780 SUMMARY OF CUBRENT RESEARCHES RELATING TO 



from the plant in great quantities when wounded. In the young 

 state only a single bundle of raphides is found in each cell, later they 

 are much more numerous. 



Here and there, in specimens preserved in alcohol, applied to the 

 walls of the cells which contain the raphides were found solid spherical 

 bodies of a yellowish colour and finely granular structure. The 

 formation of these bodies was unquestionably dixe to the alcohol; 

 and they probably arise from some gummy modification of the 

 mucilage. 



New Vegetable Pigment.* — A KosoU finds in the involucral 

 bracts of several species of Helichrysum a hitherto undescribed colour- 

 ing substance, to which he gives the name helichrysin. It tinges 

 the protoplasm, is soluble in water and alcohol, and is turned a 

 purple-red by both acids and alkalies. 



The same writer also describes methods for detecting saponins 

 and strychnine in vegetable tissues. The first is easily recognized 

 by the action of sulphuric acid, which it colours first yellow, then 

 red, and finally reddish- violet. It occurs in the living cells dissolved 

 in the cell-sap. Strychnine is coloured an intense violet-red by 

 potassium bichromate and sulphuric acid. It occurs in all the cells 

 of the endosperm of Strychnos nux-vomica and S. potatorum dissolved 

 in a fatty oil. 



Fish caugM by Utricularia.f — G. E. Simms has discovered that 

 newly hatched fish are caught and killed by the bladder-traps of 

 Utricularia vulgaris. They are mostly caught by the head, which is 

 pushed as far into the bladder as possible until the snout touches its 

 hinder wall. The two dark black eyes of the fisb then show out 

 conspicuously through the wall of the bladder. By no means a few 

 of the fish, however, are captured by the tail, and in several instances 

 a fish had its head swallowed by one bladder-trap and its tail by 

 another. 



Prof. H. N. Moseley ^ thinks it probable that the fact described 

 by Darwin (that the larger of the two pairs of projections composing 

 the quadrifid processes by which the bladders are lined project 

 obliquely inwards and towards the posterior end of the bladder) has 

 something to do with mechanism by which the fish become so deeply 

 swallowed. The oblique processes, set all towards the hinder end of 

 the bladder, look as if they must act, together with the spring-valves 

 of the mouth of the bladder, in utilizing each fresh struggle of the 

 captive for the purpose of pushing it further and further inwards. 



* Anzeig. K. Akad. Wiss. Wien, 1884, Nos. 7, 9. See Bot. Centralbl., xviii. 

 (1884) p. 94. 



t Nature, xxx. (1884) pp. 81 and 295-6 (3 figs.). 

 X Ibid., p. 81. 



