Notices of Books, 
[Ocftober, 
538 
In a paper on the influence of the roots of living vegetables 
upon putrefaction, Jeannel pronounces “ the fact that cemeteries, 
bogs, and marshes are made salubrious by vegetation indis- 
putable, being purely the result of experience.” Would M. Jean- 
nel kindly show how this theory adapts itself to such districts as 
the Terai, the Gold Coast, the Tierras Calientes of Mexico, &c., 
where we have at once the most luxuriant vegetation and the 
most intense insalubrity ? 
The intelletual capacity and educability of children of dif- 
ferent “ races ” — to say species would be, we suppose, a capital 
offence — has been studied by M. Houzeau. He concludes that 
there is in each child a different rate of intelletual proficiency, 
but that such differences amount to less than might be antici- 
pated, and that an unequal rate of improvement does not belong 
specially to any one race. Nay, as we have seen it remarked 
elsewhere, the inferior races even seem to have an advantage. 
On this fat, however, the very just comment has been made by 
other observers that this advantage is extremely transitory. 
The existence of gigantic cuttles is now no longer a matter of 
question. One, whose larger arms measured each 26 feet in 
length and 16 inches in circumference, was cast ashore on the 
Grand Bank, Fortune Bay, in December, 1874. The entire 
length of its body was 14 feet. 
As another wonder of the deep may be mentioned a marine 
worm 300 yards in length, discovered by Dr. Carl Mobius, off 
Mauritius. Is not this quite as extraordinary as the much- 
disputed “ sea-serpent ” ? 
Closet naturalists have sometimes maintained that man has at 
all times and in all places, except where debarred by climate, 
selected the same animals for domestication, the inference being 
drawn that no others were capable of being truly and perma- 
nently tamed. This theory is disproved by evidence obtained 
from Egyptian monuments. Several species of antelope were 
formerly bred and kept in a state of domestication, such as the 
gazelle, the kobe, addax, and beisa. In the pictures on Egyptian 
tombs “ flocks of these animals are represented receiving the 
attentions of the farmer and the herdsman.” From about 
1800 b.c. these representations become fewer and fewer in 
number, and ultimately disappear. It would be interesting to 
ascertain whether their removal from the ranks of tame animals 
was due to the conclusion that they were not remunerative, or to 
a general decline in the art of husbandry. 
It has been justly remarked that man’s power of destroying 
noxious animals, from the tiger or the cobra down to the locust 
and the mosquito, has increased in a far less rapid ratio than his 
means of inflidting death and destruction upon his own species. 
In the former department there is indeed great room for inventive 
ingenuity. Two species of Pyrethrum ( P . carneum and roseum) 
have been for some time in use for destroying, or at least 
