NOTES. 



383 



portant modification, has been repeated by 

 M. Dareste, who for some years past has de- 

 voted himself with great assiduity to the 

 study of embryo life. He took from under 

 a hen an egg on which she had sat for three 

 days, and let it remain in the ordinary tem- 

 perature for two or three days. He then 

 again placed it under conditions favorable 

 to incubation, and in due time a chick was 

 hatched out, just as if there had occurred 

 nothing unusual in the mean time. The 

 result of this ingenious experiment, as M. 

 Stanislas Meunier observes in La Nature, is 

 to show that life may be suspended for a 

 considerable length of time in warm-blood- 

 ed animals without fatal effects, precisely as 

 in animals of a very low grade, such as Roti- 

 fera. 



Mars's Fast Moon. The periodic time 

 of the inner satellite of Mars is only very 

 little over seven hours, while the axial rota- 

 tion of Mars itself requires about twenty- 

 four hours. Now, this discrepancy is in 

 apparent conflict with the nebular hypothe- 

 sis, which assumes all the secondary bodies 

 of a system to have been evolved from 

 their primary at successive stages, with the 

 velocity of the primary's surface at the time 

 of their being dropped as rings of nebu- 

 lous matter. But here is a planet's satel- 

 lite possessed of a velocity of revolution 

 more than thrice as high as the velocity of 

 axial rotation possessed by its primary. 

 The problem, how to account for this accel- 

 erated movement of the inner Martial moon, 

 has occupied the attention of astronomers 

 since the discovery of Mars's satellites by 

 Prof. Asaph Hall, a few months ago. The 

 theory proposed by Prof. M. H. Doolittle, 

 of the Coast Survey, appears to solve all the 

 difficulties of the case. In three ways, ac- 

 cording to Prof. Doolittle, the relative veloci- 

 ties of Mars and his moon might be modi- 

 fied by the impact of interstellar matter, or 

 meteorites : 1. These bodies, by striking the 

 satellite and forcing it to travel in a nar- 

 rower orbit, its original absolute velocity con- 

 tinuing the same, would increase its relative 

 velocity ; 2. By striking the primary, they 

 would increase its mass and its attraction 

 on the satellite ; 3. By increasing the mass 

 of the primary and so reducing its absolute 

 velocity they would make the relative veloci- 

 ty of the satellite higher. 



NOTES. 



The American Association for the Ad- 

 vancement of Science will assemble in St. 

 Louis, on August 21st. The officers are: 

 President, Prof. 0. C. Marsh; Vice-Presi- 

 dent of the Physical Section, Prof. R. H. 

 Thurston ; Vice-President of the Natural 

 History Section, Prof. Augustus R. Grote ; 

 General Secretary, Prof. H. Carrington Bol- 

 ton ; Secretary of Section A, Prof. Francis 

 E. Nipher ; Secretary of Section B, George 

 Little ; Treasurer, William S. Vaux ; Chair- 

 man of Chemical Sub-section, Prof. F. W. 

 Clarke. 



The British Association meets this year 

 in Dublin, on August 14th, under the presi- 

 dency of Mr. William Spottiswoode, F. R. S. 



During the summer vacation, teachers 

 of mathematics or astronomy will be ad- 

 mitted to the Cincinnati Observatory, there 

 to pursue the different branches of study 

 connected with their special departments 

 of instruction. Applications should be made 

 to the director of the observatory, Mr. Or- 

 niond Stone. 



The French Association for the Ad- 

 vancement of Science will this year hold its 

 meeting at Paris, commencing August 22d. 

 The officers of the Association are : Presi- 

 dent, Prof. Fr6my, of the Academy of Sci- 

 ences; Vice-President, M. Bardoux, Min- 

 ister of Public Instruction ; Secretary, M. 

 Perrier, commandant d'etat-major. 



The death of Dr. Charles Pickering, of 

 Boston, is announced. He was a grandson 

 of Timothy Pickering, and was born in Sus- 

 quehanna County, Pennsylvania, on Novem- 

 ber 10, 1805 ; graduated at Harvard College 

 in 1823, and three years later received his 

 medical diploma. He was a member of the 

 scientific staff on board of the United States 

 ship Viucennes during Commodore Wilkes's 

 Exploring Expedition around the world from 

 1838 to 1842. In 1843 he went to India 

 and Eastern Africa, to complete his ethno- 

 logical researches, and on his return home 

 two years later began the preparation of his 

 great work, "The Races of Man and their 

 Geographical Distribution" (1848). He 

 later published " Geographical Distribution 

 of Animals and Man " (1854), and "Geo- 

 graphical Distribution of Plants" (1861). 



In the Azores, a Portuguese subscribes 

 himself at the foot of a letter as "your 

 watchful venerator " an expression doubt- 

 less as sincere as " your obedient servant." 

 He dates all letters written from his own 

 house " S. C," meaning sua cam {your 

 house), and' he addresses them " S. I. C," 

 i. e. Sua ilustre casa (to your illustrious 

 bouse). By a fiction of politeness, he as- 

 sumes that the house he lives in is one of 



