298 
SUMMARY OF CURRENT RESEARCHES RELATING TO 
those who have had to do with deaf-mute asylums in the United 
States, and he concludes that after a few generations the society of 
troglodytes, vertebrate and invertebrate, might be compared to a newly 
established asylum of deaf-mutes, or an asylum for the blind if they 
interbred in the same proportions. Judging by what we know of the 
sudden production of deaf-mutes in human societies, only two or three 
generations might suffice to make the congenitally blind preponderate in 
numbers. 
Distribution of Assimilated Iron Compounds in Animal and Vege- 
table Cells.* — Prof. A. B. Macallum has a preliminary notice on the 
distribution of assimilated iron compounds other than haemoglobin and 
haematins in animal and vegetable cells. He finds that iron, firmly 
combined, is a constant constituent of animal and vegetable chromatin. 
Another substance, less rich in iron, is found in nucleoli. The chromo- 
philous substance in ferment-forming cells contains iron, and the cyto- 
plasm of protozoan organisms, which also probably secretes ferments, 
yields evidence of the presence of a firmly combined iron compound. A 
firm compound of iron is present in the chromophilous substance of the 
cytoplasm of Fungi. Of the non-nucleated organisms, Bacteria, owing to 
their minuteness, have, with one exception, given little evidence of the 
presence of an organic iron compound ; but in the Cyanophycese the 
chromophilous portions of the central substance contain iron. 
Nests of Pelagic Fishes.j — Prof. C. Mobius describes a fish’s nest 
from the Mid- Atlantic. It consisted of a sack, woven of fine silk-like 
threads, and bearing over a million eggs. The sack had a diameter of 
40 Cm. at its mouth, a depth of 50 cm., and two holes at the lower end. 
The threads seem to consist of an insoluble albuminoid akin to the 
fibroin of silk or to byssus. Mobius calls attention to previous notes 
on the “ nests ” of pelagic fishes by J. T. Cunningham, L. Agassiz, and 
A. Agassiz, and describes what appeared to be the nest of a species of 
Antennarius. 
Tunicata. 
Budding in Tunicata. J— - Mr. W. Garstang Las prepared an inter- 
esting essay on this subject ( on which, as our readers are aware, 
numerous papers have lately been written. He finds the conclusion to 
be inevitable that all the types of budding in Tunicata are ultimately 
referable to an ancestral process of embryonic longitudinal fission, as 
Balfour and Uljanin have already suggested. He thinks we may also 
conclude that budding has probably not arisen more than once within 
the group of Tunicata, since the various types of asexual reproduction 
found within it form a single pbylogenetic series, and are connected 
with one another by numerous gradations; the differentiate type of 
budding is probably in many respects more primitive than the undiffer- 
entiate. Yet there have been modifications in both directions since 
budding first arose, leading in some cases to a secondary simplification 
of the organisation of the bud, and in others to a slightly increased 
complexity. 
* Proc. Roy. Soc. Lond., lvii. (1895) pp. 261-2. 
t SB. K. Akad. Berlin, 1891, pp. 1208-10 (3 figs.). 
X Science Progress, ii. (1895) pp. 43-67. 
