Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 6.djvu/398

384 same discovery later, and publish it, the anagram might show that the writer of it had the prior claim. At present, the usual custom is to send the discovery in a sealed packet to some academy. A correspondent of Nature, who signs himself "West," publishes a scientific discovery anagrammatically, as follows:

A8C3DE12F4GH6I6L3M3N5O6P R4S5T14U6V2WXY2.

Now, who will be the first to find the key to this anagram?

examination of the air along the line of the London Underground Railway has shown that, when trains are frequent, the air is loaded with sulphurous-acid gas; and the authorities are now seeking a remedy for what has long been a serious annoyance to passengers.

waters of the Great Salt Lake appear to be rising from year to year. The mountain-streams are steadily enlarging. The humidity of the atmosphere annually increases as the area of cultivation in the valleys becomes greater, and, as a consequence, the evaporation less. Tens of thousands of acres of farming, meadow, and pasture lands have been submerged along the eastern and western shores of the lake.

, having counted the eggs in a single sturgeon, found that they numbered 921,600. The total weight of the eggs was 45 pounds. In one ounce there were 1,280 eggs.

being the season for Christmas-trees, attention is called to the fact that the use of red and green wax tapers is highly dangerous, owing to the poisonous natura of the coloring-matters employed. Analysis has shown the presence in green tapers of arsenite of copper (Scheele's green) to the extent of 0.60 per cent., and of sulphide of mercury (vermilion) in red tapers to the extent of 1.93 per cent. Yellow and blue tapers, on the contrary, are pronounced harmless.

states that cases of tapeworm are about twice as frequent among males as among females, the difference being explained, in his opinion, by the more cautious and fastidious habits of the female sex, as contrasted with males, in relation to the ingestion of underdone meat

disappearance of nitrogenous or organic matter from running water where exposed to the air is well known. Mr. A. Winter Blyth has lately shown that water running through closed iron pipes undergoes a similar process of purification, a remarkable difference being observed between the same water before and after it passes through the mains.

is the name given to a rock underlying the gold-bearing alluvium of California and Nevada. Mr. E. Goldsmith, in a communication to the Philadelphia Academy of Sciences, says that this "gravel" is composed of two ingredients, widely differing in age, viz., of pebbles, and a lava by which they are cemented together. Some of these pebbles appear to be derived from slate rock and others from hornblend rock. The lava is extremely brittle. In hardness it is equal to apatite. A few grains of bright-yellow gold are found in it, but how they came there it is not easy to say. Whether the gold came from the pebbles, or was ejected from the volcano, it is impossible to decide.

calls attention to the dangers attending the use of Paris green for destroying noxious insects. It may so poison the soil as to prevent the growth of all vegetation. The National Academy of Sciences has adopted the following resolution on the subject: "That a committee be appointed to investigate and report upon the subject of the use of poisons applied to vegetables or otherwise for the destruction of deleterious insects and other animals, and also the incautious use of poisons in the ornamentation of articles of food, and for decorative purposes generally, such, for instance, as the coloring of paper."

F. R. S., one of the most eminent physicians of England, died November 16th, aged fifty-six years. His researches on respiration and urea earned for him a fellowship in the Royal Society; his later researches were devoted to the investigation of the subject of dietetics. Dr. Smith experimented upon himself mostly, and thus subjected himself to many severe physical restraints in the interest of science. His published works are numerous, one of the latest being a volume on foods, in the "International Scientific Series."

a voluminous writer on scientific subjects, and Fellow of the Royal Society, died at Margate, England, October 30th, aged sixty years. He began the study of medicine at University College, at the age of twenty, graduated at twenty-three; afterward studied botany under Lindley, and subsequently became lecturer on materia medica and botany at the St. George's School of Medicine. In 1844 he was elected secretary of the Ray Society; in 1845, was made Fellow of the Royal Society; and thereafter, to the end of his life, held successively positions of importance and trust in various scientific bodies, and as an officer of the state. His writings were chiefly on medical subjects and natural history, botany being his favorite branch of study.