MICROSCOPY. i 187 
was calculated to rule lines to the +55455 of an inch could not 
procure any diamond fine enough to rule more than about five 
thousand to the inch. 
VITALITY as Arrectep BY TEMPERATURE.— Mr. Grace Calvert 
found that 300° and sometimes 400° Fahr. are sometimes re- 
quired to destroy living germs; also that animaleules could live 
for hours at seventeen degrees below the freezing point of water. 
Microscorican Maniputations.— Mr. Stanistreet justly judges 
that other amateurs will be encouraged by learning that the ma- 
chinery for ruling his already famons lines was entirely constructed 
by himself, untaught and unassisted, while confined to the house 
by illness. 
FIBRES or Frax anp Hreme.— Mr. Suffolk states that a com- 
mittee, on which he was appointed by the Queckett Club, under- 
took the study of these fibres with reference to their discrimination 
with the microscope in mixed fabrics ; but abandoned the work on 
finding the fibres too much alike to be distinguished. 
DARWINISM AND HısroLocy. — Dr. Lionel Beale, in his address 
to the Queckett club, counsels a careful comparative study of the 
tissues of man and the apes, in order to verify, if possible, the 
Correspondence which has’ been asserted but not proved to exist 
between them. 
STAINING AND Curtinc Lreaves.— Dr. R. Braithwaite, in his 
elaborate Study of the bog-mosses, stains leaves by immersion 
from two to twenty-four hours in iodine and sulphuric acid or 
‘solution of biniodide of zinc, preferably the latter. Transverse 
Sections he obtained by soaking the leaves in thick mucilage of 
gum arabie, and, when partially dried, enclosing between pieces 
of elder pith and slicing into water. 
ALTERNATION or GENERATIONS IN FuNGI.—Mr. M. C. Cooke 
reviews, in ‘“‘ Nature,” the experiments of Oersted and of De Bary 
on this subject. Most Uredines have two forms of fruit, but it is 
*xeeedingly difficult to prove an alternation of generations in any 
ase. . When the spores of fungi are sewn upon a plant, or intro- 
duced by inoculation, it is nearly impossible to prove that other 
fungi Subsequently appearing on the same plant owe their pres- 
“nee there to the spores intentionally sewn or inoculated. 
