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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



feet in circumference at its thickest part, and 

 a lower jaw and other bones of a younger 

 mammoth. The seeds of about twenty spe- 

 cies of contemporary marsh-growing plants 

 have been found in the soil in wdiich the re- 

 mains were imbedded. 



The American Metrological Society has 

 prepared a petition asking Congress to order 

 the metric system to be used exclusively in 

 the customs service in the United States. 

 The Geographical International Congress at 

 Berne, Switzerland, last year, entreated Eng- 

 lish men of science in future to use only the 

 units of the metric system in scientific and 

 technical publications. The new Decimal 

 Association in London has petitioned the 

 proper authorities to prepare alternative 

 questions, based on the metric system, to be 

 used at the option of the candidate in the 

 May examinations of the Science and Art De- 

 partment. 



A novel and interesting feature of the 

 first United States Food Exhibition to be held 

 in Madison Square Garden, New York, in 

 October, will be a national exhibit of dairy 

 products. It will be in charge of Prof. James 

 Cheeseman, a recognized dairy expert and 

 authority in all matters pertaining to dairy 

 interests, who represented the United States 

 in that department at the late Paris Exposi- 

 tion. He is also known to our older read- 

 ers by his suggestive article on Selection 

 in Grain - growing, in The Popular Science 

 Monthly for July, 1883. 



We are informed by the Rev. Stephen D. 

 Peet of the existence of three considerable 

 collections of cave-dwellers' relics in the 

 West one in Denver, one in Chicago, and 

 one in the far West. The relics in the col- 

 lection of the Rev. Mr. Green in Chicago 

 were carried two hundred miles on horse- 

 back, from Grand Gulch in Utah, a distant 

 and retired branch of the San Juan Valley. 



Dr. Cyrtts Thomas announces in Science 

 that he has at last discovered the key to the 

 reading of the Maya Codices, and probably 

 of the Central American inscriptions. The 

 progress of decipherment will be slow, but, 

 the clew having been obtained, it will ulti- 

 mately be accomplished. The author has 

 already determined the signification of some 

 dozens of characters, and has in several in- 

 stances ascertained the general sense of a 

 group forming a sentence. 



A remarkable ice-cave or well, at Creux 

 Perce, near the village of Pasques, depart- 

 ment of Cote d'Or, France, is described in La 

 Nalvre by M. E. L. Martel. It opens horizon- 

 tally in the field, is fifty-five metres deep, with 

 a mouth forty metres by twenty, and about 

 two thirds of the way down narrows abruptly 

 like a funnel to ten metres by five. The ice 

 in the bottom is plainly visible from the top. 

 On descending, which M. Martel did very 

 easily with a ladder, the cave is found 



fringed with stalactites and stalagmites of 

 ice from ten to fifteen metres long, and six 

 or eight by two or three metres thick. The 

 light at the bottom is sufficient to permit the 

 ice to be photographed. 



Carnaba wax is a substance which has 

 been used lately for hardening paraffin and 

 making it less fusible, for improving the 

 quality of the inferior kinds of beeswax, and 

 in making candles, varnishes, encaustics, etc. 

 It is derived from the palm tree known as 

 Copemica cerifera, of Brazil, and is there- 

 fore sometimes called Brazil wax. It is 

 very hard, breaks up into sharp-angled pieces 

 under the hammer, and is yellow, gray, red, 

 or maroon in color. 



OBITUARY NOTES. 



Admiral Ernest A. B. Mouchez, a dis- 

 tinguished French naval officer and astrono- 

 mer, has recently died, in the seventy-first 

 year of his age. His scientific career began 

 with hydrographic and coast -survey work. 

 He had charge of the French expedition to 

 the island of St. Paul to observe the transit 

 of Venus in 1874, concerning which he read 

 a report before the five academies in 1875. 

 In 1878 he succeeded Le Verrier as Director 

 of the Paris Observatory. Having already 

 organized at Montsouris a school of astrono- 

 my for officers of the marine and travelers, 

 he carried out the same idea on a more ex- 

 tensive scale at Paris ; and for eight years 

 past his school has been a nursery of young 

 astronomers for the French observatories. 

 He also organized a curious and varied astro- 

 nomical museum at Paris. He was honorary 

 President of the Astronomical Congress 

 which has met three times at Paris ; and he 

 is credited with having conceived the idea of 

 the map of the sky in the making of which 

 all civilized countries are now co-operating. 



The death is announced, at Buenos Ayres, 

 May 2d, of Hermann Burmeister, the dean of 

 South American naturalists, aged eighty-five 

 years. He was of German birth, was Pro- 

 fessor of Zoology at the University of Halle, 

 and took up his residence in South America 

 after having made several voyages there. 

 Since 1861 he had been Professor and Di- 

 rector of the Museum of Natural History of- 

 Buenos Ayres, and Curator of the University 

 of Cordova. Besides several works of natu- 

 ral history published in Europe, he was au- 

 thor of many important studies on the fauna 

 and paleontology of South America, the most 

 considerable of which were published in the 

 Anales of the Public Museum of Buenos 

 Ayres, a periodical founded by him, and of 

 a Physical Description of the Argentine Re- 

 public. He is credited with having given an 

 "enormous impulse" to science in South 

 America, particularly in the La Plata coun- 

 tries. 



