NOTES. 



7*9 



prone to depend upon the state or charit7 

 instead of prudence or self-help ; injury to 

 the patient, from the hurried nature of the 

 diagnosis which the physician is compelled 

 to make, with the crowd pressing upon him ; 

 and to the physician, from the carelessness 

 into which he is led ; and degradation of the 

 profession, by turning its practice into a sort 

 of medical " free-lunch counter," by en- 

 couraging envy and subtle methods of ad- 

 vertising, and by the injustice of the sys- 

 tem to younger and country practitioners. 

 The author suggests a number of alterna- 

 tive remedies for the evil. 



NOTES. 



The second report of the Committee of 

 the American Association on the spelling 

 and pronunciation of chemical terms, as 

 presented to the Indianapolis meeting, in- 

 cludes all the rules and categories of words 

 given in the report to the Toronto meeting, 

 but with the pronunciations of words as 

 enumerated in that report usually omitted, 

 unless they have evoked opinions at vari- 

 ance with the recommendations of the com- 

 mittee from more than one correspondent. 

 As the list is limited, brief summaries of the 

 reasons for divergent views are frequently 

 appended, with indications of the authorities 

 referred to. It is desirable that the next 

 report of the committee should be thorough- 

 ly representative. The co-operation of all 

 American chemists is therefore sought, and 

 every chemist is requested to examine the 

 list and note all variations from the spelling 

 recommended that seem to him desirable. 



Prof. H. W. Conn, in a paper on the 

 Fermentations of Milk and their Preven- 

 tion, notices, as an advantage arising from 

 pasteurization that adds greatly to its value, 

 that nearlv all the pathogenic disease germs 

 which are likely to occur in milk are killed 

 by it. It is recognized that some of our 

 dangerous epidemics are transmitted from 

 house to house by means of milk, which fur- 

 nishes a good medium for their growth. If 

 pasteurization is sufficient to kill the disease- 

 germs, and if at the same time it delays the 

 souring from twenty to forty hours, and if 

 the milk thus treated retains the taste of 

 fresh milk, and permits the cream to rise on 

 it in the natural way, it is plain that it is a 

 process highly to be recommended. It con- 

 sists in heating the milk to a temperature of 

 about 155, or a little higher, and then rap- 

 idly cooling it. 



A telephone line has been laid between 

 London and Paris, and is working success- 

 fully. 



According to a paragraph in La Nature, 

 the people of Brazil have domesticated a spe- 

 cies of snake for the purpose of keeping down 

 rats. It is the giboia, a kind of boa, which 

 attains about thirteen feet in length, but is 

 no thicker than one's arm. These snakes 

 are sold for about a dollar apiece in the mar- 

 kets of Rio Janeiro, Pernambuco, and Iiahia, 

 They arc inoffensive and graceful, and pass 

 the day asleep. At night they begin their 

 hunt, penetrating everywhere, even between 

 the ceilings and the floors, and doing exten- 

 sive execution on vermin. They learn to 

 know their home, so that, when carried off, 

 they are able to find their way back. They 

 are said to be fixed in every house in the re- 

 gions infested by rats, and to have especial 

 individual qualities which the proprietor can 

 boast of when he wishes to sell or let his 

 place. 



The Societe d'Encouragement pour l'ln- 

 dustrie National, of Paris, France, has 

 awarded Mr. Henry Marion Howe a prize of 

 twenty-five hundred francs for his magnifi- 

 cent work on the metallurgy of steel. The 

 first edition of this work was exhausted with- 

 in a few weeks after its appearance. The 

 second edition, just published, contains a few 

 revisions by the author, and additions de- 

 scribing some recent advances in the pro- 

 cesses of making steel directly from the ore. 

 The work is published by the Scientific Pub- 

 lishing Company, New York. 



Experiments recently made in a Prus- 

 sian battalion have shown that dogs may 

 be trained to hunt up the wounded after a 

 battle, and call the attendants to take care of 

 them. In training the dogs, certain soldiers 

 pretend to be wounded, and lie upon the 

 ground as they would do if that were the 

 case. The dogs are sent out to hunt them ; 

 and when a dog finds a prostrate man he 

 stands by him and barks till some of the 

 ambulance-men come up. Every company 

 of the battalion has twelve dogs trained in 

 this way. Shepherds' dogs and wolf-dogs 

 seem best adapted for this purpose, while 

 very little can be made out of hunting-dogs. 



The French Academy of Sciences has re- 

 ceived a legacy of one hundred thousand 

 francs from the late M. Cahours, the inter- 

 est of which is to be distributed every year 

 by way of encouragement to any young men 

 who have made themselves known by some 

 interesting works, and more particularly by 

 chemical researches. A preference is ex- 

 pressed by the testator for young men with- 

 out fortune not having salaried offices, and 

 who, from the want of a sufficient income, 

 would find themselves without the possibil- 

 ity of following up their researches. He 

 also recommends that the money be given 

 to the same young men doing satisfactory 

 work, for several years to cease, however, 

 when they obtain sufficiently remunerative 

 positions to make the aid unnecessary. 



