1885.] 
( 179 
NOTES. 
Mr. Charles C. Cattell, the Secretary of the Darwin Institute 
. 1 f rn ! n fc>r ai r?’ P ersists insinuating that Mr. Darwin was athe- 
lstically inclined. In an address on “ Charles Darwin, and what 
led to and sustains his Theory ” (undated, but evidently recently 
published), this writer admirably arrays certain of Mr. Darwin’s 
manifold indictments of the doctrine of design, and remarks that 
in his first work, when under the influence of the old idea he 
only attributed to the Creator the origination of life, and assumed 
the existence of only a few original forms, perhaps four or five ” 
Mr. Cattell is perhaps unaware that in the second edition, revised 
of the “ Variation under Domestication ” (1875), Mr Darwin 
implied a continuance of belief in this doctrine (vide p 12 vol i ) 
Similar movements on the part of the Secretary of the Darwin 
Institute have been noted in this Journal for August and Decern- 
ber of last year (pp. 490 to 492, and p. 729). 
Mr. E. Gilpin F.G.S., in a paper read before the Geological 
Section of the British Association, anticipates a permanent and 
profitable future for the gold-mines of Nova Scotia. 
M* H - Beauregard (“ Comptes Rendus”) studies the digestive 
apparatus of the Cantharidae. Its three portions— the oesophagus 
the stomach, and the intestine— are divided by two valves placed 
at the anterior and posterior extremities of the stomach. The 
anterior valve offers three types, occurring respectively in 
Epicauta and Lytta, in Cantharis and Mylabris, and in Meloe. 
I iof. Plateau concludes, from a series of experiments, that 
the contiablile foice of the muscular fibre is not the same in all 
animals. 
Gerhard Kriiss (“ Berlin Berichte ”) calls attention to the in- 
fluence of temperature in spectroscopic observations. By an 
increase of temperature all phenomena of absorption and emis- 
sion are removed towards the violet end of the spectrum if 
glass prisms are employed, and towards the red end in case of 
quartz prisms. These displacements are generally greater when 
they occur in the more refrangible regions of the spectrum. 
“ Science ” complains of the neglect of the entomological 
collections in American museums. We fear that such carefess- 
ness is not confined merely to America. 
* 
