440 General Notes. | [Api 
and Capt. Shepley’s “ Sun-birds,” forming one of the series of 
illustrated ornithological monographs prepared by different mem- | 
bers of the British Ornithologists’ Union. A companion volume 
by Mr. Dresser, on the “ Bee-eaters,” is in a forward state, and 
similar works are already projected. Another subarctic mam- 
mal, Spermophilus rufescens, which lives in the Orenburg steppes 
of Asia, has been found fossil in the loess and caves of Germany, 
as reported by Blasius in the Z0d/. Anzeiger——C. J. Mayna 
states that the ivory-billed woodpecker ( Campephilus principalis) 
which in Audobon’s time inhabited the Atlantic coast as far noti 
as Maryland, was common in the lower parts of the Carolina, 
in Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi, and occurred as 
far north as the mouth of the Ohio, and westward of the Missout i 
throughout the forests along the rivers to the base of the Rocky 
mountains ; is now, unless it lingers in the heavily wooded pafi 
of the state of Mississippi, confined to a small belt of “hummock” 
or “ cypress ” timber land, about a hundred miles long by fiy 
width, in the northern part of Florida, and is rare even 
PHYSIOLOGQY.! 
THE ELECTROMOTIVE PROPERTIES OF THE LEAF OF Diotti 
Professor G. B. Sanderson (Trans. Roy. Soc., Part 1, 1882), gC l 
an account of his researches on the electrical relations of pe 
ferent parts of the leaf of Dionæa in its resting and in 1G 
condition, together with a résumé of similar work of other it i 
tigators. AE 
The leaf of Dionæa contains two or three layers of S a 
matous cells whose protoplasm has great attraction 1 ‘orga 
The leaf owes its expanded condition while at rest to 
of the parenchyma cells whose protoplasm coa 
bibed water. But when the leaf is excited, as DY eee pa 
It OF ee 
. 
that different points upon the surface of the leaf äre Um 
probably accidentally, in different electrical on e00 
upper, becomes to a marked degree more wie trend ah | 
This negative change begins about one-twentieth 04°" pidde” 
the application of the stimulus, and ceases at mere wf the ee 
the first second; that is, in that time the under SUTIN’ | -eedife 
has returned to its former electrical condition. In ™ 
1 This department is edited by Professor Henry SEWALL, of Ann 
