NOTES. 



863 



but no one doctor knew the names of three 

 hundred species. Many of the most common 

 plants and brightest flowers have no Chero- 

 kee names, for the Indians do not use them 

 for food or medicine. Yet their country — 

 the mountain region of western North Caro- 

 lina — can probably furnish two thousand 

 species of plants. The Indian has no ap- 

 preciation of the beauty or fragrance of a 

 flower. 



An extract from a lecture by J. Lewis 

 Smith, M. D., of Bellevue Medical College, 

 on Growing Pains, contains some very valu- 

 able cautions. He says the pains in the 

 limbs experienced by many children, and 

 attributed to rapid growth, are very com- 

 monly slight attacks of inflammatory rheuma- 

 tism, a dangerous and painful disease when 

 occurring in an adult. 



The practice of cremation in place of 

 ordinary burial is making steady progress in 

 Paris, in spite of the opposition to it which 

 exists in certain quarters. At the new cre- 

 matorium of the cemetery " Pere-la-chaise " 

 a furnace is in operation which will re- 

 duce a body to ashes in less than an hour, at 

 a cost of about thirty cents for fuel. Since 

 the establishment of this system in the 

 French capital twelve hundred unclaimed 

 bodies of persons who have died in hospitals 

 have been thus disposed of, besides the 

 bodies of three hundred of the well-to-do 

 classes, whose wishes have been thus com- 

 plied with. 



A description is published by T. H. Lewis 

 of the sculptured figures on a rock of the 

 Potsdam sandstone on the bank of the Trem- 

 peleau River, near Trempeleau, Wisconsin. 

 The figures consist chiefly of representations 

 of the hand and foot many times repeated, 

 crescent-shaped figures called canoes, and 

 what appears to be a fort. They are cut 

 very smoothly into the rock to the depth of 

 from a quarter of an inch to an inch, and 

 are in perfect preservation. 



A mixture of sixty parts of chloride of 

 sodium and forty parts of cryolite or double 

 fluoride of aluminum and sodium having 

 been melted at a temperature of from 850° 

 to 1,100° C, was submitted to electrolysis by 

 M. Minet. Metallic aluminum flowed out of 

 the cathode, which was in charcoal, into a 

 crucible, whence it was extracted at the 

 close of the operation. The author pro- 

 duced in this way, in twenty-four hours, 5,250 

 grains of metallic aluminum. 



Prof. Arthur Dodel, of the University 

 of Zurich, says that he has observed, of his 

 students in botanic microscopy, that the av- 

 erage of those from America drew better 

 than those from Europe of the same age who 

 competed with them. To this he would add 

 the circumstance that in America, during the 

 last two years, the technique of reproduction 

 has made more progress than in any other 



part of the world. For the cause of this 

 excellence, Prof. Dodel refers to the method 

 of the instruction in drawing in the primary 

 and intermediate schools. " It will not be 

 surprising," he adds, " if this vigilant na- 

 tion finally surpasses us, and also puts us in 

 the shade in the field of artistic painting and 

 sculpture. This I call an enjoyable danger, 

 and greet it in advance in the interest of the 

 general welfare of humanity." 



The commission appointed to consider 

 the question of coal-waste in the State of 

 Pennsylvania has sent out a circular of in- 

 quiries on topics relating to the investiga- 

 tion it has undertaken. The questions come 

 under three categories, of Geological and 

 Statistical Waste, Waste of Producing and 

 Marketing, and Ltilization of Coal Waste. 

 Under the first head are questions relating 

 to the amount, annual production, and natu- 

 ral wastes of the coal-beds. The second 

 heading includes the waste incurred in pre- 

 paring the coal for market, the amount of 

 culm, etc. The third head embraces the 

 Briquette system of preparing the waste for 

 use; the appliances by which it is utilized 

 without mechanical preparation ; and the 

 gasifying processes and use in the destruc- 

 tion of garbage or cremating work, and in 

 agricultural experimentation. 



Mr. David P. Todd, of the Smithsonian 

 Institution, has made a report of progress in 

 an investigation in which he is engaged of 

 the variations of the elements of terrestrial 

 magnetism. Since the demonstration that 

 the direct influence of the sun and the moon 

 upon the earth, each being considered as 

 magnets, is inappreciable, all attempts to 

 construct a theory of terrestrial magnetism 

 have been confined to causes within the 

 earth's atmosphere. These efforts — the aim 

 of which has been to constitute currents by 

 friction in the earth's crust, or in the at- 

 mosphere by changes of density and humid- 

 ity — have failed to account for the periodic 

 nature of the phenomena. Consequently, 

 the vast masses of magnetic observations 

 already accumulated are unconnected by any 

 proposed combination of natural laws. It 

 appears, however, that one cause of vital im- 

 portance has been omitted from the ele- 

 ments of the problem, namely, the motion of 

 the earth, as referred to the ether in its 

 neighborhood ; and the author proposes to 

 base an explanation of terrestrial magnetism 

 upon the dynamic effects produced by the 

 inductive action of the earth in its motions 

 of rotation and translation through fields of 

 force — or, by regarding the earth as a cos- 

 mical dynamo. 



Some new and remarkable results are de- 

 scribed by M. Friedel as following the action 

 of alkalies and alkaline silicates on mica un- 

 der the double influence of water and a high 

 temperature. With potash and the brown 

 mica called muscovite, numerous crystals of 



