Notes. 
116 
[February, 
M. J. Thouclet has studied experimentally the velocity of cur- 
rents of air or water capable of holding mineral particles in 
suspension. 
According to the “ Comptes Rendus ” the extraordinary phe- 
nomena accompanying sunset and sunrise, in November and 
December last, have been observed at Lyon, Rambouillet, Va- 
lencia, and Christiania. 
Dr. Carter Moffat, in a Ledture delivered recently at Glasgow, 
maintained that the presence of hydrogen peroxide in the air and 
dew of Italy had some connection with the beauty of the Italian 
vocal tone. 
We regret to find that the eledtion of an Assessor to the 
Council of St. Andrew’s University has been condudted on 
political lines. 
M. P. Fischer (“ Comptes Rendus ”) shows that the abysmal 
fauna of the intertropical Atlantic, though containing many 
boreal forms, is not exclusively composed of immigrants from 
the Ardtic Seas. The limits in depth of the boreal species 
increase as we approach the Equator. Thus Malletia obtusa, 
found at 200 fathoms near Norway, occurs at 3200 at the 
Senegal. 
Mr. R. S. Tarr (“Science”) gives an account of a tradt of 
“ singing sand ” which forms a long narrow strip on the coast 
at Monomoy Point, Massachusetts. 
Prof. A. Winchell denies that the period of the inner satellite 
of Mars furnishes any objection to the nebular hypothesis. 
“ Science” quotes from the “ Transactions of the New Jersey 
Microscopical Society” (Nov. 19th, 1883) an account of a full- 
grown dipterous larva ( Sarcophciga carnaria ) taken from the 
inner ear of a man at Paterson, New Jersey, August 30th, 1883. 
The author, Dr. S. Lockwood, referred to papers which he had 
read before the Society in 1880 and 1881, describing larva of 5. 
carnaria and Authority ia canicularis passed by a man in large 
numbers. Dr. A. V. N. Baldwin had recently found a cluster of 
grubs, hard packed, in the external ear of a man in the Bellevue 
Hospital. 
The “ New York Sanitary Engineer,” as quoted by the “ Medi- 
cal Press and Circular,” reproduces the ancient joke of a reporter 
who mixed up his notes of a meeting on the conversion of the 
Jews with those of a discussion on the sewage question. 
Rev. Dr. McCook has read a paper, before the Philadelphia 
Academy of Natural Science, on the weaving habits of Psocus 
sexpunctatus. The Psocidae, a neuropterous group, are the only 
known inserts which spin when in the mature state. 
