i88o.] 
Notes. 
605 
A Society of American Taxidermists has been formed, and is 
about to hold an exhibition, in which, in addition to “Taxidermy 
proper,” there will figure “ ornamental articles in which portions 
of an animal are used,” — in other words, Taxidermy improper. 
Mr. A. S. Packard, jun., calls attention to a curious case of 
mimicry, He observed an Egerian moth, Trochilium polisti- 
forme , so closely resembling the wasp, Polistes fuscus , that he 
was at first afraid to handle it. 
M. Magnin has observed the microbia found in different kinds 
of vaccine matter, taken respectively from the horse, the cow, 
and from a human subject. All three are exactly similar in form, 
but the last-mentioned kind is only one-fifth the diameter of the 
other two. 
Carriere has repeated and confirmed the statements of Spal- 
lanzani and Schaffer, on the reproduction of amputated parts in 
snails. He finds that the eyes, the tentacles, and the lips were 
completely restored, but that an injury to the supra-oesophageal 
ganglion proved invariably fatal. The regeneration of the eye 
was quite similar to its first formation in the embryo. 
Karl Pettersen (“ Tromso Museum Aarhefter,” ii., p. 65), after 
a very extensive series of researches, concludes that the round- 
ing and smoothing of the surfaces of rocks, the grooving and 
scoring of their sides, are not always of unquestionably glacial 
origin. They are often post-glacial, since it can be shown that 
similar phenomena are in the course of origination in the pre. 
sent littoral zones. The conclusions based upon the glacial 
theory, as to the alternations in the level of the Scandinavian 
peninsula during the post-tertiary times, cannot, as a whole, be 
pronounced scientifically justified. There is no diredt proof that 
the Scandinavian peninsula during the last portion of the Glacial 
epoch was more elevated than at present, nor that it has been 
subjedt to a continental depression during the latter portion of 
the same epoch. It is, however, a facff that the peninsula has 
been rising in the Post-tertiary period. 
Mr. H. D. Minot, writing in the “American Naturalist,” 
thinks that in England wild birds are better protedted than in 
America, and are consequently more easily observed by the 
naturalist. He considers the birds of England, as a whole, 
inferior to those of New England, both in plumage and song. 
He met with mosquitoes on the Derbyshire moors. 
In the same journal Prof. A. N. Prentiss and Mr. W. A. Henry 
record some experimental attempts to destroy Aphides by 
sprinkling with yeast. The results were entirely negative. 
Dr. H. Behr communicates to the “ Rural Press ” (Californian) 
an interesting paper on “ Changes in Plant Life on the San 
Francisco Peninsula.” Commenting on the herbaceous immi- 
