HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



211 



Baron Hociistetter, distinguished for his geo- 

 logical explorations of New Zealand, has just died 

 at the comparatively early age of fifty-five years. 



Mr. Edison is showing a thirty-ton dynamo at the 

 Philadelphia Electrical Exhibition. It is the largest 

 yet constructed. Visitors have to be warned not to 

 approach too near. 



A PATENT has been granted for a process of facili- 

 tating submarine exploration, in which the oxygen 

 required for breathing purposes is produced by 

 electrically decomposing sea-water. 



The Eruption of Krakatoa is on its defence. The 

 sunset glows have, if possible, been more conspicuous 

 and beautiful than ever during the last month. 

 Surely, there cannot be so much dust in the upper 

 regions of the atmosphere now as there was twelve 

 months ago ! 



An important new departure in railway lighting is 

 reported from the district where the passenger rail- 

 way had its birth — the Liverpool and Manchester line 

 of the London and North-Western Company. This 

 is the utilisation of electricity for lighting the 

 carriages by the help of Swan's incandescent 

 20-candle power lamps and Brotherhood's patent 

 engine, stationed on the tender, and fed with steam 

 from the locomotive boiler, locomotives being 

 specially fitted for this service. The electric current 

 passes from the engine through the train, and back 

 to the locomotive, where, fixed to the footplate, is a 

 regulator fitted with an electric burner, showing 

 the driver the power of light in the train. Each 

 compartment of the train is fitted with a dupli- 

 cate lamp, the arrangement securing the instant 

 lighting of one lamp if the other should become 

 extinguislied. 



The oldest inhabitant in the zoological collection 

 in the Regent's Park died the other day. This 

 interesting individual was a specimen of the black 

 parrot from Madagascar {Coracopsis vasa). It was 

 presented to the Society by the late Mr. Charles 

 Telfair, a corresponding member, so far back as July 

 1S30, just two years after the gardens were opened. 

 This bird has therefore lived for 54 years in the 

 gardens. How old the parrot was when it arrived 

 we cannot learn, beyond the fact that it was 

 represented as an "adult bird." 



Mr. Andrew Carnegie, of New York, has re- 

 cognised the importance of the microscrope in medical 

 practice. He has recently made an absolute gift of 

 fifty thousand dollars to Bellevuc Hospital Medical 

 College of that city, to be expended in the erection of 

 a building and an apparatus to be devoted to labora- 

 tories for practical work and teaching in medicine. 

 It is the design of Mr. Carnegie to establish a labo- 

 ratory for the conduct of microscopical investiga- 

 tion. 



An illustration of the perfection to which lip-read- 

 ing can be brought was given by a deaf girl before 

 delegates to the recent convention of the teachers of 

 the deaf and dumb. By the movement of a speaker's 

 lips outlined in shadow on a wall she was enabled to 

 decipher the words uttered. 



Dr. Alfred Wright says that the house-fly is a 

 most dangerous agent in the propagation of disease, 

 and he insists on the need for doing all that is possible 

 to keep this insect at bay. He draws attention to a 

 popular fallacy that flies will not pass over a barrier 

 of geraniums or calceolarias, a quite erroneous idea, 

 but he points out that flies cannot endure the 

 eucalyptus and its products, and he wisely commends 

 an eucalyptal preparation as a pleasant and valuable 

 disinfectant in any room whence flies are to be 

 excluded. 



Professor Macleod, of Cooper's Hill Englneeiing 

 College, has invented an ingenious sunshine recorder. 

 He places a water lens or a globular bottle of water 

 in front of a camera obscura, in such a position that 

 the ray of light falls on a sensitive piece of paper 

 spread on the bottom of the camera box. As the sun 

 revolves a curved band is produced on the paper, 

 which stops when the sun is obscured. 



It is our sad duty to chronicle the death of an old 

 and valued friend, and an ardent lield-worker in 

 Lancashire geology. Mr. John Aitkin,' F.G.S., was 

 for many years president of the Manchester Geologi- 

 cal Society, where the chief of his papers were read. 

 Of late years he worked hard with the microscope. 

 He was a true scientific student to the end — without 

 a particle of that scientific dogmatism now only 

 too threatening — always willing to learn, and thank- 

 ful for being taught. No man ever lived a more 

 blameless or upright life, or was more widely 

 respected. 



The Fourth Annual Report of the Walthamstow 

 Natural History and Microscopical Society has just 

 been published, from which we gather that the 

 Society is in a flourishing condition. The curator's 

 Report is excellent. 



Mr. J. B. Sutton, the lecturer on comparative 

 anatomy at Middlesex Hospital, has shown that the 

 commonly-accepted notion that monkeys brought to 

 this country die of tuberculosis is a wide-spread 

 error. 



MM. Depierre and Clouet have communicated 

 to the Industrial Society of Mulhouse some experi- 

 ments upon the bleaching action of rays of solar and 

 electric light upon colours printed upon calico. The 

 electric light bleaches as does the solar light. All 

 colours of rays bleach, but not equally. The bleaching 

 takes place either in air or in vacuum. The yellow 

 rays are the least active, and the red rays the most 

 active. Of all artificial lights the electric light is the 

 most active. 



