864 



POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



one fortieth the weight of the body, from 

 rabbits, guinea-pigs, and pigeons, Mr. Essipor 

 affirms that the fluid acquired a marked bac- 

 tericidal power, particularly against the mi- 

 crobe of cholera. The effect took place 

 gradually, and attained its maximum in 

 about twenty- four hours. At the same 

 time the animal became refractory against 

 inoculations. 



Edward Germano recently conducted a 

 series of experiments to determine the time 

 which the typhoid bacillus could retain its 

 vitality under various conditions. The results 

 showed that in dry air the cultures were dead 

 within twenty-four hours, but in moist warm 

 air they retained their vitality for sixty days. 

 He concludes that aerial transmission in the 

 ordinary acceptation of the term — that is, 

 being blown about as dust or as a miasm in 

 the wind from infected districts — is highly 

 improbable; but that in imperfectly disin- 

 fected and apparently dry blankets and 

 woolen clotbing the microbes may retain 

 their vitality for some time and be conveyed 

 long distances. 



Some recent experiments by Professor 

 Oliver and Dr. Bolam on the immediate cause 

 of death by electric shocks seem to indicate 

 that death is due to a sudden arrest of the 

 heart's action and that simultaneous failure 

 of the respiratory center and the heart, ex- 

 cept with unusually high voltage, is very 

 rare. It follows from this that resuscita- 

 tion in apparent death from electric shock is 

 made much more difficult than if the fatal 

 result were brought about by respiratory 

 failure. 



The oldest oak tree in France, the St. 

 Bernard oak at Cunfin, is more than eight 

 hundred and twenty-five years old, having 

 been planted in a. d. 10*70, and is mentioned 

 in the Annates ecclesiasiiques du Diocese de 

 Langres. It measures twenty- two feet in cir- 

 cumference at the collar of the roots, and is 

 forty-two and a half feet high to the first 

 branches. The trunk is hollow, and the wood 

 has nearly all disappeared, leaving little else 

 than the bark, which, too, has been eaten 

 away in spots ; one of the holes is large 

 enough to let a man inside. A niche was 

 made in the upper part of the trunk by the 

 cure of Cunfin in 1749, and the statue of the 

 Virgin was placed in it. That was swept 

 away during the Revolution, but the old tree 

 still lives. 



A bluff of clay marl capped with yellow 

 gravel, fronting Raritan Bay, near Cliffwood, 

 N. J., the extreme northeastern exposure of 

 the cretaceous clay and marl outcrop of the 

 State, is a source from which collections of 

 the fauna have been made, and the only 

 spot where the flora of the horizon has been 

 observed. It has been explored geologically 

 by Messrs. Arthur Hollick, Lester F. Ward, 

 and N. L. Britton, who have collected con- 



siderable material from it. The specimens, 

 as a whole, are not very satisfactory, con- 

 sisting of poorly preserved mollusks, frag- 

 ments of crustaceans, fruit, leaves and 

 branches of trees, and masses of lignite, 

 many of them occurring in ferruginous con- 

 cretions which soon disintegrate on exposure 

 to the air. Mr. Hollick, in his paper describ- 

 ing and figuring them, notices twenty-six 

 species of plant remains, ten of which are 

 apparently new. 



The result of a careful study of four hun- 

 dred alcoholics by Forel, of Zurich', again 

 emphasizes the great importance of heredity. 

 Forty-three per cent of the cases had one or 

 both parents alcoholic. Fifteen per cent of 

 the patients were wholesale or retail liquor 

 dealers. All cases showed various physical, 

 mental, and moral alterations. Fourteen per 

 cent were epileptics. 



A comparison of the fossil foraminifera 

 of the marine clays of Maine is adduced by 

 Mr. F. S. Morton, in a communication to the 

 Portland Society of Natural History, as fur- 

 nishing additional evidence that the climate 

 when they were deposited was very much 

 colder than now. Many of the forms are 

 still found living in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, 

 but the forms found still farther north more 

 perfectly agree with them. Those found by 

 the late H. B. Brady in the shallow- water 

 dredgings from the Novaya Zemlya Sea are 

 almost identical with the Maine fossil forms. 



Dr. Dawson Williams, who has been 

 connected with the editorial staff of the 

 British Medical Journal for seventeen years 

 as assistant editor under Mr. Ernest Hart, has 

 been appointed editor-in-chief to succeed the 

 latter. 



In the list of recent deaths of men associ- 

 ated with science are recorded the names of 

 Arthur Kammermann, astronomer, at Geneva, 

 Switzerland, December 15th, aged thirty-six 

 years ; Prof. Knud Styffe, director of the 

 School of Technology at Stockholm, a great 

 authority on iron and steel and author of a 

 report on The Elasticity, Extensibility, and 

 Tensile Strength of Iron, which has been 

 translated into English, February 3d, in his 

 seventy-fifth year ; Jean Albert Gauthier 

 Villars, printer to the French Academy of 

 Sciences, and publisher of the works of La- 

 grange, Fermat, Fourier, Cauchy, and other 

 scientific investigators, February 5th, at the 

 age of sixty -nine years ; Dr. Rudolf Leuck- 

 art, professor of zoology and zootomy at Leip- 

 sic, February Yth, aged sevcntv-four years ; 

 and John Carrick Moore, an eminent geolo- 

 gist in the earlier part of the century, author 

 of papers on Silurian strata, Tertiary fossils of 

 Santo Domingo and Jamaica, Erosion of Lake 

 Basins, and the Influence of the Obliquity of 

 the Ecliptic on Climate ; in London, February 

 10th, in his ninety-fifth year — a nephew of Sir 

 John Moore. 



