NOTES. 



S7S 



with water ; 3. The solution becomes turbid 

 in boiling, without coagulating; when it 

 is curdy it sometimes leaves an insoluble 

 residue in water ; left to stand, the solution 

 becomes turbid after some days, and a mi- 

 croscopic examination shows it to be filled 

 with vibrioncs ; 4. In the presence of a sac- 

 charine liquid, papaine acts as an alcoholic 

 ferment, with an extraordinary energy and 

 promptitude, but the digestive property may 

 be arrested by the application of benzoic or 

 salicylic acid. The most important property 

 of papaine, and one which puts it in the 

 rank of the most powerful digestive fer- 

 ments, is its action on meats. One part of 

 papaine will digest and transform into sol- 

 uble peptone from two hundred and fifty to 

 three hundred parts of meat. Its solubility 

 in different fluids allows it to be used in a 

 great many pharmaceutical forms ; and, 

 being a vegetable juice, it can be preserved 

 with more stability than animal ferments, 

 and can be kept indefinitely when dry. 



NOTES. 



Mr. E. F. Hortox gives an account, in 

 the " Kansas City Review," of the opening 

 of a mound thirty or forty feet in diameter, 

 near Trenton, Missouri, June 9th, in which 

 at least twenty-five human skeletons, but no 

 relics or implements, were found. He esti- 

 mates that the mound has contained from 

 one hundred and fifty to two hundred skele- 

 tons, and says : " There appears to have 

 been a stone floor on which the bodies have 

 been placed ; over them a stone covering, 

 supported, probably, by stones set edge- 

 wise, upon which were other bodies ; this 

 continuing until there were four layers of 

 corpses and five layers of stone." 



Mr. Gerard Krefft, a naturalist distin- 

 guished for his work in the natural history 

 of Australia, died in February last. He was 

 born in Brunswick, Germany, in 1830, early 

 conceived a taste for natural history, and 

 went to Melbourne in 1852, after having 

 spent some time in the United States. He 

 went out in the collecting expedition which 

 was dispatched by the Victorian Govern- 

 ment in 1858, became its leader, and sup- 

 plemented the collection of specimens which 

 he brought back with a full report concern- 

 ing the animals he obtained, and the man- 

 ners and habits of the aborigines. Having 

 spent a short time in Europe, he returned 

 to Sydney, and became connected with the 

 Australian Museum, and eventually its cu- 

 rator, till 1874. 



The International Geological Congress, 

 which held its first session in Paris, in 1878, 

 will meet at Bologna, Italy, September 26th, 

 under the honorary presidency of Signor 

 Sella. The King of Italy has taken a warm 

 interest in the meeting, and has made con- 

 siderable efforts to assure its success. A 

 geological exposition will be held during the 

 sessions, and excursions will be made to 

 various points of interest. The reports of 

 the International Committee appointed in 

 1878, on the unification of geological no- 

 menclature and the conventional signs (fig- 

 ures and colors) used for charts, will soon 

 be mailed to subscribers to the Congress. 

 This question has been made a subject for 

 competitive essays, for which prizes given 

 by King Humbert are to be distributed by a 

 jury. 



M. FiEVEz, of the Brussels Observatory, 

 has produced a new argument against Mr. 

 Lockyer's theory that the spectrum furnish- 

 es evidence that some of the terrestrial ele- 

 ments are resolved into simpler constituents 

 by the solar heat. Mr. Lockyer's view is 

 based on the fact that some of the spectral 

 lines of elements are shortened, disappear, 

 or are unequally reversed in solar observa- 

 tion. M. Fievez has found that he can cause 

 two of the lines of hydrogen to disappear, 

 without any change in temperature taking 

 place, by simply reducing the intensity of 

 the light, as when he diminishes the aper- 

 ture of his instrument during the observa- 

 tion. The lines shorten and go out as the 

 aperture is drawn up ; appear and lengthen 

 when it is opened again. Similar results 

 were obtained with the spectra of nitrogen 

 and magnesium ; and the phenomena of re- 

 versal noticed by Mr. Lockyer were also 

 produced by changing the intensity of the 

 light. 



Mr. C. Shaler Smith has applied the 

 results of the observations of several years 

 to the estimation of the amount of press- 

 ure that has been exercised by the wind in 

 gusts of extraordinary violence. The most 

 violent storm of which he has a record oc- 

 curred at East St. Louis, 111., in 1871, when a 

 locomotive was blown over by a wind-press- 

 ure of 93 pounds per square foot. The jail 

 at St. Charles, Mo., was destroyed in 1877, by 

 a pressure of 84'3 ; a brick dwelling at Marsh- 

 field, Mo., in 1880, by a force of 58 pounds 

 per square foot. Railway-trains may be 

 blown from the track, and bridges prostrated 

 by pressures of from 24 to 31 pounds per 

 square foot. These estimates are based 

 upon the calculation of the smallest amount 

 of pressure that would do the damage. 



The magnetic survey of Missouri is to 

 be continued during the summer at the ex- 

 pense of a gentleman in St. Louis. The 

 State Legislature has rejected a bill author- 



