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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



M. Charles Brongniart has communi- 

 cated to the French Academy some observa- 

 tions on the peregrine locusts in Algeria, 

 which passed continuously for several days 

 over Mustapha and Algiers, and were so thick 

 that one could not go into the street with 

 out being hit by them. To deposit her eggs, 

 the female bores into the hardest ground, 

 even in the trodden roads, sometimes trying 

 the soil first, to the depth of from five to 

 eight centimetres. She lines the bottom of 

 the hole with a light whitish substance like 

 beaten egg, and covers her eggs, after she 

 has deposited them, with the same sub- 

 stance. In some places an average of thirty- 

 five deposits per square decimetre was count- 

 ed, each containing eighty or ninety eggs. 

 The insects succumb immediately after lay- 

 ing, and shortly die ; and the bodies lie scat- 

 tered around at the rate of thirty per square 

 metre, food for birds and predatory insects. 

 The ground where the eggs have been depos- 

 ited is easily recognizable from a distance. 



A collection of Eskimo works of art, 

 made by Assistant Superintendent Edwards 

 of the cryolite mines at Arsuk Fiord, Green- 

 land, is described by John R. Spears, in 

 Nature. It includes candlesticks, cigar-hold- 

 ers, ash-receivers, anchors, paper-weights, 

 etc , made of green-stone. The articles were 

 all made to sell to the Danish rulers, for the 

 Eskimo themselves have no use for orna- 

 mental art ; but they show considerable skill 

 in sculpture. 



The Andaman Islands, constituting a 

 small isolated territory, furnish rare oppor- 

 tunities for the study of the introduction 

 and growth of new plants. They have been 

 under scientific observation since 1858. Dr. 

 Prain, of Silpur, records that in 18G6, when 

 there were six hundred known indigenous 

 species, fifteen intentionally introduced 

 plants and " sixty-one weeds of cultivation " 

 had become established as an integral por- 

 tion of the flora, and that by 1890 twenty- 

 three more of the first class and fifty-six 

 more of the second kind had been added, 

 while four of the naturalized plants noted 

 in 1866 had disappeared. A common Indian 

 butterfly has made its appearance since the 

 plant on which its larva feeds became natu- 

 ralized. 



A committee of London municipal offi- 

 cials has been ordered to report upon the ad- 

 visability of erecting a crematorium in the 

 cemetery at Ilford. Mr. Malthouse, oncof the 

 sanitary officials of the city, has called atten- 

 tion to the fact that 91/243 bodies were 

 buried last year in the London cemeteries, 

 and that in many places they lay fourteen 

 deep. High medical authority had declared 

 already that the state of the cemeteries de- 

 manded the intervention of the Government. 

 Cremation, he said, was the only practical 

 alternative of burial, and would soon be 



adopted, if the costs were reduced, as the 

 prejudice against it was disappearing very 

 rapidly. 



An experiment has been made by Dr. 

 Pringsheiru, of Berlin, to determine the 

 position of the accent in French words by a 

 physical method. A phonautograph was 

 used, into which a number of Frenchmen 

 spoke, and the record was afterward meas- 

 ured by means of a tuning-fork curve run- 

 ning parallel to it. It was possible thus to 

 determine the duration, pitch, and intensity 

 of each syllable. As the results related to 

 French words only, it may merely be men- 

 tioned here that the shortest syllable, e, in 

 ete, with rather a slow pronunciation, con- 

 sisted of twenty-two vibrations ; yet the 

 ear, besides hearing the tone, is capable of 

 detecting fine shades and differences in the 

 mode of pronunciation. 



OBITUARY NOTES. 

 Dr. Richard Schomeurgk, Director of 

 the Botanic Gardens at Adelaide, South 

 Australia, has recently died there. He was 

 associated with his brother, the late Sir Rob- 

 ert Schomburgk, in the Boundary Demarka- 

 tiou of British Guiana in 1840; some years 

 later settled in South Australia as a farmer 

 and wine-grower ; became Director of the Bo- 

 tanic Garden in 1866; founded the Museum 

 of Economic Botany, and was an eminent hor- 

 ticulturist. Ee was author of a hook in 

 German of travels in British Guiana, in 

 which were embodied a flora and fauna of 

 the country ; of Botanical Reminiscences of 

 British Guiana ; and of papers on the agri- 

 cultural and horticultural capabilities of 

 South Australia and the Botanic Garden. 



The death is announced of Prof. Weber, 

 of Gottingen, the celebrated physicist. He 

 was born in 1802. His first scientific publi- 

 cation was the Theory of Modulations (Leip- 

 sic, 1825). Being a liberal in politics, he 

 was turned out of his professorship by King 

 Ernest of Saxony. lie soon afterward be- 

 gan to devote himself to magnetism, gave a 

 new impulse to the study of electricity in 

 Germany, and became one of the first au- 

 thorities on the subject in Europe. He was 

 restored to his chair at Gottingen in 1849, 

 and resided there for the rest of his life. 



Prof. Carl Wilhelm von Nagelli, an 

 eminent German botanist, died at Munich, 

 May 10th, in the seventy-fourth year of his 

 age. 



Sir John Hawkshatv, an eminent Eng- 

 lish engineer, died in London, June 2d, in 

 his eighty-first year. He was President of 

 the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1862- 

 186H, and of the British Association at its 

 Bristol meeting in 1875. nis greatest engi- 

 neering feat ;vas the construction of the 

 Severn Tunnel. 



