158 Scientific Intelligence. 



4. Use of the hi/grometic tiristing of the tail to the carpels of 

 Erodium.—WG have no indigenous or common Erodiinn this side 

 of Texas; but there and in California one or two species are common. 

 The narrow carpel is pointed at base ; the long awn or style in 

 drying bends at right angles with the carpel, and twists in many 

 turns, depending on the amount of dryness, and untwists in a 

 moister air or when wet. We had wondered that no one seemed 

 to have given an account of the way in which this mechanism acts 

 so as to bury the seed in the ground. Dispersed by the wind over 

 the loose or sandy soil which these species prefer, the seed-bearing 

 • the ground, and is the compan 



ively fixed point, around which the long awn makes circular 

 (veeps, whether in twisting or untwisting. This gives a rotary 

 lovement to the carpel, fixes the sharp end in the soil, and. 



whether twistmg or untwisting, causes it to bore i 

 itself in the ground. It is the same with the gri " 



5 that, when in this way thus interred, the mois- 

 ture of the soil soon destroys the epidermis and this allows the 

 long beak to detach itself at its articulation with the style, leaving it 

 planted in good condition quietly to germinate. M. Roux enters 

 into details about the effect of light, heat, chloroform, etc., upon 

 this movement, which seem to us superfluous and wide of the 



of lines leadir^^ 



nd the Monkeys on the other. MM. Gran( 

 dier and Alph. Milne Edwards, in their recent work on the Mam- 

 mals of .Madagascar, show that the Lemurs have striking peculiari- 

 ties in the conformation of the allantois and placenta, and not the 

 close relation to the monkeys generally supposed. By injecting 

 the capillary vessels of the placenta and uterus they have studied 

 the vascular relations of the fetus with the mother, and established 

 thus profound differences between the two types, which begin even 

 in their intro-uterine Wie.—L'' Institut, Dec. 29. 



6. Fauna of the Greenland ISeas.—The Fauna of the Greenland 

 Seas, according to results obtained by the "Valorous" (on its 

 return from Disco), agrees with its land flora in being mainly 

 Norwegian, there being (with the exception of the EchinodeiTOs) 

 an absence of many North American forms, which, as it appears, 

 have not been found east of the meridian of Cape Chidley in 

 Labrador. A Campamdaria was obtained identical with one 

 found by Mr. Eaton, of the British Transit-of- Venus Expedition, 

 at Kerguelen's Island ; also, in the towing-ne!:, a sponge-like dia- 

 tom, Synedra Jeffreysi Dickie, with living Globigerinae entangled 

 in the connecting protoplasmic matter of its frustules. The deep 

 waters of Davis Straits afforded a mollusk which was long since 

 found fossil in the newer Tertiary of Sicily, and was supposed to 

 be extinct.— iVoc. Roy. iSoc, No. 164, p. 78. 



