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NOTES AND MEMORANDA. 
Dr. 0. W. Holmes on the Microscope. — Dr. Holmes is more a 
literary than a medical man, as those who have read the ‘ Autocrat 
at the Breakfast Table ’ may perhaps be aware. We were therefore 
surprised when we saw that he had been selected by the Boston 
Microscopical Society to deliver an annual address to that body. In 
point of literary style his remarks leave nothing to be desired ; they 
sparkle with wit and sarcasm. However, we think that had Dr. Holmes 
any knowledge of the labours of Schleiden, Yon Bar, Ehrenberg, 
Schwann, or Johannes Muller, he would hardly have committed himself 
to the following statement : “ When he studied medicine the medical 
books treated the microscope with disgust or contempt, and from 1833- 
1835 he studied in the best schools of Paris, without hearing a word 
of the use of the microscope ; but about that time a Frenchman pub- 
lished an organic chemistry which brought some of its revelations to 
notice.” 
Fossil Diatoms from South Australia. — The ‘American Natu- 
ralist ’ (June) says that Mr. Galloway C. Morris, of East Tulpehocken 
Street, Germantown, Philadelphia, obtained from the commissioner in 
charge of the South Australian exhibit at the Centennial Exhibition, 
a small supply of a most interesting diatomaceous mineral called 
coorongite, from the Coorong District, in South Australia, where it is 
found. It is a mineral of a dark-grey or ash colour, a light specific 
gravity, and a fine spongy texture, occurring in great quantities, and 
consisting of about 20 per cent, of a hydrocarbon which can be 
separated by distillation for economical purposes as an illuminating 
and lubricating oil, and a residue consisting mainly of fi-esh-water 
diatoms. It burns when heated on platinum foil, is permanent in the 
air, and is unaffected by moisture. It is not disintegrated in ether 
or chloroform, though most of the oily hydrocarbon is removed. 
Mr. Morris has succeeded best in preparing it for the microscope by 
boiling it in sulphuric acid with the addition of a small quantity of 
bichromate of potash to make chromic acid and give off the hydro- 
carbon as carbonic acid gas. He has a few slides to spare, which he is 
willing to exchange for other mounted specimens. 
TJse of Eosine in the examination of Tendon. — In a late number 
of the ‘ Comptes Kendus ’ M. Renaut stated that he had found that 
eosine soluble in water fixed itself on protoplasmic expansions and 
coloured them strongly. Having employed this substance for the 
examination of tendinous cells, he had been able to determine the 
following fact : the network of stellate figures underlying the epi- 
thelioid layer of the tendon is not formed by cells of ordinary con- 
nective tissue, but by protoplasmic expansions of the tendon-cells 
near the surface, which are abundant at this point and anastomose 
together. 
