31 ° 
Notes. 
[May, 
Are we to rest content with the mere defeat of the recent Anti- 
viviseCtion Bill ? Will it not be well for persons introducing or 
supporting such Bills to find that in any future election the vote 
and influence of all medical and other scientific men will be 
arrayed against them, irrespective of party politics ? 
The “Medical Record” rightly pronounces the common say- 
ing that men die not of work but of worry a mere quibble. 
Fruits ripened by the eleCtric light are found to be deficient in 
flavour. 
We regret to find that the so-called “ Conservators” of Epping 
Forest are still proceeding with deep drainage and other opera- 
tions calculated entirely to change the character of the place. 
An evil-disposed boy at Brighton saturated the fur of a cat 
with petroleum and then set her on fire. For this piece of 
wanton cruelty he escaped with the moderate penalty of 
£3 12s. 6d. Had a physiologist inflicted one-tenth of this tor- 
ment upon any animal, he would have been fined £50 besides 
being preached about, prayed at, caricatured in novels and 
poems, and perhaps pilloried upon some new “ Peak of Darien.” 
M. Amans (“ Comptes Rendus,”) has been engaged with a 
series of researches on the wings of inseCts. To our no small 
disgust we find that his objeCt is aerial navigation. 
The University of Glasgow is again about to indulge in the 
election of a Lord ReCtor on political principles. It is time 
that this discreditable custom should be suppressed. 
MM. Gaston Bonnier and L. Mangin (“ Comptes Rendus”) 
show that in fungi the volume of oxygen absorbed is greater 
than the volume of carbonic acid produced. The proportions in 
one and the same species do not vary with temperature. The 
intensity of respiration augments sensibly with the degree of 
atmospheric moisture. Respiration is diminished by diffused 
light, and is more intense under the blue and violet rays than 
under the red and yellow. 
Dr. A. Mayer- proposes the use of glass coffins, to be filled 
with carbonic acid gas, and hermetically closed ! The great 
objections to this scheme are the expense and the withdrawal of 
so much combined nitrogen and phosphates from circulation. 
We regret to find in the “ Popular Science News,” formerly 
known as the “Boston Journal of Chemistry,” the following 
remarks concerning Pasteur : — “ He is a steadfast believer in 
spiritualism (?), and takes no interest in evolution theories or 
positivist docTrines.” Will it never become known that evolu- 
tion and positivism are not merely unconnected, but mutually 
antagonistic ? 
