Miscellaneous. 311 



ments, these gases constantly accompany the oxygen of which the 

 sun determines the production when it acts upon a vegetable sub- 

 merged in water impregnated with carbonic acid." Is this also the 

 case when carbonic acid is decomposed by foUage in the air ? 



Boussingault concludes his paper with the remark that the earlier 

 observers looked at their discoveries rather from the hygienic than 

 the physiological point of view ; that, while Priestley announced his 

 brilliant discovery by the statement that plants purify the air vitiated 

 by combustion or by the respiration of animals, it is curious enough 

 that, a century afterwards, it should come to be demonstrated before 

 the Academy of Sciences, that probably the leaves of all plants, and 

 certainly those of aquatic plants, whUe emitting oxygen gas, which 

 ameliorates the atmosphere, also emit one of the most deleterious of 

 known gases — carbonic oxide ! He closes with the pregnant and 

 natural query, whether the unhealthiness of marshy districts is not 

 attributable, at least in part, to the disengagement of this pernicious 

 gas by plants ? 



[We add, that what strikes us with most surprise is to learn that, 

 if these results are true, the vegetable machinery would seem to work 

 at a loss, and with a real, though it be a small, waste of material. 

 When any carbonic acid taken into the leaves passes off unchanged, 

 so much work is not done, but there is no waste or loss in the process 

 of manufacture. But, looking at the food of plants and their pro- 

 ducts — comparing the raw material with the manufactured article — 

 it seems apparent that any carbonic acid which is reduced to carbonic 

 oxide, and given off as such, is so much loss or waste. We may 

 avoid this unwelcome conclusion by the supposition that the carbonic 

 oxide and carburet of hydrogen are products of the decomposition of 

 some of the vegetable matter coetancous with vegetable assimilation, 

 but no part of that process itself. This is the more probable, since 

 it cannot reasonably be supposed that carbonic acid supplied to the 

 foliage is resolved into oxygen and carbonic oxide, and both set free, 

 which seems to be the alternative. — Asa Gray.] — Silliman' s Journal 

 for January 1863. 



On a new Species of Ophiura (O. Normani) found on the Coast of 

 Northumberland and Durham. By George Hodge. 



During the summer of 1861, whilst dredging at Seaham, upon a 

 sandy bottom, in water varying from 6 to 25 fathoms, a number of 

 small Sand-stars were brought up, associated with Ophiura textu- 

 rata and Ophiura albida. Their actions were so singular as to claim 

 a more than ordinary examination, when it was noticed that, although 

 resembling in some respects young forms of O. texturata and O. al- 

 bida, they presented features that at once distinguished them from 

 those species, the most striking of which were the longer and more 

 attenuated character of the rays, as compared with the size of the 

 disk, their excessively lively movements, and the wonderful pliability 



