NOTES. 



43i 



for small boats, but would be of no use for 

 large vessels. The English Government 

 tried to buy the invention exclusively for 

 England, but Sauvage refused to sell it on 

 such term3. It was applied to a steamer in 

 1841, after plans furnished by Sauvage, but 

 the builder and engineer of the vessel took 

 all the credit for it. After an experience 

 in the debtors' prison, and then spending 

 $16,000 in experiments during ten years, 

 Sauvage passed the last years of his unfort- 

 unate life in the Picpus asylum. The pri- 

 ority of his invention is disputed in behalf 

 of several Englishmen : of James Watt, 

 who proposed to use a screw in If 70; of 

 Edward Shorter, who patented a propeller 

 in 1800, and applied it two years after- 

 ward ; of Stevens, in the United States, who 

 tried to drive a boat by a screw in 1801 ; of 

 Trevithick, who invented a screw-propeller 

 in 1816 ; and of Samuel Brown, who used 

 one in 1827. F. Pettit Smith, to whom 

 more than any other person we owe the use 

 of this motor, never claimed to be its in- 

 ventor, but only that he placed it in the 

 dead-wood of the vessel. The " Revue Sci- 

 entifique " claims the credit of the invention 

 for Charles Dallery, who obtained a patent 

 for a screw-propeller and a tubular boiler 

 in 1S03. 



NOTES. 



The fifth annual meeting of the Ameri- 

 can Society of Microscopists will be held at 

 Elmira, New York, Tuesday, August 15th, 

 and on the three following days. Liberal 

 arrangements have been made by the local 

 committee for entertainment. A meeting 

 of great interest is anticipated. A larger 

 list of papers than on any previous occasion 

 has been promised, and preparations have 

 been made for a full display of instruments, 

 accessories, and objects. Committee reports 

 are to be made " On Eye-pieces," " On Re- 

 vision of the Constitution," and " On the 

 Question of a Quarterly Journal." Members 

 intending to be present will please notify 

 Dr. Thaddeus & Updegraff, secretary of the 

 local society, Elmira, New York ; members 

 intending to present papers or communica- 

 tions, to Professor D. S. Kellicott, secretary 

 of the association, 119 Fourteenth Street, 

 Buffalo, New York. 



M. A. Blavier has endeavored to ac- 

 count for certain remarkable climatological 

 anomalies that have been recently observed 



in France, by supposing that the Gulf 

 Stream was deflected from its regular 

 course. He observes that the sardines, 

 which, in their regular migrations, follow 

 exactly the course of the derivative current 

 of the Gulf Stream, called the Rennel, have 

 followed another route than their usual one 

 to the ocean ; also that a slight elevation of 

 temperature has been observed in Shetland ; 

 and that an accumulation of ice has been 

 noticed at the French station in Iceland. 



M. de Lacerba, of the Physiological Lab- 

 oratory of Rio Janeiro, recommends the 

 permanganate of potash as a sure antidote 

 for the bite of venomous snakes. To be 

 effective the solution of the salt should be 

 prepared at the moment of using it ; and in 

 order that it may always be on hand, he 

 recommends that packages be put up to be 

 carried by persons going into dangerous 

 spots, containing one tenth of a gramme of 

 the permanganate, and a ten-gramme bot- 

 tle. The solution should be injected with a 

 syringe. 



From a statement made in the French 

 Academy of Sciences, by M. Gosselin, it ap- 

 pears that M. Collin, of Alfort, has found 

 that American trichinous meat contains al- 

 most exclusively dead trichina?, and is, there- 

 fore, not particularly dangerous. 



Macgillivray, in his narrative of the 

 voyage of H. M. S. Rattlesnake in 1852, 

 said that he had seen the skulls of children 

 at Cape York pressed into a conical shape 

 by the constant manipulation of their moth- 

 ers. Von Baer doubted the possibility of 

 such an effect being thus produced. Dr. 

 Miklucho Maclay, however, saw the press- 

 ure actually applied by the mothers at Tor- 

 res Straits in 1880. He says that, during 

 the first weeks of the lives of the children, 

 the mothers were accustomed to spend 

 several hours each day in compressing the 

 heads of their children, for the express pur- 

 pose of giving them a conical shape. An- 

 other kind of deformity, in the heads of the 

 women, resulting; from their habits in carrv- 

 ing loads, was observed by Dr. Maclay m 

 N'.w Guinea. The women here were accus- 

 tomed to put whatever they had to carry 

 into bags, which they supported by bands 

 laid on their heads, a little behind the coro- 

 nal suture. This practice, pursued from 

 childhood, produced a saddle-shaped depres- 

 sion across the skull, which was sometimes 

 three or four millimetres deep. 



Professor E. Desor, of Neufchatel, 

 Switzerland, geologist and anthropologist, 

 and a student of glaciers and glacial geol- 

 ogy, died in March last. He lived several 

 years in the United States, and has left his 

 mark on American geology and marine 

 zoology. 



