“Seer 


Dec. 15, 1870] 
NATURE 
127 

some kind asa medium for conveying poison into the stomach 
of Claudius. With equal justice the mild Calenian wine would 
have been in ili repute because poison was not unfrequently 
mixed with it— 
Occurrit matrona potens. quze molle Calenum 
Porrectura viro miscet sitiente rubetam. 
I cannot therefore think that the bad name clinging to the whole 
family of agarics was thus incurred ; for Locusta did not employ 
a poisonous fungus for her deadly purpose : she mixed poison 
with some kind of mushroom of which Claudius was particularly 
fond, and of which he had no doubt often partaken. The words 
of Tacitus are explicit ; he says that ‘‘ the writers of those times 
have related that poison was poured into a dish of do/et?, of which 
the Emperor was fond ;” ‘‘ Temporum illorum scriptores prodi- 
derint infusum delectabili cibo boletorum venenum,” (An. xii. 66.) 
Suetonius is equally clear: ‘‘ Boletos in quo cibi genere venenum 
acceperat.” (Nero 33.) Pliny, too, seems to regard the boleti, 
which he calls an excellent food, as the vehicle conveying the 
poison: ‘‘ Veneno Tiberio Claudio principi per hanc occasionem 
a conjuge Agrippina dato.” (Nat. Hist. xxii. 22.) Cases of 
accidental poisoning by fungi no doubt occasionally happened 
amongst the ancients as amungst ourselves, but I doubt whether 
any of the family of fungi were ever designedly employed as a 
poison. According to Pliny, Annzeus Serenus, the prefect of 
Nero’s guard, with his tribunes and centurions, accidentally 
met their death by eating some poisonous fungus; I am not 
aware that any other writer records the circumstance ; it is rather 
curious that Seneca, a very dear and intimate friend of Serenus, 
makes no allusion to the cause of his friend’s death, in his 
touching lament over it, when we remember the philosopher’s 
intense aversion to the fungus tribe. Here is a specimen of his 
vigorous diatribe : “Good gods ! how many men does one belly 
engage! What! Do you think that those boleti—a pleasant 
poison—albeit they hurt not now, conceal within them no hidden 
mischief?” (Ep. xcv.) In another place (Ep. cviii.) he speaks of 
boleti and oysters together as things he had for ever renounced : 
‘For they are not food, they serve only to tickle the appetite, 
constraining those that are full to eat more ; a very gratifying 
amusement to such persons as stuff themselves with such things 
as readily go down, and as readily retyrn.” The do/e¢es instru- 
mental in causing Claudius’s death has been supposed to be the 
Amanita cesarea, the specific name being given to this fungus on 
that account, but the point cannot be decided. That the genus 
Amanita was known to Pliny appears pretty evident from his de- 
scription: itis first covered bya volva, egg-like, and then it breaks 
through this and rises onits stem. I can find no distinctive men- 
tion of the tubes or pores, characteristic of the order Polyporei, 
in any classical author. The Jo/etus of the ancients might have 
included the modern genus Boletus and some of the Agaricini. 
Some of the Polyporei are no doubt denoted by the wtentes dard 
tév piav Kal mapd tas pl(as puduevor of Theophrastus (iii. 7, 
§ 6); and Pliny probably means the same when he speaks of fungi 
growing on trees. Whatever the boleti were, they were highly 
esteemed ; we find them not unfrequently contrasted with /eg7 
and szzlli :— 
Vilibus ancipites fungi ponentur amicis, 
Boletus domino. (Juv. Sa¢. v. 146.) 
Compare also Martial (iii. 60) : 
Sunt tibi boleti; fungos ego sumo suillos. 
Boleti were so good that you could not trust a slave to convey 
them to a friend ; he would be sure to eat them on the way :— 
Argentum atque aurum facile est, lenamque togamque 
Mittere ; boletos mittere difficile est. (xiii. 48.) 
What the kind known as swi//i, ‘‘ hog-fungi,” were, cannot be 
determined. W. HouGHtTon 

Hereditary Deformities 
Tue facts about hereditary epilepsy in guinea-pigs, mentioned 
in NATURE of 3rd ult., on page 14, appear to show that muti- 
lations may be inherited when accompanied by functional de- 
rangements ; though there appears to be very little, if any, evi- 
dence of mutilation being inherited when not so accompanied. 
Dr. Carpenter says somewhere (I cannot find the reference) 
that small scars are sometimes more persistent than large ones. 
We might consequently expect that they would be liable to 
become hereditary. But this does not appear to be the fact. To 
mention an obvious instance: in many countries, the ears of all 
the girls, and of many of the boys, are pierced for earrings. We 
could not expect to find the perforation hereditary, but it would 

not be wonderful if the external scar were to be so ; the small- 
ness of the operation, not amounting to mutilation, and not pro- 
ducing any functional disturbance, might be thought to be in 
favour of this result. But Iam not aware that it is ever found. 
JOsEPH JOHN Murpuy 
Old Forge, Dunmurry, Co. Antrim : 
The Colour of Feathers and of Butterflies’ Wings 
THE change of colour observed by E. V. F. (Nature, No. 
55) in the red parts of the wing of a butterfly by the application 
of muriatic acid, is in all probability due to the red colourins 
containing a trace of copper in its composition. I have demon- 
strated the almost universal presence of that metal in the sea, in 
the earth, in fish, in flesh, in ve;retables. 
Not long ago Professor Church showed it to exist in the red 
feathers of birds. SEPTIMUS PIESSE 
Chiswick 
Man’s Bare Back 
WILL you be good enough to favour me with a small space in 
your excellent journal for these few lines, in answer to Mr 
Wallace’s difficulty with regard to the nudity of the back of 
man, According to Darwinian principles, there is what is 
called correlation of growth, by which I believe is meant, that 
an organ, or some part of the organism, is selected, not because 
itself is useful, but because its growth is somehow correlated to 
some other organ which is useful. Now, as a growth is admitted 
which exists by virtue of its correlation to some useful organ, why 
should not an atrophy of some part of the organism also be 
admitted as correlated to some organ which has been naturally 
selected on account of its usefulness? Although the nudity of the 
back of man is not in itself useful, nevertheless the atrophy of 
the hair on his back may be correlated to the development of 
some organ peculiar to man, and which is useful to him; or, in 
other words, the growth of the hair on the human back, although 
in itself useful, is incompatible with the growth of some other 
organ which may be infinitely more useful tohim. Such atrophy, 
for all we know to the contrary, may be in some way correlated 
to cerebral development, to the erect posture, to the development 
of the hand, to the organs of speech, &c. At all events, if we 
cannot positively state that our dorsal nudity is so correlated, we 
certainly cannot say that it is not. Ido not think that Mr. 
Wallace is justified in excluding the nudity of the back of man 
from the theory of natural selection, because he cannot show 
that it is useful. It may not in itself be useful, but it may be 
subordinate to some organ which is most useful. I consider that 
if the principles of a correlated atrophy be admitted, the 
stumblingblock of our bare backs will cease to trouble Darwinian 
thinkers. The argument struck me when I first read Mr. 
Wallace’s remarkable ‘‘ Contributions to Natural Selection,” but 
as I now see, by his article in p. 9, No. 53, Vol. III. of Narurr, 
that his difficulty has not been answered, I venture to address 
the foregoing to you, with the hope that my argument may be 
of some utility. E. Bonavia, M.D., 
Nov. 13 M.E.S. of London 
Loss of Temperature in Climbing 
FREQUENT reference has been lately made to the thermometrical 
results obtained by Dr. Lortet while walking up Mont Blanc, in 
which, as stated by Dr. Corfield in NATURE of Dec. 1, his 
temperature fell about 4° C, in ascending nearly 4,000 metres. 
Mr. E. R. Lankester informs me that when undertaking the same 
journey, he also found his temperature much lower when he was 
up high than when he started. 
At first sight this result is unexpected, but it was predicted long 
ago by Joule, who, in the appendix to a paper read at the British 
Association in 1843, states thus :—‘‘If an animal were engaged 
in turning a piece of machinery, or in ascending a mountain, I 
apprehend that, in proportion to the muscular effort put forth for 
the purpose, a diminution of the heat evolved in the system by a 
given chemical action would be experienced.” 
This is evidently the key to the whole subject, and I hope 
shortly to publish other results, now in an incomplete form, which 
bear on the point. 
It is evident that the potential energy which results from 
ascending a hil is gained by the expenditure of work, and a loss 
of heat from the body must naturally follow; while in walking on 
