308 
Notes. 
[May, 
of parents who have been summoned more than once for refusing 
to have their children vaccinated. 
We learn that C. H. Kehnroth, one of the professors at Dr. 
Buchanan’s College, was sentenced, on February 12th, to one 
year’s imprisonment, for issuing “ bogus ” diplomas — a very 
moderate penalty. 
According to Prof. James Law, small-pox is exceedingly com- 
mon among pigeons and poultry in India and Italy. 
We regret to find, in the prospectus of the forthcoming 
Exhibition at the Crystal Palace, “ birds of paradise, humming- 
birds, and other bright-plumaged birds ” figuring in Class X., 
among “ raw materials for clothing, ornament, or fabric.” 
Nies and Winkelmann show that solid tin floats upon melted 
tin, just as ice does upon water. 
Several eminent authorities maintain that spectral lines are 
atomic spectra, whilst bands are molecular spectra. 
L. J. Templin (“ Kansas City Review of Science ”), after a 
survey of the history of the vegetable kingdom, maintains that 
the rule of development that has governed in the introduction of 
higher forms has been by sudden jumps, and not by gradual 
modification. 
According to the Paris correspondent of “ Science ” a criminal 
who had been executed by hanging was completely restored to 
consciousness by a powerful electric current, but succumbed, on 
the second day following, to cerebral congestion. 
Dr. B. Joy Jeffries has made a careful examination on the 
prevalence of colour-blindness among the school-children in 
Boston. He finds this defect in 4*202 per cent of the males, 
and in only 0*066 per cent of the females — results agreeing sub- 
stantially with those obtained by the most careful observers in 
Europe. 
Prof. J. M. Long, writing in the “ Kansas City Review of 
Science and Industry,” remarks that Evolution claims to be the 
explanation of proximate causes, laws, and origins, not of ulti- 
mate ones. The opponents of Evolution seem utterly unable or 
unwilling to understand this distinction. 
A new insect pest is said to be committing grievous havoc in 
the olive grounds of the south of France. 
Dr. R. S. Ball, F.R.S., in a lecture delivered at the Royal 
Institution of Great Britain, remarked that the star Groombridge 
(1830) is either a runaway, or the masses of the bodies in our 
system must be much greater than it has been assumed. 
Prof. Bredichin (“ Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical 
