628 
Notes . 
[October, 
November; that its distribution in the different arrondissements 
is unequal ; that the number of deaths from this fever stand in 
no direcft and constant relation with the population of the dis- 
tricts, their extent, the state of crowding, or the general mortality. 
It is impossible to ascribe to this disease a single cause, the 
“ focal origin ” of English sanitarians. 
The “ Darwin Prize ” of the Midland Union of Natural- 
History Societies has been this year awarded to Prof. A. M, 
Marshall, D.Sc., M.D , for zoology. 
Mr. F. B. Campbell, in a memoir read before the Linnean 
Society, shows reason for believing that parthenogenesis occurs 
among house-spiders, — a perfectly novel phenomenon, if esta- 
blished. 
Herr E. Doll (“ Verhandl. Kais. Kon. Geolog. Reichsanstalt ”) 
points out the existence of a zone of country in Hungary parti- 
cularly affeCted by meteorites. Of the eight known cases 
recorded in the twenty-five years up to 1877, s ^ x this 
region, and subsequently two more. In 1877 Dr. Lawrence 
Smith traced a local grouping of the North American meteorites. 
A correspondent of the “ Medical Press and Circular ” speaks 
of the odour of the heliotrope as an efficient narcotic. 
MM. Bokorny and Loew, of Munich, have forwarded to the 
Academy of Sciences a series of microscopic preparations demon- 
strating the differences between living and dead protoplasm. 
According to “ Ciel et Terre ” four new planetoids have been 
recently discovered. Nos. 226, 228, and 229 were first seen at 
Vienna, by M. Palisa, on the 5th, 19th, and 22nd of August; 
whilst No. 227 was discovered on August 12th, by M. Henry, of 
the Observatory of Paris. 
M. J. Vincent (“ Ciel et Terre ”) records that in Belgium the 
average temperature of the month of August was lower than the 
average by 1-5° C. (^2*7° F.). The rainy days were twenty-four 
as against a mean of seventeen. The cloudiness has been 7*9 
in place of the average of 6*2. Not a single day has been com- 
pletely cloudless, and for two days the sky was entirely overcast. 
Mr. F. F. Hilder (“ Kansas Review of Science and Industry”) 
controverts the conclusions of Dr. J. F. Snyder that the “ Red- 
skins found in North America by the first European explorers 
were “ the people, or the immediate descendants of the people, 
who built the mounds.” Mr. Hilder shows that the mound- 
builders must have had considerable mathematical knowledge : 
that they had fixed habitations and idols, of the origin of which 
the recent Indians confess themselves entirely ignorant. 
Dr. C. Viguier (“ Comptes Rendus dela Societe de Geographie 
de Paris ”) ventures to suggest that there exists in man and in 
