432 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Preserving fruits and vegetables by dry- 

 ins in the sun has been practiced from time 

 immemorial. Within historical times dry- 

 ing in kilns has been introduced, and within 

 the present century compression of the dried 

 product has been added to the process by the 

 French. Immense quantities of dried and 

 compressed fruits and vegetables are pre- 

 pared for the British Army and Navy. In 

 the Crimean War the following proportions 

 for mixed vegetables were decided upon and 

 are still adhered to : potato forty per cent, 

 carrot thirtv, cabbage ten, turnip ten, and sea- 

 soning herbs (onion, leek, celery, parsley, 

 parsnip, etc.) ten per cent. The vegetables are 

 also put up separately to meet special wants 

 in various parts of the British possessions. 

 After being dried they are compressed to 

 about one eighth their original bulk, and 

 formed into small slabs which are packed in 

 soldered tins stamped inside with the year of 

 manufacture. 



The American Geologist states that the 

 largest gold-mine in the world is in Alaska. 

 It is lighted throughout by electricity and is 

 worked day and night. An offer of sixteen 

 million dollars for this mine has been refused. 



OBITUARY NOTES. 



The death of the German Count Keyser- 

 ling made a large breach in the little circle of 

 working araneologists, or students of spiders. 

 It was known that he had left a large amount 

 of manuscript for the concluding parts of 

 his work, Die Spinnen Amerikas, and this, it 

 was feared, would be lost to science. But 

 the publishers, with praiseworthy enterprise, 

 have resolved to complete Keyserling's work 

 as far as possible after his original plan. 

 They failed, however, to find any one in Eu- 

 rope who would edit the finished manuscripts 

 and complete the fourth volume, which treats 

 of the Epeiridce. In this emergency they so- 

 licited the aid of Dr. George Marx, of Wash- 

 ington, D. C, who has at last consented to un- 

 dertake the task. Being a thorough German 

 scholar and a well-furnished arancologist, Dr. 

 Marx is admirably equipped for this duty. 

 A large part of Count Keyserling's manu- 

 script, which was in a good degree of for- 

 wardness, has already been edited and will 

 soon be ready to transmit to Germany. Dr. 

 Marx will then edit the notes upon the Orbite- 

 larice and add descriptions of the species 

 which Keyserling had not reached at the 

 time of his death. He will thus contribute 

 about one third of the matter in what will con- 

 stitute Volume IV of Die Spinnen Amerikas. 



Eugene Pelitot, an eminent French chem- 

 ist, died April 8th, in the eightieth year of his 

 age. He was most distinguished in the field 

 of agricultural and economic chemistry. As a 

 pupil of Dumas, he published his first paper 

 in 1836, on wood-spirit and its derivatives, 

 lie was Professor of Chemistry successively 

 in the Ecole Centrale and the Conservatoire 



des Arts et Metiers, and of Analytical Chem- 

 istry applied to Agriculture in the National 

 Agronomic Institute; and for forty years 

 held a responsible position at the Mint. He 

 first isolated Uranium. He was author of 

 eighty papers on subjects of mineral and or- 

 ganic chemistry that bore relation to pure sci- 

 ence, industry, agriculture, and hygiene. The 

 most important of these were on the sugars. 



Sir John Henry Lefroy, a British officer 

 distinguished in military life and in science, 

 died in Lewarn, England, April lltb, in the 

 seventy-ninth year of his age. He was Di- 

 rector of the Magnetical and Meteorological 

 Observatory at St. Helena in 1840 and 1841, 

 and removed to a similar position in Toronto 

 in 1842. During the next year he made a 

 magnetic survey of the interior of North 

 America from Montreal to the Arctic Circle. 

 In 1854 and 1855 he was scientific adviser 

 to the Duke of Newcastle at the War Office 

 on subjects of artillery and inventions. He 

 has since held several high military appoint- 

 ments. 



Among the deaths of scientific men since 

 the beginning of the year, which have not 

 been specially noticed here, are those of 

 Dr. L. Taczanowski, of Warsaw, author of 

 works or papers on the ornithology of Peru, 

 Poland, Siberia, and Corea ; Otto Rosen- 

 berger, of Halle, best known in connection 

 with his work on Halley's comet ; Prof. Neu- 

 mayr, the geologist, of Vienna ; Dr. Gulia, 

 Professor of Botany, Hygiene, and Forensic 

 Medicine in the Royal University of Valetta, 

 Malta, and author of a flora of that island ; 

 Dr. F. Hauck, algologist, and author of the 

 volume on marine algae in the new edition 

 of Rabenhorst's Cryptogamic Flora of Ger- 

 many ; Lorenzo Respighi, of the Campidoglio 

 Observatory, Rome ; and Father Stephen Jo- 

 seph Perry, of the Stonyhurst Observatory, 

 England, who died in Demerara, where he 

 had gone to observe the eclipse of Decem- 

 ber 22, 1889. ■ 



Mr. James Nasmyth, the eminent Eng- 

 lish mechanical engineer and inventor of the 

 steam hammer, died in London, May *7th, 

 aged eighty-two years. He was born in Ed- 

 inburgh, the son of a distinguished artist. 

 When a boy he made a small steam-engine 

 for grinding his father's colors. In 1829 he 

 became an assistant to Mr. Maudsley in his 

 private workshop in London. After Mr. 

 Maudsley's death he made himself a set of 

 tools and began business, with a small capi- 

 tal, at Manchester. Besides the steam ham- 

 mer he invented a safety-ladle for foundries, 

 a ventilator for mines ; a steam-engine for 

 screw steamers, and a rolling-mill. He re- 

 tired from business in 1857 and became an 

 amateur astronomical observer, giving par- 

 ticular attention to the sun and the moon, 

 and to astronomical photography. His mon- 

 ograph on the moon, prepared in conjunction 

 with Dr. Carpenter, of Greenwich, is the most 

 valuable English work on the subject. 



