he will also be appoined to the rank of fall surgeon to the hospital, Two vacancies will therefore occur, that of assistant-surgeon to the hospital, and demonstrator of anatomy,
We learn from Van Nestrand’s Eclectic Engineering Magazine (New York} that the Darien Canal project is reviving The United States steamer Nipsie, attached to the South Atlantic squadron, is unclear orders to proceed to the Isthmus of Darien to make surveys and explovations, with a view to determine the hest location for an inter-oceanie canal. A similar survey on the Pacific shore of the Isthaius will be made at a future day.
M. Favre has recently detected evidences of the glacial period in the Caucuscus, and M. Ed. Collomb finds traces, in the form of moraines and erratic blocks, of its having existed with great severity in the central plateau of France. This plateau forms an almost circular geological island 360 kilometres in diameter; its altitude increases progressively from north to south, and it is terminated on the south and west side by a barrier, the highest points of which, the Mézene, the Plomb da Cantal, and the Mont d'Ortise to a height of from 1,750 to 1,900 metres (5,700 to 6,200 feet), above the level of the sea.
The sense of taste has rarely been submitted to scientific examination, or at all events has attracted far less attention than its sister senses of sight and hearing, perhaps on account of the impossibility of treating it mathematically. That it differs to a remarkable extent in different individuals is, however, as every culinary artist would acknowledge, a matter of fact; and it is also well known that it is capable of extraordinary cultivation in some Men, as shown by wine- and tea-tasters obtaining lucrative posts from the delicacy of their discrimination. Recently Dr. Keppler has puldished a paper in Philiger’s “Archives of Physiology," in which he gives the details of a number of experiments he performed with a view of determining the limits of gustatory discrimination for sapid substances in various degrees of concentration. In these experiments he first made a standard solution, and then successively employed weaker or stronger solutions, which were tasted with due precautions, sometimes before and sometimes after the standard solution, until no perception of flavour was distinguished. The substances he selected were common salt, quinine, phosphoric acid, and glycerine, all of them, be it observed, destitute of odour, which plays so important a part, often overlooked, in our ideas of the flavour of particular objects. In one series of experiments the solutions were taken freely into the mouth, rolled over all parts of the membrane lining it, and then discharged. ln a second series the solutions, were more carefully applicd to the surface of the tongue alone by means of a camel's hair brush. It was found in both cases that when a difference of 2.5 per cent. existed between the standard solution and the experimental one, the observers were able to form a correct judgment on the point that there was a difference in 53 per cent. of all the trials, but when there was a difference between the two solutions amounting to 10 per cent., the answers were rightly given in 80 per cent. of all the trials. A more correct judgment was given when the standard solution was tasted before than after the experimental one with common salt and quinine, and the acuteness in the perception of a difference was greater when the trial solution was stronger than when weaker, but the opposite held good for the other substances.
We learn from the Gardener's Chronicle that the Royal Horticultural Society has decided to retain a portion of the old Chiswick garden, comprising the ground occupied by the glass-houses, and extending sufficiently castwards and southwards to include the lange winery and the fruit-room,
M. Ductaux has lately been experimenting on the effect of certain gases in retarding the incubation of silkworms’ eggs. He has also been trying the effect of cold upon the same organisms, and finds that instead of retarding the period to the action of a gentle heat of incubation, it accelerated it: in fact, that eggs laid in autumn and left to themselves would only incubate in spring; but if subjected to the action of a freezing mixture for forty days, they would hatch into larva immediately aherwards, on being submitted to the action of a gentle heat. If these experiments are confirmed, M. Duclaux will have undoubtely discovered an entirely new principle in physiology; that cold has a vivifying influence, Hitherto physiologists have always believed that its action was diametrically opposite.
The journal of the Procerdings of the Asiatic Society of Bengal for January has an interesting article by Dr, i. Skoliczka on the Kjokenmöddings af the Andaman Islands.
The Journal of the Scottish Meteological Soetety has some interesting papers on the cold of fast summer in Ireland, and upon the thunderstorms of Scotland. The part also contains a report on the Meteorology of Scotland and a minute of the meeting of the Council.
The American Gas Light Journal reports that at a recent mecting of the Lyceum of Natural History of New York, Mr. Loew stated that ozone is produced copiously by blowing a strong current of air into the flame of a Bunsen’s burner. He also communicated that he had observed the decomposition of sulphurous acid with production of sulphurite acid and deposition of sulphur, when an aqueous sulution of the gas was exposed for two months to sunlight.
The hardness of metals may now be ascertained by the aid of an instrument invented by a French engineer. It consists of a drill turned by a machine of a certain and uniform strength. The instrament indicates the sumber of revolutions made by the drill, From this, compared with the length of the bore-hole produced, the hardness of the metal is estimated. Et is said that a great proportion of the raily tow employed in France are tested by this instrument.
ON THE TEMPERATURE AND ANIMAL LIFE
OF THE DEEP SEA[1]
III
AN enormous addition has beet made to the list of British Echinodermata by the discovery in our own seas of a number of specses which had been previously known only as Norwegian or Arctic; and these often vecurred in extraordinary abundance. One of the most interesting of these was the large and beautiful feather-star, the Antedon (Comatula) Eschrichti, hitherto known only as inhabiting the shores of Greenland and Iceland, lmt now found over all parts of our cold area. On the other hand, the influence of temperature was marked not only by the absence of many of the charactetistically southern types of this group, but by the dwarfing of others to such an extent that the dwarfed specimens might be regarded as specifically distinct, if it were not for their precise conformity in structure to those of the ordinary type. Thus the Sofaster paffosa was reduced fiom a diameter of six inches to two, and had never more that ten tays, instead of from twelve to fifteen; and Asterocanthion violaceus and Cribella oculata were reduced in like proportion. But, in addition, several echinoderms have been obtained which are altogether new to science, most of them of very considerable interest. The discovery, at the depth of 2,435 fathoms, of a living crinoid of the Apiocrinite type, closely allied to the little rhizocrinas (the discovery of which by the Norwegian naturalists was the starting-point of our own deep-sea explorations), but generically differing from it, cannot but be accounted a phenomenon of the greatest interest alike to the zoologist and the paleontologist. Another remarkable representative of a type supposed to have become extinct, occurred at depths of 440 and 550 fathoms in the warm areas being a large echindean of the diadema kind, the “test” of which is composed of plates separated from one another by membrane, instead of being connected by suture, so as to resemble an armour of flexible chain-mail, instead of the inflexible cuirass with which the
- ↑ A Lecture delivered at the Royal Institution (contmued from p. 540)
