Notes . 
281 
1880.] 
itself some centimetres deep in the earth, and there gradually 
increases in circumference till it presents an appearance very 
like that of a potato. A stem is then put forth, which in the 
spring months bears a crop of blue flowers ! Without at all 
impeaching the veracity of the Count, we fear there is here 
scope for error of observation. 
M. le Bon, in a memoir recently crowned by the French 
Academy of Sciences, shows that the differences in the cranial 
development of individuals of one and the same race, become 
greater the higher the race rises in the scale of civilisation. 
Hence, far from tending towards equality, men tend, on the con- 
trary, towards increasing differentiation. 
M. Torres Coicedo, the Ambassador of Salvador, has pre- 
sented to the Society of Acclimatisation, of Paris, two curious 
plants, the guaco and the cedron, said to be successfully used in 
South America as an antidote to the poison of serpents and to 
that of rabies. In both respefts their reputed efficacy requires 
confirmation. 
M. Jousset de Bellesme contends that luminous inseas, such 
as the Lampyridae, have not a luminous substance stored up, 
but that their special secretion is consumed as fast as it is 
produced. 
According to MM. Brongniart and Cornu multitudes of inseas 
of the species Syrphus mellinus have been destroyed by a mi- 
croscopic fungus, of the genus Entomophthora. M. Pasteur 
suggests the propriety of experimentation with a view to discover 
some fungus capable of destroying the Phylloxera. 
According to Dr. Parrot the right hemisphere of the brain is 
the earliest developed. Contrary to what holds good in the white 
race, in the negro the posterior part of the cranium is the earliest 
to become ossified. 
A subsidy of 900 francs allowed the first year of the French 
Government to the Zoological Society of France has been with- 
drawn. 
Boettger, in his Monograph of the Reptiles and Batrachians 
of the South of Portugal, describes twenty-one species, five of 
which are new to the country and one is entirely new to Science. 
Prof. Von Tieghem has shown that Bacillus amylohacter f 
which is now the great agent in the decomposition of cellulose, 
appears to have exercised the same function in the Carboniferous 
Age. 
According to M. G. Carlet, insedls when walking move their 
feet in the following order : — 
i—4 
5—2 
3—6 
