saw in nature; but with my prepossessions and habits, both as an entomologist and a housekeeper, I was contentedly interested to see the work go on."

Changes in the Position of Grains of Chlorophyll by Sun-light.-M. Borodin has found that this takes place in the higher cryptogamia and in the phanerogamia both aquatic and terrestrial [see Ann. des Sciences naturelles, sec. 5 to 12]. Lemna, Ceratophyllum and Collitriche are among the aquatic plants in which the phenomenon has been observed, and Stellaria media among terrestrial. Lemna trisulca is one of the best plants for these observations. Under diffuse day-light the grains of chlorophyll are distributed over the cell-walls parallel to the surface of the leaf or frond. Under the direct light of the sun they are rapidly (within 15 minutes or less) transported to the lateral walls. There they are at first uniformly distributed. But upon longer insolation, say for three-quarters of an hour, they became grouped in clusters. In darkness the chlorophyll is likewise upon the lateral walls. Thus absence of light produces essentially the same effect as direct sunshine, but less strikingly. Whether these changes are passive and caused by movements of the colourless protoplasm, as Sachs supposes, or active, is not made out. But the movements, according to Borodin, are in response only to the more refrangible rays.

Decomposition of Carbonic Acid by Leaves.-M. Deherain has published an important paper on this subject and synopsis of the amount of water which evaporates. Among some of his more important conclusions are the following:-(1.) That the transpiration of water continued indefinitely, and quite constantly, in a saturated atmosphere. (2.) This evaporation, copious in light and almost null in darkness, is determined by the light, and not by the heat of the sun. (3.) It is much greater from young leaves than from older ones. (4.) And is mainly caused by the luminous rays (yellow and red). (5.) The difference in this respect is manifest even when the less refrangible and more refrangible rays are brought to an equal luminous intensity. (6.) The evaporation of water is much more copious from the upper than from the lower face of the leaf.

CHEMISTRY.

Action of Gun Cotton on Camphor.-Professor C. A. Seeley recently called the attention of the Lyceum of New York to a property of gun cotton which he considered new, or at least unrecorded. It was well known that gun cotton was soluble to a very considerable extent in alcohol which held gum camphor in solution. A knowledge of this fact had been made use of in the arts, for the manufacture of an artificial ivory, which was reported to be fully equal, if not superior, to the genuine article. In making this substance, the gun cotton is ground up with the gum camphor, by means of water, into a pulp, and then pressed into a solid mass, whilst being heated to a temperature of about 300° F. Taking this fact into consideration, he had thought of ascertaining what would be the effect of exposing gun cotton to the action of the vapour of gum camphor. Therefore a small quantity was thus exposed in a glass tube; the camphor being

heated to a temperature just high enough to volatilise it. He was surprised to find that after a short time the tube became filled with red vapours, and ultimately the gun cotton exploded. Now, as in the manufacture of the artificial ivory mentioned, the mixture of gun cotton and camphor is exposed to a much higher heat than that he had made use of, it was a fact worth taking into consideration, as to whether there might not be danger of explosion resulting. It is true that, ordinarily, there is water present, but towards the end of the process this is all pressed out, and a dry mass is left. Therefore, as a precaution, it is as well to remember this fact thus ascertained.

Chlorine in Meteors.-Mr. J. W. Mallet, in an important paper on meteors in "Silliman's Journal," says he feels satisfied that the chlorine is not of meteoric origin-not an essential constituent of the original massesbut has been derived from the soil in which the iron has lain imbedded. The exudation of watery drops containing metallic chlorides is observable only at points on the outside and on cut surfaces along the lines of fissures communicating with the outside. Although chlorine is mentioned above as found in the general analysis of the planing-machine shavings, he failed altogether to detect it in a specially-selected solid piece of some fifty grams taken from a part destitute of fissures or flaws.

Synthesis of Oil of Rue.-Herren Gorup-Besanez and Grimm have lately succeeded in forming oil of rue synthetically ("Ber. Berl. Chem. Ges.," iii. 518, and "Chemical News "). Starting from the fact first suggested by Hallwachs, and confirmed by Harbordt, that this oil is a mixed ketone of the formula E {19 since it is oxidised with difficulty and yields capric acid, they distilled together equal molecules of pure dry calcium caprateprepared from a Hungarian wine-fusel-oil—and calcium acetate. The mixture melts, swells up, blackens, and evolves at first a fluid smelling like acetone, but afterwards an oil which solidifies in the neck of the retort. By fractioning this distillate, three products were obtained: one boiling below 200°; another boiling between 210° and 245°; and a solid body, caprinon, boiling above 300°. The second fraction was purified by conversion into the double salt of ammonium sulphite, crystallizing from alcohol, and decomposing by sodium carbonate; a colourless, strongly refracting oil rose to the surface, which, when dried, distilled completely between 223° and 224° and had at 17-5° C. a specific gravity of 0.8295. Commercial oil of rue, treated in the same manner, afforded a liquid distilling between 224° and 225.5° and having at 18.7° C. a specific gravity of 0.8281. Analysis of the ammonium double sulphite prepared from both, and of the pure oil both artificial and natural, gave the same result. Hence oil of rue consists essentially of methylcaprinol or nonyl-methyl ketone.

Impurities present in Reduced Iron.—The "Neues Jahrbuch für Pharmacie" has a paper by Herr E. Schering, which is abstracted in the "Chemical News." While this substance (reduced iron) has hitherto not been obtained quite free from a more or less large quantity of sulphuret of iron, the author calls attention to the fact-an important one, indeed-that he has met with samples of this medicament which, in addition to the impurity spoken of, also contain oxides and carburets of iron, and even cyanide of potassium,

due in all likelihood to the reprehensible practice of preparing the reduced iron from the residues of the preparation of cyanide of potassium from the ferrocyanide of potassium. It is therefore advisable for pharmaceutists to test the ferrum hydrogenio reductum they purchase for the presence of the cyanide alluded to.

Influence of Heat on Bromine.-Professor Andrews read a paper before the British Association on "The Action of Heat on Bromine." If a fine tube, he said, is filled one-half with liquid bromine and one-half with the vapour of bromine, and, after being hermetically sealed, is gradually heated till the temperature is above the critical point, the whole of the bromine becomes quite opaque, and the tube has the aspect of being filled with a dark red and opaque resin. A measure of the change of power of transmitting light in this case may be obtained by varying the proportion of liquid and vapour in the tube. Even liquid bromine transmits much less light when heated strongly in an hermetically sealed tube than in its ordinary state.

A Manganese Deposit in a Well.-Dr. Emerson Reynolds submitted to the British Association (Edinburgh) the result of an analysis of a singular deposit from well water. He stated that in the examination of a sample of well water used in mashing paper pulp, in a mill near Dublin, he had found that a black deposit formed in the water consisted almost wholly of an oxide of manganese. This deposit he found arose from the gradual oxidation of manganous carbonate, present in extremely minute proportion in solution in the water.

The Direct Substitution of the Alcohol Radicals for the Hydrogen in Hydric Phosphide. In the "Berichte der Deutschen Chem. Gesellschaft" (4ter Jahrgang, p. 205), there is an able account of the above peculiar process. Absolute alcohol heated with iodide of phosphonium yields hydric phosphide, ethylic iodide, and water. Hofmann has employed this reaction in a beautiful process for obtaining the iodides of triethyl and tetrethyl-phosphonium, which consists in simply heating one molecule of iodide of phosphonium with three molecules of absolute alcohol in a sealed tube for six to eight hours at 180° C. Under these circumstances, the ethylic iodide acts directly upon the hydric phosphide to form the iodides of the substituted phosphoniums. After cooling, the tube is found filled with a beautiful snow-white crystalline mass, which dissolves in water to a perfectly colourless solution. The crystals are a mixture of about equal proportions of the iodides of triethyl and tetrethyl-phosphonium. A solution of sodic hydrate separates triethyl-phosphine as a colourless layer of liquid. The solution then gives, on evaporation, beautiful crystals of the iodide of tetrethyl-phosphonium; the triethyl-phosphine, as separated by means of a funnel, is chemically pure. The iodides of trimethyl and tetramethyl-phosphonium were easily prepared by the same process. In like manner allylic alcohol, phenol, and giycerin gave promise of a rich harvest of new results.

GEOLOGY AND PALEONTOLOGY.

What is the cause of Thermal Springs?-This question is asked in a paper in the "Geological Magazine," by Mr. Henry Woodward, F.G.S. He thinks that water descending to deep levels in the strata meets at some point with

steam at a high temperature, which, being converted into water by contact, raises the temperature of the water, which in turn, as the store of heat is accumulated, rises by rents and fissures to the surface in the form of thermal springs. There seems no doubt that hot springs have a direct connexion with volcanoes. 1. Hot springs are present in all volcanic areas. 2. Where not connected directly with volcanoes, they are found situated, as in the Pyrenees, the Alps, and the Himalayas, upon lines of dislocation and disturbance, where volcanic force, if not visible at the surface, has been in operation far down beneath. 3. Hot springs distant from volcanic disturbances are nevertheless affected by them. Thus the "Source de la Reine," at the baths of Luchon, in the Pyrenees, was raised suddenly during the great earthquake of Lisbon in 1755, from a tepid spring to 122° Fahr., a heat which it has since retained. Although springs, as a rule, carry carbonate of lime and sulphate of lime in solution, the hotter thermal springs alone contain large quantities of silica in solution. For example: the hot spring of St. Michael, in the Azores, having a basin 30 feet in diameter, is surrounded by layers of travertin many feet in thickness, composed of siliceous matter deposited on wood, reeds, ferns, &c. The hot springs of New Zealand are, perhaps, the finest, exceeding even the Great Geyser in Iceland, which also deposits enormous quantities of silica from its waters on cooling, originally held in solution.

Injection of Crinoids by Silica.-A Silurian limestone which was recently examined by Dr. Dawson, was, says Dr. Sterry Hunt, F.R.S., found by him to consist almost wholly of comminuted organic remains, including fragments of trilobites, gasteropods, brachiopods, and joints of small encrinal stems and plates; the whole cemented by calcareous spar in a manner similar to many organic limestones. He observed, however, that the pores of the crinoidal remains were injected by a peculiar mineral, readily distinguishable in thin transparent sections, or on surfaces which had been exposed to the action of an acid, which dissolves the carbonate of lime and places in relief the injecting mineral. The minute structure thus revealed is precisely similar to that of recent crinoids studied by Carpenter, and will soon be described and figured by Dawson. Decalcified specimens exhibit a congeries of curved, branching, and anastomosing cylindrical rods of the replacing mineral, sometimes forming a complex network, which under the microscope resemble the coralloidal forms of aragonite known as flos ferri, and present a frosted crystalline surface. The same mineral, as observed by Dr. Dawson, occasionally occupies larger interstices among the fragments, and was evidently deposited before the calcareous spar which cements the whole mass. When this limestone is dissolved in dilute hydrochloric acid, the residue, washed by decantation, equals from five to six per cent. of the weight of the mass, and is seen under a microscope to consist entirely of the casts composed of the mineral just noticed, mixed with about one-fourth of coarse silicious sand. This matter is pale greyish-green in colour, but when calcined becomes of a bright reddish-brown, without change of form.

The Boulder Drift and Esker Hills of Ireland.-Sir Richard Griffith, F.R.S., described these to the British Association (Edinburgh), and also the position and composition of the erratic blocks of that country-a subject to which he has paid much attention for the last sixty years. By the aid of a map, he described the rocks, and showed that the boulder drift was older than any

other drift. The Esker drift, he said, was formed subsequently. These drifts are a remarkable feature in the landscape in the Irish counties in which they exist. They are in the form of long ridges, which traverse the centre of Ireland from east to west, and on reaching the valley of the Shannon take a north-westerly direction. After showing the peculiar composition of these drifts, he described the immense erratic blocks which are met with in many parts of the country. All of them are angular, and had evidently been transported on ice by a current from the north-west, as the most remarkable of them are the porphyrite granite of West Galway.

Dr. Carpenter's Speculations considered by the Americans.-Dr. Carpenter's idea that we are living in the chalk formation does not find many supporters in America. In a recent paper read before the Lyceum of Natural History of New York, Dr. Newberry, the president, said "that the conclusion drawn from those discoveries, that they overturned geological classification, was simply absurd. These explorations in the depths of the ocean had proved only this: that there had been less change in the fauna of the depths of the ocean than in that of the shores, and that a few forms characteristic of the fauna of the Cretaceous and Tertiary periods continued to exist there while they had disappeared in shallower water; but these were the most insignificant possible fragments of great life-groups, that had almost entirely passed away. The finding of a crinoid or foraminifer of the Chalk living in the ocean depths did not recall the race of the great reptiles, winged, swimming, and walking; the huge ammonites and the other infinitely-varied forms of the Cephalopoda, which characterise that period. So with all the other geological ages. They were chapters in the lifehistory of the globe which were distinct and well-defined, holding each its relative place. Human history may repeat itself, but geological history never can."

The Carboniferous Fossils of West Virginia.-Mr. F. B. Meek, in the "Report Regents of University W. Virginia," describes some new species of fossils from the district of Monongalia Co., viz.: Macrodon obsoletus, of the lower coal-measures, Nucula anodontoides, Yoldia Stevensoni and Y. Carbonaria of the coal-measures, and Phillipsia Stevensoni, from the Chester group of the subcarboniferous. From a survey of the species collected, he concludes that the Chester group (of the Illinois Reports) is represented in Western Virginia by at least six Illinois species, and along with ten or a dozen other species which he could not identify because of the imperfect state of the specimens. The beds also contain Hemipronites crassus, a coalmeasure species, and a Cyrtoceras and Bellerophon, closely like species of the coal-measures. He observes that Monongalia County is the farthest point. eastward at which the Chester group, or indeed any other of the divisions of the subcarboniferous limestones of the West, has yet been recognised. The species from the lower coal-measures are mostly the same that occur in the coal series of Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, &c., though few of them have before been found so far eastward. In some of the States mentioned, nearly all of the species range through the whole of the coal-measures, showing, as Mr. Meek remarks, that species lived on through a great length of time, and consequently that the climatic and other physical conditions of the era must have remained remarkably uniform.