No. 379.] REVIEWS OF RECENT LITERATURE. 533. 
placed directly in a quantity of the solution, which should be at least 
equal in volume to the mass of alge taken. They will keep in this 
way indefinitely. When it is desired to use the material it may be 
washed in several changes of water to which some antiseptic agent 
has been added or in a 10% solution of glycerine. For sectioning in 
paraffin the specimens are treated in the ordinary way with various 
grades of alcohol. The author also recommends certain special 
carmine stains. HMR 
Sunstroke and Bacteria. — From Natural Science (May, 1898), 
we learn that Dr. Lugui Sambon claims to have shown that under 
the term sunstroke are included two entirely different things : that 
many reported cases are due only to syncope, and when these are 
eliminated there remains a thermic fever to be attributed to a specific 
organism. He shows that the disease possesses definite symptoms 
and has a definite geographical distribution. That heat is not the 
cause is evidenced by the fact that people in certain regions, or 
under artificial conditions, work in temperatures far higher than 
exist in places where sunstroke frequently occurs, without suffering 
from the disease. Thus, true sunstroke is absent from the dry 
plains of Colorado, as well as from the high central plateau of India, 
while it is common in the moister climate and lower temperatures 
of the Mississippi Valley and the Atlantic coast of America, as well 
as on the low-lying plain of the Ganges. It also frequently occurs 
with great fatality in hospitals. He compares the bacterium with 
that of tetanus, and considers that it lives in the soil and is carried 
into the system with dust, and there forms the toxic poison, which is 
the real cause of death. 
PETROGRAPHY. 
The Igneous Rocks of the Boston Basin are again the subject of 
petrographic study. White! finds among them granites, diorites, 
quartz-porphyries, felsites, melaphyre, and diabases. The last two- 
named rocks occur as dikes. The melaphyre is an altered basalt, 
constituting a flow which is amygdaloidal at its upper surface. The 
quartz-porphyries appear to be regarded as a peripheral phase of 
granite, and the felsites as a surface facies of the same rock. Both 
1 Proc. Bost. Soc. of Nat. Hist, vol. xxviii, p. 117. 
