i 882.] 
K 243 ) 
NOTES. 
M. E. de Cyon (“ Comptes Rendus ”) has examined the influ- 
ence of high atmospheric pressures upon animal life. He finds 
that they modify sensibly the normal relations of the tension of 
the gases contained in the blood. This acftion is exerted upon 
the circulatory and respiratory systems. Pure oxygen is not a 
special poison for the organisms, and animals die in it because 
the carbonic acid (the chief excitant of the vasomotor and 
respiratory centres), being sensibly diminished, the circulation 
and respiration are arrested. The movements of the heart are 
quickened at first because the oxygen (the normal excitant of the 
nerves and the accelerating centres) augments their activity, 
whilst the absence of carbonic acid diminishes the moderating 
adtion of the pneumogastric nerves. 
M. C. Gessard (“ Comptes Rendus ”) finds that the blue and 
green colouring-matter which sometimes appears on the dressing 
of wounds is due to pyocyanine, which on oxidation passes into 
a yellow, pyoxanthose. Pyocyanine, like the ptomaines, reduces 
potassium ferricyanide. 
M. Bjerknes and M. Decharmes have both succeeded in imi- 
tating eledtric adfion hydro-dynamically. The former, by means 
of bodies vibrating in water, reproduces the phenomena of static 
electricity and of magnetism inversely. The latter, experiment- 
ing with liquid currents, finds a direct analogy between hydro- 
dynamic phenomena and those of electro-magnetism and 
induction. 
M. Laveran some time ago discovered on the blood of ague- 
patients a peculiar microbion, Oscillaria malarice. M. H. 
Richard, in a communication to the Academy of Sciences, traces 
the development of these parasites, which live in the red blood 
globules and destroy them. 
Mr. Grant Allen (“ Fortnightly Review ”), in a notice of the 
autobiography of Sir C. Lyell, makes the following happy re- 
marks : — “ He luckily escaped the conventionalising and stereo- 
typing drill of our public schools : he was never put through one 
of those dismal mills for crushing out individuality into which 
we turn most of our best material, so as to grind it down to the 
Procrustean measure of Ovidian elegiacs and Eschylean tri- 
meters. . . . He was spared the brutal influence of ‘ compulsory 
foot-ball ’ which would have been substituted for the pursuit of 
Nature in a modern public school.” We regret that Mr. Grant 
