560 



POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the use of milk of tuberculous cows — a 

 matter of more than usual interest in 

 view of the attention which is being 

 given to the general subject of tubercu- 

 losis and its transmission. Experiments 

 in using the milk of tuberculous cows 

 for feeding calves at the Storrs Station 

 have been in progress for several years. 

 During the first two years, when the 

 cows had the disease only in its earliest 

 stages, the you-ig cattle which received 

 their milk and ran with them constant- 

 ly, exhibited no signs of the disease as 

 far as could be detected by the tubercu- 

 lin test or physical examination. But 

 the result for the next year and a half 

 was quite different. Five calves were 

 fed the milk of these same cows, and all 

 five responded to the tuberculin test 

 and proved to be diseased. The physical 

 condition of three of the cows indicated 

 that during the last year the disease 

 had progressed decidedly in them. 

 While the results indicate that the 

 danger from the spread of tubercu- 

 losis to other animals through the milk 

 is not always as great as has been sup- 

 posed, they suggest the exercise of 

 greater precaution in excluding from 

 use for supplying family milk all cows 

 in which the disease is sufficiently ad- 

 vanced to be detected. Experiments at 

 a number of places have shown that the 

 milk of tuberculous cows may be pas- 

 teurized and safely used for raising 

 calves, but precautions should be taken 

 to insure confining its use to this pur- 

 pose. 



Professok E. C. Pickering, director 

 of the Harvard College Observatory, 

 has been awarded the gold medal of the 

 Royal Astronomical Society. — The Helm- 

 holtz medal of the Prussian Academy of 

 Sciences has been conferred on Sir 

 George Gabriel Stokes, of Cambridge 

 University, this medal having been pre- 

 viously conferred only on Professor Vir- 

 chow and Lord Kelvin. — Sir Archibald 

 Geikie has retired from the directorship 

 of the Geological Survey of Great Brit- 

 ain and Ireland. — We note with regret 



the death of Elisha Gray, the American 

 inventor; of M. Ch. Hermite, the French 

 mathematician; of Professor Max vo« 

 Pettenkofer, the bacteriologist; of Fred- 

 eric W. H. Myers, secretary of the 

 Society for Psychical Research; and of 

 Miles Rock, the American geodesist. — 

 The International Zoological Congress 

 will hold its fifth session in Berlin, be- 

 ginning on August 12. — The Astronomi- 

 cal and Astrophysical Society of Ameri- 

 ca will hold its next meeting in Decem- 

 ber. — William H. Crocker, of San Fran- 

 cisco, has offered to defray the expenses 

 of a solar eclipse expedition to be sent 

 by the University of California from the 

 Lick Observatory to Sumatra to observe 

 the total eclipse of the sun on May 17. — 

 A bill has been introduced in the House 

 of Representatives directing the general 

 Government, through the Secretary of 

 the Interior, to secure title to the cliff 

 dwellers' region of New Mexico for park 

 and scientific purposes, and one in the 

 Senate appropriating $5,000,000 for the 

 purchase of land in the Appalachian 

 Mountains for a national forest reserve. 

 — Mr. Joseph White Sprague has left his 

 estate, valued at $200,000, so that it 

 will ultimately revert to the Smithsoni- 

 an Institution. — Johns Hopkins Univer- 

 sity has received a conditional gift of 

 land for a new site valued at $700,000. 

 — The French and German generals have 

 removed from the wall of Pekin the 

 superb astronomical instruments erected 

 two centuries ago by the Jesuit fathers, 

 and propose to send them partly to Ber- 

 lin and partly to Paris. The American 

 general has protested against this as an 

 act of vandalism. — Dr. Adams Paul 

 sen, director of the Meteorological 

 Institute of Copenhagen, has gone 

 to North Finland to study the 

 aurora. He undertook a similar expedi- 

 tion last winter to North Iceland. — 

 Prof. Baldwin Spencer and Mr. Gil- 

 len have arranged for another expedi- 

 tion in continuation of their investiga- 

 tions into the habits and folk-lore of 

 the natives of Central Australia and the 

 Northern Territory. 



