37 ° 
Notes. 
[June, 
Dr. R. W. Shufeldt (“ American Naturalist ”) points out that 
comparatively few birds are free from disease or the sequelae of 
disease, and gives some interesting cases from his own ob- 
servation. 
In the same journal A. S. Packard, jun., gives a very valuable 
description of the brain of the locust as compared with the same 
part in other insedts. 
The same writer agrees with Prof. Carl Vogt in holding that 
different continents may have simultaneously produced repre- 
sentatives or similar species, and that we should not accept a 
single centre of creation for all faunas. 
A writer in the ‘‘American Naturalist ” strongly insists upon 
the value of the wren as a destroyer of noxious insedts. 
Prof. S. A. Forbes, of the Illinois State Laboratory of Natural 
History, in the same journal, argues that a species injurious to 
man can never be exterminated by a parasite stridtly dependent 
upon it. 
According to the “ Medical Press and Circular ” an “ anoma- 
lous febrile disorder ” has appeared in Aberdeen in the present 
month. In all the cases the patients had obtained a supply of 
milk from one particular dairy farm in the neighbourhood. But 
the cows there were healthy, and the water-supply unimpeach- 
able. The turnips given to the animals were suspedted, but 
nothing definite has transpired. Were the cows fed on sewage- 
grown turnips or hay ? 
Edgar L. Larkin, in “Science,’’ argues that if the gaseous 
matter originally filling the universe was, as supposed by many 
authors, a “ glowing vapour ” or a “ fire mist,” the law of the 
‘ correlation of force ’ or the ‘ conservation of energy ’ must fall 
to ruin. 
According to the same journal Dr. A. F. A. King read a paper 
on “ Septennial Periodicity ” in the Organic World, before the 
Biological Society of Washington. The learned author drew 
attention to the phenomena of menstruation, cestration in ani- 
mals, gestation, contagion, epidemics, and climax of fevers. 
M. de Quatrefages, in certain laudatory remarks on the “ Legons 
d’Anatomie et de Physiologie Comparees ” of Prof. Milne- 
Edwards, pronounced it a work which would be for a long time 
for all students what Haller’s great work was formerly ! Those 
who remember how disastrous the influence of Haller proved 
for biological science will not regard this comparison as a high 
compliment. 
The perch in the Seine are at present suffering from an epi- 
demic attack of a parasite. 
