5 oo Notes. [August, 
of heat or of gestation, and when [sick, and also when they 
become quarrelsome.” 
Colonel W. Hope, V.C., speaking of Government officials, 
says . << Judgment and common sense they may be wanting in, 
but school-boy competitive-examination smartness they have any 
quantity of.” 
Mr. G. Brown-Goode (“ Science ”) defends Dr. Gunther against 
the charges brought by Prof. Gill. He shows that the Challenger 
collections have not yet become the property of the British 
Museum, but are merely held in trust by Dr. Gunther for the 
Lords of the Admiralty. 
A “ Christian ” organ, whilst complaining that trade, art, and 
“ dissent ” are not, as such, represented in the House of Lords, 
does not regret the comparative absence of Science in that 
august assembly. 
Mr. W. R. Tomlinson, M.A. (“ Light ”), writes “ I have 
lono- thought that the late Charles Darwin, who was a Scripture 
student, must have got his material ideas of the ‘ survival of the 
fittest ’ from the spiritual teaching of the Bible concerning the 
conditional immortality of the soul.” 
Mr S. H. Trowbridge (“ Science”) records the capture of a 
shovel-nosed sturgeon (, Scaphirhynchops platyrhynchus) which 
“exhibited on the surface no sign whatever of eyes.” This 
species of fish ploughs in the mud for its food, and has little 
apparent use for eyes. Hence, as the author thinks, they are 
becoming obsolete. 
MM. Pasteur, Chamberland, and Roux (“ Comptes Rendus ”) 
consider that they have at last developed a vaccine for rabies. 
They have called upon the French Minister of Public Instruction 
to nominate a commission before whom the crucial demonstra- 
tion is to be performed. 
Mr J. E. Jeffries (“ Proc. Boston Natural Hist. Soc.”) com- 
bats the current idea that scales, feathers, and hairs are identical 
in Nature. 
M A. Chauveau (“Comptes Rendus”) considers it fully proved 
that condensed oxygen, as well as heat, attenuates the activity 
of virulent microbia. The precise degree of condensation is, 
however, the important point. 
It is an error to suppose that the vapours of phenol, even when 
so strong as to be scarcely tolerable by human beings, will drive 
away the house-fly. 
Dr. S. Lukjanow (“ Zeitschrift fur Physiol. Chemie ”) has 
demonstrated that the absorption of oxygen by animals is not a 
