'20 



THE POPULAR SCIEXCE MOXTHLY, 



The French Minister of Public Instruc- 

 tion is organizing at the Trocadero a mu- 

 seum of ethnography, to contain the collec- 

 tions of the exploring parties bv which 

 France is represented, in nearly every quar- 

 ter of the world, which will be under the 

 charge of M. Armand Landrin and M. 

 Hamy. The American department is nearly 

 ready to be opened. It is arranged in geo- 

 graphical order, beginning with Alaska, 

 Labrador, and Canada, and ending with 

 Brazil. The departments of the states 

 fanher south must for the present remain 

 empty for the want of specimens. Califor- 

 nia is represented by a tomb made of sand, 

 shells, and kitchen-midden stuff, containing 

 the bones of the deceased, bv collections 

 of cut flints, dolls, toys, and idols ; Mexico 

 by mummies some of which are very well 

 preserved, while others are but skin and 

 bones mirrors of polished pyrites, and all 

 kinds of divinities. 



Herr Holtz has concluded, from the 

 comparison of the statistics of thunder- 

 storms and the damage occasioned by them 

 in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, from 

 1854 to 1870, that, while the increase in 

 thunderstorms has been small, the risk 

 from lightning has been very largely aug- 

 mented. He believes the change to be 

 partly due to the destruction of forests, the 

 extension of railways, and the use of iron 

 in house-building. 



Professor George Pollestox, Linacre 

 Professor of Anatomy and Physiology in 

 the University of Oxford, died in June, at 

 his home in Oxford, in his fifty-second year. 

 His life was one of scientific activity. He 

 began his career, after being admitted to 

 practice as a physician, as assistant surgeon 

 in the British Civil Hospital at Smyrna 

 during the Crimean War, He became Lee's 

 Reader in Anatomy at Christ Church Col- 

 lege, Oxford, in 1S57, and was appointed to 

 his professorship, as the first to occupy the 

 newly founded chair, in 1860. He is' best 

 known by his work on " The Forms of Ani- 

 mal Life,'' an outline of zoological classifi- 

 cation based upon anatomical investigations, 

 by his important contributions to Canon 

 Greenwell's " British Barrows," and by nu- 

 merous contributions to the " Transactions " 

 of the Royal Linnaean and Archaeological 

 Societies, and to many scientific jouraals. 



Professor Ira Remsen has recently re- 

 ported to the National Board of Health, the 

 result of investigations he has made to as- 

 certain whether carbonic oxide escapes from 

 cast-iron stoves and furnaces in sufficient 

 quantities to be dangerous. French chem- 

 ists have asserted that it does ; experiments 

 made in Germany have failed to sustain 

 their conclusion. Professor Remsen used 

 Vogel's test for carbonic oxide, as improved 

 by Ilerapel, and was able to detect as small 



a quantity as 004 parts of the oxide to 

 1,0U0 of air, while Yogel by his original 

 test could not detect a smaller proportion 

 than 2-5 parts per 1,000. In a careful 

 examination of several furnaces in Balti- 

 more, including some bad ones, carbonic 

 oxide was not detected in a single case. A 

 1 stove of peculiar construction was experi- 

 mented upon under various conditions, to 

 ascertain whether carbonic oxide actually 

 passes through cast-iron heated to redness, 

 with the result that none of the gas was 

 foimd escaping. The conclusion is there- 

 fore drawn that if carbonic oxide is present 

 in rooms it is in a smaller proportion than 

 0*04 parts per 1,000 ; and it remains to be 

 shown whether so small a quantity is dan- 

 gerous to health. 



Among the recent entomological contri- 

 butions to the "American Naturalist '' is 

 one by George Marx, of Washington, D. C, 

 on a tube-constructing spider which he has 

 discovered in the grounds of grass lands. 

 The nests of these insects are outwardly 

 about three quarters of an inch high, com- 

 posed of grass, sticks of wood, etc., and 

 much resembling a bird's nest. Within 

 they are cylindrical, and communicate with 

 a shaft some eight or nine inches deep, at 

 the bottom of which was foimd (in October) 

 a torpid spider. The nest and tube were 

 strengthened by a lining resembling a very 

 fine tissue-paper, which showed under the 

 microscope no web-structure, but a hard- 

 ened tissue, like varnish. Several of the 

 nests were found, all constructed on the 

 same plan. Nests of a similar character, 

 but not identical, are described by Mr. Nich- 

 olas Pike, Mr. S. H. Scudder, and Mrs. M. 

 Treat, as havinsr been found in the sand 

 near the seashore. Mr. Marx believes his 

 specimens to be of a different species from 

 the others, chiefly because the nests of the 

 latter appeared to be used in summer and 

 to contain eggs, while his nests were fresh 

 in the fall, dilapidated and empty in the 

 summer, indicating that they were used only 

 as winter residences. 



Professor J. W. Mallet has published an 

 account of his determinations of the atomic 

 we^ht of aluminum by series of experi- 

 ments in three methods. The first method 

 was by the ignition of ammonia alum, the 

 second by the precipitation of the bromine 

 in aluminum bromide by silver, and the 

 third by the evolution of hydrogen through 

 the action of metallic aluminum upon so- 

 dium hydrate. In the last method the hy- 

 drogen was determined, first, by the direct 

 measurement of its volume, and, second, by 

 weighing the water produced by its oxida- 

 tion. The mean result of thirty experiments, 

 ten in the first method, eleven in the second, 

 and nine in the third, rejecting one of the 

 results as too wide of the mark, was 2702. 



