=The New Planet D Q.=--The number of minor planets discovered during the last few years, and their lack of practical importance in astronomy, has tended to distract astronomers' attention from the search for them, as unprofitable, and the announcement of a new one attracts little attention, as a rule. The planet D Q, however, discovered by Herr Witt, of the Urania Observatory, of Berlin, on August 13th last, has aroused from the first special attention through its remarkable behavior. The orbit is a very unusual one. Mars has always been considered our nearest neighbor, although it was known that some of the minor planets were slightly nearer to the sun when at perihelion than Mars is when at aphelion. But the mean distances of the latter were in all cases much greater than that of Mars; while that found for the new planet is only 1.46 as compared with 1.52 for Mars, and, as the eccentricity amounts to 0.23, the perihelion distance is only 1.13, and the least distance from the earth's orbit only 0.15 as compared with 0.27 for Venus in transit, and 0.38 for Mars in perihelion. The planet will thus be far closer to us than any other member of the solar system, and will afford a most excellent means of determining the sun's parallax. Its diameter is thought to be about seventeen miles. =Extra-Organic Factors of Evolution.=--Observing that our civilization has made advances or "strides" in recent years out of all proportion to any improvements that have taken place in our organic faculties, Arthur Allin has insisted, in Science, on the importance of extra-organic factors in human development. Our sense and motor organs, he says, are essentially instruments and tools, and so is the brain; and most if not all of the three hundred or more mechanical movements known in the arts are found exemplified in the human body. Our sense organs are thus indefinitely multiplied and extended by such extra-organic sense organs as the microscope, telescope, resonator, telephone, telegraph, thermometer, etc. Our motor organs are multiplied by such agencies as steam and electrical machines, etc., in the same manner. "The printing press is an extra-organic memory far more lasting and durable than the plastic but fickle brain. Fire provides man with a second digestive apparatus by means of which hard and stringy roots and other materials for food are rendered digestible and poisonous roots and herbs innocuous. Tools, traps, weapons, etc., are but extensions of bodily contrivances. Clothing, unlike the fur or layer of blubber of the lower animals, becomes a part of the organism at will. One finds himself more or less independent of seasons, climates, and geographical restrictions." By organic heredity or the transmission of the congenital characteristics of the parents to the children, working alone, all progress depends upon the transmission of variations occurring within the organism. "Moreover, these