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NA rURE 



{Jan. 6, 1887 



tional institutions are often inserted in educational and literary 

 journals in England. This is never done in the United States. 

 There were no fewer than forty appli(-atio;is for a recent vacancy 

 in a prominent American college, and if the appointment had 

 been advertised, the number would no doubt have been very 

 much larger. Science is of opinion that American colleges lose 

 nothing by declining to follow the English example in this 

 matter, since in the case of every important college " the presi- 

 dent and trustees keep their eyes continually open, and when a 

 vacancy occurs they are pretty sure to know who is the best man 

 for the place, or, in any event, they have made up unconsciously 

 a short list from which the selection is to be made." A distinct 

 advantage of the American p'an is that governing bodies are not 

 troubled with the importunities of persons who wish to be 

 appointed to positions for which they are wholly unsuited. 



The Wagner Free Institute of Science, Philadelphia, has 

 issued a valuable report, by Mr. Angelo Heilprin, on his explora- 

 tions on the west coast of Florida and in the Okeechobee 

 Wilderness. Mr. Heilprin is of opinion that the whole State of 

 Florida belongs exclusively to the Tertiary and post-Tertiary 

 periods of geological time, and consequently, as a defined geo- 

 graphical area, represents the youngest portion of the United 

 States. There is not, he thinks, a particle of evidence support- 

 ing the coral theory of the growth of the peninsula. Sedimen- 

 tation and deposition along this portion of the American coast 

 appear to have been practically unbroken or continuous, as is 

 indicated by the gradational union of the different formations, 

 and the absence of broad or distinct lines of faunal separation. 

 The elevation of the peninsula, especially in its more southern 

 parts, seems to have been effected very gradually, judging from 

 the perfect preservation of most of the later fossils, and the normal 

 positions — i.e., the positions they occupied when living — which 

 many of the species still maintain. There is evidence that 

 before its final elevation a large part of the peninsula was for a 

 ■considerable period in the condition of a submerged flat or plain, 

 the shallows covering which were most favourably situated for 

 Ihe development of a profuse animal life, and permitted of 

 the accumulation of reef-structures and of vast oyster and scallop 

 banks. The present submerged plain or plateau to the west 

 of the peninsula may be taken to represent this condition. 

 Fresh-water streams, and consequently dry land, existed in the 

 more southern part of the peninsula during the Pliocene period, 

 as is proved by the inter-association of marine and fluviatile 

 mollusks in the deposits of the Caloosahatchie. Mr. Heilprin 

 liolds that the doctrine of evolution receives positive and most 

 striding confirmation in Florida, because the m:)dern fauna of 

 the coast is indisputably a derivative, through successive evolu- 

 tionary changes, of the pre-existing faunas of the Pliocene and 

 Miocene periods of the same region ; and the immediate ancestors 

 ■of many of the living forms, but slightly differing in specific 

 characters, can be determined among the Pliocene fossils of the 

 Caloosahatchie. He is also convinced that man's great antiquity 

 on the peninsula is established beyond a doubt, and he suggests 

 that the fossilised remains found on Sarasota Bay, now wholly 

 converted into limonite, may represent the most ancient belong- 

 ings of man that have ever been discovered. 



An interesting paper on the sub-genus Cylinder (Montfort) of 

 Conus, contributed by Mr. J. Cosmo Melvill, M.A., F.L.S., to 

 the tenth volume of the third series of Memoirs of the Manches- 

 ter Literary and Philosophical Society, has been reprinted. Mr. 

 Melvill has much to say about the Conus gloria maris. This 

 exquisite shell is " prominent among all its kindred for beauty of 

 shape and excellence of pattern ;" and "the reticulations areso 

 fine as to defy the skill of the lithographer." The land of its 

 nativity is Jacna, island of Bohol, Philippines, where the late 

 Mr. Hugh Cuming found two examples, one very juvenile. 



scarcely more than an inch in length. Mr. Cuming tried hard 

 to find other specimens, employing all the available natives in 

 dredging expeditions ; but his efforts were unsuccessful. It is 

 said that the original very circumscribed locality has been 

 annihilated by an earthquake, and Mr. Melvill thinks that this 

 is not improbable Only twelve specimens are known to exist. 

 Five are in this country, and one of them is in Mr. Melvill's 

 collection at Prestvvich. Another — perhaps the finest specimen 

 known — is in the collection which belonged to the late Mrs. De 

 Burgh, and three are in the British Museum collection at South 

 Kensington. A good example was bought by Mr. Lovell 

 Reeve in 1865 for the Melbourne Museum. 



We have received a " List of the Macro-Lepidoptera of East 

 Sussex," compiled by Mr. J. H. A. Jenner, F.E.S., Lewes. It 

 is reprinted frjm the Proceedings of the Eastbourne Natural 

 History Society. East Sussex, according to Mr. Jenner, is 

 probably one of the richest, in number of species, in the country. 

 This he attributes to the southern latitude of the district and 

 its varied characteristics — Its downs, marshes, extensive woods 

 and forests, and its sea-coast. Some parts of East Sussex have 

 been well worked by entomologists, especially near the larger 

 towns, but little is known of some of the outlying districts. 



Among the numerous forms of fungus which live upon higher 

 plants (many of which are so detrimental to their hosts) are 

 some, it is now believed, which live with these on terms of 

 mutual assistance. Frank found that the young root points of 

 some of our forest trees, as the beech and the oak, are covered 

 with a coating of fungus (probably belonging to the truffle or 

 allied family), which seems to help in the nutrition of those 

 trees. Another interesting case is that of fungi which live with 

 orchids, and whose mode of propag.ation has lately been esta- 

 blished by Herr Wahrlich {Botanische Zeitung). The fungus 

 appears in the outer cells of the root tissue in the form of yellow 

 bladder-like balls (of the nature of hausloria or suckers) sur- 

 rounded by numerous filaments. It works no perceptible harm 

 to the plant, but on the contrary it is thought that, especially in 

 the case of orchids which live on the humus of woods, the fungus 

 probably transforms the humus matters into such as are more 

 easily utilised by the orchid, thus doing it a physiological service. 

 The fungi observed by Herr Wahrlich belong to the family of 

 ryrcnomyceles, and the genus Ncctria. 



The amount of free carbonic acid in the ground has been 

 lately shown by Prof. WoUny (we learn from Naturforscher) to 

 depend, on the one hand, on the factors of decomposition of 

 organic substances (heat, moisture, porosity), as affected by the 

 physical nature of the ground and its covering ; on the other 

 hand, on the resistance which the ground presents, according to 

 its mechanical state, to the escape of the gas. Ground-air seems 

 to have most carbonic acid when the ground is at a slope of 

 about 20". Slopes facing south have most carbonic acid ; those 

 facing north, least, though the difference is not great, as the 

 two principal factors, heat and moisture, largely c lunteract each 

 other. In drought, ground facing north has more carbonic acid. 

 With equal quantities of organic matter there is more carbonic 

 acid, the more finely granular the ground ; and such ground 

 hinders movement of the gas downwards as well as into the 

 atmosphere. The air in ground shaded by living plants has 

 considerably less carbonic acid than that in bare ground, and 

 in the latter it has less (in dry years, not in wet) than in ground 

 covered by dead parts of plants. 



In lecturing upon the "Denizens of the Aqueous Kingdom " 

 on Friday last at the Royal Aquarium, Mr. August Carter 

 referred to deformities that exist among fish. In 1885 and 1886 

 he had examined many thousands of trout and salmon fry at 

 South Kensington on their emerging from the ova, and found 



