Notes. 
1884.] 
439 
American and Continental papers are still discussing the 
bearings of the Huddersfield lead-poisoning case of 1882. It is 
deplorable that inventors do not seek to devise some safe substi- 
tute for lead as a material for water service-pipes — surely a nobler 
task than to devise new means for the destruction of life and 
property, and to play into the hands of the vilest of criminals ! 
j.he anaemia of brickmakers, well known in Italy, and recently 
observed at Bonn, is caused by the presence of an entozoon, 
Anchylostomum duodenale. The disease is contracted by drinking 
water from muddy pools. 
M. G. Rolland (“ Comptes Rendus ”) shows that since the 
beginning of the Tertiary epoch the Sahara has been dry land, 
save a relatively limited region at the north-east which was 
covered by the Eocene Sea. At the end of the Miocene all the 
north of Africa was above water, and since then, during the 
Pliocene and the Quaternary, the outline of the south shore of 
the Mediterranean has not sensibly varied. 
It is to be feared that, as far as the lighting of towns is con- 
cerned, the eledtric light has been snuffed out in Britain by 
recent legislation. Its only immediate future must be in manu- 
facturing establishments where the current can be produced and 
distributed without crossing any public road. 
We are happy to find that the study of the physical sciences 
as compared with that of classics is on the increase in Scotland. 
Mr. H. H. Smith (“American Naturalist”) maintains that 
three distindt cats have been confounded under the name of 
jaguai ( Fclis ongci'j, In the normal form the black spots are 
arranged in groups of five or six each on an ochre or tawny 
ground. In the Ouga pintada or cachorro the spots are smaller, 
and scattered evenly without grouping, whilst in the tigre grouped 
spots occur on a brown-black ground. The hunters declare that 
all these varieties “ breed true,” and that crosses are rare. 
According to the “ Lundy Index ” nitrogen protoxide is natu- 
rally evolved from the shales of the Tioga Hill, in California. 
Mr. J. B. Armstrong, of the Botanic Garden, Christchurch, 
New Zealand, believes that red clover in that island is becoming 
modified in its strudture, so as to admit of fecundation by means 
of insedts which do not visit it in England. 
M. Aug. Charpentier (“ Comptes Rendus ” after a series of 
experiments on the perception of colours, arrives at the following 
laws : — The perception of differences of illumination is the more 
easy the less the refrangibility of the colours. For one and the 
same chromatic intensity the perception of differences in illumi- 
nation is the same for all saturated colours, and for an equal 
visual intensity the perception of the differences of illumination 
is the same in all colours. 
