Page:Science vol. 5.djvu/567

 June 26, 1885.]

��SCIENCE.

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��— The Parker memorial science class of some seventy members has just closed its course of weekly lectures or lessons. These were of a very varied char- acter, being given by some twenty-five persons on successive Sundays, on a great variety of topics. The enterprise of the promoters in securing in many cases excellent speakers is to be commended; but one fails to see any harmony in the general plan, and can therefore only question its utility, beyond satisfy- ing a dyspeptic craving for miscellaneous information.

— An international pharmaceutical congress is to be held in Brussels from Aug. 31 to Sept. 6. The principal subjects of discussion are to be : 1. An international pharmacopeia; 2. Pbarniacoutical edu- cation; '^. Adulteration of food; 4. Drinking-water and its properties and circumstances. The language used will be French, and the king of the Belgians will be preshleiit of the congress.

— On the 4th of July, 1883, during the voyage from Lisbon to Plymouth, a bottle containing a paper was thrown overboard from the Gerniitn gunboat Cyclop in latitude 39° 41.8' north, and longitude 9° 41' west. This was afterwards picked up on the 1st of March, 1885, on the east side of Grand Turk I>land, West Indies. This bottle had been afloat one year and eight months, and had probably travelled back and forth in the Xorlh African and north equatorial cur- rents. Through (he German embassy in Portugal the German seewarie has received a bottle-post paf>er which was put overboard on the 4lh of December, 18j*4, by the German bark Nubia during a voyage from Rotterdam to Zanzibar, in latitude 16° 13' north, hm- gitude 21° 53' west. This was afterwards picked up near Sal Island, Cape de Verdes, in about latitude 10° 52' north, and longitude 22° 55' west. The date of the finding of the bottle was not given. The paper was handed to the German consul at Sal island by the harbor authorities of that place on the 1st of March, 1S85. It is likely that tliis bottle travelled about 70 sea-miles N.VV. by VV. ^ W. in 2^ months. It is also probable that it lay ashore for some time before it wa«» found, or that considerable time elapsed before the paper was delivered to the German consul. Through the German consulate in Rochefort, France, the same institution has received a bottle-post paper which was put overboard from the German schooner Milly, July z5, 1884, during the voyage from Ham- burg to the Marshall Islands, in latitude 48° 18' north, longitude 0° 48' west. This was afterwards picked up on the coast on the 14th of February, 1885, in latitude 40° 27' north, longitude 2° 42' west. It is probable that this buttle travelled 202 sea-miles S.E. by E. in 204 days. The seewarte has also received a bottle-post paper from Corpus Christi, Tex., which had been put overboard from the Ger- man steamer Kronprinz Friedrich Wilhelm, Dec. 26, 1882, in latitude 1° 37' north, longitude 30° 4.3' west. This was afterwards picked up on the 1st of June, 1884, near Padre Island, co.ist of Texas, in about 27° north latitude, 97° 15' west longitude. This bottle had probably travelled 4,100 sea-miles W.N. W^ W. in 623 days.

��— Dr. Bernard Schwartz has written a painstaking work on the history of mountain investigation from ancient times to the days of De Saussure (*Die er- schliessung der gebirge,' Leipzig, 1885), based on his lectures at the Freiberg mining school. It carries the reader through the early centuries of travel in rugged countries, when mountains were merely obsta- cles, not objects, in the road ; through the middle centuries, when attention to nature was awakening, but when observation was still so uncritical that Ten- eriffe, for example, was reported nine miles, and even fifteen miles high; and into the modern era, which, so far as accurate measures of altitude are concerned, began in the famous meridian-arc expedition of Bou- guer and La Condamine to Peru in 1735. Up to this time Mont Blanc was the ' monarch of mountains,' just as the Alps were the mountains, par excellence^ of the world; but then Chimborazo took the lead, and held it till 1818, when the English explorations brought the peaks of the Himalaya up to the first rank. The progress and results of mountain explora- tion are thus minutely chronicled in about five hun- dred pages, themselves almost pathless, as the table of contents is very brief, and index, page-headings, and paragraph-headings ^re quite wanting.

— Professor Nowacki of the Polytechnic institute in Zurich has prepared an introduction to the study of soils ('Kurze anleitung zur einfachen bodcnunter- suchung,' Zurich, 1885), from which we may measure the attention given to scientific agriculture in Switz- erland. It gives a general statement of the struc- ture of soils, and of the method of taking samples^ and then proceeds to treat the analysis and classifica- tion of soils more at length, and to discuss the deter- mination and supply of needful elements. It is all treated as simply as possible, so as not to be too inaccessible to those who have most need of its teach- ings. A supplement, however, gives *the first at- tempt at a scientific terminology of soils,* which we fear will not soon enter into common use. Seven genera, of six species each, from Terra rudecta limosa aut margillosa to Terra humosa agrestis et hortensis, is at least somewhat cumbersome.

— An extended list of altitudes for nearly three thousand places in the Carnic and Julian Alps has lately been compiled by G. Marinelli, professor of geography in the University of Padua, and published as a supplement to the Cosmoa of Guido Cora of Turin. It is preceded by a list of a hundred and nineteen authorities, forming in itself a guide to the geographic literature of the region, and is introduced by a well-analyzed table of contents, from which any desired point can easily be found.

— Dr. G. M. Dawson has recently discovered a re- markable Jurasso-cretaceous flora in the Rocky Moun- tains, on the branches of the Old Man River, Martin Creek, Coal Creek, and one other locality far to the north-west on the Suskwa River. The containing rocks are sandstones, shales, and conglomerates, with seams of coal, in some places anthracite. It was pro- posed by Sir William Dawson, in his paper before the. recent meeting of the R<y^'^^^«^s^v:^^:^.^^s5aa^c»w^^Fi'i-'^^

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