Notes. 5 qi 
According to “ Science pour Tous ” hay-fever and coriza a 
rosarum odore can be traced as far back as the 16th century. 
Judge Field, of the Supreme Court of the United States, re- 
lates in his Memoirs, just published, that in 1862 there occurred 
a mysterious epidemic the origin and nature of which have never 
been explained. A mere touch with the end of the finger was 
sufficient to convey the infection. 
The present Exhibition of Inventions is not, it appears, the 
only one which has proved attractive to rats. These rodents, 
like bureaucrats, love exhibitions in general. 
According to the Hydrographic Office at Washington the 
highest waves in the North Atlantic reach 15 metres. 
In the Botanical Gardens of Dijon is a poplar 40 metres in 
height, and 14 metres in circumference on a level with the ground. 
Its age is estimated at 500 years. 
A correspondent at Port Elizabeth informs us that the present 
winter is moie severe than any in South Africa within the memory 
of man. Some persons in the neighbourhood of Port Elizabeth 
have actually perished from cold. 
Dr. Bonaria, of the Bucknow Botanical Gardens, reports the 
planting of Euccily ptus globulus for sanitary purposes as a failure, 
and wonders that the tree should ever have been thought suited 
for this purpose. 
Accoiding to the “ Medium and Daybreak ” a mesmerist, by 
means of passes, tuined a yellow tulip white. Such an ope- 
rator would be invaluable at bleach-works. 
In some parts of Africa the Negroes are of opinion that any 
man who has survived a stroke of lightning is rendered incapable 
of swimming. 
Prof. Enrico di Mombello, in a recent leCture, described 
Giordano Bruno as one of the pioneers of Evolution, which he 
characterised as the old Aryan theory of the universe, in oppo- 
sition to the Semitic conception of mechanical creation from 
without. 
We learn that at the last meeting of the “ Hermetic Society” 
an adjournment until the winter was agreed upon, in order that 
the leaders of the Society might devote their time to a crusade 
against physiological experimentation, or “vivisection ” as they 
are pleased to call it. It is well to know our enemies. 
M. Charles Richet finds experimentally that normal children, 
weighing from 6000 to 9000 grms., produce hourly about 4500 
calories per kilo, of their weight. 
The evening after-glow so conspicuous in the winter of 1883 
has again become very intense, and has been observed in various 
