288 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



NOTES. 



In a cave near Decatur, Ohio, were re- 

 cently found, imbedded in ashes, fragments 

 of human bones, pieces of pottery, also bones 

 of wild animals, shells, etc. According to 

 a correspondent of the " Marietta Register," 

 the human jawbones found in this cave are 

 very large, and have the teeth well pre- 

 served. They have one tooth back of the 

 " wisdom-tooth." All the long bones were 

 broken or split a probable indication of 

 cannibal practices. 



A curious fact in the history of the 

 yellow-fever epidemic last year, in New 

 Orleans was, that in the Fourth District, 

 the death-rate of males was seventy per cent, 

 greater than that of females, though the 

 sanitary census of 1877 showed that the 

 female population of the district exceeded 

 the male by 1,261. The comparative im- 

 munity of the negro race appears from the 

 faet that while the white population of the 

 district (29,482 souls) lost 569 persons by 

 death, the black population (6,883 souls) 

 lost only 29. If the negroes had died in 

 the same ratio as the whites, they would 

 have lost about 130. 



As an illustration of the sudden extreme 

 alternations of temperature in northern Da- 

 kota and Montana, Dr. P. F. Harvey, U. S. 

 Army, states that in August, 1876, while on 

 duty with an expedition against hostile In- 

 dians, he saw the thermometer record 116 

 Fahr. in the shade at the mouth of the Rose- 

 bud River ; thirty-six hours afterward, the 

 temperature had fallen to very nearly the 

 freezing-point ; and, on the morning of the 

 second day following, he scraped hoar-frost 

 1'rom a log in front of his tent. 



The " Examiner" notes an extraordinary 

 decrease in the number of students of theolo- 

 gy at the German universities. The decrease 

 is so great that is several states there has 

 been an insufficiency of candidates for the 

 pulpit. Until now Schleswig-Holstein was 

 an extensive nursery of theologians, but there 

 also a falling off by nearly 40 per cent, has 

 recently occurred. At Kiel there are at 

 present 24, at other German universities 28 

 students of theology from Sehleswig-Hol- 

 stein altogether 52. Six years ago there 

 were still 90 of them, while fifty years ago 

 there were no less than 168 students of the- 

 ology at Kiel alone, almost all of them Schles- 

 wig-Holsteiners. 



Underground telegraph cables arc now 

 completed between Berlin and Cologne. Co- 

 logne and Elberfeld, Frankfort and Stras- 

 burg, and Hamburg and Cuxhaven ; the total 

 length of these lines is 1,554 miles, and the 

 cost about $3,000,000. 



The suggestion is made in "Dingler's 

 Polytechnisches Journal " that air for ven- 

 tilation be drawn into buildings through 

 tubes sunk about three metres in the ground 

 (say ten feet). By this means it would in 

 winter be warmed 15' or 16 Fahr., and in 

 summer cooled 2U to 23 Fahr. 



Peter Le Neve Foster, for twenty-five 

 years Secretary of the London Society of 

 Arts, died recently, at the age of seventy 

 years. A lawyer by profession, Mr. Foster 

 took a lively interest in various departments 

 of science. He was one of the first to prac- 

 tice, as a scientific amateur, the art of pho- 

 tography, and was a frequent contributor 

 of articles on that subject to periodicals 

 and cyclopaedias. He was President of the 

 Queckett Microscopical Club for one year, 

 and from 1863 to 1866 served on the Coun- 

 cil of the British Association. 



The London Geological Society has 

 awarded the Bigsby Medal to Professor E. 

 D. Cope, of Philadelphia, in recognition of 

 his services to the science of paleontology. 



In Brazil the coffee plantations, like the 

 vineyards in France, are threatened with 

 destruction by the ravages of a minute para- 

 site. The roots of the plants are found cov- 

 ered with knots and swellings like those 

 seen on the roots of the grapevine infested 

 by the phylloxera. In these swellings are 

 found minute nematode worms one fourth of 

 a millimetre id length when fully developed. 

 A single root often contains as many as fifty 

 million of these parasites. 



The larva of the tapeworm known as 

 Taenia solium comes from " measly " pork, 

 and the mature worm has a head bearing 

 a crown of hooks. Tcenia mediocandlaia 

 is derived from beef and mutton ; it has a 

 larger head, which is unarmed. It has com- 

 monly been supposed that the former spe- 

 cies is more frequently found in human sub- 

 jects than the latter, but Professor Leidy is 

 of the contrary opinion. Thorough cooking 

 of meats is a sure preventive of the devel- 

 opment of these unwelcome entozoa. 



An apparatus, the invention of an Amer- 

 ican, for carrying a line to a vessel in dis- 

 tress was lately tested in England. It con- 

 sists of a projectile weighing V2h pounds, the 

 necessary line included. This projectile is 

 placed in a gun, the wrong or heavy end 

 first, and on leaving the muzzle, at once 

 turns over, the front end becoming the rear. 

 In shape it is an elongated shell 12 inches 

 long, 3^ inches in diameter, carrying a line 

 tightly coiled within, which it pays out as 

 it flies through the air. At 22 elevation, 

 the distances reached by the projectile were 

 389, 448, and 507 yards, the deviation of 

 the shot and line from the target being 4|, 

 nine, and eight yards respectively. 



