1884.] 



MICROSCOPICAL JOURNAL. 



99 



NOTES. 



— Work in seaside laboratories in sum- 

 mer is attracting many students and teach- 

 ers, and the accommodations and facihties 

 seem to be increasing every year. Prob- 

 ably the most thoroughly equipped and 

 extensive of all is the establishment of the 

 U. S. Fish Commission, at Woods Holl, 

 Mass., where much zoological work is 

 done every year. This, however, is not 

 intended to give the instruction that can 

 be obtained at such places as Annisquam 

 on Ipswich Bay, near Gloucester, or at the 

 Summer School of Johns Hopkins Uni- 

 versity, under the direction of Prof. W. 

 K. Brooks. The Annisquam laboratory 

 opens June 20th. Inquiries should be 

 addressed to Mr. Alpheus Hyatt, Curator 

 of the Boston Society of Natural History. 



— Mr. Edward Lovett employs a cement 

 for mounting objects in fluid, which is ex- 

 ceedingly hard and apparently as endur- 

 ing as stone. It bears a high tempera- 

 ture, 140° F. in an oven, without permitting 

 the enclosed fluid to escape. This cement 

 is composed of 2 parts white lead, 2 of red 

 lead, and 3 of litharge finely ground and 

 mixed. For use a little of the powder is 

 mixed with gold-size to the consistence of 

 paint. 



— At the meeting of the New-York Mi- 

 croscopical Society of April i8th, among 

 the objects shown were samples of ramie 

 brought by Mr. T. M. Letson, who gave 

 a brief history of this fibre, and spoke of 

 its apparently growing importance as a 

 commercial product. 



— Cover-glass has been hitherto made 

 by Chance, in England, but there is an 

 establishment in Germany now prepar- 

 ing to introduce a German cover-glass. 

 Chance's cover-glass is made of ordinary 

 crown glass, having a refractive index of 

 1.5 to 1.525. 



— A correspondent writes to us in the 

 following unusual, but to us quite refresh- 

 ing words : — ' I regret that American mi- 

 croscopists do not support the Journal as 

 they should. If it was a little more scien- 

 tific would they not take hold of it more 

 readily ?' 



It is truly refreshing to learn that some 

 of our readers would like a more scientific 

 journal. Why, already it is so profound, 

 so theoretical, so much an organ of special- 

 ists, as to receive the disdain and ridicule 

 of a professor in a Western college ! Yes, 

 an elementary scientific journal is held up 

 to ridicule because it is too scientific by 



a college professor! Yet an intelligent 

 reader thinks it too elementary to be popu- 

 lar ! Well, well ! 



The same correspondent writes : — 

 ' What a pity it is that your splendid 

 (2uarterly had to die ! I have always 

 greatly regretted that. Can't you revive 

 it ? I wish I were rich — I would like to 

 help in that.' 



Such words do one good, for they show 

 that there is some appreciation of merito- 

 rious effort, even though not enough to 

 give it adequate encouragement and sup- 

 port. 



— It is stated in a Rio de Janeiro news- 

 paper that Dr. Domingos Freire has dis- 

 covered the contagium vivum of yellow 

 fever, and that successful inoculations 

 have been made in 211 cases, giving en- 

 couragement to the opinion that the dis- 

 ease may thus be prevented. 



— Mr. T. Lisle writes, in the Journ. 

 Post. Micr. Soc, that Quekett's method of 

 preparing the trachea of caterpillars with 

 acetic acid is not satisfactory. He advises 

 the following method : Cut off the head, 

 make an incision down the back, and put 

 it in a solution of carbonate of potash and 

 lime, or of caustic potash. In three or 

 four days the body becomes cheesy, when 

 it may be turned out of the skin with a 

 blunt knife. Boiling in potash then dis- 

 solves the mass, leaving the trachea float- 

 ing in the liquid. 



— Dr. J. E. Rombouts, in an article in 

 Popular Science Monthly of this month, 

 writes as follows : 



' I have concluded from my experiments 

 that it is not the pressure of the air nor 

 the power of an adhesive liquid that gives 

 flies the faculty of running over smooth 

 bodies, but that the power should be at- 

 tributed to the molecular action between 

 solid and liquid bodies ; or, in other words, 

 to capillary adhesion. 



■If we examine the under part of the pul- 

 villi with a microscope, we shall see dis- 

 tinctly that it is furnished with numerous 

 hairs, regularly distributed. These hairs 

 terminate, at their lower end, in a kind of 

 bulb, the form of which varies, whence 

 flows an oily liquid that dries slowly and 

 does not harden for a long time. The 

 minute drops left on the glass by the hairs 

 may be taken away, even after two or 

 three days have passed, without our hav- 

 ing to moisten them, by simply rubbing a 

 piece of fine paper over them. I have de- 

 vised an apparatus for collecting these 

 drops by cutting a hole in a piece of board 

 over which I fix a rfass glide. Turningf 



