NOTES. 



H3 



sheep which had been previously vaccinated. 

 Three days afterward fifteen of the sixteen 

 unvacciuated sheep were dead, while the 

 nineteen vaccinated ones were perfectly 

 healthy. M. Toussaint has discovered that 

 a female animal which has been inoculated 

 for this disease transmits her immunity to 

 her offspring, and that equally well whether 

 the inoculation was made before conception 

 or afterward. 



NOTES. 



Professor T. J. Burrill, in the " Amer- 

 ican Naturalist," refers certain blights and 

 diseases of plants to the agency of bacteria. 

 Those organisms appear to be an active 

 cause of the blight in pear and apple trees. 

 The cells of blighted pear-trees are desti- 

 tute of the starch-grains with which the 

 healthy cells are filled, but traces of fermen- 

 tation have been discovered in them, and 

 bacteria have been uniformly observed in 

 the juices of diseased pear and apple trees. 

 The death of patches of bark on the trunk 

 and larger limbs of apple-trees is ascribed 

 by Professor Burrill to the same cause. The 

 yellows of the peach-tree have been shown 

 by the discovery of bacteria under the mi- 

 croscope to be caused by a similar organism, 

 as are also the blights of the Lombardy 

 poplar and the aspen. 



Mr. E. E. Fish, in the " Bulletin " of the 

 Buffalo Society of Natural Sciences collates 

 several instances to show that the power of 

 repeating from imitation other sounds than 

 their own notes, which has been noticed in 

 only a few species, is common to many 

 birds. He has observed the sparrow sing- 

 ing clearly the song of the chewink or tow- 

 hee bunting and of the pewit ; the robin 

 interspersing the notes of a phebe-bird 

 with each song, " with such exactness as to 

 deceive any one who might not see the bird 

 while siuging " ; another robin utter the 

 notes of the oriole ; the red - eyed vireo 

 whistle the " Bob White " of the quail, de- 

 ceiving those who heard it and did not see it. 



How fallible is a name as a guide to any 

 fact in respect to the article to which it is 

 applied is curiously shown in the case of 

 the "Jordan almonds," which even Philip 

 Miller, in Bailey's Dictionary, said were so 

 called because the best of them grew near 

 the river Jordan. In fact, no almonds come, 

 or ever did come, from the Jordan. An 

 old work, however, mentions " Jardync al- 

 maunde, Arnigdalum jardi nam" and solves 

 the doubt. Jordan is a corruption of jarden ; 

 the Jordan almond is simply a garden or 

 cultivated almond. 



Mr. James B. Francis, President of the 

 American Society of Civil Engineers, endeav- 

 oring to account for the origin of anchor or 

 ground-ice, shows that it is formed in streams 

 where the water is much disturbed, rising 

 and falling in upward and downward cur- 

 rents. The ice-needles in course of forma- 

 tion, having nearly the same speeilic gravity, 

 are carried down with the descending cur- 

 rents, and many of them become attached to 

 the bottom by regelation. Of the immense 

 number of needles that are formed, enough 

 thus adhere together at the bottom to form 

 a mass of ice there. The essential conditions 

 to the formation of ground-ice are, that the 

 temperature of the water must be at the 

 freezing-point, and that of the air below it ; 

 that the surface of the water must be ex- 

 posed to the air, and there must be a cur- 

 rent in the water all of which are in har- 

 mony with this theory. The adherence of 

 the ice to the bottom is always down-stream 

 from where the needles are found, and in 

 large streams it is many miles below. 



Professor Alexander IIogg, in an ad- 

 dress, at Marshall University, Texas, illus- 

 trated the extent to which the English lan- 

 guage has spread, by referring to the time 

 when Mary Beatrice, of Modena, about to 

 marry the Duke of York, afterward King 

 James II, did not know where England was ; 

 then to one hundred years ago, when French 

 was spoken by twice as many native French- 

 men as there were English-speaking people, 

 while German was the language of at least 

 an equal number, and Spanish had a wider 

 geographical range than either German, 

 French, or English; and, comparing these 

 periods with the present, when English is 

 the language of one hundred million people, 

 and bids fair, before another hundred years, 

 to be that of ten times as many. 



Mr. Rhees's biography of Smithson, 

 published by the Smithsonian Institution, 

 states that the precise date and place of 

 his nativity are unknown. Mr. Joseph L. 

 Chester states, in the "Academy," that the 

 matriculation register of the University of 

 Oxford shows that Smithson matriculated 

 as James Lewis Macie, from Pembroke Col- 

 lege, on May 7, 1782, at the age of seven- 

 teen, and that he was a native of London. 

 As the age at the last birthday was always 

 required, it follows that he was born be- 

 tween May 7, 1764 and May 7, 1705. The 

 date, about 1754, given by Mr. Rhees as that 

 of Smithson's birth, is, then, ten years too 

 early. 



M. Schll'mberger, describing the power- 

 ful antiseptic qualities of salicj lie acid, says 

 that, employed in infinitely s:nall doses, it 

 hinders the action of nitrogenous ferments, 

 and forms stable combinations with them. 

 In hygiene, it is a valuable disinfecting and 



