Notes. 
565 
is8 3 .] 
Cattle are maliciously destroyed in India by wounding them 
with a spike moulded from the seeds of Abrus precatorius. 
Death follows on the second day. The pounded seeds, taken 
internally, have little adtion. 
MM. Muntz and Aubin (“ Comptes Rendus ”) consider that 
we are living on a stock of combined nitrogen produced at “ the 
beginning,” and that we are- exposed to see this stock decrease 
unless the supply produced by the adtion of atmospheric eledtri- 
city is a sufficient compensation. 
Dr. Laborde (Societe de Biologie) considers cinchonamine as 
excessively poisonous, even in very small doses. 
According to M. Poehl (Russian Chemical Society) almost all 
the tissues of plants and animals have the power of converting 
albumenoid matters into peptones. 
At the August meeting of the Entomological Society was read 
a communication from Dr. Fritz Muller, from which it appears 
that the protection derived by insects from an evil odour is not 
absolute. The author had found about thirty specimens of a 
common and very offensive Brazilian species whose wings appear 
to have been perforated by the beaks of birds. - 
The same author also finds that the pupae of Lepidoptera are 
not invariably modified in colour in accordance with the object 
to which they are attached. 
Dr. F. Muller also observed that the caterpillar of Eunomia 
eagrus, when becoming a pupa, attaches itself to a twig, and 
fixes its stiff and venomous hairs to the twig something in the 
style of a bottle-brush, so as to prevent access to the pupa either 
from above or below. 
At the same meeting was read a communication from Mr. W. 
H. Pryor, on the insedts of the Island of Yesso. About n per 
cent of the species collected there occur also in Britain. 
M. A. Fauvel (“ Comptes Rendus”) still upholds the doctrine 
that the cholera has been imported into Egypt from India, in 
consequence of the suppression of preventive measures. It is 
significant that the Academy of Sciences has ordered the inser- 
tion of this paper in the “ Comptes Rendus ” in full, though 
exceeding the usual limits. 
A. Ritter (“ Wiedemann’s Annalen ”) gives the following pro- 
positions as the results of a mathematical investigation of the 
subject : — The superficial temperatures of two fixed stars of 
equal densities are approximately as the square roots of their 
masses ; the surface temperature of the sun was never much 
greater, and can never become much greater in the future than 
it is at present. The masses of the white fixed stars are greater 
than the mass of our sun. 
