So far, we have seen that not even the food of plants and animals can separate the one kingdom of life from the other.  The mushroom bars the way and the green plant’s curious behavior by night and by day respectively, in the matter of its gas food, once more assimilates animal life and plant life in a remarkable manner.  Still more interesting is the fact, already noticed, that even among the green tribes there are to be found many and various lapses from the stated rules of their feeding.  Thus what are we to say of the parasitic mistletoe, which, while it has grown leaves of its own, and can, therefore, obtain so much carbon food from the air on its own account, nevertheless drinks up the sap of the oak or apple which forms its host, and thus illustrates the spectacle of a green plant feeding like an animal, on living matter?  Or, what may we think of such plants as the sundew, the Venus’ fly trap, the pitcher plants, the side saddle plants, the butterworts and bladderworts, and others of their kind, which not only capture insects, often by ingenious and complex lures, but also digest the animal food thus captured?  A sundew thus spreads out its lure in the shape of its leaf studded with sensitive tentacles, each capped by a glistening drop of gummy secretion.  Entangled in this secretion, the fly is further fixed to the leaf by the tentacles which bend over it and inclose it in their fold.  Then is poured out upon the insect’s body a digestive acid fluid, and the substance of the dissolved and digested animal is duly absorbed by the plant.  So also the Venus’ fly trap captures insects by means of its leaf, which closes upon the prey when certain sensitive hairs have given the signal that the animal has been trapped.  Within the leaf the insect is duly digested as before, and its substance applied to the nutrition of the plant.  Such plants, moreover, cannot flourish perfectly unless duly supplied with their animal food.  Such illustrations of exceptions to the rule of green plant feeding simply have the effect of abolishing the distinctions which the diet question might be supposed to raise between animals and plants.  We may return to the sundews and other insect catchers; meanwhile, I have said enough to show that to the question, “Can we separate animals from plants?” a very decided negative reply must be given.  Life everywhere exhibits too many points of contact to admit of any boundary line being drawn between the two great groups which make up the sum total of organic existence.—­Illustrated London News.

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THE RECOVERY OF SILVER AND GOLD FROM PLATING AND GILDING SOLUTIONS.

In view of the rapid development and extension of the methods of electro-plating with silver and gold, and of the large amount of spent liquors containing silver or gold thus produced, it has long been desirable to find methods by which these metals can be recovered from the spent liquors.  The processes hitherto adopted generally necessitate the tedious and unpleasant evaporation of the cyanide liquors, or else involve a series of chemical operations which are somewhat difficult to carry out, so that actually the used-up baths are sold to some firm which undertakes this recovery as a particular branch of its business.