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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



of smell. He found that, on their removal 

 or when coated with jjaraffine, the insects be- 

 came quite indifferent to the most odorous 

 substances flies, for example, when thus 

 treated, taking no further notice of tainted 

 meat. 



Professor Ernst Hampe, the distin- 

 guished German bryologist, died at Helm- 

 stedt, November 23d, at the age of eighty- 

 five. 



The " Revue Scientifique" acknowledges 

 that the meetings of the French Association 

 and the British Association will have to 

 yield place, for 1880, to that of the Ameri- 

 can Association for the Advancement of 

 Science, which excelled on account of the 

 importance of the subjects discussed, and 

 was also marked by a numerous attendance 

 and the manifestation of a great interest in 

 its proceedings. 



An International Congress of Electri- 

 cians has been called by the French Govern- 

 ment, to meet in Paris on the 15th of Sep- 

 tember, 1881 ; and an International Expo- 

 sition of Electricity is to be opened on the 

 1st of August and to be closed on the 15th 

 of November. The Government leaves the 

 expenses of the Exposition to be paid by 

 those who participate in it, but it is believed 

 that the whole financial responsibility of the 

 affair will be assumed by a French capitalist. 

 The preparations for the Congress and the 

 Exposition will he under the direction of 

 M. Georges Berger. 



The notion that the blood-capillaries re- 

 ceive material support from the tissues in 

 which they are imbedded is contradicted by 

 the researches of Ray and Brown, an ac- 

 count of which is published in a late num- 

 ber of the "Journal of Physiology." Accord- 

 ing to their experiments, the extra-vascular 

 pressure is but slightly, if any, greater than 

 that of the atmosphere ; that is, if the sur- 

 rounding tissues were all removed, the capil- 

 lary walls would be no more likely to give 

 way from internal blood-pressure than they 

 are under normal conditions. 



Professor J. C. Watson, Director of the 

 Observatory at the University of Wisconsin, 

 died on the 23d of November of last year. 

 He had acquired a high reputation as an as- 

 tronomer, both here and at the University 

 of Michigan, where he was formerly engaged, 

 and was best known, perhaps, by his discov- 

 eries of twenty-one of the asteroids, by his 

 work in the observation of the transit of 

 Venus, and the solar eclipse of 1878, and by 

 the interest he took in the search for the 

 supposed planet Vulcan. 



The equipment of the observatory now 

 in course of construction at Nice will com- 

 prise two equatorials, one meridian, and 

 several accessory instruments. One of the 



equatorials will probably be the largest as- 

 tronomical apparatus in the world. Its 

 focal distance will be about sixty feet, 

 and its aperture thirty inches. The cupola 

 will have a diameter of seventy-two feet. 

 The object-glass is to be constructed by 

 MM. Paul and Prosper Henry, of the Paris 

 Observatory. The instrument alone will cost 

 250,000 francs, and the entire observatory 

 at least 2,000,000 francs. 



Professor Alphonso Wood, author of 

 several works on botany, died at West 

 Farms, New York, January 4th, aged sev- 

 enty-one years. He was a graduate of 

 Dartmouth College and Andover Theological 

 Seminary, and spent much of his life as a 

 teacher, having had the charge of schools at 

 Meriden, Connecticut ; College Hill, Ohio ; 

 Terre Haute, Indiana ; and Brooklyn, New 

 York. For the last two years he was Pro- 

 fessor of Botany in the College of Pharmacy 

 in this city. He began the publication of 

 his botanical writings in I860., His best- 

 known works were : " The Class - Book of 

 Botany," " Object-Lessons in Botany," " The 

 Botanist and Florist " " The Plant Record," 

 and "Flora Atlantica." 



A new process of tanning, in which 

 bark is wholly dispensed with, and inorgan- 

 ic compounds are used in its place, is com- 

 ing into use in Germany. The special feat- 

 ure of the process is the action of chromic 

 acid, for the generation of which a number 

 of substances, all soluble in water, are 

 brought together in the mixture so as to 

 effect the decomposition of bichromate of 

 potash. The new process requires only from 

 four to six weeks for its completion, against 

 the several months needed in the bark- 

 process. It has been tried at an experi- 

 mental tannery in Glasgow, Scotland, with 

 favorable results. 



Benjamin Collins Brodie the younger, 

 F. R. S., died on the 24th of November last. 

 After taking his master's degree at Oxford 

 in 1S42, he went to Giessen to pursue origi- 

 nal chemical work under Liebig and first 

 distinguished himself by the publication of 

 his analyses of wax. He became an indus- 

 trious investigator of the changes undergone 

 by the molecules of different substances, and 

 of the modes of combination, and had an 

 important part in the development of the 

 present theories of chemistry. 



Pere Antoine Horner, the founder of 

 the French Roman Catholic mission and ag- 

 ricultural establishment at Bagamoyo on the 

 Zanzibar coast, has recently died at Cannes. 

 He made long journeys of exploration in 

 the interior of Eastern Africa, in recognition 

 of the scientific results of which he was 

 elected an honorary corresponding member 

 of the Royal and several other geographical 

 societies. 



