i88o.] 
Notes. 
475 
doubtless the ancestors. The second series formed an excep- 
tional group, of which Hycenodon was the last and most highly 
organised form. 
M. Ch. Richet has laid before the Academy of Sciences an ac- 
count of researches on the artion of alkaline and acid mediums 
upon the life of Crustaceans. He finds that such liquids are not 
poisonous in the dirert ratio of their acidity and alkalinity. 
Nitric acid is five times more poisonous than sulphuric, and 
twenty-five times more poisonous than acetic and tartaric acids, 
for equal weights. Ammonia is, in equal weights, thirty times 
more poisonous than baryta, and fifteen times more poisonous 
than soda, and even more deadly than strychnine. As all these 
substances, if injected into the circulatory system, would prove 
fatal, the difference is probably due to the degree in which they 
are absorbed. 
M. Viallanes, writing in the “ Comptes Rendus,” demonstrates 
that the heart of inserts is at first a simple tube open merely at 
its two extremities. As long as there are no lateral orifices the 
heart is completely arterial. The author has also indicated the 
mode of the formation of the lateral orifices and of the pericardic 
sinus. 
M. Thibaut finds that the production of urea in the animal 
system is not exclusively confined to the liver, but extends in a 
slight degree through the whole organism. 
The “ Bulletin de la Societe Botanique de France ” records a 
case of morbid alcoholic fermentation observed in the roots of 
apple-trees in Normandy. No yeast-cells or other microphytes 
were found in the afferted roots. 
We perceive with regret that the prartice of stocking unin- 
habited islands with goats and rabbits still continues. The 
consequence is the destruction of the native flora, and, second- 
arily, of the fauna also. 
Dr. W. K. Parker, F.R.S., has communicated to the Royal 
Society some very important researches on the strurture and 
development of the skull in the Batrachia. Concerning the 
geographical distribution of frogs, he remarks that there is a sort 
of facies or character about the allied types of any great geo- 
graphical region which indicates that certain external characters 
repeat themselves in different parts of the world. The European 
and Indian regions yield the highest kinds ; Australia and South 
America the lowest and most generalised. 
Mr. J. Norman Lockyer, F.R.S., has laid before the Royal 
Society a further note on the spertrum of carbon. The addi- 
tional phenomena described are a blue line with a wave-length 
of 4266, a set of blue flutings from 4215 to 4151, and another 
set of ultra-violet flutings from 3885 to 3843. The blue flutings 
