i88a.] 
Notes. 
245 
compared with those of the dog. The latter exerts a power of 
8-25 kilos, per kilo, of its own weight, while in the crocodile the 
power exerted rises to 12*8 kilos. 
M. Lecoq de Boisbaudran has exhibited to the Academy of 
Sciences a specimen of a curious violet colouring-matter deve- 
loped on the surface of starch-paste, especially if exposed to the 
vapours of acetic acid. 
M. Filhol (“ Comptes Rendus ”) concludes that Campbell 
Island has never been in connection with New Zealand, its fauna, 
present and fossil, being totally distinct. 
It is stated that during the recent season of high barometric 
pressure the sea-level was depressed about a foot at Antibes, and 
continued so for a fortnight. On the summit of the Pic du Midi 
temperatures as high as 68° to 69° F. were registered from 
January 8th to January 20th. During the exceptional calm in 
England and France, the north of Norway suffered from un- 
usually violent and continued tempests. 
An instrument closely approaching the telephone is said to 
have been invented in the seventeenth century, by one Grim- 
melshauen, a soldier in the service of the Bishop of Strasburg. 
Believers in metempsychosis would do well to examine whether 
their supposed recollections of prior lives are not simply cases of 
hereditary reminiscence. 
M. Vulpian (“ Comptes Rendus ”) criticises the views of M. de 
Lacerda on the value of potassium permanganate as an antidote 
to snake-poisons. He shows that the bite of Bothrops jfacarandi 
in Brazil is not always deadly ; he proves that the injection of a 
solution of permanganate into a vein is fatal, and that if it merely 
passes into the subcutaneous cellular tissue it will be decomposed, 
forming a clot of hydrated peroxide very near the point of injec- 
tion, and being thus prevented from penetrating far. The poison, 
on the other hand, is not thus decomposed. He does not call in 
question the alleged character of the poison as being not a true 
chemical agent, but a ferment. 
In the introductory chapter of the “ Manual of the Infusoria,” 
by W. S. Kent, now in course of publication, the following ap- 
pears, and should certainly be made more public than it is likely 
to be as a mere footnote in a very extensive work : — “ In associ- 
ation with the discoveries of Leeuwenhoek here recorded, it is 
worthy of remark that a cabinet of the microscopes, to the num- 
ber of twenty-six, as self-construcfled and employed by that 
investigator, and consisting of simple doubly-convex lenses, were 
originally presented by him to the Royal Society of England, but 
have long since been lost sight of. The latest tidings of them 
would appear to have been furnished by Mr. Henry Baker, who 
in his work ‘ The Microscope made Easy ’ [p. 7, note], published 
