288 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



A committee of the Paris Academy of 

 Sciences has matured a plan for the foun- 

 dation of an Institat Pasteur for the treat- 

 ment of rabies, to be open to Frenchmen 

 and to foreigners bitten by dogs or other 

 rabid animals. A public subscription is to 

 be instituted in France and abroad for the 

 foundation of the establishment. The man- 

 agement and application of the subscription 

 will be under the direction of a committee, 

 of which Admiral Jurien de la Graviere, 

 President of the Academy, is chief. 



Dr. Dubois, of Paris, has been making 

 experiments on the properties of vaseline 

 as food. Two dogs were fed on soup in 

 which the usual fat was entirely replaced 

 with vaseline. With this diet, the animals 

 even slightly increased in weight ; their gen- 

 eral state was good, with no loss of appetite, 

 vomiting, or diarrhoea. Whence the experi- 

 menter infers that the carburets of hydrogen 

 forming vaseline, though they favor neither 

 oxidation nor saponification like fats, are 

 readily tolerated in the alimentary canal of 

 dogs. 



The Marquis de Nadaillac gives man's 

 range of endurance of temperature as 

 equivalent to at least 132 C., or 236 

 Fahr. His estimate is based on the re- 

 corded facts of -65 C., or-85 o Fahr., 

 observed in the Kara Sea, and 67 '7 C, or 

 151-8 Fahr., in the country of the Tua- 

 ricks, in Central Africa. 



Dr. Andries, having calculated that ac- 

 cidents from lightning have increased by 

 from three to five fold during the last fifty 

 years, finds that the causes which have been 

 assigned for the phenomena do not account 

 for all. He regards the main cause as lying 

 in the enormous increase in manufactories, 

 locomotives, etc., which fill the air with 

 smoke, steam, and particles of dust of all 

 kinds, while the increased populations con- 

 tribute their share to the impurity of the 

 atmosphere. His own experiments and those 

 of others have shown that all the electrical 

 phenomena of the air increase in intensity 

 with the increase of dust in it. 



The London Sanitary Protection Asso- 

 ciation registers more than 1,000 members, 

 and reports 1,264 inspections during the 

 year. The general character of the houses 

 inspected was found to be as insanitary as 

 ever, only 5 per cent being found in perfect 

 order, and 95 per cent in fairly good order ; 

 while in 60 per cent foul air was escaping 

 directly into the house, and in 24 per cent 

 sewage was partly retained under -ground 

 by leakage or choking of pipes. 



A periodical descriptive of the contents 

 and additions to the collection has been 

 started by the administration of the Ethno- 

 logical Section of the Royal Museum at 

 Berlin. The first number contains an ac- 



count of Dr. Nachtigal's ethnological col- 

 lections, and other papers of similar interest. 



OBITUARY NOTES. 



The death is announced of Dr. Moser 

 von Moosbruch, agricultural chemist, of Vi- 

 enna. 



M. Felix Leblanc, Professor of Chem- 

 istry in the JScole Cenirale des Arts et Manu- 

 factures, Paris, is dead. He was for a long 

 time a collaborator with Dumas ; and has left 

 his mark in chemical science, particularly in 

 the matter of studies of carbonic oxide, 

 ne also gave much attention to electrical 

 investigations, and was a member of the 

 committee on experiments of the Inter- 

 national Electrical Exposition of 1881. He 

 w r as chief inspector of gas in the city of 

 Paris, and Vice-President of the Society for 

 the Encouragement of National Industries. 



Johann Jacob von Tschudi, an emi- 

 nent observer of South American phenom- 

 ena, died in St. Gall, Switzerland, on the 

 24th of January last. He was born at 

 Glarus, in 1818, and went from school to 

 Peru, where he lived five years. He gave 

 the public the best account of Peru, and 

 also published books on the fauna of that 

 country, and the ancient Quichua language, 

 a travel-sketch of the Andes, an account of 

 the Brazilian province of Minas-Geraes, the 

 " System of the Batrachians," and finally, a 

 comprehensive book of travels in South 

 America, in five volumes. He was a 

 brother of Friedrich von Tschudi, author of 

 the " Thierleben der Alpenwelt." 



Mr. Richard Edmunds, a student of 

 extraordinary agitations of the sea and 

 earthquake-shocks, and of antiquities, died 

 recently at Plymouth, England, in his 

 eighty-fifth year. The results of his seis- 

 mological investigations are published in 

 the " Edinburgh New Philosophical Jour- 

 nal," the British Association Reports, and 

 the " Transactions of the Royal Society of 

 Cornwall." He also published, in 1862, a 

 book on the " Antiquities, Natural History, 

 Natural Phenomena, and Scenery of the 

 Land's End District." 



Dr. T. Spencer Cobbold, Fellow of the 

 Roval and Linnaean Societies, has recently 

 died. He was born in 1 828, and received a 

 medical education in practice and at the 

 University of Edinburgh. He was an emi- 

 nent physician and medical professor. He 

 devoted much attention to the study of 

 morphology and the investigation of the 

 life-history of animal parasites. He pre- 

 pared the article on " Ruminantia " for the 

 " Cvclopaedia of Anatomy and Physiology." 

 In 1868 he was appointed, by the Trustees 

 of the British Museum, Swiney Professor of 

 Geology. 



