1887.] MICROSCOPICAL JOURNAL. 55 
upper and anterior part of the brain. This is the part which, on a frtor7 grounds, we 
should expect to increase most by education and civilization, since it is those parts of the 
brain that especially perform the moral and intellectual functions. 
3. The lower parts of the brain, being the parts which preside over selfish propensi- 
ties, give no increased breadth to the head, being called into play comparatively less 
and less with the advance of education and civilization. 
The skulls were all those of adults, and probably all males. Among them were, of 
course, many abnormalities. The number in the collection was estimated at 10,000. 
Rudiments vs. vestiges.—Prof. J. A. Ryder, formerly of the U. S. Fish Commission, 
no ‘recently in the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania, suggests the restriction of 
the term ‘rudiments’ to structures which are appearing, and the employment of the 
word ‘vestiges’ for structures which are disappearing. 
Only the pain of hunger fatal— Henry Howard explains, in an article on ‘ Fasters 
and Fasting,’ in the March Cosmofofitan, that it is not hunger itself, but the Jazz of 
hunger, that kills starving people. 
What is hunger? It is not the result of a local condition, but a sensation that is only 
an expression of the general state of the organism, since it may be satisfied without in- 
troducing food into the stomach, as is proved by the injection of nutritive substances 
into the veins; and Schiff has demonstrated the same fact as regards thirst. On the 
other hand, a very small quantity of food introduced into the stomach of a person suc- 
cumbing to starvation, and still susceptible of the pangs of hunger, will cause these 
pangs to cease immediately, even before any absorption has had time to take place; 
and, consequently, before there has been any possibility of assimilation. This proves, 
furthermore, that hunger is a reflex sensation of which the stomach is the point of de- 
parture. 
It is the azz of hunger that kills quickly, and not hunger itself. It is certain that a 
man in good physical health may live a long time without eating or drinking, if he 
does not suffer too much from the pangs of hunger. The history of the miners of 
Bois-Mouzil, as related by Soviche, is a proof of this. Eight miners were shut up in a 
coal-mine one hundred and thirty-six hours. The first day they divided among them 
a half-pound of bread and two glasses of wine, which one of them had brought with 
him. That was all the food they partook of during their imprisonment. It would 
generally be believed that these eight unlucky miners must have felt the torments of 
hunger in their most frightful form at the moment when the drill penetrated the gal- 
lery of the mine; but, according to their assertion, this long abstinence had occasioned 
them little inconvenience. 
Speed of the toboggan.—It has been reported to President Bowditch, of the Ridge- 
field Athletic Club of Albany, that the toboggans on the club chute have been timed 
at the point of greatest speed, which is when they leave the chute and strike the 
ground, and found to attain a velocity of ninety-three miles an hour. The timing cal- 
culations were carefully made, and repeated again and again by a civil engineer. If 
they are not fallacious, the toboggan is the fastest of vehicles, and outstrips even the 
ice-boat.—/vom the March Swiss Cross. 
CORRESPONDENCE. 
To THE EpIToR :—I noted with surprise in the January number of the /ourna/ 
Prof. Hitchcock’s mention of never having met with Bacillaria paradoxa in America. 
And I am glad that Mr. Wm. A. Terry has recorded his experience in collecting by 
a note to the. Journal. Anything from the pens of experienced collectors—such is, as 
yet, the poverty of our microscopical literature as to collecting—has much value. And 
in this connection I would especially commend to all collectors, and particularly to that 
still larger class who would collect, ¢f they only knew how, Prof. Kain’s article in the 
February number of the ‘ Zorrey Bulletin.’ 
We have found Bacillaria paradoxa in great abundance and vigor, almost ceaseless 
in its activity while the material remained fresh, by simply scraping the spiles between 
tides near the R.R. depot at New Haven. Two deductions from our personal experi- 
