1 881.] 
Notes . 
247 
ning and Porcupine before his appointment at Edinburgh. His 
contributions to the Transactions of learned societies are nume- 
rous and important. Whilst paying our last tribute to the memory 
of this indefatigable worker in Science, we cannot refer without 
pain to the unseemly character of the dispute concerning his 
successor. It appears that what is locally known as “ soundness ” 
is considered of greater weight than merit and efficiency. 
M. A. Raffray (“ Comptes Rendus ”) gives a view of the geo- 
graphical distribution of Coleoptera in Abyssinia. In the littoral 
zone, an arid plain, the Coleoptera belong almost exclusively to 
Saharian types, the Tenebrionides predominating. In the interior 
valleys the types are Senegalian. Among the characteristic 
forms are Tefflus, Galinta, Casnonia, Heliocopris, many Cetoni- 
adas, — including Goliathus Pluto, Eudicella Chloe, and Campso- 
cephalus Horsfieldianus, — some fine Buprestidae, Cerambycidas, 
and a great variety of Chrysomelidas. On the table-lands most 
of the Coleoptera are peculiar; some have analogies with Natal, 
and some with the Mediterranean basin. There are few Longi- 
cornes, Buprestidas, and Cetoniadae, but many dung-feeding 
Lamellicornes and Carabs, many of the latter analogous to those 
of Syria and Southern Europe. In this zone there are numerous 
Paussides. In the fourth or subalpine zone the predominant 
forms are distinctly European, the chief exception being an 
aberrant Calosoma (C. caraboides). Among eighteen mollusks 
from the same zone nine belong to African and nine to European 
types. 
Prof. Schmich (“ Naturforscher”) attributes, like Adhemar, the 
changes in the land- and sea-level to alternations in the latter 
affeCting the northern and southern hemispheres in semi-periods 
of 10,500 years. The more flooded hemisphere has its glacial 
epoch, with an oceanic climate; the less flooded has its warm 
epoch, which is approaching in the northern hemisphere. 
M. S. Jourdain (“ Comptes Rendus ”) shows that in the star- 
fishes the supposed heart and the vascular circles are merely the 
genital passages and annexed glands. 
M. Marey (“ Comptes Rendus ”) announces that he has suc- 
ceeded in reproducing photographically the successive movements 
of a bird in flight. With a specially modified apparatus he is 
able to take twelve successive images per second — the time re- 
quired for each being from i-70oth to 1- 1500th of a second, 
according to the weather. 
J. Reinke (“ Berlin Berichte ”), in replying to HH. Loew and 
Bokorny ( see “ Journal of Science,” 1882, p. 152), contends that 
protoplasm is not a “ body ” in the chemical sense of the word, 
but an organism. He also shows that the reducing power is no 
fundamental and universal difference between living and dead 
cells, since it is wanting or doubtful in animal cells, the cells of 
Fungi and of the roots of Pisum and Zea. 
