864 



POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



exhibit as much variety as we are accustomed 

 to find on land. Detailed charts will be 

 made to show the variations that take place 

 from point to point. Such investigations of 

 the kind as have been made heretofore 

 have had regard chiefly to the fishes, while 

 comparatively little attention has been paid 

 to the other features. 



NOTES. 



A CORRECTION. 



To the Editor. 



Dear Sir : I beg leave to call your atten- 

 tion to a mistake in my article on The Mala- 

 rial Parasite, which I regret to say must 

 have been in the original manuscript and 

 which escaped me when reading the proof. 

 On page 685, thirteenth line from the top, 

 the word " quartan " should have been " ter- 

 tian." It is evident that when a daily par- 

 oxysm occurs this is due to the alternate de- 

 velopment of two groups of tertian parasites, 

 in which the cycle of development is forty- 

 eight hours, and net to two groups of quar- 

 tan parasites, the cycle of development of 

 which would be seventy-two hours. 

 Very truly yours, 



George M. Sternberg. 



The summer lectures in botany of the 

 Torrey Botanical Club and the College of 

 Pharmacy of the City of New York will be 

 given at the college, 115 West 65th Street, 

 in two weekly courses : the first, on the Gen- 

 eral Morphology of Plants, Fridays, at 4 p. m., 

 by W. Arthur Bastedo, beginning March 

 26th and closing June 11th ; and the sec- 

 ond course, on the Summary of Cryptogamic 

 Botany, with practical work on the micro- 

 scope, Thursday evenings, by Dr. Smith Elv 

 Jelliffe, March 25th to June 10th. The 

 prices of tickets are $5 to the first course 

 and $10 to the second course. The eight 

 Saturday excursions (stormy Saturdays ex- 

 cepted) will begin April 24th. Tickets for 

 either course may be obtained now at the 

 college. 



The American trout "rainbow trout" 

 as the French call it is found by M. Hugues 

 Oltramare to be of very much more rapid 

 growth than either the European lake or 

 river species, and thei-efore presumably a 

 more profitable kind to raise. The fry of the 

 species of the same age are very readily dis- 

 tinguished by the superior size of the Amer- 

 icans. The latter are also more active, more 

 constantly in motion, and eat more. 



The results of experiments made some 

 time ago by Dr. Losener on the effect of the 

 conditions of burial on the microbes and 

 germs of disease are reassuring. Infected 

 carcasses were buried under conditions like 

 those of ordinary burials. The duration of 



the vitality of the pathogenic organisms was 

 various, but all were dead within a year ex- 

 cept the anthrax bacilli, which retained their 

 full complement of virulence during the whole 

 period. None of the organisms either, ex- 

 cept those of anthrax, found their way to the 

 adjacent soil and water ; but so admirable a 

 barrier is provided by the soil that the earth 

 close beneath the bottom of the hole con- 

 taining the infected carcass was in every case 

 found quite devoid of pathogenic germs. 

 Experiments made in Massachusetts with 

 sewage have shown that filtration through 

 soil is effective to purify from bacteria. 



Three deposits of volcanic ash in Ne- 

 braska are described by Prof. Rollin D. Salis- 

 bury in Science: at Ingham, Edison, and 

 Orleans. At all these places several more 

 or less associated exposures of the ash ap- 

 pear ; and in all the cases it is found in the 

 side or near the head of a canonhke ravine. 

 It varies in color from white to yellow cream 

 or light gray, and in grain from the grade 

 of coarse sand to that of white flour. In 

 some places the bed is more than twenty 

 feet thick. Such ash has been found in 

 other places in Nebraska, and it has already 

 become an important article of commerce, 

 under the name of pumice. 



Prof. Max Wolf has continued with suc- 

 cess the method, which he began in 1861, of 

 discovering new minor planets by the small 

 shift of their images, due to orbital motion, 

 on a photographic plate exposed behind a 

 large portrait lens. Since 1890, Prof. Wolf 

 has discovered fifty-six new planets, of which 

 thirteen were found in 1896. The whole 

 number of small planets which have been 

 calculated is now four hundred and twenty- 

 two. 



A new breed of fowl has been system- 

 atically created in France by a M. Gourgaud 

 dwarfs of the breed called there Gatinais, 

 or giltinais bantams. Associating with a 

 gatinais hen an ordinary white double- 

 crested bantam cock with blue toes, M. 

 Gourgaud obtained a nest of half-dwarf 

 chickens having single crests and double 

 crests, and some blue and others rosy toes. 

 He then went to work to eliminate the double 

 crests and blue toes, directing the associa- 

 tion of pairs to that ideal, and approaching 

 it more nearly with each successive genera- 

 tion. In 1895 he had obtained a fixed 

 dwarf breed, with rosy toes and single 

 crests. 



The primitive relations between Europe 

 and the East Mediterranean countries were a 

 prominent subject of discussion in the An- 

 thropological Section of the British Associa- 

 tion. The sectional presidential address of 

 Mr. Arthur J. Evans related to it, and pa- 

 pers bearing upon it were read by Dr. Mon- 

 telius. Prof. Petrie, Mr. J. L. Mjres, and 

 others. 



