NOTES. 



143 



rudenesses of tbeir own barbaric times." So 

 Mr. Skidmore would find his substitute in 

 diversion derived from pursuits, achieve- 

 ments, and habits of the children's elders. 

 " In an age of mechanic arts and commerce, 

 of which the great men are inventors, au- 

 thors, business organizers, engineers, and 

 self-made millionaires, with the eyes of youth 

 trained upon them in admiration, interested in 

 everything that pertains to their history, and 

 eager to imitate them, it is nonsense to sup- 

 pose that the boys can not be made to belong 

 to such an age in their play as exactly as the 

 men do in their work." The new play must 

 call forth the constructive faculties, and man- 

 ual training is held up as an element of it. 



Propagation of Cholera. The report of 

 the Cholera Quarantine Board at Alexandria, 

 Egypt, after reviewing the work of contend- 

 ing against the epidemic last season, ipquires 

 into the origin of the disease. According to 

 information received in Egypt, the first cases 

 of cholera were observed among the Yemen 

 pilgrims immediately on their arrival at 

 Mecca. It is known that cholera must have 

 been prevailing in the Yemen as lately as 

 the end of 1892. Discussions on the subject 

 in the past have usually been very unsatis- 

 factory and the conclusions very indefinite. 

 The serious fact remains that cholera epi- 

 demics among the pilgrims annually collected 

 at Mecca are of very frequent occurrence and 

 are a standing menace to Egj^pt and Europe. 

 Four times within the last twelve years the 

 disease might have been introduced by the 

 pilgrims into Egypt or Europe, or both, and 

 the experience of France and Spain has 

 shown how easily it might become endemic. 

 The endeavors of the Quarantine Board have 

 fortunately been successful in stamping out 

 cholera before the pilgrims reached Europe. 



NOTES. 



Boards for making coffins are exported 

 in large numbers from Upper Tonkin to the 

 province of Mongtze, in China. The trees 

 from which they are made are not growing 

 in the woods, but are deposited in what a 

 French writer calls tree mines that is, they 

 are buried in a sandy soil at a depth of from 

 seven to twenty-five feet, in good preserva- 

 tion, and some of them more than three feet 

 in diameter. They probably once grew, judg- 



ing from the character and position of the 

 trunks, in a large forest which was buried by 

 an earthquate or some other similar catas- 

 trophe. It is impossible to determine when 

 the event took place, for no record of such a 

 phenomenon is preserved ; but the time can 

 not have been extremely remote, for the up- 

 per limbs of many of the trees are still whole. 

 The tree is a kind of pine, very pitchy, and 

 therefore very durable ; whence the demand 

 for it. 



The vibrations of a building or a bridge 

 may be registered by means of a bright gem 

 which will reflect a ray of light upon a sensi- 

 tive hand moved by clock work. It has re- 

 cently been found by Dr. Steincr, of Hunga- 

 ry, that the vibrations of a stone bridge while 

 a railroad train is passing over it at a speed 

 of twenty-five miles an hour are much more 

 extensive than had been supposed, and in 

 the fact this author finds a new source of 

 danger. 



Acceding to a request of the Alpine 

 Club, the Government of India has author- 

 ized its oflicers who are in a position to make 

 them to institute observations of the move- 

 ments of glaciers in the Himalayas. 



A CONSIDERABLE quantity of evidence has 

 been collected of a power in tobacco to de- 

 stroy the micro-organism of cholera. Herr 

 Wernicke wrapped cultures in cigars, inocu- 

 lated them with sterile dry and moist un- 

 sterilized leaves, immersed them in infusions, 

 and enveloped them in tobacco smoke ; and 

 in every case they disappeared in a few hours, 

 except in a five-per-cent infusion, when they 

 lived thirty-three days. Tarsinari found that 

 they were usually killed after thirty minutes' 

 exposure to tobacco fumes. Immunity from 

 cholera has been observed among workmen 

 in tobacco factories. 



The collected works of the chemist Jean 

 Servais Stas are to be published as a mark 

 of honor to his memory, under the direction 

 of MM. Spring and Defaire, in three quarto 

 volumes of about five hundred or six hun- 

 dred pages each. The first volume will con- 

 tain the memoirs and papers relating par- 

 ticularly to the determination of atomic 

 weights ; the second, notes, reports, and lec- 

 tures ; and the third, posthumous works, re- 

 lating especially to spectroscopic researches. 



Certain concretions or " coal balls " 

 found in the lower coal measures were the 

 subject of a recent paper by H. B. Stocks in 

 tlie Edinburgh Royal Society. They are re- 

 markable for the perfect condition in which 

 their fossil contents are preserved. Chem- 

 ically they consist of carbonate of lime and 

 iron pyrites in equal proportions. The per- 

 fect condition of the fossilized plant cells 

 and fibers indicates that decay and petrifaction 

 must have gone on simultaneously, and Mr. 

 Stocks accounts for them by supposing that 

 by the process of osmosis water containing 



