630 
Notes. 
[0<5tober, 
The swallows and the martins are said to have taken their de- 
parture from Paris at the end of August, instead of, as usual, 
about October 10th. 
M. Hennessy (“ Comptes Rendus ”) argues that the mean 
temperature of the Northern Hemisphere is not higher than that 
of the Southern. 
According to Tieghem certain low plants — Ascomicetes, Mu* 
corini, &c.— live and increase in oils in the absence of atmo- 
spheric air. 
The “ Deutsch-Amerikanishe Apotheker Zeitung ” replies to a 
correspondent that “ between cruelty to animals and vivisection, 
in the scientific sense of the term, there is a mighty difference, 
which many persons have not recognised and cannot recognise.” 
According to Prof. Xavier Landerer, of Athens, rabies is ex- 
ceedingly common in the East among dogs, cats, and jackals. 
This observation overturns the theory that the disease is produced 
by confinement, chaining, muzzling, &c. 
The so-called double or twin canals which have become visible 
on the surface of the planet Mars are occasioning much at- 
tention. 
Prof. Freeman, of the Johns Hopkins University, of Baltimore, 
concludes, from a long series of experiments, that electricity is 
not demonstrably disengaged by the evaporation of fluids. 
The subterranean chambers of the Observatory of Paris are 
about to be utilised for studying the changes which the attraction 
of the heavenly bodies may occasion in the reflecting surface of 
a bath of mercury. 
Statues are about to be ereCted at Besan^ons and Beaume les 
Dames in honour of Claude de Jouffroy, who is now alleged to 
have been the originator of steam-navigation, 
M. P. de Tchihatcheff, in a paper read at the recent South- 
ampton Meeting, contends that the great deserts of Africa and 
Asia are not sea-beds, recently laid dry, but they have been up- 
raised at remote geological epochs, and that their sand is not of 
marine origin, but is the product of rocks disaggregated by winds, 
changes of temperature, &c. He admits that the Asiatic deserts 
are much more ancient than the Sahara. At a point in the Gobi, 
of the same latitude as Palermo, Russian explorers found, as 
late as May 16th, a temperature of 22 0 F., and snow 2 yards in 
depth ! 
M. d’Abbadie (“ Comptes Rendus ”) recommends fumigations 
of sulphur as a preservative against the effects of malaria. He 
gives an interesting account of the gradual ruin of Zephyria, in 
the island of Milo, a town once containing 40,000 inhabitants, 
