144 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Mr. Potts, of the Academy of Natural 

 Sciences of riiiladeljjhia, observes that the 

 order Spovr/nhe has many more representa- 

 tives in our fresh waters than has generally 

 been supposed. He recently described to 

 the Academy three species of Spongilla 

 which he found in a small stream near 

 Philadelphia. Since then he has found the 

 Spomi'iUa fragilis of Lcidy plentifully in the 

 Schuylkill below the dam, and a lacustrine 

 form above the dam, and has obtained 

 a very slender green species which appears 

 creeping along stems of Sphagnum^ etc., in 

 a swamp near Absecum, New Jersey; a 

 beautiful species from the Adirondack 

 lakes ; another lacustrine form from the lake 

 near the Catskill Jlountain House ; and four 

 species from an old cellar at Lehigh Gap, 

 Pennsylvania. 



Mr. Edward Pi. Alston, a British work- 

 ing naturalist of growing reputation, died 

 in London, March 7th. He contributed ar- 

 ticles to " The Zoologist " and other jour- 

 nals, chiefly on mammals and birds, pub- 

 lished an account of a journey to Archangel 

 and of the birds he observed there, was en- 

 gaged in the compilation of the part of the 

 " Zoloogical Record " relating to mammals, 

 and of the new edition (18'74) of Bell's 

 " British Mammals," published a revision 

 of the genera of the Rodentio. (ISYG), and 

 " Slemoirs on the Mammals of Asia Minor " 

 (IS'?'? and 1880), and prepared the "Mam- 

 mals " of Salvin and Godman's " Biologia 

 Centrali-Americana " (1879 and 1880). 



Honor to American Science. Professor, 

 John W. Draper has been elected one of the 

 twelve honorary members of the Physical 

 Society of London, under the presidency of 

 Sir William Thomson. 



Professor S. Calvin, of the University 

 of Iowa, not R. S. Calvin, as it was errone- 

 ously printed, is the author of the article 

 entitled "A Piece of Coal," published in the 

 March number of the " Monthly." 



Dr. James Leavis, a well-known Ameri- 

 can conchologist, died at his home in Mo- 

 hawk, New York, February 23d. 



" Land and Water " has a curious ac- 

 count of a rat which, feeding upon the oys- 

 ters in an oyster-cellar in London, was 

 caught by one of the mollusks and held fast 

 by the tail. It adds: " We have seen sev- 

 eral instances of mice being caught by oys- 

 ters. In the collection of the late Frank 

 Buckland were several specimens, but in all 

 these instances the mice were caut/ht by 

 their heads. In one case, two mice had 

 fallen victims to an oyster." 



Mr. John B. IIansler has made a study 

 of the source of the drift-ice which ac- 

 cumulates in the harbor of New York dur- 

 incc the severe weather of winter, and has 



traced the principal part of it to the Tap- 

 pan Zee and Haverstraw Bay. In order to 

 prevent future obstruction of the harbor, 

 he proposes to confine the ice to the waters 

 in which it is formed, by stretching cable- 

 netting across the river at the narrows 

 below the Tappan Zee. The cost of the 

 structures needed to effect the object would 

 be, he believes, less than the amount of 

 damage now frequently suffered from ice in 

 a single season. The presumption that his 

 plan would be sufficient is strengthened by 

 the fact that the bridge of the Central Rail- 

 road of New Jersey over Newark Bay has 

 wholly stopped the drifting of ice from that 

 water through the Kill van Kull. 



M. DE MoLON has obtained from the peats 

 of Brittany, by means of suitable reagents, 

 benzine, paraffine, fatty oils, phenols, resin- 

 ous matters, acetic acid, and seventeen or 

 eighteen per cent, of a waxy substance anal- 

 ogous to the resins, which in distillation fur- 

 nishes enough paraffine to make the prep- 

 aration profitable. The same peat affords 

 an illuminating gas superior to that ob- 

 tained from coal, and one third cheaper. 



M. Bourdon has devised a system of 

 drainage by means of Avhich the under- 

 ground atmosphere of a whole vineyard 

 may be uniformly and effectively impreg- 

 nated with sulphuret of carbon for the pre- 

 vention of phylloxera. The expense of set- 

 ting the system in operation is great, but 

 after this a saving may be realized of four 

 fifths of the material it has hitherto been 

 necessary to use. 



M. F. ZuRCHER has contributed a new 

 element to the discussion of the question of 

 the relation between the number of sun- 

 spots and the rainfall. He has made a 

 comparison of the maximum heights of the 

 inundation of the Nile and of the numbers 

 of sun-spots as indicated by Wolf, for 

 forty-five years, from 1825 to 1870. The 

 curves representing the two values show a 

 parallelism throughout that is remarkable, 

 if nothing more. 



M. Gaston Bonnier has found, from in- 

 vestigations recently made in Austria and 

 Hungary, that the intensity in the color of 

 flowers of the same species increases with 

 the altitude, though in a less marked degree 

 than the deepening of color that corresponds 

 with a greater height of latitude. The fact 

 has been made clear to him in many cases 

 by the comparison of colors in two, three, 

 four, and sometimes five places of increasing 

 altitude, in which the hues showed a grada- 

 tion of intensity. A microscopical exami- 

 nation disclosed that the change was not 

 occasioned by a new disposition of the color- 

 ing matter, but by an increase in the number 

 of grains of pigment on a given surface. 



