June 30, 1 881] 



NATURE 



203 



external temperature for days. The author saw preparations 

 still pulsating strongly and regularly on the fourth day. (The 

 liquid, in that case, must be often renewed.) These rhythmic 

 contractions of a voluntary striped muscle, indicating chemical 

 stimulus awaken special interest, through their similarity to the 

 Ijng-known contractions of the apex of the heart, sepai-ated and 

 without ganglia, in blood-seinim. The heart-muscles, it is 

 known, are also striped. 



The Gorilla and the Chimpanzee. — Mr. H. von Kop- 

 penfels, who is now engaged in explorations in the Gaboon district 

 of Western Africa, in a letter published in the last number of 

 the American Naturalist, states that he has good evidence of 

 the existence of crosses between the male gorilla and the female 

 chimpanzee. " This" he says, " settles all the questions about 

 the gorilla, chimpanzee, Kooloo-Kamba, N'schig i, M'bouve, 

 the Sokos, Baboots, &c." Herr v. Koppenfels observes that 

 the " French savants seem to have a special predilection for 

 creating new species from variations in the form of the skull, 

 such as often occur in this group of animals. There is but one 

 district which forms the range of the gorilla, and this is situated 

 in the western part of Equatorial Africa, and here it exhibits no 

 varieties, while the chimpanzee is found all over Tropical Africa, 

 and naturally exhibits considerable variation. The chimpanzee 

 of Northern Guinea differs essentially from that of the southern 

 portion of the same country, and, according to Livingstone, the 

 ' Soke ' differs from both, but is still a chimpanzee. Du Chaillu's 

 Kooloo-Kamba, N'schigo, and M'bouve are itol distinct species, 

 and this traveller, who is certainly a man of merit, but is too 

 credulous, has been imposed upon by the mendacity of the 

 natives, which beggars description. The names N'schigo, 

 M'bouve, Koola, Baboo, Soko, Quia, and Koiloj-Kamba are 

 only different designations of the chimpanzee by different tribes. 

 The mongrel progeny of the male gorilla and female chimpanzee 

 discovered by me is found but in individual cases, and as such 

 deserves no special name." 



Salivary Globules. — Prof. Strieker of Vienna, by examina' 

 tion of salivary globules under high-power lenses (obj. No. 

 X. of Krafft and Seivert), has obtained the following results : — 

 He cannot accept the supposition of asi-called Brownian (mole- 

 cular) movement in salivary corpuscles. He has found the 

 globules to consist of a complete, distinctly visible network. 

 The granules, which have been seen under low powers of the 

 microscope, appear on close inspection and carefully focussing 

 to be thickened points of intersection of the threads forming 

 the reticulum. There is a permanent fluctuation of the threads 

 during the life of the corpuscle. By the action of concentrated 

 salt-solutions the fluctuation ceases gradually and the reticular 

 arrangement disappears. 



Fish Mort.\litv in the Gulf of Mexico. — From time to 

 time since 1844 a widespread destruction of all sorts of marine 

 creatures has occurred along certain well-marked-out tracts in 

 the Gulf of Mexico. In 1854 the fishes suffered all along the 

 southern shore ; in 1S7S there was again an exci-s;ive mortality ; 

 in 1879 the plas;ue again appeared ; while in 1880, we learn from 

 the recently-published report of Inspector Ingersall to Prof. S. 

 F. Baird, it has been very intense. The poisoned waters occur 

 in streaks or patches, sometimes near to one another, at other 

 times many yards apart. These seem to drift with the flow of 

 the tide, and ultimately become diluted. The most probable 

 solution of this strange phenomenon is to suppose that eruptions 

 of noxious volcanic gases arise through the bottom of the sea ; 

 certain it is that the marine life on the sea-bottom suffers first. 

 Sponges, sea-anemones, moUusks, and the ground fish die in mass, 

 an 1 apparently at once. Upwards the deadly pestilence mounts, 

 and the small fish swimming at or near the surface are killed by 

 thousands, and float lifele-s on the water. The large surface 

 fish would seem to escape, and rarely is a mullet to be found 

 destroyed. Fishing in such districts has to be abandoned, even 

 although in the pure streaks the fish abounded, for .■^hould a 

 smick fill its well with the results of a successful catch it had to 

 run the gaunilct of the broad patches of the poisoned waters, and 

 if any of these were encountered, and enterei the well, a few 

 m jments would suffice to bring about the death of every fish in 

 the cargo. The keeper of the Egmont Lighthouse writes on 

 Febrnary 21 in this year : "As the tide came in on October 17, 

 1880, there were thousands of small fish floating on the water, 

 most of them quite dead. The next day the fish were dying all 

 along the shore ; between October 25 and November 10 the 

 stench was so horrible that it was impossible to go on the beach. 



Sending my family to Manatee, the assistant-keeper and myself 

 shut ourselves up in our rooms, and kept tar, coffee, <S:c., burning 

 day and night in order to stand it. The peculiar smell was like 

 bilge-water. The fish I noticed dying acted as if crazy, darting 

 around in every direction, then giving up and floating ashore. 

 After a very heavy gale from the south-west the bad and good 

 waters got mixed up, and soon all the fish caught were fat and 

 nice." As the cause of this strange phenomenon is still pro- 

 blematical, some discarding the idea of the evolution of subter- 

 ranean gases, beheving it to be the result of a poisoning of the 

 waters by an excess of rain-water discharged into the Gulf by the 

 rivers, others that it is owing to the water being saturated with 

 the tannin derived from decomposing roots and stems of 

 palmetto, sumach, oal<, &c. , it would seem highly desirable 

 that Prof. Baird should institute a series of observations as to 

 the chemical constituents at different times of the waters of these 

 districts. 



On the Nectar-secreting Glands in Species of Melam- 

 PVRUM. — The cow-wheats are a familiar group of pli.nts, of which 

 several species are to be found native. E. Rathay, while investing 

 the subject of the secretion of sugar by plants, was attracted by 

 the appearance of swarms of ants evidently collecting some sweet 

 material from the little dark puncta on the bracts of Mdampyrum 

 an'cnsc (purple cow-wheat). These puncta, even under a hand- 

 lens, are seen to be little round disk-shaped bodies, which proved 

 to secrete a sugary secretion for which the ants came. In a 

 memoir on this subject these gland-like disks are de cribed and 

 figured as they occur in M. arvcnse, M. ncinorostini, AI. pratense, 

 and I^I. I'arlmtiim. These bodies have long since been observed 

 by the systematic botanists; they form part of the trichomic 

 development of the epidermal system of the bracts, and may be 

 described as consisting of a short foot-cell, attached to the centre 

 of which is a circular disk. This latter is composed of a single 

 layer of seven-sided cells. According to their function these 

 structures in the species of Melamp\Tum mentioned belong to 

 the epidei mal glands of De Barry, since they secrete upon the 

 upper side of their disk, between the cuticle and cell-membranes 

 of the seven-sided cells, a liquid which, through the bursting of 

 the cuticle, gets out, and is sought by the ants and eaten. The 

 secreted fluid contains at least 2 per cent, of a kind of sugar 

 which is not reducible by oxide of copper. The history of the 

 development of these structures is practically the same as that 

 of other similar formati ms. The purpose which they serve to 

 the Melampyrum would seen neither to be explained by the hypo- 

 thesis of I3elt and Delpino as t') the meaning of the extra 

 floral nectaries, nor according to the hypothesis of Kerner con- 

 cerning the same. ' Rathay further adds that the moistne.-s which 

 almost always appears over these structures is quickly, on re- 

 m ival, renewed ; that this moistness increases so much as to form 

 drops when the plants are protected fro n the approach of ants, 

 &c. ; and that this drop-formation is repeated several times if 

 the drops are from time to time removed (Vienna Academy 

 Proceedings, vol. Ixxxi. 18S0). 



CHEMICAL NOTES 



M. Raoult states in Compt. rend, that the oxides of barium- 

 strontium, and calcium rapidly absorb carbon dioxide at a high 

 te iiperature : much heat is evolved in the reaction, the tempera- 

 ture of the mass in the case of barium oxide being as high as 

 1200°, according to a pyrometric determination. 



MM. Cailletet and Hautefeuille have determined the 

 densities of liquid oxygen, nitrogen, and hydrogen (Ccvnpl. rend.) 

 by liquefying these gises mixed with carbonic anhydride and 

 with nitrous oxide, and basing their calculations on the assump- 

 tion that the mixed liquids are without action on one another. 

 The density of liquid oxygen at - 23° (pressm-e =^300 atmos.) 

 was found to be o'Sg from experiments with carbonic anhydride, 

 and o'94 from experiments with nitrous oxide : at 0° the numbers 

 obtained were o'58 and 0-65 respectively. Liquid nitrogen at 

 - 23° gave numbers corresponding with the density 0'44, while 

 at o" the density was o'37. The den-i!y of liquid hydrogen was 

 o 033 at - 23°, and 0'025 at o^. Dividi ig the atomic weights of 

 the three elements by the densities at - 23°, the atomic volume 

 of oxygen is found to be 17, of nitrogen 31 "8, and of hydrogen 

 303- 



Herr O. Low describes experiments with fluorspar from 

 Wolsend-jrf (Berliner Boichte), which seem to show that the 

 liquid con'ained in the cavities of this mineral consists of free 



