HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



187 



Professor Fleeming Jenkins, who occupied the 

 chair of engineering at Edinburgh, died in June last. 

 He was born in 1833, was at one time professor of 

 engineering at University College, London, and was 

 the originator of the scheme of telpherage or electrical 

 transmission. 



Professor Thorpe, of the Yorkshire College, 

 Leeds, has been appointed successor to Professor 

 Frankland in the chair of chemistry at the Royal 

 School of Mines. 



A FEW extracts from a pamphlet entitled, " Facts 

 Proving that Lightning is a Composite Force," by Mr. 

 William Boggett, will suffice perhaps to show what it 

 is like. He believes that water consists of hydrogen 

 and oxygen, plus electricity, only that the voltaic 

 current employed by the first discoverers of the gases 

 in water united gently with the electricity and 

 removed it without its removal being discovered. 

 Dynamos obtain their powerful currents from the 

 water in the earth, which is the great reservoir of 

 electricity." It is, of course, possible to misrepresent 

 a writer by giving detached quotations, but Mr. 

 Boggett certainly speaks of " the discovery that 

 lightning is a composite force, consisting of the 

 electric currents, emanating, one from water in the 

 clouds, the other from water in the earth. Each 

 of these currents are united with one of the ele- 

 ments of water— say, oxygen (heat)— the other 

 combined in like manner with the other element of 

 water— hydrogen (light)," and so on. Space is too 

 valuable to do more than just to mention the state- 

 ment that there is no heat in incandescent electric 

 lamps (" neither combustion nor heat ") ; that when, 

 at the Polytechnic, men used to point their fingers at 

 suspended electric balls the balls moved one way, 

 but the other way when pointed at by women, and a 

 somewhat similar difference of effects when hats were 

 made to move by " electric contact " of fingers. 

 These last two statements are not on the author's 

 personal authority. One would think he might have 

 tried to verify them, for, speaking seriously, there can 

 surely be no excuse for printing such things without 

 having taken the trouble to put them to practical 

 proof. 



There must be a considerable amount of unselfish 

 benevolence diffused among mankind. Else why 

 should the Bread Reform League in two years and a 

 quarter have received over£2'jo towards the expenses 

 of inducing people to eat wheat meal bread instead 

 of white bread ? The donors and subscribers could 

 enjoy the privilege by themselves alone if they 

 pleased. However, a Report lately issued gives a 

 short statement of the financial accounts from Decem- 

 ber 1882 to last March, and it further appears that 

 the use of wheat meal bread is increasing, and that 

 the article itself, as sold by bakers, is improving in 

 quality. The Report is dated from 36, Coleman 

 Street, London, E.C. 



In the " American Monthly Microscopical Journal " 

 for June may be found a short paper, with illustrations, 

 on the microscopical structure of tea-leaves ; and a 

 continuation of the provisional key to the classifica- 

 tion of freshwater algse. 



At the May and June meetings of the Entomolo- 

 gical Society of London, Mr. F. Enock, of Woking, 

 read a most interesting paper on the life history of 

 Atypus piceus, Sulz., the only British representative of 

 trap-door spiders. His observations, made from 1876 

 to the present time, were detailed with great care and 

 minuteness, and many interesting facts in the spider's 

 economy established. The paper was fully illustrated 

 by the exhibition of numerous specimens of the nests, 

 spiders, &c, from Hampstead and Woking. 



From a return lately issued from the Home Office, 

 it appears that those among us who oppose vivisection 

 have not much ground for objection on the score of 

 painful experiments in this country in 1884. Forty- 

 nine persons held licenses during some part of the 

 year in England and Scotland, of whom fifteen did 

 not use them. About 441 experiments were per- 

 formed under the Act, and, as regards the infliction of 

 pain in those cases where anaesthetics were not used 

 or only partially used, some consisted in inoculation ; 

 others, performed for medico-legal purposes, resulted 

 in the death by tetanus of three frogs and six mice 

 which survived only a few minutes, and others again 

 were experiments on the infection of fish with a 

 species of fungus very destructive in certain rivers 

 and streams, or on the effects of the immersion of fish 

 in distilled water which proved fatal to about thirty 

 minnows and sticklebacks. Two other cases involving 

 pain "of a very trifling character," are referred to, 

 and the Report for England and Scotland ends by 

 saying that the amount of direct or indirect suffering 

 may be stated as "wholly insignificant," while the 

 report for Ireland says that the experiments performed 

 there were all painless. 



MICROSCOPY. 



Journal of the Royal Microscopical 

 Society. — The June number contains papers on New 

 British Oribatidae, by Mr. A. D. Michael, F.L.S. 

 on the Structure of the Diatom Shell by Dr. J. D. 

 Cox ; and on the Structure and Origin of Carboniferous 

 Coal Seams, by Mr. Edward Wethered, F.G.S., 

 followed by the summary of current researches. 



Microscopes with Bent Body Tube.— The 

 above journal gives a figure of a microscope intended 

 to combine the advantages of keeping the stage 

 horizontal, and at the same time the body of the 

 observer in a convenient position. The tube of the 

 instrument has a break in it, the upper part sloping 

 towards the eye, the lower part being vertical ; and a 

 truncated equilateral prism is inserted at the junction 

 of the two pieces of the tube. 



