NOTES. 



43i 



small Europeans. Precociousness becomes 

 less and less in proportion to the advance 

 made by any race in civilization a fact 

 which is illustrated by the lowering of the 

 standard for recruits, which has been made 

 necessary in France twice during the pres- 

 ent century, by the decreasing rapidity of 

 growth of the youth of the country. Wo- 

 men are more precocious than men, and in 

 all domestic animals the female is formed 

 sooner than the male. From eight to 

 twelve years of age, a girl gains one pound 

 a year on a boy, and in mixed schools girls 

 obtain the first places up to the age of 

 twelve. The inferior tissues and organs 

 develop before the higher ones, and the 

 brain is the slowest of all organs to devel- 

 op. M. Delaunay concludes his paper by 

 stating that the precocity of organs and or- 

 ganisms is in an inverse ratio to the extent 

 of their evolution. 



NOTES. 



According to Dr. Abercrombie, a gen- 

 tleman who had been a soldier dreamed that 

 he heard a signal-gun, saw the proceedings 

 for displaying the signals, heard the bustle 

 of the streets, the assembling of troops, etc. 

 Just then he was roused by his wife, who 

 had dreamed precisely the same dream with 

 this addition, that she saw the enemy land 

 and a friend of her husband's killed ; and 

 she awoke in a fright. This occurred at 

 Edinburgh, at the time when a French in- 

 vasion was feared, and it had been decided 

 to fire a si<nial-gun at the first approach of 

 the foe. The dream was caused, it appears, 

 by the fall of a pair of tongs in the room 

 above ; and the excited state of the public 

 mind was quite sufficient to account for both 

 dreams turning on the same subject. 



The French forestry department, accord- 

 ing to the " Polybiblion," have arrived at the 

 conclusion that forests directly increase the 

 supply of water in their neighborhood. From 

 observations at Senlis and Nancy, they have 

 decided that it rains more abundantly in 

 wooded tracts, and that, while the leaves 

 and branches give back the water quickly 

 to the air, they prevent rapid evaporation 

 from the ground, and are thus favorable to 

 the formation of springs. 



Dr. LrjDWTG Moser, Professor of Phys- 

 ics in the University of Konigsberg, died in 

 the latter part of February, aged seventy- 

 five years. " Long," says " Nature," " before 

 photography had become a practical art, Dr. 



Moser had acquired considerable reputation 

 by his systematic and successful experiments 

 in this department." 



Specimens of the volcanic ashes which 

 rained down upon Dominica have been an- 

 alyzed by M. L. Best. The lye was found 

 to be rich in chloride of potassium. The 

 predominant constituents of the solid part 

 were silicates (feldspar and pyroxene), and 

 pyrites in perfectly defined cubic crystals. 



Another severe outbreak of scarlet fe- 

 ver, which occurred near Manchester, Eng- 

 land, last summer, and in which thirty-five 

 persons belonging to eighteen different fam- 

 ilies were attacked, twenty-five within thirty- 

 six hours, has been traced by the health au- 

 thorities to the distribution of the infec- 

 tion through the milk-supply. 



Herr Baoigartner, a German, has in- 

 vented a balloon for navigation, having three 

 cars attached, each with ten or twelve rings, 

 to be set in motion by a crank. He recent- 

 ly attempted an ascension with his machine 

 i at Leipsic. When the balloon was rising 

 very slowly and skimming the house-tops 

 his two assistants, in their alarm, jumped 

 out. Upon this the balloon shot up to a 

 great height, then burst and fell. The in- 

 ventor was not seriously hurt, and is re- 

 solved to make a second experiment. 



TiEv. James Clifton Ward, F. G. S., 

 from 1865 to 1878 an active working mem- 

 ber of the English Geological Survey, and a 

 popular writer on geological subjects, died 

 April 13th, at the early age of thirty-seven. 



" Nature " quotes from the " Bom- 

 bay Gazette " an account of a remarkable 

 thunderstorm that occurred at Dharwar, in 

 March last, during which " hailstones fell 

 measuring no less than nine or ten inches 

 in circumference." The thunder and light- 

 ning were terrific, and, after the fall of hail, 

 there was a heavy down-pour of rain. We 

 thought the hailstones mentioned above were 

 the largest ever heard of, but it turns out, 

 as usual, that the West is ahead in hail- 

 stones as well as meteors and other celestial 

 commodities. The " Bulletin " of the Iowa 

 Weather Service, for April, 1880, received 

 since the above was written, tells of thun- 

 derstorms during the month, in that State, 

 where hailstones fell measuring twelve inches 

 in circumference. 



The death is announced of Karl von See- 

 bach, the distinguished Professor of Geol- 

 ogy at Gottingen. Although still a young 

 man at the time of his death, he had done 

 a large amount of valuable work, especially 

 in the investigation of volcanic phenomena. 



A scientific association has been formed 

 in Algeria on the plan of the British and 



