Page:Science vol. 5.djvu/307

 NOTES AND NEWS.

It U announced th»t the nextmeetingar the Amer- ican aaaoclatlon for Ihe HdvancemeDt of science will be held on Aug. 26 and following days, at Ann Arbor, Mich. The vole of the association at the Philadeiphla meeting wu to hold the 16S5 tneeting nt Bar Harbor, Houut Desert Island, Me., pro?!deU suitable accom- modatioDS could be secured; but, failing that, the meeting would bo held at Ann Arbor. The decision was left to the permanent secretary. The correspond- ence of thl9 officer has developed the fact that It wonid be quite impossible to bold the meeting at Bar Hartior in August, as the hotels would be overcrowd' ed. It would only be poasibla in July or in the latter part of .September. The decision to meet at Ann Arbor was also re-enforcad by the invitations which have been received from the mayor of that city, and the president of the University of Michigan, cordially urging the association to decide to vieit that place; and, as the mcetiug will fall in vacation, there will be ample accommodations, as fifteen hundred Stu- dents and four hundi-ed members of professors' fami- lies are cared for in term-time. The university offers to open its hails for the sectional meetings. There is no doubt that the association will thoroughly approve the decision of the permanent secretary.

— Mr. J. A. Allen, who for many years has had charge of mammals and birds at the .Museum of comparative zoology at Cambridge, has accepted the curatorship of mammalogy and ornithology in the American museum of natural history in New York, where he will enter upon bis new duties about May 1.

— The friends of rational work in physiology have achieved well-merited success in the nniversity of Oxford. Early in March, in an overflowing ' convo- caUon,' says Nature, the battle of vivisection was fooght out a third time. The victory i>f sound sense over false sentiment has again been won ; and on Ibfs occasion the vote is unuiistakablc. lu spite of the most vigorous exertions of the opponents of physiology, the decree to eudow the physiological laboratory— as the other scienliflc departments in the university are endowed — has been carried by the large majority of one hundred and sixty-eight. The dean of Chrlstchurch opened the debate In a moderate speech recommending the grant. He pointed out that the vote was for teaching-purposes, ntid in no way concerned vivisection; for Professor Burd on San- derson had given the most complete assurances that he would not use painful experiments on living ani- mals for the purposes of teaching. Canon Liddon opposed the decree, on the ground that the council should have Introduced further safeguards against Ibe indi scrim In ate use of vivisection. He admitted that vivisection was justlBed in certain cases, and spohe <■( it an a painful necessity. The bishop of Ox- rord denied the moral riglit of man to Inflict pain in order to advance knowledge, and declared vivisection to be degraiiing to the sensibility and humanity of the operator. The vote was supported by Professor

��Dicey and Sir W. Anson, and unintentionally dam- aged by Dr. Aciand. The last speakers were much interrupted by a clamor which prevented their re- marks being heard. The announcement of the result — piaceU, 413; non-placets, 244 — was received with great enthusiasm, both In the arena and in the un- dergraduates' gallery. It is to be hoped that this decisive vote will put an end to the warfare wagfd against the teaching of physiology in Oxford.

— In an article in the March number of the North-American review, on 'the moral aspects of vivisection,' treated solely from an ethical point of view, Prof. Noah K. Davis concludes that "whoever hinders the physiologist in his duties by exciting public odium, commits a trespass on him, and on society at large, in whose interest he is laboring, and so does a multiplied wrong."

— The journal of the English Society of arts, in speaking of the testing of house-drains by smoke in order to ascertain whether the joints are tight, describes the 'Innis' smoke-rocket.' which can be used in place of the iron vessel for fire, and the pump or fan for forcing the smoke into the drain, and which is found to be much more handy and simple. The rocket is made of a composition that will generate an abundance of smoke, packed in its case hard enough to burn ten minutes, thus giving time for the Inspector to light it, introduce it into the drain, insert a plug behind it, walk through the house to inspect the joints, and finally reach the roof, where the smoke is issuing from the soil-pipe. A wet cloth thrown over the top of this pipe may be used to cause a slight pressure in the pipes below, and thus render the test more severe. Such a test would appear to be more satisfactory than the introduction of peppermint-oil, and to imitate the action of sewer-gas in attempting to pass the usual traps.

— The Academy announces the initial number of a journal entitled Parallax, and aupposably intended to be published monthly. It is edited by Mr. John Hampden, the valiant champion of the theory that the earth is a circular plane. The Academy Is dis- posed to welcome the new periodical, as the profes- sedly comic papers have been painfully dull of late. Sir. Uompden retains all his well-known Ingenuity of vituperative expression. To call Sir Isaac Newton 'a fanatical pantheist' is a happy thought which would certainly not have occurred to everybody.

— We learn from Mature that the trade in children within the province of Yakutsk is the subject of an interesting note in a recent number of the laieatfya. The Irkutsk geographical society had received a note from one of its members, who thus depicted the lot of girls within the province: In the last century the poorest Yakute, who had no means of supporting a large family, took his new-born child In a covering of birch-bark, and hung it on a tree in the forest to die from hunger. But tlie richer Russian merchants liegan to buy children from tbeir poorer Yakute clients, and so several Kusgiaus purchased whole families of servants. This custom indncol the Yakute communities to take care of the poorest chll-

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