720 



POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



tor hung fire, there was no danger of the 

 charge going off accidentally some time after 

 the explosion was due, nor was there any 

 risk of its being purloined or used for crimi- 

 nal purposes. 



NOTES. 



According to the Tribune de Geneve, 

 twenty new hotels were opened in Switzer- 

 land in 1897, and twenty-five were enlarged, 

 adding two thousand beds and making the 

 whole number of beds about ninety thousand. 

 The number of nights' lodgings furnished 

 during the season is estimated at ten million. 

 Supposing each guest to spend twelve francs 

 a day, the total revenue from tourists would 

 amount to one hundred and twenty million 

 francs, or twenty four million dollars. Classi- 

 fying the guests according to nationality, it is 

 estimated that the Swiss constitute eighteen 

 per cent of the whole, Germans thirty-four 

 per cent, English sixteen per cent, French 

 twelve per cent, Americans eight per cent, 

 and those of other nations twelve per cent. 



A list of women astronomers, compiled 

 by Herman S. Davis from Ribiere's Les 

 Femmes dans la Science, contains as con- 

 t miporary workers in the science the names 

 of seventeen American women who have 

 taken part in astronomical computations or 

 are teachers of astronomy, and twelve who 

 are working in the application of photog- 

 raphy to astronomy. Of the women in the 

 later li-t, Miss Ida C. Martin, Miss Dr. Doro- 

 thea Klumpke (now in the Paris Observatory), 

 and Mrs. M. P. Fleming have attained dis- 

 tinction for successful original researches. 



The object of the Pure Food and Drug 

 Congress, which met in Washington in March, 

 1898, with Joseph E. Blackburn, of Colum- 

 bus, Ohio, as president, is declared in its 

 resolutions to be to secure suitable national 

 legislation to prevent the adulteration of 

 food, drink, and drugs, to secure the enforce- 

 ment of laws, and secure and promote uni- 

 formity of State legislation looking to that 

 end ; to create and maintain a high public 

 sentiment on these subjects, to sustain public 

 officers enforcing the laws respecting them ; 

 and to promote a more general intelligence 

 concerning the injury to health and business 

 interests resulting from food adulteration. 

 In this work all are invited to join. The 

 congress was in session four days, and sev- 

 eral important papers were read to it. 



The large Atlantic coastal plain begin- 

 ning with southern New Jersey, Mr. John 

 Gifford affirms, in The Forester, would soon 

 be capable, if protected from reckless devas- 

 tation, of producing almost limitless quanti- 

 ties of the valuable smooth-bark or short leaf 

 pine. In Northampton and Accomac Coun- 

 ties, Virginia, lying in this plain, the forests 

 are already properly cared for and propa- 



gated without the aid of forest laws. This is 

 done by insuring their freedom from fire, 

 which is attended to purely as a matter of 

 present economy. The value of the woods in 

 holding the loose sandy soil and as wind- 

 breaks is recognized, and the litter of the 

 pine trees is a precious dressing for the 

 sweet potato fields. This litter, of pine 

 " chats," " needles," or " browse," is care- 

 fully raked off every year and spread on the 

 fields, and there is nothing left in which fire 

 can start. 



The Lalande prize of the French Acad- 

 emy of Sciences has been conferred upon 

 Prof. S. C. Chandler, of Cambridge, Mass., 

 in recognition of " the splendor, the impor- 

 tance, and the variety " of his astronomical 

 work ; the Damoiseau prize upon Dr. George 

 William Hill, of Washington, for his re- 

 searches in mathematics and astronomy; 

 and the Henry Wilde prize on Dr. Charles 

 A. Schott, of Washington, for his researches 

 in terrestrial magnetism. 



Prof. J. Mark Baldwin, of Princeton, 

 author of the bocks The Development of 

 the Child and the Race, Handbook of Psy- 

 chology, and The Story of the Mind, has 

 been elected a member of the French Insti- 

 tute of Sociology. 



Among the recent deaths of men asso- 

 ciated with scientific pursuits we notice 

 those of Charles Michel Brisse, professor at 

 the Lycee Condorcet for twenty-five years, 

 and professor at other French schools, author 

 of papers on the displacement of figures and 

 on the general theory of surfaces, and of 

 other works in mathematics and mathemat- 

 ical physics, and a co-worker on the Journal 

 de Physique, in his fifty-sixth year; Prof. 

 H. Alleyn Nicholson, of the University of 

 Aberdeen, author of books on zoology and 

 geology ; M. F. Gay, of the University of 

 Montpellier, a student of the green algae, aged 

 forty years ; Dr. Dumontpallier, of Paris, 

 author of contributions to the pathology of 

 the nervous system, aged seventy-four years ; 

 Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Pringle, of the 

 British Army, author of papers on the hy- 

 giene and diseases of India ; Pastor Christian 

 Kaurin, of Norway, a student of Scandi- 

 navian mosses, aged sixty-six years ; T. Car- 

 nel, professor of botany and director of the 

 Botanic Garden, Florence ; the Rev. Barthol- 

 omew Price, author of several elaborate 

 works in mathematics, and secretary of the 

 Oxford University Press, in his eighty-first 

 year; Dr. Constantino Vousakis, professor 

 of physiology in the University of Athens ; 

 William Dames, professor of geology and 

 paleontology in the University of Berlin, and 

 subeditor of the Palaontologisehe Abhand- 

 lungen, in his fifty-second year; and Dr. 

 Gottlieb Gluge, emeritus professor of physi- 

 ology and anatomy in the University of Ber- 

 lin and author of an atlas of pathological 

 anatomy, aged eighty- six years. 



