384 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Houghton, Mr. Barrett received a great deal 

 of valuable information concerning the fate 

 of Franklin and his men. It is proposed to 

 send an expedition next spring to Hudson's 

 Bay, and thence by sleds to the place where 

 the men of the Erebus and Terror are buried 

 about 500 miles distant inland. The Es- 

 quimaux state that the white men left behind 

 a lot of books with writing in them, which 

 were buried in the cairns. 



A correspondent of the American Man- 

 ufacturer records as an " innovation in tech- 

 nical education " a recent visit paid to the 

 Phcenixville Iron- Works by the classes in 

 civil and dynamic engineering of the Penn- 

 sylvania University, under the charge of 

 their professors. It is the intention of the 

 professors to make frequent visits with their 

 classes to all establishments of interest with- 

 in convenient distance of the university. 

 Each student will be required to take notes 

 and make an elaborate report of his obser- 

 vations. 



Died, September 17th, at his seat of 

 Lacock Abbey, Wiltshire, England, William 

 H. Fox Talbot, one of the discoverers of the 

 art of photography. He was born in 1800, 

 and received his education at Harrow School 

 and the University of Cambridge. The 

 course of experiments, which resulted in 

 the production of a photographic image, 

 were begun by him in 1833. His results 

 were first published in February, 1839. 

 Daguerre's researches had, however, been 

 published a short time before. Of late years 

 Mr. Fox Talbot took a deep interest in cunei- 

 form inscriptions. 



Having made exact measurements of 

 172 crania of known sex, Morselli reaches 

 the following conclusions : 1. The cranium 

 in man is to the cranium in woman as 100 : 

 85.7. 2. The lower jaw in man, compared 

 with the same in woman, is in the propor- 

 tion 100 : 78.5. 3. This last difference is 

 noticed also in anthropomorphous apes. 4. 

 Individual variations are more extensive 

 in women than in men. 5. Taking into 

 consideration the relation between the 

 weight and the capacity of the cranium, it 

 may be inferred that woman has a less 

 development of osseous tissue. 6. In the 

 ratio of the weights of the cranium and the 

 lower maxillary, we have a new zoological 

 difference between man and ape, the latter 

 always presenting a heavier jaw relatively 

 to the cranium than the former. 



At Cassel, in Prussia, there is a Live- 

 stock Insurance Company which insures 

 live-stock against disease. The books of 

 this company furnish conclusive evidence 

 of the very great frequency of trichinosis 

 in swine. In the district of Cassel the pro- 

 portion of cases of trichinosis to the total 

 number of swine insured was one in 300 ; in 



East and West Prussia, one in 450 ; in Si- 

 lesia and Posen, one in 230. Since July, 

 1876, the proportion of affected animals in 

 the provinces near the Russian frontier has 

 been even more unfavorable, and many of 

 the insured have found 10 or even 15 per 

 cent, of their pigs thus diseased. 



Mention is made in Addison's Spectator 

 of an odd character in Italy who had a 

 chair-balance made for himself, so that he 

 might be able to keep his bodily weight con- 

 stantly the same. A like idea has recently 

 occurred to a French investigator, who has 

 constructed a " registering balance," show- 

 ing in curves the gains or losses of any mat- 

 ter placed in one or other of its scales. In 

 one experiment made by the inventor, an 

 adult man seated in the balance, was first 

 quiet for twenty minutes, then read in a 

 loud voice for twenty minutes, then was 

 perfectly quiet for twenty minutes more. 

 The curve of variations in the weight of the 

 body during this hour shows a considerably 

 greater loss in the second twenty minutes 

 than in the first, a loss partly compensated 

 by a diminution in emission of water and 

 carbonic acid during the third twenty min- 

 utes. 



Two processes for preserving fish from 

 decay were detailed in a recent communica- 

 tion to the Paris Academy of Sciences by 

 E. M. d'Amelio. The first process was as 

 follows : The fish, whether raw or cooked, 

 is immersed in a strong solution of citric 

 acid in water. After two or three hours, 

 the fish is taken from the bath and dried 

 in the open air, or by artificial heat, the 

 latter course being preferable. Fish so 

 prepared will keep fresh anywhere for 

 years. To restore its original flexibility 

 it must be steeped in fresh water four or 

 five days. The other method consists in 

 the employment of a bath of silicate of 

 potash and glycerine, in equal quantities. 

 The fish, the intestines having first been re- 

 moved, is steeped in this bath for a day or 

 two, washed in fresh water, and dried slow- 

 ly. By the use of this process the author 

 has succeeded in preserving intact the color 

 of the fishes and the eyes. 



It is proposed to erect at Stockholm a 

 monument to Linnaeus, consisting of a 

 statue of the great naturalist, surrounded 

 by allegorical figures of the four sciences to 

 which he devoted himself, namely, botany, 

 zoology, mineralogy, and medicine. 



The Marquis of Bute has on one of his 

 estates near Cardiff, Wales, a flourishing 

 vineyard of some 6,000 vines. A French 

 vineyard-proprietor, w r ho has inspected these 

 vines, expresses his conviction that this ex- 

 periment of a vineyard in that climate was 

 destined to be entirely successful. 



