NOTES. 



863 



ice detailing an experienced observer who 

 acts as director and supervises the work car- 

 ried on in an office furnished by the State 

 Experiment Station. 



In a paper on the Occurrence of Tin in 

 Canned Goods, read in the American Chemi- 

 cal Society, Prof. H. A. Weber related a 

 case of poisoning from eating pumpkin-pie 

 made from canned pumpkin, in the investiga- 

 tion of which he had found as much as seven 

 maximum or fifty or more minimum doses of 

 tin salts in a pound of canned pumpkin. 

 He had also found large traces of tin in canned 

 fruits and tomatoes. The paper was very 

 generally discussed, and it was agreed that 

 the subject ought to be investigated. There 

 is considerable difference of opinion among 

 chemists concerning the extent and even the 

 reality of danger from this source. 



Prof. Springer informed the American 

 Association that he has discovered a latent 

 quality in aluminum which adapts it in a re- 

 markable degree to use in the construction 

 of sounding-boards. He has found that it 

 differs from all other metals, so far as he is 

 aware, in being free from the comparatively 

 continuous and uniform higher partial tones 

 that give the tone-color called metallic ; and 

 that it possesses an elasticity capable of sym- 

 pathetic vibration uniform through a wide 

 range of tone-pitch, that renders it in that 

 respect superior to wood. The thickness of 

 the sheet may be so reduced as to obtain the 

 utmost amplitude of tone vibration without 

 injury to the quality of the tone ; and in 

 this it is superior to both wood and other 

 metals. 



The photochronograph is an instrument 

 intended to remove the personal equation 

 in transit observations (astronomical) by 

 means of photography. It was devised by 

 Prof. Bigelow, of Woodstock College, and 

 gave very satisfactory results as a first ex- 

 periment with the star Alpha Aquike. The 

 first apparatus was soon superseded by a sec- 

 ond, and the second by a third, each being 

 improved as the experiments suggested. An 

 account of the instrument and its workings 

 is given in a special publication of George- 

 town College Observatory. 



The Association of Agricultural Colleges 

 and Experiment Stations adopted a resolu- 

 tion, at its recent meeting in Washington, 

 asking the Secretary of Agriculture, in the 

 interest of forest preservation, to secure the 

 passage of laws exempting from sale or 

 pre-emption Government forest lands now 

 unsold, and to cause them to be surveyed, 

 reported upon, and protected. It also sug- 

 gested that the Weather Bureau organize 

 and, co-operating with the agricultural col- 

 leges and stations, assist in maintaining a 

 study of climatology in its relations to farm- 

 ing ; and that the sphere of this work should 

 be enlarged to include the physics, conditions, 

 and changes of agricultural soils. 



A cavern was discovered lately on the 

 slope of the mountain at Baden which had 

 evidently been used in the middle ages and 

 long previously. Remains of the founda- 

 tions of a vestibule were found at the en- 

 trance. In a niche hewn out of the rock was 

 an altar with the sacrificial stone table. In 

 front of the cavern was a regularly constructed 

 building, fully ten feet below the surface of 

 the ground above, designed probably to con- 

 ceal the cavern behind, which may have been 

 employed as a temple to Mithra. There 

 were two stalls for horses, fragments of uten- 

 sils, knives, flint arrow-heads, and carved 

 bones, mixed up with Roman coins, lamps, 

 and stamped tiles. 



A cocrse of lectures on the work of the 

 Rothamstead Agricultural Station was deliv- 

 ered at Washington by Mr. R. Warrington, 

 Vice-President of the Chemical Society of 

 England, during the recent meeting of the 

 Association of American Agricultural Col- 

 leges. At the conclusion of his lectures the 

 speaker congratulated our country on having 

 more than fifty experiment stations, each of 

 them endowed with an income equal to or 

 surpassing that possessed by Rothamstead ; 

 but advising his hearers that if at the end 

 of fifty years each of our stations is to show 

 a record of work done equal to or surpassing 

 that accomplished by the old station in Eng- 

 land, it will only be by each one pursuing its 

 work in the same spirit of accuracy, thor- 

 oughness, and patience that has characterized 

 the Rothamstead experiment. 



The minor planets 296, 297, 298, 300, 

 302, and 303, have been named respectively 

 Phaetusa, Cecilia, Baptistina, Geraldina, Cla- 

 rissa, and Josephina. 



The address of Vice-President J. J. Ste- 

 phenson before the Geological and Geographi- 

 cal Section of the American Association was 

 on the relations of the Chemung and Catskill 

 formations on the eastern side of the Ap- 

 palachian basin. The speaker found that 

 the deposits were not made in a closed sea, 

 but that the influx of great rivers with their 

 load of debris made conditions of the shal- 

 low basin such that life could not exist ; 

 and that in the present state of our knowl- 

 edge we are not justified in including the 

 Chemung period in the Carboniferous age. 



The British consul at Hankow, China, 

 writes that the varnish exported from that 

 city is the gum of the Rhus vernifem, or 

 varnish-bearing sumach. It has to be col- 

 lected and strained in the dark, as light 

 spoils the gum and causes it to cake with all 

 the dirt in it. And it can not be strained in 

 wet weather, because moisture causes it to 

 solidify ; but then it should only be used in 

 wet weather, as, if the atmosphere is dry 

 when it is rubbed on, it will always be sticky. 

 As used by the Chinese, the varnish takes 

 about a month to dry, and during the time it 

 is drying it is poisonous to the eyes. ' 



