568 
Notes . 
if there is one point in which the charlatan is invariably superior 
to the man of sterling ability, it is in the art of talking. 
Dr. Lenz contends, from the presence of fresh-water fossils, 
that the Sahara is not the bottom of a sea which has been 
elevated. 
In order to account for the mysterious disappearances of per- 
sons, now so common, a French writer suggests the existence 
of a disease not yet recognised, which, without any previous 
warning, suddenly resolves the patient into vapour. He even 
professes to have witnessed the disappearance of a friend with 
whom he was walking. A very simple consideration overturns 
this hypothesis. We can scarcely assume that the disease 
causes the sudden vaporisation of clothing, boots, keys, knives, 
money, trinkets, and all that the patient had about him at the 
time of his disappearance. Yet no one has ever found in the 
streets a complete suit of clothes from which the body of the 
wearer escaped ! 
At the recent meeting of the British Medical Association a 
resolution in favour of vivisection was passed with but one 
dissentient. 
Dr. C. Jehn gives, in the “ Chemiker Zeitung,” a very striking 
case of fish perishing by thousands in consequence of water in 
which flax had been steeped having been allowed to flow into a 
stream. 
M. H. Toussaint (“ Comptes Rendus ”) finds that no contagious 
malady possesses a greater virulence than tuberculosis, the virus 
resisting and preserving its efficacy at temperatures which destroy 
the baCteria of splenic fever. The infection takes place as easily 
by ingestion as by inoculation. 
ERRATUM. 
Page 479, line 19 from bottom, for “ animal ” read “ normal. 
