost through a 

 failure to secure the approval of the clergy, 

 the vote in the two houses standing clergy, 

 yeas 73, nays 78; laity, yeas 130, nays 29. A 

 scheme was approved for establishing such a 

 permanent training school for teachers in con- 

 nection with the Church as may be entitled to 

 receive support from the state. A special 

 meeting of the Synod was held in June to con- 

 sider the questions relating to the Divinity 

 School of Trinity College, when resolutions 

 were adopted asserting the right of the bishops 

 to nominate the professors and lecturers in the 

 school. 



ANIMAL-PLANTS AND PLANT-ANI- 

 MALS. The singular behavior of the sundew 

 (Drosera) and other plants of its class in prey- 

 ing upon insects, and the fact that the victims 

 of these carnivorous plants, which possess va- 

 rious and complex arrangements for attract- 

 ing and securing their prey, are decomposed 

 by a fluid which corresponds in its nature and 

 action to the gastric juice of animals, and are 

 taken into the system of the plants, awakened 

 the wonder of the scientific world a few years 

 ago, when the discovery was made and pub- 

 lished by Charles Darwin. The fact that the 

 nitrogenous matter thus consumed actually 

 formed a part of the nutriment of this group 

 of plants still remained to be proved until the 

 recent experiments of F. Darwin established it 

 beyond question: he took a large number of 

 sundew plants and supplied half of them with 

 nitrogenous food in the form of roast beef ; of 

 the fed plants, 69 per cent, more survived 

 than of the unfed ; their stems weighed 41 

 per cent, more ; they excelled the starved 

 plants in the number of their seeds by 141 

 per cent., and in the aggregate weight of their 

 seeds by 279 per cent. Equally confirmatory 

 results were reached in Germany by Keller- 

 mann, Reiss, and Von Raumer, who fed the 

 plants with aphides. 



Another approach to the animal kingdom in 

 the physiology of plants has been noticed by 

 "Weyl, and more lately investigated by Sid- 

 ney Vines in a micro-chemical examination of 

 the aleurone grains in the seeds of the blue lu- 

 pine (Lupinus varius). These are grains of a 

 soluble or partly soluble proteinaceous sub- 

 stance which are found in the endosperm or 

 the cotyledon of the seeds of numerous plants, 

 and contain the stores of proteid food. The 

 analysis of Vines revealed the presence of two 

 proteids belonging to the globuline group, 

 which have never before been found except 

 in animals : these were myosine, which occurs 

 in dead muscular tissue, and vitelline, which is 

 found in the yolk of eggs. An extract of the 

 seeds also contained a proteid which possesses 

 all the properties of peptone, and resembles 

 very closely the hemi-albuminose of Kuhne, 

 or a peptone of Meissner. The peptones, 

 formed by the action of the gastric or pancre- 

 atic fluids on proteids in the digestive organs 

 of animals, are classed by Meissner as the #, 

 5, and c peptones, representing three different 

 stages of decomposition in the digestive pro- 

 cess. The presence of these products, which 

 were supposed to be confined to the physio- 

 logical economy of animals, has been detected 

 not only in the higher flowering plants, but is 

 established by recent researches of Professor 

 Nageli in one of the lowest of the protophytes 

 the yeast-plant. Nageli finds by his analy- 

 sis of the cells of this fungus that, besides the 

 albuminoids, of which the cells are mainly 

 composed, they contain about two per cent, of 

 peptones, and that these exist in all three of 

 the modifications distinguished by Meissner. 



