178 Notes . [March, 
— a facft which furnishes a powerful argument for the preserva- 
tion of this harmless and beautiful bird. 
“The Vidtorian Year-Book for 1879-80” gives a curious 
ethnological fadt. Of every 1000 native-born Vidtorians the 
proportion of criminals is 11*18; of natives of England and 
Wales, 40*23; of Scotland, 39*91 ; of Ireland, 80*36; and of 
China only 12*64 ! Hence an Englishman or Scotchman is more 
than three times, and an Irishman more than six times, as likely 
to commit crime as the much-denounced Chinaman. 
According to M. E. Allary (“ Bulletin de la Soc. Chimique de 
Paris ”) the proportion of iodine in sea- weeds ranges from 1*224 
kilos, per 1000 in the fresh leaf of Digitatus stenolobus to 0*007 
kilo, in D. bulbosus. 
According to the “ Dundee Advertiser ” certain bees in New 
South Wales having suffered from drought, made provision for 
such an emergency by storing a large number of cells in every 
hive with water. Pending the confirmation of this singular 
anecdote we reserve comments. 
Prof. Lister, F.R.S., in an Address delivered before the British 
Medical Association on “ Micro-Organisms and their Relation to 
Disease,” observed very justly that if the researches of MM. 
Pasteur and Toussaint should lead to nothing more than what 
seems to be already on the point of attainment, — the means of 
securing poultry from death by “ chicken-cholera ” and cattle from 
the terribly destructive splenic fever, — it must be admitted that 
we have an instance of a most valuable result from much-reviled 
vivisection. 
We are happy to learn that a Civil List pension of £200 
annually has been conferred upon Mr. A. R. Wallace, in recog- 
nition of his splendid services to biological science. 
Mr. J. C. Branner communicates to “ Science ” some observa- 
tions on the habits of the Brazilian “ Cambota ” ( Callichthys 
asper). He watched one of these fishes travel a distance of 
90 metres on dry ground. 
According to the “ Medical Press and Circular ” a woman at 
Ipswich, of the name of Lockwood, has not taken more than a 
pound of solid food during the year 1880. Since September she 
has partaken of nothing but a few drops of weak tea. She is 
sometimes in a state of coma for days together. 
The same journal announces that another of the London 
hospitals is in danger of entering upon a career of rampant 
“ nursedom.” 
It is somewhat significant that in the poem in which the 
Laureate has recently libelled the medical profession he contrasts 
an angelic nurse with the coarse, unfeeling dodtor. 
