384 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



The Savifarian publishes a table show- 

 in<^ the death-rate ol' various cities in the 

 United States lor tiie nioiitli of Mareli, from 

 which it appears that the highest deatli-ralc 

 (Nashville) was ;i7.69 per thousand per 

 annum, and the lowest (St. Louis) 13.37. 

 Other cities showed the following death- 

 rates: New York, 30.'25 ; Philadelphia, 

 2(3.30; Brooklyn, 23.54; Chicago, 15.73; 

 Boston, 22.67 ; New Orleans, 26.72 ; Wash- 

 ington, 33.36; Richmond, 26.40; Charles- 

 ton, 34.50; New Haven, 19.80. 



A PARTY of Englishmen, Drs. Freeland 

 and NichoUs, Captain Gardner, and Mr. 

 Watt, while exploring the steep and forest- 

 covered mountain behind the town of Ros- 

 seau, in the republic of Dominica, came 

 upon a boiling lake about 2,500 feet above 

 the sea-level, and two miles in circumfer- 

 ence. When the wind cleared away for a 

 moment tlie clouds of sulphurous steam 

 with which the lake was covered, a mound 

 of water was seen ten feet higher than the 

 general level, and caused by ebullition. The 

 margin of the lake consists of beds of sul- 

 phur ; at the outlet is a waterfall of great 

 height. 



The twenty-fourth meeting of the Amer- 

 iean Association for the Advancement of 

 Science will be held at Detroit, Mich., com- 

 mencing on Wednesday, August 11th. The 

 Permanent Secretary calls special attention 

 to the meeting of the Entomological Club. 

 It is proposed to form a subsection of An- 

 thropology at the coming meeting of the 

 Association. Officers of this year's meet- 

 ing : President, Prof J. E. Hilgard ; Vice- 

 President, Section A, Prof H. A. Newton ; 

 Section B, Prof. J. W. Dawson ; chairman, 

 Chemical Subsection, Prof S. W. Johnson. 



M. Le Verrier, Director of the Paris 

 Observatory, transmits twice daily to the 

 principal ports of France forecasts of the 

 probable weather for the ensuing twelve 

 hours. The present system does not include 

 signals to give warning of storms. The tele- 

 grams are posted up in some public place. 



It is suggested to form an artificial isth- 

 mus between France and England, leaving 

 a narrow space in the centre for the pas- 

 sage of ships. The expense would not be 

 much greater than in boring a tunnel, and 

 the advantages in some respects greater. 



A NEWSPAPER paragraph gives this in- 

 stance of community of disease in man and 

 animals. A large Newfoundland dog, be- 

 longing to a Mr. Wallace, of Upton, Mass., 

 contracted measles from the children of a 

 Mr. Walker, and died of the disease. The 

 dog exhibited all the symptoms of measles 

 as seen in human beings, and under medical 

 treatment was convalescing, when he ran 

 out in the snow, was chilled, and died. 



A CLUB has lately been formed in this 

 country for the circulation among its mem- 

 bers, by way of the United States mails, of 

 microscopic objects. Applications for mem- 

 bership should be made to the secretary of 

 the club. Rev. A. B. Hervey, 10 North Sec- 

 ond Street, Troy, N. Y. Those only are 

 eligible as members who are accustomed to 

 work with the microscope, and who can 

 contribute to the usefulness of the club by 

 sending good objects for examination. 



At the Louisville meeting of the Ameri- 

 can Medical Association, S. D. Gross, M. D., 

 of Philadelphia, avowed himself an advocate 

 of bloodletting lor many diseases, especial- 

 ly those of an inflammatory character. He 

 predicted that phlebotomy would again 

 come to be recognized as a therai-eutic 

 agent, but that it would not be practised 

 indiscriminately. 



Pettenkofer has shown that a cubic 

 foot of soil contains oiie4hird of a cubic 

 foot of air. Now, according to Boussingault, 

 the amount of carbonic acid in this air is 

 much more than that in the atmosphere. 

 He found that in a field recently manured 

 it amounted to 221 parts in 10.000 of air; 

 in a vineyard, 96 ; forest-land, 86 ; loamy 

 subsoil, 82 ; sandy subsoil, 24 ; garden-soil, 

 36. 



The title of the society known as the 

 New York Lyceum of Natural History has 

 been changed. It will henceforward be 

 known as the New York Academy of Sci- 

 ences. 



A CORRESPONDENT of the Department of 

 Agriculture writes that a decoction of tansy- 

 is always effectual in killing bots. He gives 

 the tansy in the morning to a horse infested 

 with bots, and in the evening a dose of 

 salts ; the bots die, and pass out with the 

 excretions. 



Black silks are very commonly " weight- 

 ed " with foreign substances to the amount 

 of 100, 200, and 300 per cent. This increase 

 in weight is caused by treatment with salts 

 of iron and astringents, salts of tin and 

 cyanides. In fact, what is sold as silk is a 

 mere agglomeration of heterogeneous mat- 

 ters, held temporarily together by a small 

 portion of silk. 



It is stated by Paul Perny, formerly a 

 pro-vicar apostolic in China, that the Em- 

 peror Kien-Lung, who lived upward of a 

 century ago, drew up the plan of a general 

 encyclopaedia of human knowledge, the pub- 

 lication of which still goes on. Nearly 

 100,000 volumes of this work have ap- 

 peared, and there remain 60,000 volumes 

 to be published ! M. Perny further states 

 that the Chinese have encyclopaedias of 

 more than 300 volumes on agriculture, hor- 

 ticulture, pisciculture, etc. 



