1882.] 
Notes. 
373 
The appointment of the Fellows and Examiners of the new 
Royal Irish University has taken place, and has given room for 
no little discussion. 
The medical papers give several instances of larvae, apparently 
Dipterous, having been found in human subjects in this country. 
It is important to know whether such phenomena have been re- 
corded formerly, or whether some Dipteron has recently become 
parasitic on man. 
Capt. E. L. B. Davis writes to the “ Popular Science Monthly” 
to protest against its insertion of quack advertisements. The 
editor, in reply, disavows responsibility for the advertisements, 
and hints that it would not be easy to exclude them. 
Prof. Ladolei denounces as “ materialistic ” the opinion that 
plants possess sensation and will. 
M. Colasanti (“ Les Mondes ”) finds that Lepidopterous chry- 
salides may be submitted for forty-eight hours to a temperature 
of — 12° C. without injury. He exposed butterflies to the 
same temperature, and found that on restoration to a normal 
temperature they all revived. On being thus frozen and restored 
for three successive times they became weaker. 
S. Ambrogio (“ Les Mondes ”) proposes the law that the phy- 
siological action of organic substances is “ directly as their 
specific heat, and inversely as their molecular weight,” being the 
reverse of the acftion of the metals. 
Dr. Paterson, of Bridge of Allan, writes to a Glasgow paper 
that the mavis , has, during the last thirty years, grown pro- 
gressively scarcer in Scotland, and will ultimately become extincft. 
Mr. R. C. Rutherford explains the phenomena of odours by the 
vibrations of an “ odoriferous ether ” analogous to, or possibly 
identical with, the luminiferous ether. 
Prof. R. Owen has received a gold medal of honour, instituted 
centuries ago by the Dukes of Mantua, and of which Dante, 
Michael Angelo, Raphael, and Cuvier have been previous reci- 
pients. 
There is a division among the Occultists. Swami Dayanund 
Suruswati Pundit, the elecfted Director and Chief of the “ Theo- 
sophical Society of the Arya-Somaj,” now declares that Colonel 
Olcott and Madame Blavatsky know nothing of occult science as 
practised by the Yogis of old ! — Light. 
M. Lemoine (“ Comptes Rendus ”) gives an account of the 
skulls of Arctocyon Dueilii and Pleuraspidotherium Ammonieri 
from the lower eocene near Rheims. The former of these mam- 
mals is a carnivorous type ; the latter combines the characters of 
the Marsupials, the Pachydermata, and the Lemuridae. In both 
the quadrigeminal tubercles appear to have been completely un- 
