April 8, 1920] 



NATURE 



61 



There are, however, no fewer than thirty-six plates 

 of excellent photographs, notably those which 

 represent the people and their mode of life. 

 The greater number of Arawaks inhabit the savan- 

 nahs of southern British Guiana and the neighbour- 

 ing parts of Brazil. The largest of the tribes is 

 that of the Wapisianas, and they number only 

 about 1200. Others amount to fewer than one 

 hundred each, all rapidly decreasing. 



Mr. Melville, magistrate and protector of 

 Indians, has lived amongst them for twenty-five 

 years, guarding them from the unscrupulous ex- 

 ploiter. " No traders or missionaries have yet 

 established themselves amongst them, hence their 

 natural honesty, their simple purity, and their 

 primitive religion? ideas have not been destroyed." 



The author says that the coincidence between 

 our classical and the Wapisiana interpretation of 

 the zodiacal and other constellations is not to be 

 wondered at. To call Orion the warrior is obvi- 

 ous enough. But the Pleiades are "the turtle's 

 nest full of eggs and father of the rains," the be- 

 ginning of the June wet season. Spica is the corn- 

 planter ; Scorpio, the anaconda ; and Antares, the 

 scorpion's heart, a red macaw swallowed by the 

 snake, a Cygni is the kingfisher, a and )8 Cen- 

 tauri are a hunter with his wife. 



Life and Temperature. 



Action de la Chaleur et du Froid sur I'ActiviU 

 des Etres Vivants. By Georges Matisse. 

 Pp. ii + 556. (Paris: Emile Larose, 1919.) 



MG. MATISSE has brought together in book 

 . form researches made by him on the 

 influence of cold and heat on living organisms. 

 He reminds us of the famous experiments of the 

 Abb6 Spallanzani, prince of biologists, who 

 showed that dry rotifers could be submitted to 

 temperatures far below zero and up to 62*5° C, 

 and yet return to active life on wetting. Pouchet 

 tells of the strange views which were mooted con- 

 cerning the death and resurrection of these 

 animals and others experimented upon by Spallan- 

 zani, and how Fontana, for fear of the Inquisition, 

 experimented in secrecy, while the Abb6 fear- 

 lessly published his results and speculations. 

 Spallanzani crushed frozen eggs of insects with 

 the finger-nail and found that small drops of liquid 

 exuded. Life is preserved in this fluid, a "super- 

 fusion " of the colloids and electrolytes of proto- 

 plasm, the water freezing out. He found seven- 

 teen was the greatest number of freezings and 

 thawings which any rotifers, Tardigrades, or 

 Anguillula withstood. Gradual thawing is essen- 

 tial for the preservation of life. Pictet successfully 

 NO. 2632, VOL. IO5I 



froze and thawed frogs and fish. Spallanzani was 

 the first to sterilise infusions by heat. 



M. Matisse recalls Ehrenberg's observations on 

 oscillaria, infusoria, and rotifers living in hot 

 springs in Ischia at 81-85° C. ; life in similar 

 conditions, he says, is found in the Yellowstone 

 Park, Wyoming, U.S.A. 



We now know that spores of bacteria with- 

 stand 100° C. more than sixteen hours, 115° C. 

 from thirty to sixty minutes, and 140° C. one 

 minute. Not only does temperature count, but 

 also time. Claude Bernard found that pigeons 

 and guinea-pigs died in six minutes when put in a 

 dry oven at 90-100° C, rabbits in nine minutes, 

 and dogs in eighteen to thirty minutes. A woman 

 stayed twelve minutes in an oven at 132° C. with- 

 out being strongly incommoded. Pouchet men- 

 tions a man who, at the old Cremorne gardens, 

 walked through a perforated metal tunnel which 

 was surrounded with burning brushwood. 



Adaptation to temperature is of considerable 

 interest. Paul Bert found that fish, raised quickly 

 from 12° to 28° C, died, but that, raised slowly 

 "2° C. a day, they survived up to 33° C. Tadpoles, 

 kept a month at 15° C, died at 40- 3° C. ; others, 

 kept at 25° C., died at 435° C. (Davenport and 

 Castle). Snails survive exposure to —110° to 



— i20°C. for weeks. Spallanzani showed that their 

 respiratory exchange and circulation cease entirely 

 in the cold. Protozoa survive —200° C. ; bacteria, 



— 250° C. for ten hours (MacFadyean). 

 Seasonal polymorphism depending on tempera- 

 ture is of interest — e.g. aphis is wingless, and 

 repro(juces parthenogenetically in the summer; it 

 becomes winged, and male and female in form, 

 with sexual reproduction, in the autumn. Papilio 

 Vanessa porosa — levana has spring and summer 

 forms. Salamanders, on the high Alps, are small 

 and black, and have only two young, which are 

 born without branchiae ; those on the plains are 

 large, blotched with yellow, and have many young 

 born with branchiae. Inversion of the climatic con- 

 ditions reverses the characteristics of these two 

 forms (Kammerer). Tower submitted Coleoptera 

 {Leptinotarsa decemlineata) at the time of forma- 

 tion and maturation of sex elements to 35° C. and 

 dry conditions. The eggs hatched in normal con- 

 ditions showed eighty-four mutations in the ninety- 

 eight individuals which reached adult age. 



A gasteropod, Lymnea stagnalis, reproduces its 

 kind in water cooler than 12° C, but the progeny 

 are small. In water at 15-18° C. the progeny are 

 larger. The character of smallness becomes fixed ; 

 small individuals transported from cold to warmer 

 water continue to have small progeny (Semper). 



The main part of Matisse's book deals with the 

 consideration of the law of van't Hoff and 



