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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



ese caves are wilder and more dangerous 

 than those at Gomanton. 



The use of gas cooking-stoves is increas- 

 ing in Great Britain. Many of the Scottish 

 gas companies now let out the stoves at a 

 cheap rate. Dr. Stevenson Macadam, speak- 

 ing of gas-cooking in its sanitary aspects, 

 says : " The wholesomeness of the meat 

 cooked in the gas-stoves must be regarded 

 as beyond doubt. Gas-cooked meat will be 

 found to be more juicy and palatable, and yet 

 free from those alkaloidal bodies produced 

 during the confined cooking of meat, which 

 are more or less hurtful, and even poison- 

 ous." A joint cooked in a gas-oven weighs 

 heavier than the same joint cooked in a 

 coal-oven, because the juices are more per- 

 fectly preserved in it. 



Professor W. Mattieu Williams calls 

 attention, in " Science Gossip," to the dan- 

 ger of the extermination of the sole one 

 of the best of food-fishes by trawling. 

 The vessels, which are numbered by the 

 thousand, sweeping the sea-bottom with a 

 track as broad as their own length, scour 

 each an acre an hour. If they are steamers, 

 the effect is vastly magnified. Forty years 

 ago, when the " Silver Bank " was a fresh 

 fishing-ground, soles were retailed in Lon- 

 don at twopence a pound, and enormous 

 specimens were abundant. Gradually the 

 size diminished and the quantity declined 

 till the harvest consisted chiefly of " slips." 

 Now the Silver Bank is practically ruined, 

 and the price of soles has risen about one 

 thousand per cent. 



M. Breal, a French writer on education- 

 al subjects, remarks, in his essay on the 

 method of acquiring foreign languages, that 

 when a person goes to a foreign country to 

 learn the language he rarely succeeds ; but, 

 if he goes to pursue some particular pro- 

 fession or business, he learns the language 

 rapidly and thoroughly first the language 

 of that business, then the language of ordi- 

 nary intercourse, and so on step by step, in 

 the order of nature. Thus it is the natural 

 method that prevails. 



The " Lancet " makes a distinction be- 

 tween what it calls the use and the abuse 

 of tobacco. The man who can say, " I al- 

 ways know when I have smoked enough if 

 I go beyond the just limit I lose my power 

 of prompt decision," is one, it suggests, who 

 had better not smoke at all ; but " a moder- 

 ate use of tobacco soothes the senses, and 

 leaves the mental faculties free from irrita- 

 tion, and ready for calmly clear intellectual 

 processes. When this is not the effect pro- 

 duced by smoking, the " weed " had better 

 be eschewed. 



Mr. George J. Romanes, having ob- 

 served a rat, under circumstances in which it 

 should have been badly frightened, manifest 

 great savagery and voraciously devour its 

 companion, persisting in biting it till the last 

 moment of consciousness, has been led to 

 inquire whether the case is one of peculiar 

 ferocity, or of emotional insanity produced 

 by extreme terror. He wishes to know how 

 wild rats ordinarily behave when shut up in 

 a cage together. 



It is definitely asserted by the engineer 

 of the Suez Canal that the annual mean 

 level of the Mediterranean at Port Said is 

 the same as the annual mean level of the 

 Red Sea at Suez ; and that, according to the 

 observations of the Panama Canal Company, 

 there is no difference of moment between 

 the levels of the Atlantic at Colon and of 

 the Pacific at Panama. 



OBITUARY NOTES. 



Professor William Ripley Nichols, 

 of the Massachusetts Institute of Technol- 

 ogy, died in Hamburg, Germany, July 14th, 

 in the fortieth year of his age. His death 

 was caused by a disease of the lungs, from 

 which he had been suffering more or less 

 for four or five years. He was graduated 

 from the Institute in 1869, in its second 

 class, and was shortly afterward appointed 

 Professor of General Chemistry in it. He 

 was the author and compiler of several 

 text-books on general and inorganic chem- 

 istry. He made a specialty of water analy- 

 sis, in which he acquired a high reputation 

 for accuracy and probity; he studied the 

 ventilation of railroad-cars and the effect 

 of the atmosphere of smoking-cars, and did 

 much work for the Massachusetts State 

 Board of Health. 



Professor Sheldon Amos died at Ram- 

 leh, near Alexandria, Egypt, January 3d, at 

 the age of fifty years. He was the youngest 

 son of the late Andrew Amos, Professor of 

 Law at Cambridge, and was called to the 

 bar in 1862. He was for several years 

 Professor of Jurisprudence at University 

 College, London, but spent many of the later 

 years of his life abroad, in Australia and 

 Egypt. He was for several years, and till 

 his death, English Judge of the new Egyp- 

 tian Court of Appeals. He was the author 

 of several legal treatises. 



Dr. William King, Emeritus Professor 

 of Geology, Mineralogy, and Natural His- 

 tory in Queen's College, Galway, Ireland, 

 died June 23d, in his seventy-ninth year. 

 He was elected to his professorship on the 

 foundation of the Queen's Colleges in Ire- 

 land, in 1849, and filled it actively till 1883. 



