630 
appendages was very much weakened. “ With 
those decapitated Belostomas that assumed the 
death-feigning attitude, a weakened tetanic 
condition of the muscles could be induced by 
gently stroking the abdomen with a camel’s 
hair brush, but the instant the stroking ended 
the legs would sprawl apart and become lax.” 
Certain experiments were performed by the 
authors in which the Belostomas and Nepas 
were cut into two distinct parts, the cut being 
made between the prothorax and the meso- 
thorax. The operation was performed in such 
a manner that “neither the fused infra- 
esophageal and first thoracie ganglia, nor the 
large ganglion, which innervates the posterior 
pairs of legs and the abdomen, are injured.” 
In such eases, in Belostoma, the two parts con- 
tinued to feign death. In fact the response 
continued for a considerable length of time 
after the operation. The posterior portion, 
after coming out of the death-feint, if thrown 
into water, would attempt to swim by making 
a few feeble movements with the appendages. 
When the water bug, Belostoma, is severed be- 
tween the first two thoracic segments, the two 
portions will continue the feigning posture; 
yet when the head is removed, the organism 
immediately arouses from the death-feint. In 
other cases the insect (Nepa) was severed 
across the metathorax, posterior to the last 
ganglion, and it was found that the posterior 
portion did not respond to stimuli at all even 
when the ventral surface of the abdomen was 
touched with a red hot needle; but the part in 
front of the cut reacted much in the same 
manner aS an uninjured specimen. 
VIII. In the discussion of “The Origin 
and Development of the Death-Feint,” the 
authors review the ideas of Preyer, Romanes 
and Holmes. They eall attention to the fact 
that both Belostoma and Nepa tend to cling 
together and form clusters, a positively thig- 
motactie response. It is also a noticeable 
phenomenon that contact stimuli play a large 
role in the lives of both of these organisms. 
“The various members of the families Belos- 
tomide and Nepide ” are largely responsive to 
touch stimuli. The authors believe that the 
SCIENCE 
[N.S. Von. XXXV. No. 903 
phenomenon of death-feigning may have its 
origin “out of positively thigmotactic pro- 
pensities.” 
IX. The authors do not believe that in the 
lower animals there is any conscious effort to 
deceive their enemies through the death-feign- 
ing response. They consider that the act is 
an instinctive one. There is no room for the 
supposition that the response is anything more 
than a non-intelligent one. “The death-feint 
in the arthropods is simply a non-intelligent 
instinctive act.” 
C. F. Curtis Rinry 
URBANA, ILL., 
November 14, 1911 
The Sun. By Cuartes G. Aspot. D. Apple- 
ton & Co. 1911. Pp. xxv -+ 448, illustrated. 
Upon the steady and regular maintenance 
of the amount of heat received by the earth 
from the sun depends the very existence of 
life upon our planet. Any large variation in 
the amount of solar heat would totally de- 
stroy the world as it is to-day, would make it 
an uninhabitable furnace or a frozen waste of 
icebergs. This dependence upon the life-giy- 
ing properties of the sun has been dimly real- 
ized from the earliest times; in many lands 
and in many ages the sun has been worshipped 
as the all-powerful, the god of gods. Yet it is 
only within comparatively recent years that 
anything has been known as to what the sun 
really is, and whence is derived its constant 
outpourings of light- and life-giving energy. 
A hundred years ago, so little was known 
about heat and its properties that the elder 
Herschel could advance his fanciful and 
utterly impossible theory of a habitable sun. 
To within the last three or four years 
widely divergent views have been held as to 
how much heat (radiant energy) reaches the 
earth from the sun in a given time. The 
younger Herschel in 1838 made the first scien- 
tific estimate of the quantity of heat derived 
from the sun. He found that a beam of sun- 
light three inches in diameter would raise the 
temperature of half a pint of water 0.37 of a 
degree per minute, or, were the sun in the 
zenith, the amount of heat received would 
