248 
Notes. 
M. Fischer gives (“ Petermann’s Geograph. Mittheilung. ”) 
an essay on the distribution of the date-tree. It can bear a 
winter temperature as low as 23*9°, and even the contact of snow 
for a day or two. To ripen its fruits it requires a mean summer 
temperature of at least 79 0 F., a dry air, and a clear sky. Its 
northern limit as a fruit tree is given by the isotherm of 70° F., 
and as an ornamental tree by that of 6i° F. 
“ Ciel et Terre ” describes the showers of dust so common in 
Italy. They occur generally in calm weather after a sirocco. 
The sky takes a reddish tint, the barometer falls, and the tem- 
perature rises. The dust is of a brick-red colour, of an acid re- 
action, and contains iron, partly of terrestrial and partly of 
cosmic origin. If accompanied by rain it injures vegetation by 
its causticity. 
Mr. J. A. Wanklyn, writing in a lay paper, impugns the validity 
of the scientific evidence in the Lamson case. 
Out of every hundred anti-vivisedlionists ninety-nine are quite 
willing to get rid of vermin by poison. But if vermin are poi- 
soned to solve an important judicial question, as in this very 
Lamson case, we hear shrieks about “ violationism,” “ orgies of 
diabolism,” and the like ! 
M. Decharme (“ Comptes Rendus ”) has succeeded in repro- 
ducing, by means of liquid currents, the coloured rings of Nobili 
as obtained by eledtric currents. 
Diphtheria — a disease which, by the way, according to the 
“ New York Medical Record,” may be communicated by cats — 
has been ravaging Bloemfontein, South Africa. Many cases 
proved fatal within twenty-four hours. 
In the Department of the Seine there have been, from Novem- 
ber 1st, 1880, to November 1st, 1881, 641 cases of rabies in 
dogs : 153 persons have been bitten, of whom 21 have died of 
hydrophobia. 
An American contemporary suggests that the navies of all 
powers might, in time of peace, contribute much to scientific 
exploration without any sacrifice of efficiency and without appre- 
ciable outlay. 
Dr. Brown-Sequard (“ Comptes Rendus ”) shows that in the 
guinea-pig the results of accidental post-natal lesions may be 
transmitted for several generations. 
Dr. J. F. Snyder (“ Kansas Review of Science ”) contends 
that the mound-builders and miners of North America were not 
a distindl and vanished people, but were of the same race as the 
Aborigines found by the first European settlers. 
ERRATUM 
Footnote at bottom of p. 148, for “ insignificant” read “ significant.” 
