774 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. II., No. 4.i. 



Marengo, lo., thai this ant <Ioes not dwell east of the 

 Missouri River, in Missouri, Iowa, and Minnesota ; 

 that it avoids eastern while abounding in western 

 Nebraska; and that it is not found in Kansas farther 

 east than Brookville, which is near the site reported 

 by Prof. Todd. The structure of the ant-hills, ami 

 the harvesting habits of tlie species, were described. 

 Mr. T. Meehan, to whom had been referred a small 

 quantity of the dCbrLt collected from one of the nests 

 by Prof. Todd, reported that there were no seeds 

 among the pebbles, but that tliere were a number of 

 calices, or undeveloped capsules, of a leguminous 

 plant, Dalea alopecuroides, which is common on the 

 plains. Dr. McCookhad been puzzled to explain why 

 such intelligent creatures should be detected in har- 

 vesting immature seeds, until, upon inquiry, he found 

 that leguminous plants have a succession of flowers; 

 so that there may be mature seeds and flowers on a 

 plant at the same time. It is evident that the ants 

 were not harvesting out of season, but were occasion- 

 ally deceived, and cast out to the refuse-heap the 

 calices that contained no edible seed. — [Acad. nat. 

 sc. Pliilad.; meeting Xov. 21, 1883.) [493 



Dipterous'maggots in man. — Dr. Samuel Lock- 

 wood exhibited a full-grown dipterous larva taken 

 from the inner ear of a man at Paterson, N.J., Aug. 

 oO. There was a perforation of the membrana tym- 

 pani. The man had suffered seven days from its 

 presence. The grub had entered the outer ear, but 

 eluded an attempt to extract it by re-entering tte 

 drum. Appearing again in the external ear, it was 

 extracted with forceps, and kept alive for several days. 

 He referred to certain papers read to the society (one 

 in 1880, and a sequel in 18S1), in which he described 

 specimens of dipterous larvae passed by a man in 

 large numbers, and which he determined to be larvae 

 of Sarcophaga carnaria and Anthomyia canicularis, 

 which had come of eating tainted cold meat and cold 

 boiled cabbage. He had also shown a larva, which 

 he could not determine, which had been vomited by 

 a girl. The larva taken from the man's ear he had 

 determined to be the viviparous flesh-fly, Sarcophaga 

 carnaria, and thought that the man had eaten meat 

 on which were the freshly laid larvae, which, being 

 very sm.all, might easily be unperceived. If the man 

 had coughed during the eating, he might have thus 

 thrown oni' of Ihe larvie against the entrance to the 

 eustachian tube, and it could readily ascend the epi- 

 thelial walls, feeding upon the mucus on its way. 

 The larva had attained full growth, and, about to 

 pupate, was restless to find a nidus: hence the good 

 fortune of its twice entering the outer ear from the 

 rent in the tympanum. Dr. A. V. N. Baldwin re- 

 marked that he had recently found a cluster of grubs, 

 hard-packed, in the external ear of a man in Bellevne 

 liospital; to which Dr. Lockwood replied, "Probably 

 the parent fly had oviposited there when the man 

 was asleep, attracted by the fetid odor of a diseased 

 ear." — [N. Jrr.i. micr. hoc. ; meetinr/ Nov. 19.) [494 



Spinuing-habit of Psocus. — Rev. H. C. McCook 

 announced that the small neuropterous insect, Psocus 

 sexpunctatus, had recently been found, for the first 

 time in America as far as he was informed, on the 



Wissahickon Creek, Fairmount Park, Philadelphia, 

 by Mr. S. F. Aaron. Tlie family of the Psocidae is 

 of peculiar interest in being the only true insects 

 which spin webs in the ima^o state. Tlie generally 

 larval function of web-spinning might, perhaps, be 

 correlated with the rank which zoologists assign the 

 Nenroptera as the lowest in the order Insecta. It is, 

 however, a striking example of the diverging and in- 

 dependent lines along which life-forms have sprung 

 up in nature, that a fimction which belongs to the 

 larval stage of insects, and which appears in the iraago 

 stage oidy in the lowest type of tlie same, should 

 appear as the most permanent and characteristic func- 

 tion of the sjiider, — an animal, which, although it is 

 now commonly given a lower place in the same sub- 

 kingdom with the insect, is certainly very differently 

 and but little less highly orgauized. It would be a 

 difficult task to trace, or even imagine, any evolu- 

 tionary ■connection between the web-spinning spi- 

 der, the web-spinning lepidopterous larva, and the 

 web-spinning neuropterous imago. There is, indeed, 

 the eommou factor, the spinning-function; but the 

 physiologist fails to perceive any use or combination 

 of the same which can unite the organisms in which 

 it inheres. — {Acad. nat. sc. Philad.; meeting Nov. 

 27.) , [495 



VERTEBRATES. 



Action of the respiratory movements on 

 circulation. — Taljanzeff states, that, in violent 

 breathing, partial or complete inhibition of the con- 

 tractions of the right side of the heart may take place, 

 without, however, any fall of arterial pressure result- 

 ing; the blood being forced from the right to the left 

 side of the heart by the action of the breathing-move- 

 ments on the heart, especially on the right ventricle. 

 He has discovered, also, that if the branches of the 

 vagus going to the lungs are cut, and their central 

 ends stimulated, a decided reflex action on the heart 

 and blood-vessels is obtained. In most cases the heart 

 was slowed, giving the well-known ' vagus pulse," and 

 the blood-pressure lowered; though in one experi- 

 ment there was a fall of aortic pressure without any 

 change in either the force or rate of the heart con- 

 tractions. — (Ceyitralbl.med.wiss., 1883, 401.) w. n. u. 



[496 



Vaso-motor nerves of the leg. — In a brief 

 preliminary communication, Bowditch and Warren 

 give some of the results of an investigation upon the 

 vaso-motors of the extremities. Their method of de- 

 termining the contraction or dilatation of the blood- 

 vessels was to enclose the limb in a plethysmograph, 

 — a method undoubtedly very delicate and accurate, 

 but possessing the disadvantage that it gives only the 

 general result of the stimulati(m of the nerve on the 

 blood-vessels of the limb as a whole, and furnishes 

 no indication of local dilatations or constrictions 

 which may take place. They find that stimulation 

 of tlie peri|)lieral end of the divided sciatic may 

 cause either constriction or dilatation. When the 

 induction-shocks followed in rapid succession (10 to 

 64 in a second), a constriction of the blood-ve^sels 

 was the general result. When the stimuli followed 

 more slowly (4-0.2 in a second), a dilatation was 



