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 ; that officers affected in their vision be given shore employment; and that certain specified improvements be introduced into the method of testing for defects of vision.

way changes are produced in the configuration of the country in a region of lakes by the action of the water is illustrated in a recent lecture by R. H. Mill. Taking certain English and Scotch lakes, Loch Tay has been gradually silted up during the last thirty years; a stony peninsula is building up at the foot of Ullswater; the rush of the waves is slowly eating away the eastern shore of Windermere; the affluent rivers are filling Haweswater with stones and rubbish, and a delta has been formed which nearly cuts the lake in two—a process which has been completed in certain lakes that are specified. The famous floating island of Derwentwater is probably a piece of the moat of waterweed that covers the floor of some parts of the lake, raised to the surface by the gas given off by its own decomposition.

says in his Early Spring in Massachusetts, speaking of a class of books which have not yet gone out of fashion: "A good book is not made in the cheap and offhand manner of many of our scientific reports, ushered in by the message of the President communicating it to Congress, and the order of Congress that many thousand copies be printed with the letters of instruction from the Secretary of the Interior (or rather exterior), the bulk of the book being a journal of a picnic or sporting expedition by a brevet lieutenant-colonel, illustrated by photographs of the traveler's footsteps across the plains, and an admirable engraving of his native village as it appeared on his leaving it, and followed by an appendix on the paleontology of the route by a distinguished savant who was not there; the last illustrated by very finely executed engravings of some old broken shells picked up on the road."

a limited study of dietaries, mostly in New England, acknowledged to be imperfect, the results, as summarized by Prof. W. 0. Atwater, decidedly confirm the general impression of hygienists that our diet is one-sided and that we eat too much. The food which we actually eat, leaving out of account that which we throw away, has relatively too little protein and too much fat, starch, and sugar. This is due partly to our large consumption of sugar and partly to our use of fat meats. The rejection of so much of the fat of meat at the market and on our plates at the table is not mere willfulness. It is in obedience to Nature's protest against a one-sided and excessive diet. How much harm is done to health by our one-sided and excessive diet no one can say. Physicians tell us that it is very great.

demonstration was given in April to a meeting of medical men in London by Mr. S. Schöntheil, of the most modern and scientific method of training the deaf and dumb so as to enable them to use articulate speech and give them a full command of language. Several pupils were introduced who were subjected, with highly satisfactory results, to exercises in pronunciation, lip-reading, dictation, recitation, reading, and answering miscellaneous questions.

is now generally recognized in Great Britain, ex-President Teall, of the Geological Section of the British Association, says, that there is no important difference in structure or composition between the rhyolites, andesites, and basalts of the Palæozoic and of the Tertiary periods. Identity of structure and composition in this case implies identity in the physical conditions under which the rocks were produced. Hence we may sum up the case of the bearing of volcanic rocks on the theory that, so long as observations are confined to a limited area, doubts may arise as to the truth of the uniformitarian view, but these doubts gradually fall away as the area of observations is extended. There are still some outstanding difficulties, but, as many similar ones have been overcome in the past, it is improbable that those that remain will prove formidable.



death of Prof. Valentine Ball, of Dublin, is a serious loss to the scientific circles of that town. He contributed much to the literature on precious stones, and published several books of travels. Although of fine physique, he died at the age of only fifty-one.

death is announced of Prof. Baillon, Director of the Botanical Laboratory of the faculty of medicine at the Sorbonne. He was one of the most distinguished of the French botanists and a very prolific writer. He was born at Calais, November 30, 1827.

died on June 21, 1895. He was Professor of Astronomy at Berlin University and editor of the Astronomischen Jahrbuch. He was born in 1834. His most important labors lie in the region of astronomical computation.

chief observer in the Astrophysical Observatory at Potsdam, died on the 7th of July of heart disease. He was born in Berlin, October 23, 1822. He took his degree from the Berlin University in 1843. He did a large amount of valuable astronomical work, being especially interested in sun spots, his work on these making his name known to the scientific world.