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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



near the shore. Genera which live in Arc- 

 tic seas at a temperature below the freezing- 

 point, find themselves at home in British 

 seas at a temperature several degrees higher, 

 and continue to be found in still warmer 

 seas, till near the Island of Zebu, where they 

 occur at 70 of temperature. Dr. Fuchs 

 does not deny that heat has an influence 

 in controlling the distribution, but he con- 

 tends that it is very much less than that of 

 light. 



The death of William Spottiswoode, 

 President of the Koyal Society, was an- 

 nounced by cable from London, June 27th. 

 Dr. Spottiswoode was born in 1825, and 

 was graduated at Oxford in 1S45, as first 

 class in mathematics. By inheritance he 

 became Queen's printer, and managed that 

 business through his life, but at the same 

 time continued his studies, and became fa- 

 mous in mathematics, languages, and phi- 

 losophy, and was active in educational mat- 

 ters. He contributed much that is of value 

 to scientific journals. He was President of 

 the Dublin Meeting of the British Associa- 

 tion in 1878, and in that capacity delivered 

 an address of remarkable qualities. A por- 

 trait of him and a short sketch were given 

 in the " Monthly " for November, 1878. 



Mr. F. W. Putnam has described, in a 

 paper before the American Antiquarian So- 

 ciety, a number of interesting copper im- 

 plements from Mexico. These articles are 

 now rare, because most of them have been 

 sent to the melting-pot. The implements 

 described by Mr. Putnam include a shapely 

 axe from San Luis Potosi ; axes from Tla- 

 colula, Oaxaca; "hoes," with semi-lunar 

 blades, from Teotitlan del Valle and Oaxa- 

 ca; and scrapers of a little different shape, 

 which are now in Dr. Valentini's collection 

 and in the Peabody Museum. The exact 

 character of many of these implements is 

 not yet determined. 



Another French expedition has started, 

 in the steamer Talisman, to explore the 

 depths of the Atlantic. It will begin with 

 the coast of Morocco and the vicinity of the 

 Canary Islands, and will go thence to the 

 Cape Verd Islands, the red-coral fisheries of 

 San Jago, and the desert islands of Branco 

 and Raza, which are frequented by saurians 

 that are found nowhere else, and will pay 

 particular attention to the Sargasso Sea and 

 its fauna. 



Dn. II. Leffmann has observed, in bot- 

 toms of some of the silicious geyser-waters 

 of the Yellowstone National Park, deposits 

 of gelatinous matter, which an analysis has 

 proved to be nearly pure silica. It is struc- 

 tureless, but becomes a white opaque mass 

 when heated and dried. Confined for some 

 weeks with strong sulphuric acid, it shrank 

 to about one tenth its former volume. 



The Rev. J. L. Zabriskie, of Nyack, New 

 York, records the discovery, from observa- 

 tions of pods which he was keeping in his 

 room, that the Wistaria-pod has the faculty 

 of exploding with a very audible noise, and 

 throwing its beans with force to a considera- 

 ble distance. Two of the pods in his room 

 thus exploded in succession. One of the 

 beans was thrown to a distance of sixteen 

 feet, and rebounded four feet. If it had been 

 ejected with the same force from the posi- 

 tion in which it grew on its native vine, it 

 would have flown for a distance of at least 

 thirty feet. 



Professor W. P. Blake has found na- 

 tive lead and minium occurring in galena, 

 near Bellevue, Idaho. The native lead is 

 in small, rounded masses or grains of an 

 eighth or a quarter of an inch in diameter, 

 and sometimes in reniform bunches weigh- 

 ing an ounce or more. The minium is gen- 

 erally found incrusting it. 



The efficiency of oil to temper the rage 

 of the waves in storms at sea is now gen- 

 erally recognized, and it is becoming the 

 practice for vessels to take oil with them to 

 be used in this way in cases of extremity. 

 The ship Glamorganshire was recently saved 

 in a tempest by the timely use of oil ; while 

 a powerful steamer, the Navarre, neglecting 

 it, was swept by the waves and went down 

 in the North Sea, on the 6th of March, with 

 those on board. The oil operates by pre- 

 venting the waves around the vessel from 

 breaking, and converting them into a heavy 

 swell. " Chambers's Journal " remarks that 

 " ships that leave port unfurnished with oil, 

 in case of emergency, are defrauded of one 

 of their chief elements of safety." 



M. Richet, Professor of Clinical Surgery 

 at Paris, has been chosen to the seat in the 

 French Academy of Sciences made vacant 

 by the death of M. Sedillot. 



The greenhouses of the Dutch garden- 

 ers have been recently infested by a mvria- 

 pod, heretofore unknown, called the Fon- 

 taria gracilis, which has the singular faculty 

 of emitting a strong odor of prussic acid 

 when attacked. A chemist of the country, 

 M. Guldensteeden-Egeling, has ascertained 

 that the animal really fabricates and se- 

 cretes hydrocyanic acid. This substance 

 bus hitherto been regarded as exclusively of 

 vegetable origin. 



M. Margis, of Paris, has succeeded in 

 obtaining oxygen directly from the atmos- 

 phere by dialysis. By forcing air through 

 a Beries of membranous bags prepared by 

 immersing taffeta in ether, sulphide of car- 

 bon, or alcohol, and covering with a fine 

 layer of caoutchouc, he has secured an in- 

 crease of the percentage of oxygen in re- 

 spect to nitrogen till the fourth bag gives 

 ninety-five per cent of pure oxygen. 



