576 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Among the relics found in the high 

 mound, on the Ohio River, opposite Ports- 

 mouth, Ohio, were two crosses and thirty 

 buckles of silver. The crosses were deco- 

 rated with leaves, but furnished no clew as 

 to their date ; but one of the buckles, which 

 was heart-shaped, bore the French crown of 

 1730 or 174>. The whole outfit probably 

 belonged to a convent of one of the Jesuit 

 missionaries. The discovery indicates that 

 the mound was used for burials down to 

 quite recent times. 



Emin Bey, as he is known, Emin Pasha, 

 as he has been promoted to be, Dr. Schnitz- 

 ler, as he is in his patronymic, has been for 

 ten years in the Egyptian service, for most 

 of the time successful governor of the Equa- 

 torial Province. He has done much for 

 science through his contributions to Peter- 

 mann's " Mitteilungen " and the " Proceed- 

 ings " of the Zoological Society ; and he is 

 described in " Nature " as " a good type of 

 the kind of explorer that is wanted, now 

 that mere pioneering work has been pretty 

 well exhausted ; a man well qualified by his 

 scientific training to remain in a particular 

 region for years if necessary, and study it 

 in all its aspects." 



Dr. Frantzel, of Berlin, reporting on 

 the effects of immoderate smoking upon the 

 heart, says that smoking, as a rule, agrees 

 with persons for many years, although by 

 degrees cigars of a finer flavor are chosen. 

 But all at once, without any assignable cause, 

 troubles are experienced with the heart, 

 which compel the calling in of the doctor. 

 Common cigars are not so liable to produce 

 these effects as the finer flavored ones. Nor 

 can the charge be laid upon cigarettes, al- 

 though they produce evils of their own. The 

 troubles seldom begin till after the smoker 

 is over thirty years of age, and most usually 

 attack him at between fifty and sixty. While 

 it has not been determined what it is that 

 makes smoking injurious, it appears certain 

 that the effect does not depend upon the 

 amount of nicotine. 



Mr. W. Doderck, Director of the Hong- 

 Kong Observatory, has prepared a table of 

 the relative frequency per year of danger- 

 ous storms in different seas and gulfs, which 

 shows the following results: Arabian Sea, 

 70; Bay of Bengal, 115; Southern Indian 

 Ocean, 53; Java Sea, 12; China Sea, 214; 

 Gulf of Mexico, 355. The hurricanes of the 

 Antilles and the typhoons of the China Sea 

 show a kind of monthly variation. The 

 former have their maximum in August and 

 their minimum in January; with the latter, 

 the maximum is in December and the mini- 

 mum in February. In the Java Sea and 

 the Southern Indian Ocean, the maximum 

 occurs in February; in the Bay of Bengal, 

 in October ; and in the Arabian Sea, in June. 



Two of the recent grants made by tne 

 trustees of the Elizabeth Thompson Science 

 Fund are in aid of American work : oi_e of 

 two hundred dollars for the investigation of 

 underground temperatures by a committee 

 of the Natural History Society; and one of 

 five hundred dollars to Professor E. D. Cope, 

 to secure the services of a skilled preparatcur 

 in working out the material accumulated for 

 the continuance of his researches on Ameri- 

 can fossil vertebrates. 



OBITUARY NOTES. 



Thomas Stevenson, the eminent con- 

 structor of the Bell Rock and numerous 

 other lighthouses, died May 8th, in the 

 sixty-ninth year of his age. He bore a part 

 in the designing and construction of thirty 

 lighthouses, and in numerous river, harbor, 

 and dock works. The results of his experi- 

 ments on the force, height, and action of 

 sea-waves, are published in his book " On 

 the Design and Construction of Harbors." 

 He was the author of great improvements 

 in lighthouse-lighting, and the optical appa- 

 ratus in each of his lighthouses was espe- 

 cially adapted to the situation. The results 

 of his researches on this point are given in 

 the book " Lighthouse Construction and Il- 

 lumination," which has been translated into 

 German. He was also interested in theo- 

 logical questions, and wrote tracts upon them. 



Professor Johan Edyard Aresciiotjg, 

 the Swedish botanist, died in Stockholm, 

 May 7th, in the seventy-seventh year of his 

 age. He was made Reader in Botany in the 

 University of Lund in 1839, and was ap- 

 pointed Professor of Botany in the Univer- 

 sity of Upsala in 1858. He held the last 

 position till 1876. He was the author of 

 numerous papers and monographs on botan- 

 ical subjects. 



Dr. Albert Eeli-Oho, botanist, died in 

 Alameda, California, March 31st, at seventy- 

 four years of age. He was born in Connecti- 

 cut, and went to California in the early days 

 of its American settlement. He investi- 

 gated the botany of California during more 

 than thirty years; was one of the founders 

 of the California Academy of Sciences, to 

 whose " Proceedings" he was a frequent 

 contributor ; and was attached to the special 

 expedition to Alaska in 1807 as surgeon and 

 botanist. 



The death is reported of Dr. Alexander 

 Ecker, professor at the University of Frei- 

 burg, in the seventy-first year of his age. 

 He was a distinguished anatomist and pa- 

 thologist, and was founder of the Ethno- 

 graphical Museum at Freiburg. 



Dr. Karl Friedlander, professor at the 

 University of Berlin, an eminent patholo- 

 gist and anatomist, has recently died. 



