Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 41.djvu/278

266 Physical Constitution of the Heavenly Bodies, translated by Jane and Caroline Lassell.

Dr. Huggins was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1865, and has received two of its medals; he was awarded, with Dr. Miller, the gold medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1867, for their conjoint researches, and he was given a second medal of the same society in 1885. He has received doctor's degrees from the Universities of Cambridge, Oxford, Edinburgh, and Trinity College, Dublin; and he holds the honors and memberships of other British societies, and of numerous societies in foreign lands. As Rede lecturer at the University of Edinburgh, in 1869, he gave an account of his researches in astronomy by means of the spectroscope; and as President of the British Association in 1891 he delivered an inaugural address, the more definite purpose of which, as defined by the author, was "not to attempt a survey of the progress of spectroscopic astronomy from its birth at Heidelberg in 1859, but to point out what we do know at present, as distinguished from what we do not know, of a few only of its more important problems." The success of this effort, the Observatory says, was recognized equally by the general public and by those more familiar with astronomy. "Those who were already familiar with Dr. Huggins and his work have learned afresh almost to their surprise how closely he has been identified with the 'very remarkable discoveries in our knowledge of the heavens which have taken place during this period of thirty years,’ Not that the president materially assists in pointing this moral; rather is it pointed by the facts in spite of him. He is almost too eager to assign credit to others when he might justly have mentioned his own work."

manufacture of flints is still carried on at the hamlet of Porcharioux, department of Loir-et-Cher, France, where the stone is abundant and of fine quality. The stones are quarried and roughly broken by the men, and are taken by the women into the house to be finished. A single worker can dress five or six thousand stones in a week. The use to which the flints are applied is not known to M. Belot, who has described the manufacture; but the business seems to be profitable. The work is attended with danger of lung disorders caused by the dust, a liability which the workers accept philosophically. The business is in the hands of a single family.

investigation by Mr. Thomas Whitelegge, of Sydney, may cast some light as to the causes which influence marine food supplies. He found that a sudden discoloration of the water in Port Jackson Harbor was caused by the presence of a minute organism which he identified as a species of the genus Glenodinium; and, so far as he was able to judge, fully half of the shore fauna was destroyed by the invaders. The bivalves were almost exterminated wherever the organism was abundant during the whole of the visitation.