732 
Notes, 
[November, 
The “Journal of the American Chemical Society ” contains a 
biographical notice of the late M. Tessie du Motay. It appears 
that he was not merely eminent as a chemist and a technologist, 
but had earned some reputation as a poet, a dramatist, a musi- 
cian, and a student of Oriental literature and mythology. He 
leaves behind him an unpublished poem entitled the “ Expiation 
of Faust.” 
A morning paper favours its readers with the following choice 
tit-bit of un-natural history : — “ The only good thing to be said 
for the shark is that it knows its own friends, and studiously 
abstains from eating the pilot-fish, which guides it to its prey. 
It spares this useful little attendant, as the crocodile spares the 
humming-bird or the trochilus.” The writer might find it diffi- 
cult to show what opportunities the crocodile has for sparing the 
humming-bird, or how the latter can ever be of use to him. 
Another writer, in the self-same paper, speaks of the hamster 
and the marmot as identical ! 
M. Th. Lecard has communicated to the Academy of Sciences 
an account of a vine with tuberous roots and a herbaceous stem, 
which he has discovered in Soudan. It yields abundant and 
delicious grapes. 
Dr. B. W. Richardson, in a paper read before the Sanitary 
Institute (Exeter, Sept. 20th, 1880), seems to approach the posi- 
tion of Prof. Jager. He writes : — “ Go into the wards of a 
lunatic asylum, and notice among the most troubled there the 
odour of the gases and the vapours they emit by the skin and 
the breath. That odour is from their internal atmosphere, their 
nervous ethereal emanation. They are mad up to suicide or 
murder, or any criminal folly. Can it be otherwise ? They have 
secreted the madness ; they are filled with it ; it exhales from 
them. Catch it, condense it, imbibe it, and in like manner it 
would madden any one.” Is not this the teaching of Jager and 
Dunstmaier, spiced to suit the audience and the occasion ? 
The “ Medical Press and Circular ” learns with delight — which 
we fully share — that “ Dr.” Tanner’s ledture on his forty days’ 
fast, given in Booth’s Theatre, New York, “ did not draw an 
audience capable of half filling the house. ’ 
According to the “ Zeitschrift fur Physiologische Chemie ” 
(iv., p. 382) G. Huffier has obtained from putrescent blood 
long purple-red crystals of haemoglobine, often above a milli- 
metre in length. 
M. E. Yung (“ Comptes Rendus,” August 30, 1880) has studied 
the development of the eggs of Loligo vulgaris and Sepia offici- 
nalis exposed to light of different colours. The development is 
hastened by violet and blue light ; retarded by green and red. 
Yellow light behaves like white light. Larvae of Ciona intesti- 
nalis also grew most rapidly in the violet light. Development 
