NEWS NOTES 319 



Rotten Wood for Watchmaking. The finest Swiss and French 

 watches, especially the small screws and the escape parts, are still polished 

 by hand and rotten wood. In Switzerland it is estimated that $4,000 worth 

 of rotten wood is used annually for this purpose, the best quality costing one 

 dollar per pound. Not only the species of wood but the species of fungus 

 causing the rot is determinate in producing the desired result, namely, a yel- 

 lowish-white, silky wood, soft and spongy, brittle and of feather weight, 

 and the annual rings still visible. [From The Forestry Quarterly, Septem- 

 ber, 1906.] J. B. 



Oysters and Typhoid. A series of experiments by Prof. Klein in the 

 Metropolitan laboratory in London shows that the ovster exerts a positively 

 bactericidal and anti-septic action on the typhoid germ. The superstition in 

 regard to eating oysters during those months without an R in their names 

 is without foundation. \Review of Reviews, 34:381, September, 1906.] 

 E. A. 



Timber for Wood Pulp. Circular 44 of the Forest Service states that 

 over three million cords of wood were used for paper pulp in 1905. 

 1,300,000 cords came from New York State. Less than 2,000,000 cords 

 were used in 1 899. Spruce was used for 70 per cent, poplar and hemlock 

 each about 10 per cent of the total. It is estimated that in New York the 

 supply of timber for pulp will last less than twenty years, in Maine fifteen 

 years and in the other States producing less pulp from thirteen to thirty 

 years. Progress in making pulp from sawmill waste, such as sawdust, is 

 being made. 



NEWS NOTES 



Professor Burkett, one of the authors of the well-known "Agriculture 

 for Beginners" has resigned from the Agricultural College at Raleigh, N. C, 

 to accept the directorship of the Agricultural Station at Manhattan, Kan. 



Professor Davis of the Chico (Cal.) normal school will earlv in 

 January take up the nature-study work in the college for teachers in Miami 

 University, Oxford, O. 



North Carolina Nature-Study. Prof, and Mrs. F. L. Stevens are 

 conducting regularly a very practical nature-study department in the new A'. 

 C. Journal of Education. 



Traveling Libraries and Nature-Study. Through the Andrew 



