Notes and Memoranda. 319 



ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY.— Oct. 2. 



Fossil Insect in the Devonian Strata op North America. — 

 At the last meeting of the Society Mr. Samuel Scudder, Secretary 

 of the Natural History Society of Boston, U.S., exhibited fossil 

 impressions of a gigantic Ephemera, which must hare measured five 

 inches across the full expanse of the wings ; these impressions along 

 with others had been found in the Devonian strata of North 

 America, and were the earliest known records of insect life on the 

 globe. 



NOTES AND MEMORANDA. 



Vegetable Transformations. — M. Trecul has a paper in Comptes Rendus, 

 detailing experiments and observations which he thinks shew that the organic 

 matter contained in certain plant cells can transform itself, during putrefac- 

 tion, into living bodies, differing from the species generating them. He tells 

 us that in the bark of the elder (Samhucus niger), and in plants of the Solanum 

 and Crassula families, there are to be found utricles full of little tetrahedrons, 

 containing amylaceous matter, and that he has seen these bodies elongate 

 themselves by one of their angles, and gradually form a peculiar plant by pro- 

 ducing a cylindrical stem. 



The Spiral Vessels of Plants. — M. Lertiboudois states, in Comptes 

 Rendtis, that the spiral or tracheal vessels of plants may not only contain air, 

 but be traversed by fluids capable of solidification. In one instance he found 

 the large vessel in the centre of fibres of the Calamus Rotang full of a white 

 solid substance, composed of cylinders of variable length. Placed in water 

 this material resolved itself into granules, which exhibited a lively motion. 



Pharaoh's Serpents. — The amusing chemical playthings, lately introduced 

 and so named, are said to be composed of sulpho- cyanide of mercury, and 

 their peculiarity consists in the extraordinary volume of ash which they 

 pour forth in a serpentine form, as soon as they are ignited. They are highly 

 poisonous, and it would be unadvisable to allow the air of a sitting room to be- 

 come too full of their fumes. Cyanogen, or " blue producer," as the name 

 implies, is an essential constituent of Prussian blue. It is a compound of carbon 

 and nitrogen, in the proportion of twelve by weight of the former to fourteen of 

 the latter. At ordinary pressure, cyanagen is a transparent gas; under a pres- 

 sure of four atmospheres a liquid, and may be frozen at — 30° into a crystalline 

 solid. It forms a series of important compounds — that with hydrogen is hydro- 

 cyanic, or prussic acid. With sulphur it forms^sulpho-cyanogen, the compounds 

 of which are called sulpho-cyanides, 



The Moon Eclipse, 4th Oct. — In Paris, according to Messrs. Goldschmidt 

 and Flammarion, this eclipse was very well seen, and the radiating lines from 

 Tycho and other mountains in the obscured parts were distinctly visible, as 

 were also the margins of the various craters. In the neighbourhood of London 

 the same facts were noticeable, and the copper-coloured light on the eclipsed 

 portion was unusually striking, from the extreme fineness of the weather. It 

 looked as if a cap of dark but luminous copper-coloured smoke was slowly 

 drawn over part of the moon's face. The refractive power of the earth's atmo- 

 sphere is said to be the cause of this phenomenon. 



The Magnetic Storm in August. — The great magnetic storm, which began 

 on the 3rd August, commenced very suddenly, and was felt simultaneously at 

 Kew and Lisbon. The needle was violently agitated. The storm, after a period 

 of repose on the second day, broke out again. In general character it resembled 

 the magnetic storm of 1839, and on both occasions the sun exhibited large spots 

 rapidly changing their appearance. 



