NOTES. 



719 



an extreme antiquity. This is one of the 

 most important works of this kind that 

 have attracted the attention of Eurooean 



archaeologists. 



NOTES. 



Professor 0. N. Rood, of Columbia Col- 

 lege, describes, in a late number of the 

 " American Journal of Science," a modifica- 

 tion of the Sprengel pump, by which he has 

 been able to obtain a vacuum of jy^mrniTTroo 

 " without finding that the limit of its action 

 had been reached." 



Alden B. Hurt, not Huet, as it was 

 wrongly printed, is the name of the author 

 of the article " Union of the Telegraph 

 and Postal Service " published in the July 

 " Monthly." 



The center of population of the United 

 States appears now to have reached a point 

 in latitude 39^ 03', about five miles west of 

 Covington, Kentucky, ten miles east of the 

 boundary-line between Indiana and Ohio, 

 and fifty-one miles west and a few miles 

 south of the point it reached in 1870. It 

 has moved westward about four hundred 

 and fifty miles since 1790. 



Mr. Johx Fergus McLennax, an indus- 

 trious student in anthropology, died in June 

 of lung disease, from which he had suffered 

 for many years, aggravated by a fever caught 

 in Algeria. His investigations were directed 

 chiefly to the history of institutions. Their 

 results were given principally in his essays 

 on " Plant and Animal Worship," in the 

 " Fortnightly Review," which first drew at- 

 tention to the distribution and historical 

 importance of totemism, and in his essays 

 on " Primitive Marriage." 



A French scientific journal relates an 

 incident illustrating the susceptibility of 

 spiders to music. A party at a country- 

 house had formed a quartet and were per- 

 forming a number of pieces, when two spi- 

 ders were observed to descend upon their 

 threads and hang near the top of the win- 

 dow of the room. They continued there for 

 an hour, and did not go back to their nests 

 till the music had stepped. 



Dr. Beddoe and Mr. Tuckett have stated 

 that " British heads are smaller than Brit- 

 ish heads used to be," and Mr. Horsfall, in 

 the " Manchester Guardian," infers from 

 this and other facts that the English peo- 

 ple are physically deteriorating. The con- 

 ditions under which youth are brought up 

 in these days, without access to play-grounds 

 and public gymnasia, with smoking and 

 drinking as their principal recreations, are 



such as to favor the stunting of the race. 

 The " Lancet "' takes up the thought, and 

 points to the mode of life of a large num- 

 ber of urban people as the great evil of 

 civilization. It urges the multiplication of 

 places for open-air recreation and gymna- 

 sia, with increased freedom of admission to 

 them. 



The ninth award of the Rumford medal 

 has been made by the American Academy 

 of Arts and Sciences to Professor J. Willard 

 Gibbs, for his researches on thermo-dynam- 

 ics, and the medal was formally conferred 

 upon that gentleman in January last. Pro- 

 fessor Gibbs, in entering upon his investiga- 

 tion on the "Equilibrium of Heterogeneous 

 Substances," the work for which the medal 

 was conferred, took his departure from the 

 two propositions enunciated by Clausius, 

 that " the energy of the world is constant," 

 and " the entropy of the world " (that is, 

 the energy not available for work) " tends 

 constantly toward a maximum," and held 

 as his leading object to develop the parts of 

 energy and entropy in the theory of thermo- 

 dynamic equilibrium. His researches were 

 declared by the President of the Academy 

 to be " the consummate flower and fruit of 

 seeds planted by Rumford himself, though 

 in an unpromising soil, almost a century 

 ago," when he showed how water could be 

 boiled by the heat developed in boring a 

 cannon. 



Sir Josiah Masox, founder of the Ma- 

 son Science College, died at Birmingham, 

 England, in June, at the age of eighty-six 

 years. He rose from the humblest ranks, 

 having begun life as a street hawker and 

 Jack-at-all-trades. He became employed in 

 the gilt toy trade in 1814, and engaged in 

 the manufacture of split rings in 1822. He 

 afterward added the manufacture of steel 

 pens, and became the greatest producer of 

 them. He established an orphanage at Ed- 

 lington in 1860, expending 300,000 upon 

 it, and received the honor of knighthood in 

 acknowledgment of his work. He afterward 

 built up and endowed the Mason Science 

 College, the inaugural address of which 

 was delivered by Professor Huxley, giving 

 it a total sum of about a quarter of a mill- 

 ion pounds sterling. 



M. de Bisschop has won a prize of one 

 thousand francs, or two hundred dollars, for 

 a small motor suited to use in families. His 

 engine is worked by gas, and the operation 

 costs, at the prices current in Paris, two 

 cents an hour for machines doing a work of 

 36'17 foot-pounds per second, five cents an 

 hour for machines performing at the rate of 

 180'8 foot-pounds per second. The smaller 

 machines are sold for one hundred dollars ; 

 the larger ones for one hundred and eighty 

 dollars. 



