334 
fortunately not told. Inthe next page we find that the 
molluscs or soft animals are composed of radiata, star- 
fishes, &c., polyps, corals, &c.,naked molluscs and tes- 
tacea or shell-fish. Need we carry our investigation 
further? 
The terms which the author supposes are used by 
surgeons and physicians are of the most astounding 
nature, and many of them, although possibly used a 
century or two ago, are perfectly newto us. We only con- 
fine ourselves to the letter A. Do any of our readers 
suffer from acatharsia, acratia, acrisy, acropathy, acropy, 
acroteriasm, acrothymion, adenopharyngitis, aerophobia, 
agalaxy, agennesia, agrypnocoma, anagogy, anopsy, anti- 
spasis, antritis, apagma, apolepsy, apolysis, apotrepis, 
or arthropuosis? Let them have recourse to such 
remedial agents as acidulum, acopica, adipson, alborga 
(a kind of sandal wood made of mat weed), aldehydic 
acid (which “is a solution of oxide of silver in alde- 
hyde”), alloxan (which our readers will be surprised 
to learn is “the action of nitric with uric acid”), amy- 
lum (which we are told is “a preparation of starch”), 
anacathartics (which are “any medicines that operate 
upwards; a cough attended with expectoration ;” it 
is of course the “ medicine that operates upwards” and 
not the cough, that we recommend as a remedial 
agent), antephiatic medicine, or arrowroot (consisting of 
starch, albumen, volatile oil, chloride of calcium, and 
water), which we presume may be obtained at an antido- 
tarium. Should surgical aid be required, an arthrem- 
bolum may prove of service. We can only account for 
this appalling list of medical terms and for the information 
regarding alloxan, arrowroot, &c., on the supposition that 
Dr. Nuttall’s medical attendant is an incorrigible wag, and 
that he took a most dishonourable advantage of his 
position. 
Our readers will, we think, by this time be satisfied that 
our introductory remarks upon this discreditable pro- 
duction were not at all too severe. It is a disgrace to 
English science that such books should find a respectable 
publisher. 
Das Gesetz der vermiedenen Selbstbefruchtung bei den 
hdheren Pflanzen. Von Dr. O. W. Thome. (Williams 
and Norgate.) 
WE opened this little pamphlet in the hope of finding in 
ita new contribution to the literature of the self-fertilisation 
and cross-fertilisation of plants, but were disappointed 
to discover that it consisted of little besides a résumé of 
the labours of others in this field. The instances in which 
the self-fertilisation of hermaphrodite flowers is prevented 
by the fact that the stigma and the stamens ripen at 
different times, are mostly taken from Prof. Hildebrand’s 
“Die Geschlechter-Vertheilung bei den Pflanzen,” and 
from that botanist’s contributions to the “ Botanische 
Zeitung.” On the laws of dimorphism and trimorphism 
we have little but the examples so elaborately worked out 
by Mr. Darwin in the genera Linum, Primula, and 
/ythrum,. It is singular that from the time that Sprengel 
first called attention to the provisions which favour cross- 
fertilisation in plants, now more than seventy years since, 
so little had been done in this field until the researches of 
the two eminent botanists above named, and even now they 
have so few fellow-labourers. There is no department of 
physiological botany more beneaththe eye of every dweller 
in the country, or of any one who possesses a garden, 
none which presents so many points of interest even to 
the casual observer, and so many illustrations for the 
advocate of the doctrine of “design,” and none in 
which a careful series of observations would be more 
fertile in results of importance. If country botanists 
would bestow a portion of the energy which has been 
wasted in mere collecting, and the eradication of rare 
plants from their native haunts, on systematic physiolo- 
gical obseryations, the gain to genuine science would be 
immense, A. W. B. 
NATURE 
[Aug. 25, 1870 
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 
[ The Editor does not hold himself responsible for opinions expressed 
by his Correspondents. No notice is taken of anonymous 
communications. | 
The Gulf-Stream 
As a note appended to Prof. Wyville Thomson’s lecture ‘‘ On 
Deep-Sea Climates,” published in your number for July 28, may 
lead your readers to suppose the divergence of opinion between 
my colleague and myself upon the subject of the Gulf-Stream to 
be greate: than it is, I shall be obliged by your placing before 
them a few observations which may put the question really at 
issue between us in a more definite form. 
The term ‘ Gulf-Stream” is continually used in two different 
senses. By myself it has been employed to designate the current 
issuing from the Gulf of Mexico through the ‘‘ Narrows”’ be- 
tween Florida and the Bahamas ; and this I apprehend to be its 
true signification. My colleague’s definition of it I give in his 
own words :—‘‘ The water of the North Atlantic thus consists 
first of a great sheet of warm water, the general northerly reflux 
of the equatorial current, the most marked portion of it passing 
through the strait of Florida, and the whole generally called the 
Gulf Stream.” He thus distinctly recognises, with myself, the 
participation of a Subsidiary Current with the Gulf-Stream proper 
in the production of the two great temperature-phenomena of 
the North Atlantic, determined by the /orcupine soundings 
—(1) the elevation of the temperature, not of its surface-layer 
only, but of a stratum $00 or goo fathoms deep, by a north-east 
movement of tropical water ; and (2) the depression of the tem- 
perature of its deepest portions by a reflux of glacial water from 
the Arctic and Antarctic basins. 
Now I have on no occasion, so far as I can recollect, spoken 
so disrespectfully of the Gulf-Stream proper as to ‘‘ deny that it 
exercises any influence upon the temperature of the basin of the 
North Atlantic,” nor am I aware of having expressed a ‘‘ doubt 
whether it reaches the coast of Europe at all.” That the Gulf 
Stream proper, by raising the temperature of the portion of the 
Atlantic basin over which it can be distinctly traced, has a most 
important ¢va/rect influence upon the temperature of its north- 
eastern extension, I cannot doubt for a moment ; and that its 
direct influence.is traceable to the western coast of Europe, as far 
north as the Bay of Biscay, I accept on the authority of the 
recently-published Admiralty charts of its course and distribu- 
tion. But I /aze expressed a doubt as to the extension of the 
Gulf-Stream proper to the channel between the North of Scot- 
land and the Faroe Islands; and I have ventured to think it an 
open question whether the super-heating of the surface-water 
observed on a hot Midsummer day beyond the northern border 
of the Bay of Biscay was not as probably due to the direct influ- 
ence of the sun as to the extension of the Gulf-Stream to that 
locality. 
The main questions between my friend and myself are there- 
fore as follows : What are the relative shares of the GulfStream 
proper, and of the Subsidiary Current, in producing the elevation 
of temperature in the upper stratum of the North Atlantic to a 
depth of about 800 fathoms—and what is the motive power of that 
Subsidiary Current? These questions can only be answered, as 
it seems to me, by an appeal to certain general probabilities— 
definite data for their determination being still deficient, for, in 
the first place, all the calculations which have been made as to 
the quantity of water which issues from the Narrows, and the 
amount of heat which it conveys, are based (if I recollect aright, 
having here no access to books on the subject) upon the assump- 
tion that both its temperature and its rate of movement are the 
same throughout its depth as they are at its surface. Now, until 
reliable proof shall have been furnished as to both these particu- 
lars by our friends of the United States Coast Survey, I must 
claim a suspension of judgment, many probabilities leading to 
the suspicion that the bottom-flow may be considerably less rapid 
than the surface-current, andits temperature considerably lower. 
Secondly, even admitting in its full force the reputed “ glory” of 
the Gulf-Stream at its exit from the Narrows, I fail to see the 
evidence that either its heat or its movement is directly con- 
cerned in the flow of the warm upper stratum of the- north-east 
extension of the Atlantic towards the Hebrides, the Faroes, and 
Spitzbergen. For as the stream of superheated water, on its 
emergence into the open ocean, spreads itself out like a fan, it 
must necessarily become shallower as it extends instead of 
deeper, and this (if I remember aright) is what all observation 
