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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



The Pamban-arivy, or Snake Fall, of Tre- 

 vancore, India, is a double fall, descending 

 in the first plunge from the cliff edge twelve 

 hundred feet, and can be seen from a dis- 

 tance of forty miles. 



OBITUARY NOTES. 



Herr Karl Weihrauch, Director of the 

 Meteorological Observatory in Dorpat, Rus- 

 sia, has recently died, at the age of fifty 

 years. 



The death was announced, early in the 

 year, of M. Clevaud, Professor of Botany 

 at Bordeaux, and author of the Flora de 

 Gironde, a work of which two parts have 

 appeared, and which " is characterized by 

 its beautiful plates, and by the attempts to 

 place on a scientific basis the genetic rela- 

 tionship of the various species with one 

 another." 



Prof. Sophie Kovalevsky, of the Uni- 

 versity of Stockholm, who died February 

 10th, was a woman of rare mathematical 

 gifts. Besides an autobiographical sketch, 

 which is described as "one of the finest pro- 

 ductions of modern Russian literature," and 

 a fragment of a longer novel, she wrote sev- 

 eral able papers in the higher mathematics. 

 She has recorded in her Reminiscences a 

 curious experience of her childhood. In re- 

 pairing her father's house in the country 

 (Russia), the wall-paper for the nursery was 

 overlooked in ordering from St. Petersburg. 

 For want of anything else, the room was pa- 

 pered with a set of Ostrogradski's litho- 

 graphed course on higher mathematical anal- 

 ysis. The ten-years-old girl acquired the 

 habit of reading the learned dissertations, 

 and became so familiar with their language 

 that when she began, at sixteen, the study 

 of the differential calculus, her teacher was 

 astonished at the rapidity with which she un- 

 derstood him "just as if it was a reminis- 

 cence of something that you knew before," 

 he said. 



Mr. George Wareing Ormerod, of 

 Teignmouth, England, a student of local 

 geology, and author of papers on the salt- 

 beds of Cheshire and the granite of Dart- 

 moor, died in January, eighty years old. He 

 had been a member of the Geological Society 

 of London for fifty-eight years, and contin- 

 ued the compilation of the classified index 

 to its publications, which he began early, till 

 he had reached an advanced age. 



Antonio Stoppani. an Italian geologist, 

 died January 1st, at Milan. He conducted a 

 scientific periodical, II Rosmini, which was 

 in sympathy with the teachings of the phi- 

 losopher of that name. Of his books, one 

 called II Bel Paese, or The Beautiful Coun- 

 try, has been published in several editions. 



Dr. Felix Liebricht, who died in Au- 

 gust last, in his sixtieth year, was an early 

 and successful student of folk lore and com- 

 parative mythology. He was a native of 

 Silesia, and spent the greater part of his 

 working life as a professor in the Univer- 

 sity of Liege. He translated Basile's Penta- 

 merone from the Italian, published a version 

 of the romance of Barlaam and Josaphat, 

 brought out an annotated edition of Gervase 

 of Tilbury's treatise a sort of encyclopae- 

 dia of mediaeval folk lore and in 1 876 pub- 

 lished, under the title of Zur Volkskunde, a 

 selection of his contributions on his special 

 subject to periodical literature. 



Charles John Maximovicz, the famous 

 Russian botanist, one of the most distin- 

 guished systematic botanists of our time, 

 and the great authority on the plants of 

 Eastern Asia, died in St. Petersburg, Febru- 

 ary 16th. His scientific career began with 

 a journey in Manchuria, the botanical re- 

 sults of which were published in 1859. He 

 next made large collections in Japan and 

 distributed them among the herbaria of the 

 world. From time to time since 1866 he 

 published critical notes of Manchurian and 

 Japanese plants, and was the author of 

 monographs of the Rhododendrons, the Hy- 

 drangeas, and the Buckthorns of Eastern 

 Asia. 



General Liagre, of the Belgian Engi- 

 neers, who died in January last, was well 

 known in the scientific circles of his coun- 

 try. He was attached to the observatory as 

 astronomical aid, and, after the death of 

 Houzeau, as a member of the Directorial 

 Committee. He was a distinguished mathe- 

 matician. 



The death of Mr. John Marshall, Presi- 

 dent of the British General Medical Coun- 

 cil, at the age of seventy-two years, on New 

 Year's day, was followed by that of Mr. Ed- 

 ward Bellamy, Lecturer on Artistic Anatomy 

 at the South Kensington School, January 4th. 



Prof. Casey, Fellow of the Royal Uni- 

 versity of Ireland, an eminent mathemati- 

 cian, died January 3d, in the seventy-first 

 year of his age. 



The deaths have been reported of Dr. 

 Karl Weihrauch, Director of the Meteorologi- 

 cal Observatory of Dorpat, January 19th, 

 in the fiftieth year of his age ; M. Emile 

 Reynier, electrician, January 20th, at the 

 age of thirty-nine years ; and Mr. Cosmo 

 Innos Burton, Professor of Chemistry at the 

 English Technical Institute at Shanghai, in 

 the twenty-eighth year of his age. 



Dr. Philip Carl, Professor of Physics 

 at the Munich Royal Military College, and 

 editor of the Repertory of Physical Tech- 

 nics and the Journal of Electro - technics, 

 died January 24th. 



