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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



M. P. Puiseux, remarking upon the ap- 

 parent relations between the activity of 

 vegetation and actinometric conditions, cites 

 in illustration the promptitude with which 

 plants mature during the summer of lands 

 which the snow hardly leaves. Phaneroga- 

 mous plants may be found at the height of 

 twelve thousand feet, ranunculuses on the 

 Schreckhorn, saxifrages on the Gravola, go- 

 ing through all the phases of their develop- 

 ment in the space of three months under a 

 mean temperature, according to ordinary 

 estimates, considerably inferior to that of 

 the polar regions. Doubtless these plants 

 find a compensation for the unfavorable 

 thermic conditions in the intensity of the 

 solar radiation at great altitudes, which is 

 increased by the reflections from the snow. 



M. Gautier insists, in a number of 

 communications to the French Academy of 

 Sciences, that the venom of serpents con- 

 tains a toxic substance analogous to the 

 alkaloids and the ptomaines. The venom 

 of the Vaja tripudians, of which a quarter 

 of a milligramme will kill a sparrow, may 

 be boiled, filtered, and treated with alcohol, 

 without losing its activity. These proper- 

 ties indicate a relation with the alkaloids. 

 Not only the saliva of serpents, the salivas 

 of other animals of the dog, the hare, even 

 of man are capable of exhibiting delete- 

 rious properties. An extract from human 

 saliva furnishes an extremely poisonous 

 liquid, capable of killing a bird almost as 

 quickly as the venom of a serpent. Thus 

 the saliva of man, the dog, and the serpent, 

 all contain toxic alkaloids, and do not differ 

 essentially except in the higher or lower 

 degree of concentration of the poison ; and 

 it appears that animal as well as vegetable 

 tissues are capable of elaborating alkaloids. 



M. G. Delaunay has been studying the 

 influence exercised by the greater or less in- 

 tensity of the nutritive phenomena in cases 

 of poisoning by strychnine. Equal doses 

 of strychnine were given to two frogs, one 

 of which had been kept active for a half- 

 hour previously. The poison took effect 

 more quickly and more actively upon this 

 one than upon the one that had been quiet. 

 In another experiment, the poison operated 

 more slowly and more lightly upon a frog 

 that had been bled than upon the other one, 

 which had not been hurt. When one of the 

 frogs was bled after taking the poison, it 

 exhibited a tendency to return to the nor- 

 mal condition in measure as it lost blood. 



M. Albert Gaudry has been elected to 

 fill the chair in the French Academy which 

 was made vacant by the death of M. Sainte- 

 Claire Deville, receiving forty votes to eight- 

 een cast for his competitor, M. Laury, ge- 

 ologist. " La Nature " remarks that with 

 M. Gaudry a new science, paleontology, ob- 

 tains representation in the institute. 



Dr. K. von Fritsch, of Halle, maintains 

 that the causes of earthquakes are much 

 slighter than has been generally believed, 

 that they may be sought at a depth of not 

 more than ten or fourteen miles, and often 

 of less, and that rather feeble forces may 

 produce earthquakes which will be felt at 

 great distances. The hammer in Krupp's ' 

 factory, which weighs a thousand centners, 

 and falls from a height of ten feet, pro- 

 duces sensible concussions over a surface 

 five miles in diameter ; and a recent explo- 

 sion in a dynamite factory was felt at be- 

 tween twenty-five and thirty miles away. 

 Dr. Fritsch points out how earthquakes 

 might and must be produced by the increase 

 and decrease in volume of rocks under the 

 influence of physical and chemical forces, 

 by concussions, by the opening of crevice9 

 in rocks, and by the subsidence of masses 

 of rocks due to these agencies. 



Dr. S. Gibbon, medical officer for the 

 Holborn district, London, says in his latest 

 report that, whatever may be the cause, 

 there is no doubt that a Jew's life in Lon- 

 don is, on an average, worth twice as many 

 years as a Christian's. The Hebrews of the 

 metropolis are notoriously exempt from tu- 

 bercular and scrofulous taint. Pulmonary 

 consumption is very rare among them. The 

 medical officer of one of the Jewish schools 

 has remarked that their children do not die 

 in anything like the same ratio as Christian 

 children. In High Street, Whitechapel, the 

 average death-rate on the north side, which 

 is occupied by Jews, is twenty per thousand, 

 while on the south side, which is occupied 

 by English and Irish Gentiles, it is forty- 

 three per thousand. 



Mr. C. R. Plowright, F. L. S., made 

 thirteen experiments last summer in inocu- 

 lating wheat-plants with the fungus of the 

 barberry-bush, and derived results adverse 

 to the theory that wheat-mildew is developed 

 from the fungus. One hundred and sev- 

 enty-six plants of wheat were employed, 

 seventy-eight of which were inoculated with 

 the barberry-fungus, and ninety-eight un- 

 inoculated ones were kept for check plants. 

 Seventy-six per cent of the inoculated plants 

 developed the rust in about fifteen days, and 

 seventy per cent of the uninoculated plants 

 developed it also. Only one experiment of 

 the thirteen seemed to support the theory 

 of metamorphosis. 



Mr. Muybridge has been exhibiting some 

 remarkable rapid-process photographs in 

 Paris, one of which is said to have been 

 taken in one hundredth of a second. He 

 has obtained a series of six photographs 

 during the leap of a clown, which when pro- 

 jected on a screen by a zoetrope exhibit the 

 clown as in motion, with all his changes of 

 position. 



