November 



900] 



NATURE 



and is thus the less sensitive of the two instruments. An exami- 

 nation in detail of these curves shows that the temperature was 

 at its lowest about eight minutes after the middle of the eclipse, 

 and began to rise rapidly as the eclipsed portions of the sun 

 became less. The highest reading with the black bulb thermo- 

 meter before the eclipse began was 63°7, the lowest during 

 eclipse being 35^7, showing a fall of 28°. With the white bulb 

 the corresponding readings were 1 5° "6 and 3° respectively, show- 

 ing a drop of r2'°6. 



DO MEN ICO CIRILLO AND THE CHEMICAL 



ACTION OF LIGHT IN CONNECTION 



WITH VEGETABLE IRRITABILITY. 



/^NE hundred and one years ago, on October 29, 1799, 

 ^-^ Domenico Cirillo, the Neapolitan Linnjeus, was hanged 

 on the market-place of Naples, together with some of the 

 noblest among Italian men of letters and science. It is especially 

 fitting to remember Cirillo in England, the country which he 

 visited and where he had many friends, and for the literature 

 and science of which he showed a special predilection — a country 

 which unfortunately had such a fatal influence upon his destiny. 

 The Cirillos of Grumo, a village of Terra di Lavoro, were a 

 family of doctors, naturalists and artists. At the beginning of 

 the eighteenth century Nicola Cirillo was famed, both as a 

 physician and a botanist. Following the best traditions of 

 Neapolitan science, the traditions of Pinelli, of Imperato, and 

 of Maranta, Nicola Cirillo instituted a private botanical garden, the 

 only one then existing in Naples. In 17 18 he became a Fellow 

 of the Royal Society of London, and in connection with this 

 Society, then presided over by Sir Isaac Newton, Nicola Cirillo 

 began to collect meteorological data on the climate of Naples. 

 After his death, in 1734, his botanical garden and his collections, 

 together with the famous herbarium of Ferrante Imperato, were 

 preserved, and the garden improved with the more recent 

 systems of classification by Sante Cirillo, painter and naturalist, 

 whose house became a centre of the learning and culture of 

 Naples. ^ 



Domenico Cirillo was born in 1739, and so profited by the 

 education and influence of Sante, his uncle, of Nicola Capasso, 

 Francesco Serao, and of other teachers, that at the age of 

 twenty-one, in 1760, he successfully competed for the chair of 

 botany in the University of Naples. Domenico Cirillo, indeed, 

 followed in the track of Nicola, and soon became known both 

 as a botanist and as a physician. In numerous botanical 

 excursions he visited the greater part of the provinces of 

 Southern Italy and Sicily ; and he was the first to organise in 

 this country a regular botanical survey, sending out pupils and 

 assistants to collect in different provinces. Thus not only many 

 rare plants were described in his "Fascicoli Plantarum rariorum 

 Regni Napolitani," begun in 1788, but several new species were 

 discovered. At present, in the Italian flora, about thirteen 

 species of phanerogams are retained as first discovered and 

 described by Cirillo. 



That period, when men worked under the spell of Linneeus, 

 was a time of great botanical fervour, di furore botanico to use 

 Cirillo's expression, in the collecting and investigating of plants. 

 Of Cirillo's early connection with Linnaeus, botanists are still 

 reminded by the name of the Cyrillae, which the great Swede 

 dedicated to his young Neapolitan correspondent. Indeed, the 

 devotion of Cirillo for Linnaeus was so great that, following the 

 impulse of his enthusiastic nature, he raised a monument to him 

 in the old botanical garden of the Cirillo family. 



Induced by Lady Walpole, Cirillo visited France and 



1 Ferrante Imperato, whose herbarium was preserved in the Cirillo col- 

 lections, lived at the end of the sixteenth century. In writing his " Historia 

 naturale," printed in Naples in 1599, Imperato put together a museum 

 which soon became known in Europe ; for besides having for fellow-workers 

 in Naples B. Maranta and Fabio Colonna, Imperato corresponded with 

 P. A. Mattioli, Gaspard Bauhin, Ulisse Aldovrandi, Melchiorre Guilandino, 

 arid others of the foremost botanists of the time. His herbarium is said to 

 have been composed of eighty volumes. The museum of Imperato got 

 dispersed during the plague of 1656, and Nicola Cirillo eventually ob- 

 tained possession of only nine volumes. After the sacking of Domenico 

 Cirillo's house in 1799, one volume only of the Imperato herbarium was 

 saved, and is now in the Biblioteca Nazionale of Naples. It contains 440 

 dried plants, i.e. about one-seventh of all the plants identified in the days of 

 Imperato and Bauhin. This herbarium, together with the herbarium of 

 Cesalpino, is among the rarest of botanical relics. 



Of the herbarium of Domenico Cirillo a small remaining portion is now 

 preserved in the botanical museum of the Agricultural College of Portici, 

 in the care of Prof. O. Comes. 



NO. 161 8, VOL. 63] 



England, becoming connected with D'Alembert, Diderot, 

 Nollet, Buffon, Franklin, Sir John Pringle, and especially with 

 William and John Hunter. He was elected a Fellow of the 

 Royal Society. In 1771 he published in the Philosophical 

 Transactions an account of the Manna Tree of Calabria, Sicily 

 and Monte Gargano, describing the method of extracting the 

 manna. The Philosophical Transactions also contain his 

 observations, made near Taranto, on the effect of the tarantola 

 bite; Cirillo confirms what Serao, in 1742, had already written 

 on Tarantisrn, dispelling the absurd superstition of the music- 

 cure supposed to be effected by dancing the Tarantella. He 

 observes how in Sicily the tarantola is never dangerous, and the 

 music-cure is unknown.^ 



In the latter part of the eighteenth century, while the 

 Neapolitan kingdom was freeing itself more and more from the 

 baneful Spanish influence, during the early years of the reign of 

 Ferdinand IV. and Maria Carolina of Austria, a spirit of reform 

 and progress had risen in South Italy, and a new impulse was 

 given to research in natural sciences. In medicine, after 

 Francesco Serao and Domenico Cotugno, Cirillo rose above the 

 rest. The researches and teaching of Giovanni Maria Delia 

 Torre and of Cirillo opened a new field to the Neapolitan 

 naturalists in microscopical investigations. And around Cirillo, 

 again, a new school of botanists and zoologists and of chemical 

 investigators arose, among whom we may record the names of 

 Filippo Cavolini, Vincenzo Briganti, Gaetano Nicodemi, 

 Antonio Barba, Saverio Macri, Antonio Fasano, Nicola 

 Pacifico, Vincenzo Petagna, Matteo Tondi, Nicola Andria, 

 Vincenzo Comi. The discoveries of Alberto Fortis in 1783, 

 near Molfetta, where he observed the richness of the soil in 

 nitrates, led to investigations in Naples on the origin of nitre, 

 in which Fortis himself, Melchiorre Delfico, Giuseppe Giovene, 

 Giuseppe Vairo and Zimmermann were chiefly engaged. In 

 geological and mineralogical research Giov. M. Delia Torre 

 took the lead, and with him, or shortly after him, worked 

 Ascanio Filomarino duca della Torre, Domenico Salsano, Gius, 

 Gioeni, Gaetano De Bottis, Luigi De Curtis, Vincenzo Santoli, 

 Domenico Tata, Scipione Breislak, Camillo Pellegrini. In 

 1788 Lazzaro Spallanzani began his tour to the volcanic regions 

 of Southern Italy and Sicily. In those days Sir William 

 Hamilton, during the many years of his residence in Naples, 

 collected information on the Phlegrean Fields, while Ascanio 

 Filomarino was forming his Vesuvian Museum, destined to so 

 short an existence ; for the museum and all the other scientific 

 collections in the Filomarino Palace were destroyed in January 

 1799, when the unfortunate duke and his brother, Clemente 

 Filomarino, the poet (the translator of Young's poems), were 

 burnt as Jacobins by the infuriated Royalist mob.^ 



During this same period some of the more important foreign 

 works were translated into Italian and published in Naples ; 

 such as the works of Stephen Hales, of Priestley, Linnaeus, and 

 the Agricultural Encyclopaedia of Rozier.^ 



Omitting here all mention of his medical and other publica- 

 tions, Cirillo's chief works on botany and entomology were the 

 following : — "Tabulae botanicas elementares," 1773 ; " De essen- 

 tialibus nonullarum plantarum characteribus," 1784 ; " Entomo- 

 logia Neap. Specimen primum," 1787-1790; " De Cypero 

 Papyro," 1787, re-edited at Parma in 1796; " Fundamenta 

 botanica, sive philosophiae botanicae explicatio," 1787 ; " Plant- 

 arum rariorum Regni Neapolitani," fasc. i. 1788, fasc. ii. 1793; 

 " Discorsi Accademici," 1789, re-edited in 1799. 



In the field of vegetable physiology, the discoveries of Cirillo 

 on the irritability of plants are noteworthy. In that field, 

 together with his contemporary, G. B. Dal Covolo, Cirillo is the 



1 The music-cure for the tarantola bite is still practised by peasants, 

 especially women, in some parts of the province of Lecce and in Calabria. 

 In Cirillo's days the belief in the dangerous andstrange effects of the bite 

 of the tarantola was held even by persons high in authority. See Andrea 

 Pigonati, " Sul Tarantismo," Opuscoli Scelti ii. (Milano, 1779). Compare 

 Franc. Serao, " Delia Tarantola o sia Falangio di Puglia " (Napoli, 1742). 



2 Duca della Torre, " Descrizione del Gabinetto Vesuviano da lui posse- 

 duto " (Napoli, 1796, 2da ed.). 



3 The works of Hales were translated by a lady, Maria ArdinghelH ; 

 St. Hales, " Statica dei Vegetabili ed Analisi dell' Aria, tr.-id. dall' Inglese 

 con varie annotazioni da M. A. ArdinghelH " (Napoli, 1756). 



St. Hales, " Emastatica, ossia Statica degli Animali. E.sperienze idrau- 

 liche fatte sugli animali viventi " (Napoli, 1776). 



Gius. Priestley, " Sperienze ed Osservazioni sopra diverse Specie di aria, 

 trad, dair Inglese" (Naf>oli, 1784).- 



The translation of Rozier's Encyclopaedia was begun in 1783, and was 

 due to the Societa Letteraria di Napoli, of which Cirillo was one of the 

 leading members. 



Vincenzo Petagna began editing the "Species Plantarum" of Linnaeus. 



