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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



but a good meteorologist as well one of the 

 scientific men of his time. M. Vice-Admiral 

 Vignes, President of the Geographical So- 

 ciety of Paris, on reading the paper, re- 

 marked that he was surprised to find in Vir- 

 eil the exact laws of cyclones, which sailors 

 did not learn till a comparatively modern time. 



British Fisheries. The North Sea fish- 

 eries of Great Britain were reported at the 

 meeting of the British Association to be de- 

 clining. It was proposed to draw up a his- 

 tory of the North Sea trawling grounds, com- 

 paring their present condition with their 

 condition some twenty or thirty years ago, 

 when comparatively few boats were at work ; 

 to continue, verify, and extend observations 

 as to the average size at which prime fish 

 became sexually mature ; and to collect sta- 

 tistics as to the size of all fish captured in 

 the vicinity of the Dogger Bank and to the 

 eastward, so that the number of immature 

 fish annually captured may be estimated ; 

 also, to make experiments with beam trawl 

 nets of various meshes with a view to deter- 

 mine the relation, if any, between the size 

 of mesh and the size of fish taken. 



The Kingfisher. The habits of the king- 

 fisher (Halcyon vagans) are the subject of a 

 paper by Mr. J. W. Hall, of the Auckland 

 (N. Z.) Institute. His observations, while not 

 decisive, favor the opinion that kingfishers 

 capture live birds. They are also sometimes 

 captured by hawks ; but the hawk does not 

 always come off best. One day the author 

 saw a hawk sailing round the bend of a hill 

 followed by a kingfisher. Then at once 

 arose a great outcry, and the hawk came 

 again in sight, bearing the kingfisher in its 

 talons. But, nothing daunted, the kingfisher 

 with its pickaxe of a bill pegged away at 

 the breast and abdomen of its captor to 

 such good effect that the hawk was glad to 

 liberate its prey, whereupon the kingfisher 

 flew away, apparently but little the worse for 

 the encounter, and carrying with it the full 

 sympathy of the onlookers. 



NOTES. 



The Japanese observe very exact propor- 

 tions between leaves and flowers in the ar- 

 rangement of irises. With three leaves they 

 use one flower, with seven leaves two flowers, 



with eleven leaves five flowers, with thirteen 

 leaves only three flowers, and with fifteen 

 leaves only two flowers again. When we 

 examine pictures that show the results of 

 the application of these rides, says Garden 

 and Forest, we are convinced that they have 

 been dictated by a very true feeling for ar- 

 tistic effects of the most delicate sort. 



According to the analyses of Dr. C. F. 

 Millspaugh, of the West Virginia Experi- 

 ment Station, weeds vary largely in the per- 

 centages of nitrogen, phosphoric acid, and 

 potash which they contain. One of the 

 evening primroses has only one per cent of 

 nitrogen, while the poke-weed has three per 

 cent of that substance, and a dry ton of the 

 weed will contain twenty-two dollars' worth 

 of it. By composting weeds with plaster, a 

 valuable manure may be obtained. 



According to the story of George Hunt, 

 keeper of the lighthouse at Tillamook Rock, 

 on the Pacific coast, in the storm of Decem- 

 ber 7, 1891, the waves swept clear over the 

 house, washing away the boats, and tearing 

 loose and carrying off the landing platform 

 and tramway which were bolted to the rock. 

 On the 29th the waves were still higher, and 

 streams of water poured into the lantern 

 through the ventilators in the balloon top of 

 the dome, one hundred and fifty-seven feet 

 above the sea-level. 



Dr. Alanus, a tianslation of whose letter 

 relating his experiences is published in the 

 Medical and Surgical Reporter, says that 

 after having lived for a long time as a vege- 

 tarian without feeling any better or worse than 

 he had felt w ith a mixed diet, he discovered 

 one day that his arteries were showing signs 

 of atheromatous degeneration. Consulting a 

 work by Dr. E. Morin, of Paris, he found 

 that affection pointed out as one of the re- 

 sults of living on an exclusively vegetable 

 diet. He now no longer considers puieiy 

 vegetable food as the normal diet of man, 

 but only as a curative method of great serv- 

 ice in various morbid states. 



According to an article in the Overland 

 Monthly, many women in California gain a 

 livelihood by raising flower bulbs and seeds 

 for market, and many others send to San 

 Francisco every day hampers of wild flowers 

 and ferns which have been picked from the 

 neighboring canons. Mrs. Theodosia Shep- 

 herd, of Ventura, stands foremost among 

 these successful floriculturists, although only 

 eight years have passed since, without means 

 and broken down in health, she grew her 

 first seeds for market in the old mission town 

 of San Buena Ventura. She now fills orders 

 from prominent Eastern florists, with occa- 

 sional calls from Europe, Australia, and the 

 Sandwich Islands. 



An attempt has been made by Herr 

 Pf eiffer to prove and measure, by the change 

 in electric conductivity, the solvent action cf 



