OcToBER 19, 1899] 
NATURE 
591 
BEES LO LTTE FOTO Ke 
The Editor does not hold himself responsible for opinions ex- 
pressed by hits correspondents. Neither can he undertake 
to return, or to correspond with the writers of, rejected 
manuscripts intended for this or any other part of NATURE. 
No notice ts taken of anonymous communications. | 
Peripatus in the Malay Peninsula. 
My friend Mr. Richard Evans, of Jesus College, Oxford, now 
in the Malay Peninsula with the Skeat Expedition sent out by 
the University of Cambridge, writes to me that he and | _ Inde : 
| the same time in several papers, the latest one having been 
subsequently other members of the expedition have discovered 
Peripatus. His letter, written from Aring, Kalantan, and dated 
August 27, states that he had found two specimens about three 
months previously. The locality is given as ‘‘one of the 
mountains here.” For some months after this discovery no 
further specimens were found, in spite of much searching. A 
little before the date of his letter, however, Mr. Laidlaw, of 
‘Cambridge, had found five and Mr. Evans six additional 
specimens, thus bringing up the number to thirteen. 
The eleven specimens which were obtained last were found 
in two groups of five each, while a single individual was 
discovered by itself in the rotten tree in which one of the 
groups occurred. 
The individuals of a group differed much in size, although 
each group was probably a brood. 
The colour of the specimens is chocolate-brown above with 
numerous small pale spots, the under-surface being pinkish 
yellow with a nearly white spot between the feet of each pair. 
The number of pairs of feet varies from twenty-three to 
twenty-five, the latter number occurring in the largest and 
presumably the oldest specimens. 
Mr. Evans has asked me to embody these facts in a note to 
Narure, and I feel sure that they will be of great interest to 
all naturalists. EpwarD B. POULTON. 
Oxford, October 13. 
Dark Lightning Flashes. 
THE paper by Mr. A. W. Clayden, referred to in my lecture 
from which Dr. Lockyer quotes (p. 570 ave), is entitled ‘‘ Note 
on some Photographs of Lightning and of Black Electric 
Sparks,” and is to be found in the Praceedzngs of the Physical 
Society, vol. x. p. 180, having been read on June 22, 1889. 
The author’s photographs were exhibited at the meeting, but 
were not printed with the paper. 
The following extract shows that some of Mr. Clayden’s 
observations were very similar to those described by Dr. 
Lockyer. He photographed some electric sparks of different 
intensities, *‘and before developing the plates exposed them to 
the diffused light from a gas flame. The brilliant sparks then 
yielded images which may either be called normal with a 
reversed margin, or reversed with a normal core. The fainter 
sparks were completely reversed. . . . The reversal seems to 
spread inwards as the exposure to diffused light is increased.” 
If the section of a flash is approximately circular, the luminosity 
would naturally be greatest along the middle, gradually falling 
off towards the edge. 
It was of course known long before the date of Mr. Clayden’s 
paper that the bright parts of a photograph might be reversed 
by the action of diffused light before development (Sutton’s 
“Dic. of Photography,” edition of 1867, p. 299). 
I think it hardly possible that any lightning flash would be 
sufficiently brilliant to give a photographic image with a dark core 
and bright edges—Nos. 5 and 6 of Dr. Lockyer’s list. The 
image of the sun itself is not generally reversed, unless with 
comparatively long exposure. The picture in the Strand 
Magazine (vol. xiil. p. 44, Fig. 10), which I understand to be 
the only apparent example of this class of reversal which Dr. 
Lockyer has met with, seems to me, from considerations of 
perspective, to represent beyond question merely a close double 
flash, two connected discharges having taken the same path 
through a moving body of air. 
Dr. Lockyer’s convincing article has no doubt finally dis- 
posed of the dark flash as an objective reality, It is to be 
hoped that so-called ‘‘ ribbon lightning” will soon follow in its 
footsteps. SHELFORD BIDWELL. 
NO. 1564, VOL. 60] 
Heredity and Variation. 
THE interesting suggestion made by Prof. Adam Sedgwick 
in his Dover address—to the effect that variability has 
decreased and heredity increased, so to speak, as evolution 
has progressed—leads me to call attention to the work of certain 
other writers. Prof. Bailey, of Cornell University, in his 
work ‘‘The Survival of the Unlike” (Macmillan) argues in 
detail for a similar view, z.e. that heredity has been gradually 
““acquired,” while variability has been reduced. His book 
deals largely with evidence from plants. He stated the view 
earlier in certain papers. Moreover Prof. Williams, of Yale 
University, independently took up a like position at about 
read and discussed before the Society of American Naturalists 
at Ithaca, N.Y., December 1897, and subsequently printed in 
Sczence.1 The point of view has become fairly familiar to 
American biologists. Indeed the editor of Sczence has referred 
to it as one of the two most important recent suggestions in 
the theory of evolution. As Prof. Sedgwick does not refer to 
these writers—though he may intend to do so in the fuller 
discussion which he promises—his readers to whom the sug- 
gestion appeals may find it worth while to look into them. 
The work of Prof. Bailey—who is a natural selectionist among 
botanists !—is remarkable from other points of view as well. 
Oxford, October 10. J. Mark BALpwWIn. 
Phosphorescent Earthworms. 
In a recent issue of NATURE (during May of the current 
year) Mr. Beddard, in referring to the phosphorescence of 
Microscolex (Photodrilus) and of Adlolobophora foetida, suggests 
that this phenomenon is exhibited by the slime secreted by the 
epidermis. Will you allow me to mention my observation on 
a New Zealand worm that indicates that the matter is worthy 
of re-investigation ? 
Our large white earthworm (Octochoetus mudtiporus) has a 
milk-coloured ccelomic fluid of very great tenacity ; it can be 
drawn out into strands, and soon hardens on exposure to air. 
In the dark, when the worm is handled, this fluid is discharged 
abundantly from the dorsal pores and from the mouth, which 
it reaches through the ‘‘ peptonephridia” opening into the buccal 
cavity. The fluid is brilliantly phosphorescent when freshly 
discharged, and the fluid sticks to one’s fingers very persistently ; 
but it soon loses its phosphorescence. I wish here merely to point 
out that the luminosity is due to the ccelomic fluid in O. mz/t- 
porus, and I believe that further examination will show that the 
same is true of 4. foettda. 
The fluid in O. mzltzporus contains numbers of ‘‘ elaocytes,” 
which are present also in 4. foe/zda and other European worms; 
but in the New Zealand worm they are colourless, not yellow. 
| A very remarkable kind of corpuscle is also present, viz. a cell 
containing a threadlike structure not unlike those described by 
Goodrich in an enclytroeid a few years back. I am now en- 
deavouring to locate the phosphorescence—that is, to ascertain 
which of these two cells is the seat of the phenomenon. 
Dunedin, N.Z., August 5. W. BLAXLAND BENHAM. 
MEETING OF THE INTERNATIONAL 
METEOROLOGICAL COMMITTEE. 
HE Committee met at St. Petersburg from September 
2-7 ; the meeting was a small one, only about half 
of the members being present. It was opened by the 
Grand Duke Constantine, who delivered an interesting 
address, in which he specially referred to the service 
rendered to meteorological science by A. Kupffer, the 
founder of the Russian climatological organisation. The 
reports of the various sub-committees were read and 
considered, and the following are the principal resolutions 
arrived at :—On the report, by Prof. Riicker, upon ter- 
restrial magnetism and atmospheric electricity, it was 
decided that the sub-committee should be maintained as a 
distinct organisation, under the direct supervision of the 
International Committee. In reply to a question by 
1] regret that absence from my library makes it impossible for me to give 
the exact references to his papers and to Prof. Bailey’s. 
