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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



The Geological Society has awarded the 

 Wollaston medal to Mr. George Busk for 

 his researches on fossil polyzoa and pleisto- 

 cene mammalia ; the Murchison medal to 

 Professor Ferdinand Roemer, of Breslau ; 

 the Lyell medal to Professor H. G. Seeley, 

 for his long-continued work on fossil sauri- 

 ans ; and the Bigsby medal to M. Renard, of 

 the Brussels Museum, for his petrographical 

 researches. 



The " Saturday Review " gives some 

 more illustrations of the learning that is 

 fostered by the English School-Board cram 

 examinations. One is, that "the earth's 

 axis is a pole put through the center of the 

 sun, which turns it round." Another pupil 

 stated that " the Nile is the only remarkable 

 river in the world. It was discovered by 

 Dr. Livingstone, and rises in Mungo Park." 

 On ancient Britain the examinations brought 

 out statements that Julius Caesar invaded 

 the country b. c. 400 ; that the women " wore 

 their hair down their backs, with torches in 

 their hands " ; and that the " Druids were 

 an ancient people, supposed to be Roman 

 Catholics." 



The latest reports from Sydney with 

 reference to the Monotrcmata state that 

 Mr. Caldwell has exhibited specimens " show- 

 ing the stages in the development of the 

 monotremes from the laying of the egg to 

 the hatching," and that Baron Miklucho- 

 Maclay, who had found that the tempera- 

 ture of Echidna was 82"5 Fahr., now finds 

 that that of the Ornithorhyncus is only 76 

 Fahr., or more than 20 below that of man. 



Messrs. Schulz, Knaudt & Co., Essen, 

 Germany, are now producing, from the ref- 

 use of the fire-grates of the puddling and 

 reheating furnaces, two hundred cubic me- 

 tres of water-gas per hour, which contains 

 forty-eight per cent of hydrogen, and forty- 

 four per cent of carbonic oxide. The gas is 

 used for welding and in the production of 

 incandescent lights. The firm are about to 

 build apparatus that will generate fourteen 

 thousand cubic metres of the gas per day. 



In a recent paper by MM. Fremy and 

 Urbain, before the French Academy of Sci- 

 ences, attention is called to cutose, the sub- 

 stance that covers and protects the aerial 

 organs of plants, which is shown to ap- 

 proach the fatty bodies in its properties 

 and composition. It resists the action of 

 energetic acids, is insoluble in dilute alkalies, 

 and is not acted upon by neutral solvents, 

 but is modified in its conditions by boiling 

 alkaline liquids. 



In a recent paper before the Royal 

 Society on " Underground Temperatures," 

 Professor Prestwich, after considering the 

 sources of error that affect thcrmomctric 



observations in collieries and mines, sug- 

 gested, as the result of a large number of 

 observations in mines, Artesian-well bor- 

 ings, and Alpine-railway tunnels, that the 

 mean thermic gradient is about forty-five 

 feet for every degree Fahrenheit. 



OBITUARY NOTES. 



General Helmersen, a Russian officer 

 of considerable distinction as a geologist 

 and explorer, is dead. 



The death is announced of Hofrath 

 Schmid, Professor of Mineralogy at Jena. 



Mr. John Francis Campbell, who re- 

 cently died in England, was the inventor of 

 a " sunshine recorder," a curious instrument 

 in which the sun burned out its path for 

 every hour of the day when visible, and in- 

 dicated by the amount of charring the ever- 

 varying intensity of the influence of its 

 rays. Other instruments have been invent- 

 ed with similar purpose, but their power is 

 generally limited to the registration of the 

 chemical action of the sun's rays. 



Mr. IIodder M. Westropp, archaeologist, 

 author of a " Manual of Archaeology " and 

 other works, is dead. 



Mr. Thomas C. Archer, Director of the 

 Edinburgh Museum of Science and Art, died 

 February 19th. While a customs clerk in 

 Liverpool, he was appointed to take charge 

 of the exhibit of that town in the Great 

 Exhibition of 1851. lie afterward added 

 to his usual duties the work of lecturing at 

 local institutions and educational establish- 

 ments, and became a professor in the Liver- 

 pool Institution. He was appointed to the 

 Museum in Edinburgh in 1SG0. Among his 

 scientific publications are a text-book on 

 " Economic Botany," and papers before the 

 Royal Society of Edinburgh on " Graphite 

 in Siberia," on an undescribed variety of 

 flexible sandstone, on " Two Species of Fora- 

 minifera," and on "some objects from the 

 Nicobar Islands of great ethnological inter- 

 est." 



Mr. Sidney Gilchrist Thomas, whose 

 name is inseparably associated with the ba- 

 sic or Thomas-Gilchrist process for making 

 steel from phosphoric pig-iron, died in Paris 

 on the 1st of February. He was educated 

 at Dulwich College, England, and was in- 

 tended for the medical profession, but en- 

 tered the civil service, while he kept up all 

 his life a strong interest in the study of 

 chemistry. The first announcement of the 

 discovery in iron-working which he and his 

 relative, Mr. Gilchrist, had made, was given 

 in a paper which he read before the Iron 

 and Steel Institute in 1ST8, " On the Elimi- 

 nation of Phosphorus." 



