Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 29.djvu/154

144 London "Sanitary World" publishes regularly a "Black-list," including the names of dealers who have been proved to be selling falsified or adulterated goods. It intends to secure for this list the records of all proceedings under the Foods Act, and against the owners of rookeries, throughout England, so that the people of all the villages can learn at once who is cheating them and selling them unwholesome goods.

artificial fire-proof stone or plaster has been invented, the principal constituent of which is the mineral asbestine, a silicate of magnesium. This is mixed with powdered flint and caustic potash, and with sufficient water-glass (silicate of soda) to make it into an adhesive plaster. It is further mixed with sand before use. It does not require lathing, but adheres to a smooth surface, and may be applied upon a wall or ceiling of sheet-iron.

fixing soils in embankments, or where there is wash, reliance is usually placed upon the roots of grass or other plants; and long delays are often incurred, with frequent renewals and repairs of gulleys, before a network of roots can be obtained capable of giving a firm foundation. M. Cambier, of the French railway service, has found in the double poppy a most valuable plant for this purpose. It grows quickly, and helps to support the soil in about two weeks, while, at the end of three or four months, it forms a stronger network of roots than any grass known. It is an annual, but sows itself after the first year.

to the Newcastle (England) "Journal," Mr. Walter McDonald, of Ilderton, near Wooler, while trying to clear a dam which had been clogged by a freshet, fell into a snow-drift, and might have been buried in it but for the extraordinary sagacity of his collie dog. He was struggling to reach the branch of a tree that overhung him, which the dog observing, it sprang at the branch, pulled it down, and held it within its master's reach till he was able to get a hold upon it.

of Freiburg, Saxony, announces the discovery by himself, in the new mineral argyrodite, of a new nonmetallic element, closely related to arsenic and antimony, to which he has given the name of Germanium.

of the chair of Geology and Chemistry in Washington and Lee University, died at Lexington, Virginia, February 2d, in the sixty-fifth year of his age. He had been a professor at Lexington since 1851. He was the author of contributions on "Virginian Geology in American Science," his last paper having been a review of the geological reports of Professor W. B. Rogers.

death of M. Jules Jamin, Perpetual Secretary of the Section of Physical Science in the Paris Academy of Sciences, is announced. He was born in 1813, was elected a member of the Academy in 1858, was an eloquent teacher and debater, and a frequent contributor to the "Revue des Deux Mondes"; he published many papers in the "Transactions" of the Academy, was author of a course in physics for the Polytechnic School, and had patented an electric light.

who was distinguished as a field geologist of the southern coasts of England, died in Edinburgh on the 28th of February, in his eighty-sixth year. He was the son of a country mechanic and inn-keeper, and served in the revenue coast-guards for twenty years, and afterward in the customs, for pay hardly ever much exceeding five hundred dollars a year. He was an industrious collector, and an indefatigable hunter of new species; he became very early acquainted with the marine fauna of his districts; first detected the lower Silurian fossils in the supposed Azoic rocks of Cornwall; furnished the Polytechnic Society in 1843 a valuable paper on land and freshwater shells and marine animals; discovered the fossils in the altered rocks of the Highlands, which enabled Murchison to elucidate the structure of that region; and has been said by a living geologist to have done more in the field of old red sandstone fossils "than all other geologists put together."

Professor of Botany in the University of Liege, died February 28th, in his sixty-third year. He was a son of Professor Charles Morren, of the University of Ghent, who was afterward Professor of Botany in the University of Liége. Being called upon to assist his father in teaching, he prepared, as his especial examination thesis for the doctorate, a dissertation on green and colored leaves, by which he first became known to the botanists of Europe. He succeeded his father as full professor in 1858. He was founder of the Botanical Institute of Liége; editor of the "Belgique Horticole," and author of numerous memoirs and academic dissertations on questions of botany, chemistry, and vegetable physiology.

mineralogist and Professor at the Freiburg University, is dead. He was best known by his book on "Jadite and Nephrite."