Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 18.djvu/154

144 phenomenon of the perforation of rocks by sand carried on the wind has been observed in the Valley of the Rhone in France. A very violent wind often prevails in the neighborhood of Uzès, and drives large quantities of sand against a band of quartzose pebbles contained in a tertiary soil. The pebbles contain cavities which might be believed to have been made by human hands, but which are really produced by the often renewed friction of the sandy particles against their surface.

distinguished as a chemist and geologist, and one of the discoverers of the anæsthetic properties and uses of ether, died at Somerville, Massachusetts, on the 29th of August, 1880, aged seventy-live years.

to the recent census of New Zealand, the Maories or primitive inhabitants are rapidly decreasing, their numbers, which in 1861 were 55,334, having fallen in seventeen years to 43,595, or about twenty per cent. The causes given for this national decay are love of drink, bad food and clothing, neglect of cleanliness, and unwholesome dwellings. The natives of Hawaii are disappearing still more rapidly. In 1866 they numbered 57,125, and had fallen off in the next twelve years to 44,088.

report of the experts employed to ascertain the causes of the Tay Bridge disaster is in refreshing contrast to the excusatory treatment of official recklessness and incompetency in this country. The bridge, according to this report, was badly designed, badly constructed, and badly maintained, and it tumbled down on account of defects of structure that became apparent and were patched up some time before the casualty happened. The initial blunders are laid at the door of Sir Thomas Bouch, the designer and constructor of the bridge, and General Hutchinson, the Board of Trade Inspector, has to bear the blame of allowing the bridge to be used when he knew it was in this dangerous condition.

has called attention to the remarkable powers of resistance against chemical agents possessed by insects. Having put a common fly into the lye of potash, he found it in the best condition on the next day. He also found that weevils, imprisoned for a considerable time in a flask containing caustic stone and coriander-seed, prospered, multiplied, and lived as long as the seed lasted.

Professor of Comparative Philology in the University of Pennsylvania, died at his home in Chickies, Pennsylvania, September 10, 1880, at the age of sixty-eight.

who has explored many of the barrows and burial-mounds of India, has found in them new evidences of the resemblance of the mounds and their contents to similar works in Europe. The shape of the tumuli is the same in the East and the West, and they are always placed on the slope of a hill facing the south.

of Merges, Switzerland, has just published some interesting observations he has made upon the flickering of gaslights. At a distance of six miles these lights appear to the eye as star-like shining points; and from a large number of observations Professor Forel has arrived at the conclusion that their flickering is strongest when the air is still, and becomes weaker as the force of the wind increases. This appearance should not, of course, be confounded with the flickering which is produced by the wind. The study of the atmospheric conditions under which the flickering takes place might be made the starting point for investigating the twinkling of the stars.

has found a bivalve crustacean allied to Cythera, a salt-water genus, living between the leaves of the bromeliads, or plants of the pineapple tribe, which grow upon the trees in Brazil. It does not resemble any living entomostraeanentomostracan [sic], but has its nearest known ally in a fossil species of the Silurian strata of Bohemia. Müller has named it Elpidium bromellarium. He found it in the tree-frequenting bromeliads everywhere from the seaside to nearly one hundred miles in the interior. As it can not wander from tree to tree, or even from one plant of bromelia to another, its distribution must be effected by beetles or some other bromelia-infecting forms.

putting chloride of aluminum, the vapor of water, and metallic magnesium in a heated porcelain tube, Stanislas Meunier has produced a multitude of microscopic octahedral crystals, of extreme hardness and wholly proof against the action of fuming nitric acid, which he says have the same composition as natural spinelle. He has also produced, by the reaction of water and chloride of aluminum, hexagonal laminæ of corundum crystallized as in nature.

a paper on Japanese Pulmonifera, read at the Boston meeting of the American Association, Professor Morse called attention to the occurrence of a number of species of land-snails in Yezo, identical with forms occurring in New England. He also alluded to the occurrence of two species of slugs in Japan which are common in New England. While he had met with most of fresh-water genera of Pulmonifera in Japan, he had never yet found aan [sic] example of Physa.