864 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Dr. D. TV. Prentiss, of Washington, D. 

 C, has described a remarkable change in 

 the color of the hair which followed the 

 use of pilocarpine in the case of a young 

 woman treated by him. The hair, which 

 was at first light blonde, with a yellow 

 tinge, became chestnut brown in the course 

 of a month and almost a pure black in six 

 months, and acquired a more vigorous and 

 thicker growth. A microscopic examina- 

 tion showed that the change in color was 

 due to an increase of the normal pigment, 

 and not to a dye. The eyes also became 

 darker. The hair of an infant, treated for 

 croup, showed a distinct change to a darker 

 color after ten days' use of pilocarpine. 



The death is announced of M. Bussy, the 

 eminent French chemist. He was the first 

 person that succeeded in obtaining metallic 

 magnesium. 



Mr. M. E. Wadsworth has called atten- 

 tion to a confusion in which the term 

 Laurentian as the name of a geological for- 

 mation has become involved by its having 

 been appropriated to two different sets of 

 rocks. Mr. Edward Desor first used the 

 name in 1850, and applied it to some ma- 

 rine deposits in Maine, on the St. Lawrence 

 River, and on Lakes Champlain and Onta- 

 rio. He employed it afterward in several 

 papers published in scientific journals and 

 transactions, and it seems to have passed 

 into current use among geologists between 

 1850 and 1857. Sir William Logan in 1854 

 applied the same name to the Canadian 

 rocks, which he had heretofore called the 

 "metamorphic series," and which are the 

 equivalents of the Azoic rocks of Foster 

 and Whitney. Mr. AVadsworth maintains 

 that the later appropriation should give 

 way to the earlier application. 



Professor E. D. Cope describes the re- 

 mains of a large mosasauroid reptile, to 

 which he gives the name of CUdastcs cono- 

 don, of which a part of a skeleton has been 

 discovered by Professor Samuel Lockwood 

 near Freehold, New Jersey. The parts 

 found include numerous vertebra? ; the 

 greater part of the lower jaw, with some 

 teeth ; a humerus and ulna nearly perfect ; 

 a nearly entire coracoid, and parts of both 

 scapulas ; and indicate an animal larger 

 than any Clidaslcs hitherto known. 



Hermann von Schlagintweit, the eldest 

 of the three brothers who became distin- 

 guished by their explorations of the high- 

 lands and mountain-regions of India, died 

 in Munich on the 19th of January. He was 

 born in 182(5, published works on the phys- 

 ical geography of the Alps in 1S50 and 185 1, 

 and in the three years following IS 11 trav- 

 eled with his brothers Adolph and Robert 

 through the East Himalaya region and As- 

 sam, Cashmere, Ladakh, and Balti, and over 



the Karakorum and Kuen-Lun Mountains to 

 Chinese Turkistan. The results of their 

 explorations have been embodied in two 

 works of high scientific value, which, unfor- 

 tunately, are not yet completed. 



The crayon-pencils now much used by 

 children have been found to be colored 

 with poisonous dyes. The Dublin "Jour- 

 nal of Medicine " has an account of a child 

 who was taken with all the symptoms of 

 poisoning, for which he was treated with 

 emetics and purgatives. The vomited mat- 

 ter was marked by particles of a green sub- 

 stance containing copper, and the discharges 

 from the bowels bright-green fragments. 

 The child was sick for a month. It was 

 found, on examination, that he had eaten 

 a part of a green crayon, colored with ar- 

 senite of copper. 



The deaths of Dr. Karl Peters, Professor 

 of Mineralogy and Geology at Griitz Univer- 

 sity, and author of numerous papers, and 

 of Dr. Karl Fortlage, Professor of Philoso- 

 phy at the University of Jena, are announced. 

 Dr. Peters was fifty-seven and Dr. Fortlage 

 seventy-five years of age. 



A report has been published by the 

 Legislative Assembly of New South Wales 

 on museums for technology, science, and 

 art, and upon scientific, professional, and 

 technical instruction in the colony, which 

 is full of information in connection with the 

 extension of scientific instruction in its re- 

 lations to technology. 



Dr. Pellegrino Manteucci, who died in 

 London on the 8th of August last, in the 

 thirty-first year of his age, had just accom- 

 plished the hitherto unachieved task of 

 crossing Africa from the Red Sea to the 

 Gulf of Guinea. He left Suakim on the 

 Red Sea, with two companions, in March, 

 1880, with the intention of crossing the con- 

 tinent. Prince Borghese left him at Dar- 

 foor, and he and Lieutenant Massari went 

 on alone. Reaching the Niger, they em- 

 barked on that river and arrived at Egga, 

 where they found the agent of a European 

 company on the 8th of June, and set sail for 

 Europe on the 1st of July. The two trav- 

 elers entered the Mersey on the 5th of August, 

 only three days before Manteucci's death. 



The first discovery of fossil human re- 

 mains in the caverns of Brazil has been 

 made by Dr. Lund near Agua Santa, prov- 

 ince of Minas Geraes, where an osseous 

 breccia has been found, containing human 

 debris, closely associated with the remains 

 of extinct species. 



Dr. Javal has recently declared, in a 

 communication to the Societe de Medecine 

 Publique el d'Hygiene Professionelle, that 

 the electric light, in the degree of division 

 to which it has been brought, is absolutely 

 harmless, and without danger to the sight. 



