1030 Scientific News. [ December, 
procedure, Professor Rossbach places, uncovered, on a slide, a 
drop of water containing Infusoria, to which, being carefully 
examined, a little of the suspected fluid is applied. If organic 
poison be present the Infusoria become a formless sediment. 
I-15 ,000,000 of a grain of atropine may be thus detected.—Sczence 
Gossip, 
Syrpes or Marine Atca#.—Rev. A. B. Hervey of Taunton, 
Mass., will mail to any address, for two dollars, a set of six slides 
showing the characteristic fruit of the six great groups into 
which Professor Agardh divides the Red Alge. 
SCIENTIFIC NEWS. 
— A number of final reports of the Norwegian North Atlantic 
Expedition have recently appeared. It has been found, says the 
New York Nation, that free carbonic acid does not exist in ordi- 
nary sea-water, which indeed has an alkaline reaction, but that it 
is present in the form of carbonates, and in a_less degree of bi- 
carbonates. In regard to saltness, a remarkable fact was deter- 
mined, which has a most important bearing on various theories of 
oceanic circulation—namely, that the excess of salt noticeable 
and expected in the warm Atlantic current water was not con ned 
to it, but almost equally characterized the deep strata, which were 
reduced to the freezing point. This water is, therefore, not 4 
Polar indraught, as has been supposed, Arctic or Antarctic, but 1s 
tropical surface water, which has been cooled; while the Polar 
vater continues equally distinguished from it by its deficient salt- 
ness, and appears to allow the cooled salt water of the surface to 
sink through it without mixing, and to form on the bottom cet 
tain portions of what has been called the “ cold-area.” i 
Six or seven new species of fishes, a ray, a sucking pout ( Li 
paris), several species of Lycodes, were discovered, together with 
a translucent “ghost,” with ventral fins reduced to long biped fila- 
ments attached to the throat, and with no scales, which was called nie 
Rhodichthys regina. It was brought up from a depth of a mile =) 
and a half in the open sea between Jan Mayen and Finmark. 
port laws. It appears that in 1877, in two months, 15,000 er 
were killed in Michigan, of which, at least, 8,500 were exported. 
_ from the State. In 1878, a grand total of 1,000,000 pounds be 
Venison, or about 21,000 deer were slaughtered, of which 13,5¢ 
