234 



NATURE 



[January 5, 1893 



must have almost exclusively served under the Empire. They 

 are now reduced to 27, The oldest, Vivien by name, a Lyons 

 man, is now 106. When 13 he was with Bonaparte in Egypt, 

 fought in 22 campaigns, and was one of the Imperial 

 Guard at Waterloo. The youngest is 92, and served in the 

 navy. The mean age of the 27 survivors is 97 or 98 years. The 

 annual number of deaths in this body of men reached a maximum 

 of 6456 in 1872, since which year it has been gradually diminish- 

 ing. The proportional mortality rose, in general, till 1889, but 

 in the years since there has been a marked fall, testifying to the 

 exceptional vitality of those late survivors. M, Turquan calcu- 

 lates that this remnant will have wholly disappeared by the end 

 of the century. Going back to 181 5, he estimates the genera- 

 tion to which the men belong at about 300,000, with a mean 

 age of 25 years, and tha.t 500,000 births between 1785 and 

 1795 would concur to its forpiation. From figures relating to 

 the Napoleonic w ars he comes to the grim conclusion that one 

 man in five of those born between the years just named was 

 destined to die in war. It is, he says, to the immense losses of 

 men during the ten years of war of the Empire that the present 

 generations owe their low birth-rate. 



Mr, J. R. S. Clifford offers some interesting observations 

 in the January number oi Nature Notes — the Selborne Society's 

 magazine — on the Death's-head moth and bees. Last July a 

 friend of his at Gravesend found one of these huge moths 

 trying to gain access to a hive, having evidently been drawn to 

 the spot by the odour of the honey. This disposes of doubts 

 which have been suggested as to the old statements about this 

 moth's habit of entering hives when it has a chance. The con. 

 struction of modern hives keeps it out, but " where old-style 

 hives are used, the moth can and does enter, and occasionally 

 one has been found dead within a hive, the bees, being unable 

 to remove so bulky an insect, having taken the precaution to 

 embalm its body with what is called propolis." According to 

 Mr. Clifford, some Continental bee-keepers have discovered 

 that " the bees are aware they are liable to the intrusions of this 

 big moth,*' and when the bees are "located in the old-fashioned 

 hive, the insects erect a kind of fortification at the portal. This 

 is constructed with a narrow passage and a bend, past which the 

 Death's-head could not possibly make its way, and which it has 

 no jaws to bite through." 



We learn from the Agricultural yotirnal, issued by the 

 Department of Agriculture at Cape Colony, that much atten- 

 tion is being given there to questions connected with the fruit 

 export trade. The department is in correspondence with the 

 steamship companies with a view to securing every possible 

 encouragement to the trade, which is expected to be taken up 

 on a considerable scale this year. Replying to inquiries on the 

 subject, the Castle Mail Packets Company announce that they 

 will give every publicity to the rates of freight to be charged 

 and the stowage arrangements, &c. The Company will also 

 concede a somewhat lower rate for the less remunerative fruits 

 carried in the cool chambers, and v/ill reserve a cool and well- 

 ventilated part of the vessel for conveyance of fruit as ordinary 

 cargo. Careful instructions have been issued to captains of the 

 Company's vessels in regard to the stowage and carriage of 

 fruit. 



Dr. Theodore Maxwell has issued a useful catalogue of 

 Russian medical dissertations and other works he has collected 

 and presented to the Royal College of Surgeons of England. 

 In order that the dissertations may be of service to students 

 who do not read Russian, he has indicated the nature of 

 each work in English, and has given references to such abstracts 

 in the Lancet or elsewhere as he has himself made or happens 

 to be acquainted with. 



NO- I 2 10. VOL. 47] 



An excellent "Child Life Almanack" for 1893, by A. M. 

 Clive Bayley, has been published by Messrs. G. Philip and Son. 

 It is issued as an extra number of " Child Life," and the object, as 

 the author explains, is to provide teachers with suggestions both 

 for lessons to be prepared and observations to be made. 

 Teachers who may wish to give " seasonable " lessons will 

 find many most useful hints as to what really goes on in nature 

 during the various periods of the year. 



Mr. John Browning, optical and physical instrument 

 maker, has issued an illustrated catalogue of magic, dissolving 

 view, and optical lanterns, lime-light apparatus, and slides. 



The extraordinary diversity in the temperature at which 

 different micro-organisms flourish and multiply, has from time 

 to time been the subject of some interesting investigations by 

 Fischer, Globig, and others. Thus Fischer isolated fourteen 

 different species of bacteria from the sea-water in Kiel harbour, 

 and from soil in the town itself. These he was actually able 

 to cultivate successfully at the freezing temperature (0° C.) as 

 well as at from 15° to 20° C. Globig, on the other hand, studied 

 the behaviour of micro-organisms at high temperatures and 

 separated out no less than thirty varieties from garden soil which 

 would grow at 60° C. Some of these were even able to develop 

 at 70° C. , whilst the majority refused to grow at all below 50° C. , 

 some still more fastidious individuals objected to any tempera- 

 ture below 60° C, and others again required a temperature of 

 between 54° and 68° C. One bacillus, however, was discovered 

 more catholic in its taste in this respect, for whilst growing at 

 68° C. it managed to develop also at from 15° to 20*" C. Some 

 fresh contributions on the growth of micro-organisms at low 

 temperatures have recently been made by Forster of Amsterdam 

 (" Ueher die Entwickelung von Bakterien bei niederen Temper- 

 aturen"). As tar back as 1887 Forster described a phosphor- 

 escent bacillus obtained from sea-water which was found not 

 only capable of growing, but of producing the phenomenon of 

 phosphorescence at 0° C. In further researches made by this 

 investigator in conjunction with Bleekrode, it is stated that, 

 although not many different species were found by them to 

 develop at 0° C, yet immense numbers of individual bacteria 

 belonging to this category were detected in very various media. 

 Thus one cubic centimetre of milk as sent into the market con- 

 tained 1000 such micro-organisms, whilst in a single gram of 

 garden soil as many as 140,000 were found. Lar^e numbers of 

 such bacteria were also present in sea-water obtained from the 

 North Sea, and they were also found on the surface of fresh 

 water fish as well as in their alimentary tract. It is well known 

 that to successfully preserve meat and other articles of food it 

 is necessary to employ a much lower temperature than 0° C, 

 and experience has further shown that this is best done when 

 the atmosphere is deprived of all moisture, as is accomplished 

 by the compression and subsequent expansion of the air in 

 enclosed spaces. Haddocks imported from Norway and thus 

 artificially frozen were examined by Forster for bacteria. These 

 fish were first killed and then exposed to a temperature of from 

 20° to 40° below o^ C. until they became perfectly hard and 

 stiffly frozen, when they were removed to a cold chamber in 

 which the temperature varied from 8° to 15° below 0° C. In 

 spite of the extremely low temperature to which these fish had 

 been subjected, on examining them when still hard frozen, a 

 considerable number of bacteria were found in the abdominal 

 cavity which had been opened when the fish was killed. It is 

 obvious that during the interval which elapsed between the 

 killing of the fish and their transference to the freezing chamber, 

 bacteria must have been able to gain access, but had not had 

 time to multiply to any considerable extent before the fish was 

 frozen. Forster points out, what is sufficiently apparent, that 

 the packing of samples of water in ice when sent from a distance 



