864 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



to a level with the kindred fine arts of paint- 

 ing and sculpture. The first general meet- 

 ing and exhibition of the Society will be 

 held in Rochester about December 20lh, 

 when displays are invited of stuffed animals 

 in groups, single specimens, etc. 



Brigadier-General Albert J. Meyer 

 died at Buffalo, the 24th of August, in the 

 fifty-third year of his age. He early turned 

 his attention to the devising of practicable 

 methods of signaling, and rendered efficient 

 service by this means during the war. He 

 was chiefly known to the public by his work 

 in connection with the establishment and 

 development of the present extensive and 

 complete Weather Service, of which he was 

 the chief officer. 



A French chemist, M. Alland, has found 

 a way to give a solid and soluble form to 

 sulphuret of carbon, by which it is made 

 much less volatile, more convenient to han- 

 dle, and more efficacious as an insecticide. 

 He dissolves the sulphuret in a heavy oil 

 which is formed in the manufacture of an- 

 thracene and saponifies with lime, and adds 

 quicklime to the solution. The paste thus 

 obtained is soaked in water and dried into a 

 cement which forms an isolating crust. A 

 very effective insecticide, which, however, 

 acts slowly, is thus obtained. 



Professor C. W. Borchardt, of the Uni- 

 versity of Berlin, died at Riidersdorf, near 

 Berlin, June 27th. He was formerly Profes- 

 sor of Mathematics in the Prussian Military 

 Academy, and had been since 1856 editor of 

 the " Journal for Pure and Applied Mathe- 

 matics," the oldest of the existing mathe- 

 matical periodicals. 



The President of the Anthropological In- 

 stitute of London has attempted an explana- 

 tion of the long-standing and puzzling ques- 

 tion of the manner in which the huge and 

 heavy stones which stand as monoliths or in 

 groups as tombs or temples were lifted into 

 their places. Some of the hill tribes of In- 

 dia still erect big stones as memorials, and 

 it is reported of one of them that they re- 

 cently carried a stone weighing twenty tons 

 up a high hill in the course of a few hours. 

 The ponderous block was inclosed in a wood- 

 en framework so arranged that a large num- 

 ber of men could lift all at once, and in this 

 simple way it was borne to the hill-top, a 

 height of four thousand feet. 



The London " Times " has tried with 

 success the experiment of having reports of 

 the debates of the House of Commons trans- 

 mitted by telephone directly to its compos- 

 itors while they are at work. The notes 

 made by the reporter are read directly into 

 the telephone-receiver in the room adjoining 

 the gallery of the House, and are received 

 by the compositor who sits with his ears near 



the office terminus of the instrument. The 

 compositor is provided with a system of sig- 

 nals by means of which he can control the 

 rate at which the reports are transmitted to 

 him, and have all the corrections and ex- 

 planations he may need made on the spot. 



M. Charpentier has measured the varia- 

 tion in the intensity of light to which the 

 eye is sensitive, and has found it to be 

 equivalent to about seven or eight hun- 

 dredths ; that is, a given light, whether 

 strong or weak, must be diminished or in- 

 creased in that degree to give a new sensa- 

 tion distinct from the former one. The 

 difference is essentially the same in direct 

 and indirect vision and with light of every 

 color. 



The death is announced of M. Lissajous, 

 Professor of Physics at Toulouse, and author 

 of several valuable scientific memoirs. 



According to a recent report of the Bos- 

 ton Board of Health, appreciation of the ne- 

 cessity of good sanitary conditions is stead- 

 ily increasing in that city. Requests for the 

 inspection of premises are now frequent, 

 while a few years ago obstacles were thrown 

 in the way of inspectors by the landlords. 

 This regard for proper sanitary construction 

 is not confined to any class, but is exhibited 

 alike by the owners of elegant mansions and 

 of the most ordinary dwellings. 



Mr. A. A. Breneman has obtained some 

 very satisfactory results in the color decora- 

 tion of common gray stone-ware. The pro- 

 cess was described in a communication to, 

 and samples of the ware exhibited before, 

 the Chemical Section of the American Asso- 

 ciation at the recent Boston meeting. This 

 sort of ware has hitherto been decorated 

 only in blue, but these samples showed that 

 a wide range of coloring was possible. The 

 process is simple and comparatively inex- 

 pensive. 



Louis Francois de Pocrtales died at 

 Beverly Farms, Massachusetts, on the 17th of 

 July, in his fifty-seventh year. Since the 

 death of Professor Louis Agassiz, he has 

 been the keeper of the Museum of Com- 

 parative Zoology at Harvard, and was well 

 known among scientific men for his work 

 in connection with deep-sea dredging. 



A statement by Professor Mivart in a 

 recent paper on tails, respecting the non- 

 existence of monkeys in the West Indies, 

 has been shown by correspondents of "Na- 

 ture " to be an error. Monkeys are found 

 in the islands of St. Christopher and Ne- 

 vis, and in Grenada, where they exist in 

 large numbers in the wild state, and are 

 very destructive to the growing crop?. 

 Apes are also said to be found wild in 

 Montserrat. 



