384 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the inferior mansions of the person he hap- 

 pens to be writing to, who, possessing a 

 more illustrious habitation, allows the writer 

 to occupy it by indulgence or sufferance. 



During the discussion of hell-fire which 

 lately swept over this country, we did not 

 notice in any of the brethren such gracious 

 evidence of a meek and loving spirit as in 

 " Brother " Swigart, of Huntington, Pennsyl- 

 vania ; Brother Swigart is what is known as 

 a "Pilgrim Baptist." Says the Primitive 

 Christian: "At our last prayer - meeting 

 Brother Swigart took the position that we 

 have nothing to do with hell. It was not 

 prepared for the Christian, and therefore need 

 not concern us. Heaven is the place about 

 which we are concerned, and not hell." 



The educational authorities of Berlin 

 maintain a vast garden for the purpose of 

 supplying fresh botanical specimens for the 

 public schools of the city. Over 4,000,000 

 plants are required for botanical instruction 

 during the year. 



The biological department of the Johns 

 Hopkins University will this summer organ- 

 ize at Fort Wool, Virginia, a laboratory for 

 the study of marine zoology, the sessions 

 commencing June 15th, and continuing till 

 August 15th. The laboratory is designed to 

 meet the wants of advanced scientific in- 

 vestigators, but at the same time there will 

 be accommodations for a few less advanced 

 students. A fee of ten dollars will be charged 

 for the use of laboratory and apparatus, and 

 board will be furnished at cost. Address 

 Dr. W. K. Brooks, Johns Hopkins Univer- 

 sity, Baltimore. 



A short time ago we published a few 

 specimens of the absurd anomalies of our 

 common " systems " of weight and measure. 

 Many others are cited in a late number of 

 the Polytechnic Review. Among these we 

 notice two as being specially absurd. Thus 

 a law of the colony of Pennsylvania, about 

 the year 1705, enjoined that all brewers 

 " shall sell beer and ale by wine-measure to 

 all persons as drink it in their houses, and 

 by beer-measure to all such persons as carry 

 the same out of their houses." The other 

 instance is quoted from Mr. Charles Reade, 

 who says that in Shropshire they at one 

 time actually had different weights for dif- 

 ferent market-days ! 



Exact experiments made by Grehant 

 show that a man, or one of the lower ani- 

 mals, compelled to breathe for half an hour 

 an atmosphere containing only j}y of car- 

 bonic acid, absorbs that gas in such quan- 

 tity that about one-half of the red blood- 

 corpuscles combine with it and become in- 

 capable of absorbing oxygen ; and that, in 

 an atmosphere containing i^Vff f carbonic 

 oxide, about one-fourth of the red corpus- 

 cles combine with the gas. 



Dr. Percy, F. R. S., at a recent meeting 

 of the British Iron and Steel Institute, gave 

 some particulars as to the manufacture of 

 Japanese copper. Bars of this metal pre- 

 sent a beautiful rose-colored tint on their 

 surface, which is due to an extremely thin 

 and enduring film of red oxide of copper, 

 and which is not in the least degree affected 

 by free exposure to the atmosphere. Dr. 

 Percy exhibited bars of Japanese copper 

 which had been in his possession thirty 

 years, and which had undergone no change, 

 though freely exposed to the action of the 

 air. The secret of this result is that the 

 copper is cast under water, the metal being 

 very highly heated, and the water, too, made 

 hot. Dr. Percy had himself succeeded in 

 casting copper in this way, with results the 

 same as seen in the Japanese metal. 



Whitebait, a favorite fish among Brit- 

 ish epicures, has made its appearance in the 

 bay of New York. Mr. Eugene Blackford, 

 of Fulton Market, is satisfied of the identity 

 of the fish caught here with the English 

 whitebait. Only a few specimens have been 

 found as yet, but a full supply is anticipated 

 when the proper nets are procured, and 

 shoals of the fish are discovered. 



The sum voted by the French Chambers 

 for the maintenance of the national mu- 

 seums during the present year is 762,780 

 francs. With this pittance have to be de- 

 frayed all the expenses of the great muse- 

 ums of the Louvre, the Luxembourg, of 

 Versailles, and St.-Germain-en-Laye, with 

 their branches. Attention is called in La 

 Nature to the significant fact that the single 

 Theatre de V Opera receives from the state 

 a larger bounty than all these great mu- 

 seums taken together. In consequence of 

 this parsimony on the part of the Govern- 

 ment, many of the great French collections, 

 once justly esteemed to be the completest 

 of their kind in the world, are now far sur- 

 passed by similar collections in other coun- 

 tries. 



The state of the " temperance question" 

 in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and 

 Ireland may be inferred from the following 

 statistics, derived from official sources : In 

 1877 duty was paid in the United Kingdom 

 on 29,888,176 gallons of home-made spirits, 

 intended for home-use. This is 62,112 gal- 

 lons less than in 1876, but the decrease is 

 due exclusively to Ireland. England shows 

 an increase of 414,947 gallons, and Scotland 

 an increase of 16,051, but Ireland shows a 

 decrease of 493,110 gallons. The number 

 of gallons destined for consumption in Eng- 

 land was 16,853,082, in Scotland 6,987,189, 

 and in Ireland 6,047,905. The 10,618,564 

 proof gallons of imported foreign spirits en- 

 tered for consumption in the United King- 

 dom in 1877 were less by 883,176 gallons 

 than the quantity in the preceding year. 



