JZO 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Several cyclopaedias contain the state- 

 ment, in substance, that no land in Connect- 

 icut rises above a thousand feet in height. 

 Professor Asaph Hall writes to "Science" 

 that, according to Mr. G. M. Bradford's sur- 

 veys, several points in the northwest part 

 of the State are higher than this, and men- 

 tions six mountains that exceed 1,600 feet. 

 They are : Ivy Mount, Goshen, 1,642 ; Hay- 

 stack Mount, Norfolk, 1,672 ; Bald Mount, 

 Norfolk, 1,770 ; Bradford Mount, Canaan, 

 1,910; Bear Mount, Salisbury, 2,100; and 

 Bruce Mount, Salisbury, 2,300 feet. 



Under the promptings of the universal 

 recognition of the truth that, for Japan to 

 take the rank she should hold among civil- 

 ized nations, her literary and educational 

 work must be freed from the trammels of 

 the Chinese ideographs, a society the Ro- 

 maji Kai has been formed to promote the 

 general adoption of the Roman letters. Its 

 committee, composed of native and foreign 

 scholars, has drawn up a scheme of trans- 

 literation, and a monthly journal the "Ro- 

 maji Zasshi," which, besides this subject, 

 will discuss general topics and publish clas- 

 sical and original literary papers has been 

 begun, to introduce the new system to the 

 people. 



Dr. Cornish, a student of cholera, pro- 

 poses that a certain proportion of the per- 

 sons who are condemned to death every year 

 in India be used, their own consent having 

 been obtained, as subjects for experiments 

 on the transmission of cholera; further 

 punishment to be remitted if they survive 

 the tests. 



A division of economic ornithology has 

 been established in the Entomological Bu- 

 reau of the Office of Commissioner of Agri- 

 culture, and Dr. C. Hart Merriam, Secretary 

 of the American Ornithologists' Union, has 

 been appointed to take charge of it. Its 

 special field of investigation will be the 

 inter-relation of birds and agriculture, and 

 will include the relations of birds and in- 

 sects, the food and habits of birds, and the 

 collection of data bearing on the migration 

 and geographical distribution of North 

 American birds. 



M. J. J. Martinez proposes a universal 

 subscriptien for the purpose of boring a 

 hole, thirty by one hundred and fifty feet in 

 diameter, down into the earth, at which con- 

 venient stations may be fixed for the obser- 

 vation of all kinds of subterranean phe- 

 nomena. 



Lieutenant Van Gele, of the French 

 Equatorial Station, gives the following list, 

 with the weights, of the various articles of 

 costume of a Congo negro lady : A copper 

 riug on each ankle, \ kilogramme ; brass-wire 

 leglets on each calf, 1 kilogramme each ; a 



petticoat of banana-fiber cloth, twenty inches 

 long and nine inches wide, j/,- kilogramme ; 

 a bell fastened with a belt, \ kilogramme ; a 

 copper collar around the neck the most 

 important garment of the dress 27 kilo- 

 grammes. The total weight is 29210 kilo- 

 grammes, or nearly 75 pounds about the 

 load of aEnropean infantry-soldier of which 

 less than half an ounce is devoted to the 

 purpose of real dress. 



The French Association for the Advance- 

 ment of the Sciences was to meet at Greno- 

 ble on the 12th of August, under the presi- 

 dency of Professor Verneuil. The meetings 

 would continue till the 20th, after which a 

 series of excursions was projected, to last 

 till the 24th. Two conferences were ap- 

 pointed : " On the Alimentary Resources of 

 France," by Dr. Jules Rochard ; and " On 

 the New Paleontological Gallery of the Mu- 

 seum," by M. G. Cotteau. 



Experiments reported by M. Guignet to 

 the French Academy of Sciences confirm 

 the views of M. Fr6my that the behavior of 

 chlorophyl, or the coloring-matter of leaves, 

 is usually like that of an acid. M. Guignet 

 has obtained chlorophyllate.of [soda, and 

 from it, by double decomposition, salts of 

 lime, baryta, and lead. 



MM. Muntz and Marcano have observed 

 that nitrification of the soil is going on in 

 the equatorial regions of South America on 

 an extraordinary scale. At some points the 

 constituents of the mold are cemented to- 

 gether in a kind of paste by enormous pro- 

 portions sometimes forty per cent of ni- 

 trate of lime. The origin of these condi- 

 tions is traced to the numerous mountain- 

 caves, which are inhabited by legions of 

 birds and bats, whence the streams carry 

 the guano over extensive areas. 



OBITUARY NOTES. 



Dr. Henri Milne-Edwards, the eminent 

 French naturalist, and the successor of 

 Geoffroy St.-Hilaire in the chair of Zoology 

 at the Museum of the Academy of Sciences, 

 died in Paris, July 29th, in the eighty-fifth 

 year of his age. A portrait and sketch of 

 his life and works were published in " The 

 Popular Science Monthly " for February, 

 1883. 



Robert von Schlagintweit, Professor 

 of Geography and Ethnology at the Univer- 

 sity of Giessen, has recently died, at the 

 age of fifty-two. He was the youngest of 

 three brothers who were commissioned by 

 the British East India Company, on the rec- 

 ommendation of Humboldt, to explore In- 

 dia and the mountain-regions of the north- 

 west. 



