56 
Notes.*: 
and more rascality done over the question of storage batteries 
than over any other department of eleCtrical science. 
Mr. St. George Stock, writing in “ Light,” says that in the 
Southern Hemisphere the climate is growing perceptibly colder. 
“ In the Banda Oriental, and in the Argentine Republic, houses 
used regularly to be constructed without fireplaces ; now they 
are as regularly constructed with them.” 
Dr. Hammond, in a discourse delivered at Lehigh University, 
remarks that “ Most civilised communities have enaCted laws 
against the employment of children in severe physical labour. 
This is well enough. But no such fostering care does the State 
take of the brain of the young. There are no laws to prevent 
the undeveloped nervous system being overtasked ar.d brought 
to disease, or even absolute destruction.” 
M. G. Colin (“ Comptes Rendus ”) concludes, from a series of 
experiments, that — 
1. Virulent agents, when introduced into animals upon which 
they have no injurious aCtion, may preserve their properties un- 
touched for one or two weeks. 
2. These agents, after thus sojourning in animals where they 
remain sterile, may, if returned to others susceptible, produce 
their ordinary effeCts with an undiminished rapidity and in- 
tensity. 
3. In certain cases these agents may produce, in so-called 
“ refractory” animals, organic or functional diseases, severe and 
even fatal, though not analogous with those produced in suscep- 
tible animals. 
4. RefraCtory animals, after having played the part of inert 
receptacles of virulent matter, may become the passive agents 
of contagion, though remaining themselves untouched. 
5. The same animals may serve repeatedly for the transit of 
virulent matter without a former local deposit having the attenu- 
ating effeCts of a vaccination. 
Dr. A. Mehring, at the last meeting of the German Congress 
of Naturalists and Physicians, read a paper on the heads of cer- 
tain dogs found as mummies at Ancon, on the Peruvian coast. 
These “ Inca dogs ” represent three races — one resembling the 
sheep-dog, one a terrier, and another a bull-dog. Nehring con- 
siders the first-mentioned as the primitive form, while the other 
two have been developed. All seem originally derived from the 
wolf of North America, as a number of anatomic features tes- 
tify. Wolves born and brought up in captivity undergo, even in 
the first generation, changes in the size and proportions of the 
skull, and in the size, form, and position of the teeth, which, 
when compared with the skulls and teeth of wild wolves, indicate 
a transition to the type of the domestic dog. 
We regret to put on record the death of the eminent naturalist 
Dr. Alfred Brehm, on November nth 
^ JAN 1 385 
