NATURE 



\_Dcc. 1 6, 1880 



A Rhenish Fishery Society has just been founded at Cologne. 

 It will direct its attention not only to the Rhine fisheries, but its 

 programme is a most universal one, comprising even the further- 

 ance and support of ichthyological research as well as the 

 establishment of ichthyological stations in various countries. 



Mr. Baller of the China Inland Mission has lately made a 

 journey in the little-known province of Kweichow at the time 

 when the people were engaged on their opium har\-est, and he 

 thus describes the process ; — A small three-bladed knife is used 

 to make an incision in the poppy-head as soon as the petals fall 

 off. The drop or two of milky juice that oozes out is after a 

 little while scraped off with a small curved knife into a bamboo 

 tubej and a fresh incision made. The process is repeated until 

 the supply is exhausted. The juice thus collected is dried in the 

 sun, when it turns jet black, and is then ready for the market. 



OUR ASTRONOMICAL COLUMN 



The Comets of Hartwig and Swift. — M!M. Schulhof 

 and Bossert have investigated the elements of comets iSSo r/and 

 e, discovered respectively by Dr. Hartwig at Strasburg on 

 September 29, and Mr. Lewis Swift at Rochester, New York, 

 on October 11. Prof. Winnecke had conjectured that Hartwig's 

 comet might have been identical with the comets of the years 

 1382, 1444, 1506, and 1569, with a period of revolution of 623 

 years. MM. Schulhof and Bossert formed six normal positions 

 between September 30 and November 29 from observatiDns at 

 Paris, Strasburg, Berlin, Leipsic, Kiel, Kremsmunster, Lund, 

 Florence, Marseilles, O'Gyalla, Clinton, and Washington, and 

 on varying the distances from the earth at the first and fifth 

 place until the other normals were represented as closely as 

 possible, arrived at an elliptical orbit, but with a period of 12S0 

 years : this result is necessarily uncertain under the circum- 

 stances, but it nevertheless appears to render so short a revolu- 

 tion as 62 J years in the highest degree improbable. 



With respect to Swift's comet, taking as the fundamental data 

 the Odessa observation on October 31, a mean of Dunecht, 

 Paris, and .Strasburg on November 9, and an observation at 

 Paris on November 2 7, it is found that, assuming only one revolu- 

 tion to have been accomplished between 1869 and 1880, or that 

 the period is lo'96 years, the middle place cannot be represented 

 with sufficient precision ; when the error is diminished in longi- 

 tude, it is increased in latitude. On the hypothesis that the 

 period is 5J years, or that two revolutions are included in the 

 above interval, the error in latitude is greatly diminished, but 

 still exceeds thirty seconds of arc. This, while indicating that 

 the second hypothesis is more probable than the first, is regarded 

 by MM. Schulhof and Bossert as rendering so short a period as 

 3§ years possible, though it is admitted that it may well be due 

 to errors of observation. It must be borne in mind that the 

 comet has always presented itself as a faint diffused object, 

 withoat that degiee of condensation necessary to insure precise 

 observation. The following is the cllij se of 54 years' period : — 

 Perihelion passage, 18S0, November 8'oooii G.M.T. 



Longitude of perihelion 43 433) 



„ ,, ascending node 296 51 33 > 



Inclination S 23 32 ) 



Angle of excentricity 41 3 25 



Logarithm of semi-axis major 0*492684 



M. Eq. 



iSSo'o 



With these elements the perihelion distance will be found to 

 be l'o67i, and the aphelion distance 5'i5i8, and the heliocentric 

 latitude at aphelion - 4° 6''6, whence we find the distance from 

 the orbit of Jupiter to be o"53. 



MM. Schulhof and Bossert propose to continue their investi- 

 gation when further observations are available : meanwhile it 

 may be remarked that their ellipse of five and a half years is 

 likely to afford positions sufficiently near the truth to insure the 

 observation of the comet as long as it is within reach of our 

 telescopes, and it may be suggested to those who are in possession 

 of powerful instruments that they will render an important 

 service in determining places of this comet as long and as accu- 

 rately as practicable. 



The November Meteors. — Notwithstanding much inter- 

 ference from clouds the observers at Moncalieri, who watched 

 for meteors during the nights of November 12-14, consider that 



they obtained evidence of the increasing density of the Leonid- 

 stream, thus confirming observations made last year in England 

 and the United States. One of these meteors appeared larger 

 than the planet Jupiter, with an intense blue light, and a bright 

 train of the same colour. It is added : "La lumiere zodiacale 

 d'opposition etait tres brillante vers I'orient, sur le fond pur de 

 ciel, s'elevait jusqu'au dela de la queue de Lion." 



Near Appulse of Jupiter to a Fixed Star. — On the 

 evening of November 20 Jupiter must have approached very 

 near to the star B.D. -!- 2° No. 97, rated 7-7 in the Durck- 

 inusteriiiii;, and 7-9 on December 17, 1856, when it was 

 observed on the meridian at Bonn, indeed the resulting place of 

 the star would bring it almost into contact h ith the limit of the 

 planet about the time of conjunction in right ascension (9h. 4m..), 

 but small errors of the star's position and tables of Jupi'er may 

 have combined to leave it at an appreciable distance from the 

 limb ; perhaps some reader of Nature may have determined 

 micrometrically the nearest approach. The apparent place of 

 the star on November 20 was in R.A. oh. 38m. 49'44s., Dec!. 

 + 2° 32' 59"'9- 



BIOLOGICAL NOTES 



Anab.^ina living in Eotrydium. — It is now well knowa 

 that many plants belonging to the group of the Nostocs flourish 

 within the cells of other plants. Thus they are to be found 

 in the petioles of the leaves of Gunnera, in Lemna, in An- 

 thoceros, in Blasia, and in AzoUa ; and it was to be expected 

 that they would equally find themselves at home in the cells 

 of even more lowly organised plants. An instance of this 

 latter, not without interest, has been noticed by Dr. L. Mar- 

 chand, who recently collected a Botrydium at Montmorency, 

 which, on being examined under the microscope, was found, 

 instead of containing the usual mass of granular chlorophyll, 

 to be filled with a chain of moniliform filaments, presenting 

 all the characters of the chaplets of a Nostoc or Anabxna. 

 These filaments were composed of cells, some oblong with 

 yellowish heterocysts, and they did not fill the entire cavity of the 

 Botrydium cell, but seemed to adhere to its inner walls. The 

 Botrydia plants were perfect ; the root-like prolongations, as well 

 as the rest of the plant, were perfectly closed. How then did 

 these foreign bodies get in? This is not a question easy to 

 answer, but it is one well worthy of being investigated. Dr. 

 Marchand calls attention to the remarkable figure of Mr. E. 

 Parfitt in "Grevillea" (vol. i. p. 103, pi. vii.), in which there 

 is now little doubt, with the light thrown on the subject by Dr. 

 Marchand's specimens, that there is represented our common 

 species of Botrydium with a parasitic, or better, an endophytic 

 Anaboena. No doubt the cells of the Anabsena in Parfitt's 

 figure are badly represented, but the observation made in Parfitt's 

 paper would seem now not to be without a special interest of 

 its own. 



Mesembrianthemu.m not Mesembryanthemum. — Prof. 

 Asa Gray, in the Botanical Gazette [(Indiana), vol v. Nos. 8 

 and 9, p. 89, thus writes : — This word is properly written 

 Mesembrianthemum, by Jacob Breyne, who made the name, and 

 by Dillenius, who took it up, both giving the derivation from 

 Mesembria, mid-day, alluding to the time in which the blossoms 

 open. But both Breyne and Dillenius themselves very often 

 wrote it Mesembryanthemum ; Linneus, adopting this latter, 

 became consistent by making a wrong and far-fetched deriva- 

 tion to match the orthography. Among systematic writers 

 Sprengel almost alone keeps to the correct orthography, but 

 Webb insists on it. The younger Breyne, in his edition of his 

 father's "Prodomus," has a note about it (p. 81). He mentions 

 an excuse for changing the orthography, namely, "that some 

 species do not open their blossoms at noontide," but intimates 

 that Linneus' derivation from the insertion of the corolla around 

 the middle of the germ is open to the same objection. Prof. 

 Asa Gray adds, "if heeded, this kind of objection would be fatal 

 to very many generic names." 



Chlorophyll in the Epidermis of Plants. — Adolf Stohr 

 contributes to the Scientific Pi-oceednigs of the Vienna Academy 

 a very interesting paper on the occurrence of chlorophyll in the 

 epidermal tissue system of the leaves of flowering plants. He 

 sums up a detailed account as follows :— While the epidermis of 

 the aquatic submerged Phanerogams is usually regarded as con- 

 taining chlorophyll, the epidermis of the green organs of the 

 terrestrial Phanerogams is, on the contrary, considered to be 



