NOTES. 



719 



congress was divided for convenience into 

 two sections, one dealing with educational 

 and the other with mathematical geography. 

 Most of the prominent geographers of the 

 world were present, and much valuable work 

 was done. The visitors were entertained in 

 royal style, and the social features were not 

 the least attractive part of the meeting. 



The yellow coloration of milk on expos- 

 ure to heat is due, according to M. Cazeneuve 

 and M. Haddon, to the oxidation of the lac- 

 tose in presence of the alkaline salts of the 

 milk. Lactose during this oxidation yields 

 acids, especially formic acid, easily detected, 

 the presence of which suffices to explain the 

 coagulation of the milk as it ensues with any 

 acid. 



The French Association for the Advance- 

 ment of Science will meet at Bordeaux, 

 from August 4th to August 9th, under the 

 presidency of M. E. Trelat. 



Three cases of tuberculosis following 

 tattooing are reported in the British Medical 

 Journal. Three boys were tattooed by the 

 same woman, who used her saliva as a ve- 

 hicle for the coloring matter. The woman 

 died soon afterward with pulmonary tuber- 

 culosis, and all the boys presented unmis- 

 takable signs of tuberculosis at the site of 

 the operation. 



Bacteriology has taken up the telephone 

 as a disseminator of disease, and may make 

 necessary the adoption of some device by 

 which the danger of infection from the 

 mouthpiece, which many people allow to 

 touch the lips, can be avoided. The med- 

 ical journals of Paris are agitating the 

 matter. 



The ultra-conservatism which is so cer" 

 tainly bred by life about an old university 

 was sadly illustrated recently at Oxford by 

 the rejection of a proposal to include an- 

 thropology among the subjects of the final 

 school of natural science not as an extra 

 but as an equivalent subject. There axe un- 

 fortunately still in high positions classical 

 teachers who believe that science is an un- 

 essential part of a nineteenth-century educa- 

 tion. 



Rather a novel contrivance for utilizing 

 air currents in irrigation is described in the 

 Louisiana Planter. " A crude invention, which 

 is called the ' Jumbo ' wind engine, appeared 

 in western Kansas about ten years ago, and 

 is now coming into extensive use. It re- 

 sembles the paddle wheel of a stern wheel 

 boat, with a shaft twelve or fourteen feet 

 long, with a diameter of twelve or sixteen 

 feet, with six or eight radial arms. The 

 lower half of this horizontal wheel is shield- 

 ed from the wind, so that the air acts only 

 upon the upper vanes. A crank upon one end 

 of the shaft connects with a pump. Its 

 power can be indefinitely increased by in- 



creasing its length. It is said that a Jumbo 

 giving one hundred horse power in a fifteen- 

 mile wind can be put up at a cost of five hun- 

 dred dollars. The wind acts on this sort of 

 paddle wheel from all points of the compass 

 except two." 



The recorded heights of what are called 

 maximum waves on the ocean vary from 

 forty feet from crest to hollow to ninety 

 feet. The great storm waves travel very far 

 and faster than the storms, so that preced- 

 ing them they give warning of them. Some- 

 times they appear as a record of a far-aw r ay 

 storm that is spent. When they have trav- 

 eled beyond the limits of the wind that 

 raised them tbey become long undulations, 

 hardly noticed in deep water, but very evi- 

 dent in shallow places. These probably 

 form the " i - ollers " that appear periodically 

 in places situated in latitudes where gales do 

 not occur. Other rollers are believed by 

 Captain W. J. L. Wharton to be due to earth- 

 quakes or volcanic eruptions occurring in 

 the bed of the sea. Of these are the sudden 

 great waves which often cause so much de- 

 struction on the South American coasts. 



A marked decrease in the killed and in- 

 jured among railroad employees in 1894 is 

 attributed in the report of the Interstate 

 Commerce Commission to the smaller num- 

 ber of men, the smaller volume of business 

 transacted, and perhaps to the increased use 

 of automatic appliances and the improved 

 grade of efficiency of the men. One man 

 was killed out of every 428 in service, and 

 one injured out of every 23. One passenger 

 was killed out of each 1,912,G18 carried, or 

 for each 44,103,228 miles traveled ; and one 

 injured out of each 204,248 carried, or for 

 each 4,'709,'77l miles traveled. A distribu- 

 tion of accidents to the terminal groups into 

 which the railroads are divided exhibits the 

 diversity in the relative safety of railway 

 employment and of railway travel in the 

 different sections of the country. 



The Reichsbank, the German Govern- 

 ment's banking establishment recently made 

 some instructive experiments, with cement 

 as a fireproof covering for safes. A safe 

 consisting of steel wire netting, between two 

 layers of cement, was subjected to a heat of 

 1,800 F. for over half an hour. When the 

 safe was opened, silk paper was found unin- 

 jured, and a maximum thermometer, which 

 had been in the safe, had only registered 

 85 F. 



Some interesting observations on the re- 

 lation of dust to rainfall and scenic effect 

 were made during a trip to Greenland last 

 summer by Prof. William H. Brewer, of the 

 Sheffield Scientific School. He says that the 

 fogs progressively thinned as they went far- 

 ther north ; that, owing to the small amount 

 of dust in the air, the rain, even when 

 streams were flowing from the scuppers, 



