NOTES. 



719 



Professor L. Weber relates, in a Ger- 

 man periodical, that during a thunderstorm 

 at Ribnitz, in Mecklenburg, the lower pane 

 of a window on the first floor of a house 

 was broken by lightning, and a jet of water 

 was thrown upward through the hole to the 

 ceiling, with such force that a part of the 

 ceiling was broken down, and other damage 

 was done. The hole in the window was like 

 a bullet-hole, with radial cracks. Some ci- 

 gars on a table, that was broken by the fall 

 of the ceiling and the water, were carbon- 

 ized. The origin of the jet of water, is not 

 satisfactorily explained. 



Mr. Thomas Wardle, of Leek, England, 

 has been to India and examined the cultiva- 

 tion of the silk-worm and the means still in 

 use for reeling the silk there, with a view to 

 suggesting means for improving them. Al- 

 though the reputation of Indian silk has 

 greatly declined during the last twenty-five 

 years, he is satisfied that its fiber is quite 

 equal to that of Italian silk, and that im- 

 provement in methods is all that is required. 

 The Italian threads are, however, four times 

 as long as those of the Indian cocoons. The 

 profitableness of the silk-growing business 

 is shown by the fact that the zemindars de- 

 rive their very highest rents from lands de- 

 voted to it. 



An ancient probably prehistoric Brit- 

 ish vessel has been found at Brigg, in Lin- 

 colnshire, England, in the course of mak- 

 ing an excavation of the ground for a new 

 gas-holder. It is cut out of a solid piece 

 of wood, and measures forty-eight feet in 

 length, fifty-two inches in width, and thirty- 

 three inches in depth. It is in a remark- 

 ably good state of preservation, because, 

 probably, it was imbedded in a clayey soil 

 which excluded the air. An ancient wooden 

 causeway was discovered in the same neigh- 

 borhood a few years ago. It was made of 

 squared balks of timber fifteen feet long 

 and ten inches square, which had been fas- 

 tened to the earth by pegs driven through 

 holes in the ends. 



Mrs. Bryant has communicated to the 

 Anthropological Society the result of some 

 tests which she has made of the powers of 

 perception, inference, and imagination, of a 

 class of girls of about thirteen years of age, 

 by asking them to describe some particular 

 object from memory. The most noteworthy 

 result was that due to a faculty which the 

 author calls emotionalism. The emotional 

 girls, who, in their descriptions, used such ad- 

 jectives as " beautiful," " lovely," " sweet," 

 etc., showed deficiency in more valuable 

 traits of character ; and it seemed that in 

 those cases emotion superseded thought. 

 Such tests as these might prove valuable in 

 education and the choice of a profession, 

 and, perhaps, in civil-service examinations. 



MM. C. Weigett, 0. Sacre, and L. 

 Schwab, have investigated the effects on 

 fisheries and fish-culture of sewage and in- 

 dustrial waste waters, and find them very 

 damaging. Chloride of lime, 0*04 to 0*005 

 per cent chlorine, exerted an immediately 

 deadly action upon tench, while trout and 

 salmon perished in the presence of 0008 

 per cent of chlorine. One per cent of hy- 

 drochloric acid kills tench and trout. Iron 

 and alum act as specific poisons upon fishes. 

 Solution of caustic lime has an exceedingly 

 violent effect upon them. Sodium sulphide, 

 0*1 per cent, was endured by tench for 

 thirty minutes. 



Mr. John Urie, of Glasgow, Scotland, 

 has invented a new method of photographic 

 silver-printing by machinery. A ribbon of 

 paper is caused to travel by clock-work be- 

 neath a negative, which is let in to the top 

 of a light, tight box. Above the negative 

 is a powerful gas-burner, which is turned 

 up and down automatically, as the paper 

 pauses in its passage every few seconds. 

 The strip of paper, which, at the end of a 

 few minutes, bears perhaps twenty latent 

 images of the negative, beneath which it has 

 been traveling, is then developed by a suit- 

 able chemical agent to make those images 

 visible. 



M. Perrotin has reported to the French 

 Academy of Sciences concerning the obser- 

 vations he has been making upon the " ca- 

 nals" of Mars with the great equatorial 

 which has just been mounted at the Nice 

 Observatory. These are a feature of the 

 planet which was first observed by M. Schia- 

 parelli, and consist of grooves about twen- 

 ty-five kilometres in width, having perfectly 

 parallel borders, which are stretched across 

 the Martian continents, between the seas. 

 Nothing like them exists on the earth or the 

 moon, or any other planet, so far as has 

 been observed. Consequently, it is impos- 

 sible to conceive any satisfactory explana- 

 tion of their existence. M. Perrotin's ob- 

 servations have been verified by MM. Tre- 

 pied and Thallon. 



Besides the caves at Gomanton, in 

 North Borneo, of which we lately gave an 

 account in our Miscellany, the edible birds' 

 nests are produced in caves in islands off 

 the coast of the Malay Peninsula. The 

 caves belong to the Siamese Government, 

 and are farmed out to contractors. The 

 harvest is during March and April. The 

 nests are collected as soon as they are 

 built, and before the swallows have begun 

 to lay their eggs. The birds build second 

 nests, and these are taken away ; but the 

 third nests are left. The caves are accessi- 

 ble only by means of rattan ladders, and the 

 nests are collected from the rocks by means 

 of rattan galleries and stagings. The Siam- 



