630 
Notes. 
[July, 
natural selection of condition, he finds himself a spiritual being 
with an immortal soul.” Might we remind this Dr. Jones that 
a gorilla has no more tail to “ rub off” than a “ Concord Philo- 
sopher ” ? 
On the same occasion a Mr. Alcott held that, “ instead of 
coming up from animals, animals have descended from men, 
and were possible only because man made himself a beast first.” 
Prof. His has, very characteristically, sought to deny the ex- 
istence of a rudimentary tail in the human embryo. He denies 
the existence of supernumerary vertebrae in the “ caudiform ap- 
pendage.” Prof. Gerlach has shown, however, in an elaborate 
memoir (“ Gegenbaur’s Morphologisch. Jahrbuch ”), that such 
supernumerary vertebrae actually exist. 
M. Emile Delaurier (“ Les Mondes ”) considers that the ex- 
cessive velocity of comets causes a vibration of the ethereal 
matter of space, and producing heat and light, and thus gives 
rise to the so-called tail. He contends that the popular belief in 
the influence of comets upon the temperature is not groundless. 
According to H. C. Bumpus (“ American Naturalist ”) the 
yellow-bellied woodpecker drinks the sap of the birch-tree. “ The 
humming-birds were very thick round the tree, sucking the sap 
where it was running from the holes ; there were also butterflies 
and moths around it.” 
[We have often captured Lepidoptera by boring holes in trees 
and seizing the insedts as they came to drink. — Ed.] 
Dr. C. Brame (“ Les Mondes ”) maintains that cyclides and 
cyclidary formations appear general in nature, not merely in or- 
ganic matter, but in plants and animals, of which he gives 
instances. He argues that the chemical law of multiple propor- 
tions is applicable to the relative dimensions of the central objedt 
and of the cyclide or the concentric cyclides. 
H. C. Heller (“Wiener Akad. Wissenschaft ”) observes that 
genuine Alpine forms show a strong tendency to melanism. 
Lacerta crocea and Polias prester take in the higher mountains 
an almost black colouration. The mountain salamander ( Sala - 
tnandra atra) is intensely black. The fish in the Alpine lakes 
have dark colours. With the exception of the Chrysomelidae 
most of the insedts are black or deep brown, and the higher we 
ascend the darker become their colours. This is the more inte- 
resting as the Alpine flora is distinguished by the brightness and 
purity of its colours. 
According to “ L’Union Medicale ” a crucial experiment on 
M. Pasteur’s system of protecting cattle from anthrax, by a kind 
of vaccination, was performed in May this year, near Melun, and 
was attended with complete success. 
