NOTES. 



6 39 



chemical telegraph, and soon found his sys- 

 tem capable of great speed ; he was thus 

 led to the invention of automatic methods 

 of transmitting signals, of which one is the 

 basis of the most important process now 

 used. He invented electrical clocks, and 

 in 1843 constructed the earth-battery. In 

 1844 he patented ingenious apparatus for 

 registering the progress of ships, and he 

 also devised electrical methods of playing 

 keyed instruments at a distance. He was 

 struck down with paralysis some years 

 ago, and died, at the age of sixty-six, in a 

 " Home for Incurables." A Government 

 pension of eighty pounds a year was all 

 that saved him from pauperism. 



NOTES. 



Mr. Seth Green, of Rochester, Fish- 

 eries Commissioner, announces that he is 

 ready to supply brook and salmon trout to 

 persons who desire the same for the pur- 

 pose of restocking the waters of the State 

 of New York. Applicants must remit to 

 Mr. Green money to pay the traveling ex- 

 penses of a messenger, and full directions as 

 to the route to oe tasen. 



Benjamin It. Tucker, of New Bedford, 

 Massachusetts, proposes to issue, early in 

 the present year, the first number of a 

 quarterly periodical, to be known as the 

 Radical Review, and modeled after the 

 Fortnightly and the Contemporary Review 

 of London. The list of contributors in- 

 cludes the names of many of the foremost 

 American radicals. The subscription price 

 will be $5 per annum. 



In an address before the Illinois Wool- 

 Growers' Association, Mr. George Lawrence, 

 Jr., of Wisconsin, asserted that merino 

 sheep, taken from Vermont to Wisconsin, 

 show a marked improvement in many re- 

 spects when bred in the latter State. They 

 have a larger carcass, are heavier boned, 

 quality and quantity of fleece are equal if not 

 superior, and they are more hardy, than 

 their Vermont ancestors. 



The Bulgarian Turk of the lower class 

 believes that a railway-engine is driven, 

 not by steam-power, but by a devil. A 

 young devil is trapped in England, shut up 

 in the " fire-box on wheels," and bribed to 

 work the crank by the occasional gift of a 

 little cold water to mitigate his torture. 



M. Drouyn de Lhuys, President of the 

 French Agricultural Society, has issued a 

 circular to similar bodies in foreign coun- 

 tries, announcing that the society intends to 



organize an International Agricultural Con- 

 gress to assemble at Paris during the Expo- 

 sition of 1878. 



The award of the London Royal Soci- 

 ety's medals for 18*76 was as follows: To 

 Claude Bernard, the Copley Medal for phys- 

 iological researches ; a Royal Medal to Wil- 

 liam Froude, for researches on the behavior 

 of ships ; Royal Medal to Sir C. Wyville 

 Thomson, for services on board the Chal- 

 lenger ; Rumford Medal to P. J. C. Janssen, 

 for researches in the radiation and absorp- 

 tion of light. 



Prof. Osborne Reynolds, in reply to 

 some newspapers which have pronounced 

 the British Arctic Expedition a failure, 

 calls attention to the fact that, since Hud- 

 son's time, arctic navigators had penetrated 

 60 or 70 miles of the 540 to be passed on 

 the route to the pole. But Captain Nares 

 has in one year carried the British flag 60 

 miles nearer, so that "nearly one-half, and 

 this by far the most difficult half, of the en- 

 tire results of all expeditions since Hud- 

 son's time, has been accomplished by the 

 last." Further, Captain (now Sir George) 

 Nares seems to have pursued his journey 

 to its end r at least by that route ; and in 

 coming back can say that he did not leave 

 a single uncertainty behind him. 



A very valuable mine of silver has re- 

 cently been discovered at Harbor Island, 

 Newfoundland, near the public wharf. 



An act of the Parliament of the Do- 

 minion of Canada grants an additional 

 quarter-section of land, on payment of a 

 trifling fee, to every settler on Dominion 

 lands who plants with trees thirty-two 

 acres in successive annual installments. 



Dr. A. E. Foote has established at 

 3725 Lancaster Avenue, Philadelphia, an 

 agency for the sale and exchange of nat- 

 ural-history specimens, including minerals, 

 botanical and zoological forms, fossils, pre- 

 historic relics, etc. He issues a monthly 

 bulletin containing the needed pai'ticulais, 

 and which may be obtained on application. 



An eminent scientific professor, inter- 

 ested in the state of science-education in 

 our colleges, has been looking into the 

 subjects of their use of text-books. He 

 collected catalogues from 187 colleges, and 

 gleaned from them the following statistics 

 regarding the physical and chemical text- 

 books employed. For physics, the text- 

 books ran thus : Olmsted in 48 colleges, 

 Ganot in 33, Silliman in 16, Steele in 15, 

 Deschanel in 12, Rolfe and Gillette in 11, 

 Wells in 8, Norton in 8 ; the others scat- 

 tering. The preferences for chemistry ran 

 as follows : Youmans in 37 colleges, Eliot 

 and Storer in 28, Barker in 24, Roscoe in 

 18, Steele in 18,Fownes in 13, Wells in 10; 

 others scattering. 



