NOTES. 



43i 



was but little fixed capital to be damaged, 

 and the next year's production of the soil 

 would be as good as ever. But the effects of 

 to-day's wars in civilized countries are felt, 

 not by the belligerents only, but to the very 

 ends of the earth. The network of com- 

 merce is so complicated and extensive that 

 any suffering felt by one member of the fam- 

 ily of nations is shared in more or less by 

 all. The Lancashire weavers probably suf- 

 fered more from the stoppage of the cotton 

 supply in our civil war than they would have 

 done by any contingency in a war between 

 England and Germany or France. 



The researches of Mr. Charles B. Plow- 

 right into the distribution of calculous dis- 

 ease in England make apparent a corre- 

 spondence between it and gout, and some 

 likeness with the distribution of diabetes, 

 but little or no parallelism with that of rheu- 

 matism and albuminuria. When compared 

 with the rainfall map of the country, the 

 disease seems to prevail most where there is 

 least rain. So in Ireland, where the rainfall 

 is very heavy, fatality from calculus is rare. 

 Exposure to a dry atmosphere means, of 

 course, more loss of fluids to the body than 

 immersion in a moist atmosphere ; and it has 

 been proved experimentally that immersion 

 in water of a lower temperature than the 

 body of itself lessens the acidity of the 

 urine. 



Several agencies deleterious to health 

 are mentioned by M. Raymondeau as con- 

 fronting the workers in Limoges china-ware. 

 They are forced to occupy a position that 

 promotes a spinal curvature ; the dust aris- 

 ing in the early operations of crushing and 

 grinding the quartz is deleterious to the 

 lungs ; the work in preparing the paste is 

 done on a panned floor over which water 

 flows continuously, or under conditions favor- 

 able to the propagation of the maladies of 

 dampness ; those who have to place the pre- 

 pared paste in the ovens are exposed to the 

 danger of an escape of sulphuric-acid gas ; 

 and those who turn, polish, and dust the 

 china suffer from the action of dust on their 

 bronchial tubes. 



Some interesting facts were furnished 

 some time ago by English hatters respecting 

 the sizes of men's hats. The "size" is a 

 mean between the length and breadth of the 

 hat ; thus, measurements of seven inches and 

 a half by six inches and a half would give 

 No. 7, and so on. The usual size for an adult 

 Englishman is No. 1. Germans have round 

 heads, Malays small ones. The heads of 

 Portuguese average from six inches and sev- 

 en eighths to seven inches ; those of Span- 

 iards are a little larger. The heads of Japa- 

 nese excel the English average. Men that 

 have much to do with horses are said to have 

 the smallest heads ; and a rough relation ap- 

 pears to exist between the size of the head- 

 dress and the mental capacity. 



Among the peculiar geological features 

 of Palestine, as described by Prof. Hull, are 

 traces of old sea margins two hundred feet 

 above the present sea margins, and the evi- 

 dences that an arm of the Mediterranean 

 had at one time occupied the valley of the 

 Nile as far as the First Cataract, when Afri- 

 ca was probably an island. It is also made 

 probable that, at the time of the Exodus, the 

 Red Sea ran up into the Bitter Lakes. In 

 illustration of the great changes that have 

 taken place in the elevation of the land east- 

 ward of these lakes, it was mentioned that 

 the waters of the Jordan Valley once stood 

 at 1,292 feet above their present height. 



A small exposure of peridotite in Pike 

 County, Ark., described by Messrs. Branner 

 and Brackett, of the State Geological Survey, 

 is regarded as important in the suggestion it 

 offers respecting the time and character of 

 the disturbing influences by means of which 

 the region was sunk toward the end of the 

 Cretaceous period beneath the ocean, and as 

 interesting because it is the third reported 

 occurrence of picrite-porphyry in the United 

 States. The entire exposure is 2,400 feet 

 long by 1,600 feet wide. 



A meeting of the International Congress 

 of Hygiene and Demography is arranged for, 

 to be held in London in 1 890. Sir Douglas 

 Galton is president of the organizing com- 

 mittee. 



Three asteroids which have been discov- 

 ered since the 1st of January, 1890, bring 

 the number of these worldlets that have been 

 identified up to 290. Most of the more re- 

 cent discoveries seem to have been made by 

 specialists who pursue the search for aste- 

 roids as their chief work. Mr. Luther, who 

 discovered No. 288, has been about forty 

 years at the business, and this is his twenty- 

 fourth planet. M. Charlois, the discoverer 

 of No. 289, has detected six of these. No. 

 290 is M. Palissa's seventieth asteroid, al- 

 though he has been looking for them only 

 since 1874. Mr. Peters, of Clinton, New 

 York, has discovered forty-eight. The broth- 

 ers Henri discovered seven each, but of late 

 years their attention has been turned from 

 this subject to that of photographing the sky. 



The collection of birds from the Galapa- 

 gos Archipelago, made in connection with the 

 voyage of the steamer Albatross in 1882, is 

 of special interest, for the reason that two 

 islands are represented in it upon which no 

 collections had been made before ; and sev- 

 eral new species have thus been added to 

 science ; while other islands have been care- 

 fully examined. From Mr. Robert Ridg- 

 way's description of these collections — pub- 

 lished among the Scientific Results of the Ex- 

 pedition — it appears that the avifauna of the 

 islands is not yet exhausted as a field for 

 promising research in the problem of the 

 derivative origin of species. 



