go 

islands ; a special application made fox skulls from St. Giles’s, 
and the Liberties of Dublin ; skulls of extinct tribes earnestly 
sought; and his Lordship expected to supply a consignment of 
200 or 300 skulls, besides their flint and other implements, 
tobacco pipes, pottery, and so forth, ancient and modern, What 
would be the commotion here, and what the comments in 
our newspapers ! and yet such a request has been made by the 
zealous Secretary of the Smithsonian Institute to the Government 
of the United States of Colombia, and he is likely to prefer the 
same hint here, now that the 4/asama claims are in happy way 
of settlement. The Colombian Government has taken the 
matter coolly, and published the application in the Gaceta 
Oficial, calling to it the attention of the local authorities. How 
the local authorities will persuade the local Indians to hand over 
the solicited pair of recent male and female skulls, appears rather 
doubtful and dangerous, as will be the polite request of the 
resident magistrate, or other authority, to the tribes of Achill 
Island or Connemara. Some of the Indian tribes in Colombia 
are much more likely to place the skulls of the Government or 
their emissaries in their own local museums. 
_ Ir is stated from India that a number of experiments have 
shown that the madar plant, when mixed with opium, is an 
excellent substitute for ipecacuanha in dysentery, 
Tue Kava or Ava is well known as a favourite intoxicating 
drink of the South Sea Islanders. The extraordinary and dis- 
gusting mode of preparing this beverage, by chewing the root, 
ejecting the saliva into a bowl and fermenting it, has been the 
means of giving it a greater amount of publicity than it would 
have otherwise obtained. Many stories have been told about its 
uses and effects. It appears that at one tim: before the inter- 
course with foreigners the only intoxicating drink known to the 
natives was the water in which the roots of the kava plant 
(Macropiper methysticum) had been- macerated, and this was 
comparatively little used, except as a medicine, as it was supposed 
to prevent corpulence. Since the introduction of foreign spirits 
into the islands the use of kava has much diminished, though 
intoxication is none the less common, and with many of the 
natives kava is still much appreciated, and even many of the 
lower classes of white people are confirmed kaya-drinkers. It 
is said that, if drunk in excessive quantities, it produces numerous 
cutaneous diseases, but if taken in moderation has no ill effect 
upon the system. A drink, prepared ina similar filthy manner, 
is the South American Piwarri, which is produced by first chew- 
ing a sufficient quantity of cakes made of cassava meal (Manihot 
ulilissimc ), and then putting the masticated material into a bowl 
with water, where it is left to ferment for some days, and finally 
boiled, 
So much has been said about the adulteration of butter and 
the frequent substitute of a compound for that useful article, in 
which no trace of true butter exists, that the introduction of Aus- 
tralian butter into this country is a matter not only of commercial 
importance, but must also give general satisfaction to all classes. 
The butter is of good quality, and arrives after its lengthened 
voyage in good condition. It is produced in different parts of 
the Australian colony, so that we may hope to receive large and 
continuous supplies. Itis a fact worth noting that whereas at 
one time large supplies of butter were exported from Cork: into 
the colonies, one of these same colonies is now sending its pro- 
duce to us. 
THE cultivation of the beet in England for the manufacture of 
sugar seems in a fair way of at last becoming a /azt accompli. 
Besides the works already in operation at Lavenham in Suffolk, 
Buscote in Berkshire, and other places, a new beetroot sugar 
company has ust been formed under good prospects at Sandwich 
Kent. 
NATURE 

[Fune 1,1871 

PROF. WYVILLE THOMSON’ SINTRODUCTORY 
LECTURE AT EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY 
(Continued from page 76) 
HE distinction between inorganic bodies and organised 
beings instinct with life seems clear enough. Between the 
animal and the vegetable kingdoms it is impossible to draw a 
definite line. It is to solve this difficulty that Ernst Haeckel 
has proposed his fourth kingdom, and we have now to consider 
whether orjnot the solution is satisfactory or legitimate. 
Plants have the power of secreting and storing in organs which 
are specially fitted for its reception, usually the leaves, a sub- 
stance called ‘‘ chlorophyll,” by means of which, acting pro- 
bably asa ferment or in some way which is not yet thoroughly 
understood, the plant can, under the influence of light, absorb 
carbonic acid from the atmosphere, decompose it, and, while the 
carbon is in the nascent condition, combine it with the elements 
of water, or with the elements of water and of ammonia, reduced 
likewise to the nascent state by the same agency. The plant 
thus gains from the inorganic world, from the water contained in 
the soil and the inorganic substances dissolved in it, and from the 
atmosphere, various elementary substances, chiefly, however, 
oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, and nitrogen, and these it recombines 
into ternary, quaternary, and still more complex organic com- 
pounds. 
The operations which take place within the chlorophyll cell 
of the plant are briefly these :— 
1. Water, H, O, which has been absorbed by the root of the 
plant from the soil, and pumped up by endosmosis or capillary 
attraction to the leaf, is decomposed, and its elements are re- 
duced to the nascent condition. 
2. Carbonicacid, C O,, which exists as a gas in the atmosphere 
to the amount of about 1 vol. to 2,500 of air, and which is con- 
sequently in contact with the surface of the leaves, is absorbed, 
and its elements are reduced to the nascent state. 
3. Ammonia, N H,, an abundant product of the decom- 
position of organised bodies, which exists in small quantities in 
the water of the soil, and much more abundantly as a gas in 
the atmosphere (in the proportion of about 1 vel. to 1,000,000 of 
air), is decomposed, and its elements are reduced to the nascent 
state, 
4. The nascent carbon of the carbonic acid is combined with 
the elements of water in varying proportions, and by the re-com- 
bination of the elements of these binary compounds, ternary 
compounds ; for example, cellulose, starch, dextrine, and gum, 
which have all apparently the same composition, C, Hy, O;, or 
some multiple of these proportions ; sucrose or cane sugar C,, 
H,, O,, ; dextrose and levulose, grape and fruit sugar, C,; Hy, O.; 
the glucosides, such as tannine, C,, H,,O,,; the fixed and 
essential oils, some of which latter, however, as turpentine and 
its isomers, are binary, C,) Hg; and many like substances, are 
produced. 
5. The nascent nitrogen of the ammonia, sulphur, which is 
probably derived from a trace of sulphuretted hydrogen in the 
atmosphere ; phosphorus, derived from the decomposition of cer- 
tain minerals contained in the soil or of vegetable or animal 
matter, are united to form quarternary, quinary, and more com- 
plex compounds, such as vegetable albumen, fibrin, casein, and 
protoplasm, 
Aibumen. Casein. Fibrin. 
Carbon . 0 : c 53°5 538 52°7 
Hydrogen . ° . 70 72 69 
Nitrogen . : : ¢ 15°5 156 15 "4 
Oxygen. : . 22'0 22°5 2355 
Sulphur. : 5 16 o'9 12 
Phosphorus 6 5 5 "4 oo o%3 
and the vegetable alkaloids, for example, nicotine C,, H,, Ns, 
morphine Cy;1H,, NO, + H,O, and narcotine Cy, Hy, NO. 
Under the guidance of the vital property, and through the 
medium of a peculiar substance called protoplasm, whose exact 
composition it is difficult to determine, but which seems to be 
closely related to albumen, which is constantly present where 
vital actions are going on, and in which alone apparently the 
peculiar property called life resides, these different substances are 
adjusted as to their related proportions, and selected and applied 
each to its destined object in the plant economy, to enlarge the 
cell or to strengthen the cell-wall, to lay the foundation of a new 
cell, to be stored up in a special reservoir for future use, to 
contribute, in short, to the development or maintenance of the 
special specific form of the organism of which it forms a part. 
