NOTES. 



383 



tion of Edmands's Topographical Camera, 

 an instrument by means of which mountain 

 profiles may be drawn with great accuracy. 

 The work done by the president himself 

 includes between 6,000 and 7,000 measure- 

 ments of the horizontal and vertical posi- 

 tions of the mountains. The " Department 

 of Improvements " has constructed a sub- 

 stantial path which makes the peak of Mount 

 Adams easily accessible to any good pedes- 

 trian. An excellent camp has been estab- 

 lished on Mount Adams, which will doubtless 

 soon be followed by others. The club at 

 present has its headquarters in the Massa- 

 chusetts Institute of Technology, but this 

 arrangement is only temporary, and it is 

 the intention of the Council, as soon as pos- 

 sible, to hire a room in which to collect a 

 library of books, maps, photographs, and 

 paintings of the mountains. A summer 

 school of topography, under the auspices 

 of the club, and with special reference to 

 State surveys, is in contemplation. 



Economy in Stock-Feeding. We com- 

 mend to the attention of such of our readers 

 as are farmers a paper by Prof. Samuel W. 

 Johnson, in the American Journal of Science 

 and Arts for March, on " The Composition 

 of Maize-Fodder." The paper is extreme- 

 ly valuable, and abounds in practical obser- 

 vations, for two or three of which we make 

 room here. Regarding the influence of age 

 upon the content of albuminoids in forage 

 plants, the author states that quite young 

 meadow-grass as it is found in pasturage 

 contains in its dry matter twenty-four per 

 cent, of albuminoids, cut just before bloom 

 twelve per cent., and at the end of blossoming 

 eight per cent. In case both of maize-fod- 

 der and meadow-grass the inferior quality 

 of the older vegetation is compensated by 

 the superior quantity. The author holds 

 that in New England the farmers can raise 

 or buy Indian corn, cotton-seed, meal, and 

 other concentrated foods, and conibine them 

 with coarse fodder to make a cattle food 

 equal or superior to the best of hay, at less 

 cost than is involved in feeding the latter. 

 But to throw cured maize-fodder out in the 

 cattle yard, or to feed it in the stall as hay 

 is fed, is highly wasteful. It cannot be fed 

 alone or as an adjunct to hay : to use it pro- 

 fitably it must be finely cut and well mixed 



or alternated with maize or cotton-seed meal, 

 bran, or some similar material. Maize meal 

 and similar articles contain too much albu- 

 minoids, fat, and starch, for healthy and 

 economical cattle food ; maize-fodder con- 

 tains too little of these and too much coarse 

 fibre ; the two should be mixed. 



Where the Ancients got tlicir Tin. 



Shortly before his death, Karl Ernst von 

 Baer contributed to the Archiv fiir Anihro- 

 pologie a paper entitled " Whence came the 

 Tin for Ancient Bronze ? " The subject is 

 one that has long engaged the attention of 

 archaeologists, but hitherto the only sources 

 assigned for this tin have been Cornwall 

 and the straits of Malacca. There has, how- 

 ever, been a vague notion that tin may also 

 have been derived from Georgia, Armenia, 

 or Persia. To decide this question, Von 

 Baer addressed an inquiry to M. Semenow, 

 Vice-President of the Russian Geographical 

 Society, who obtained the desired informa- 

 tion from a traveler named Ogorodinkow. 

 According to his report, tin occurs and has 

 been worked in two localities in Khorassan. 

 It was the opinion of Von Baer that many 

 of the bronzes of Assyria and Babylonia 

 were made from tin obtained in this region. 



NOTES. 



The Christian Union has begun the 

 publication of a series of articles, by dis- 

 tinguished writers, on " How to spend the 

 Summer." Each writer will speak from 

 personal expei'ience, and, if the articles we 

 have seen are a fair sample of those to 

 come, everybody seeking health or pleas- 

 ure, either at home or abroad, will be prof- 

 ited by reading them. 



Admission to hospital for purposes of 

 clinical instruction has at last been granted 

 to female medical students in London. This 

 removes the only remaining obstacle to a 

 complete medical course for women in Eng- 

 land ; and the concession came just in time 

 to prevent the break-up of their leading 

 medical school. 



During the coming summer a limited 

 number of teachers of mathematics or as- 

 tronomy will be permitted to spend a por- 

 tion of their vacation at the Cincinnati Ob- 

 servatory, in the pursuit of studies con- 

 nected with their special departments of in- 

 struction. Particular attention will be paid 

 to the art of computing, in order to give an 



