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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



Eothen will touch first at Whale Point, in 

 Hudson Bay, and there recruit a force of 

 Esquimaux to reenforce the search-party; 

 from Whale Point the schooner will proceed 

 to Beach Point, Repulse Bay, one hundred and 

 forty miles north. Thence the search-party 

 will proceed inland by sleds five or six hun- 

 dred miles to a point in the northern portion 

 of Boothia Felix, where the last survivors of 

 the Erebus and Terror crews are said to 

 have perished, and where, according to the 

 natives, their bodies are buried. 



Rediscovery of a lost Sphceria is noticed 

 by the bulletin of the Torrey Botanical 

 Club. This fungus, the S. barbirostris, was 

 discovered by Dufour in the department of 

 Landes, France, over forty years ago. Since 

 then no specimen has been found until 

 lately, when Mr. J. B. Ellis rediscovered it 

 on some maple-bark at Vineland, New Jer- 

 sey. 



Among some insects sent to Prof. Lock- 

 wood, of Freehold, New Jersey, as damag- 

 ing the wheat, he identified that terrible 

 microscopic hemipteran, the chinch -bug. 

 The specimens came from Morris County. 

 The Hessian fly is unusually troublesome 

 this year in New Jersey. 



In a recent lecture before the Natural 

 History Society of Harvard College, Prof. 

 J. D. Whitney asserted that the " Calave- 

 ras skull " is undoubtedly of Pliocene age. 

 Chemical analysis had shown it to be a true 

 fossil, its organic matter being almost en- 

 tirely lost, and the lime phosphate replaced 

 by carbonate. Prof. Whitney had himself 

 chiseled away from the skull the substance 

 of the matrix in which it was imbedded 

 when found in the strata underlying Table 

 Mountain. 



The Polytechnic Review mentions the 

 discovery, in South America, of a species of 

 fibrous plant suitable for paper -making. 

 The specific nature of the plant and the lo- 

 cality of its growth are kept secret. It is 

 asserted that a No. 50 thread of the fibre 

 " cannot be broken by the strength of or- 

 dinary fingers without snapping." The 

 plant grows wild, and is, when full grown, 

 taller than a man, in some cases even higher 

 than a man on horseback. In the natural 

 state it is of a brown color, but is easily 

 bleached to pure white. 



A series of grammars of Indo-Germanic 

 languages is announced as forthcoming from 

 the press of a Leipsic publishing-house. 

 There will be eight grammars in the series 

 namely, Indian, Iranic, Greek, Italic, Ger- 

 man, Irish, Lithuanian, and Slavic. The 

 Indian grammar will be by Prof. W. D. 

 Whitney, of Yale College, and he has gone 

 to Europe to see the work through the 

 press. 



Dr. Brown-Sequard has been appoint- 

 ed the successor of Claude Bernard in the 

 professorship of Physiology in the College 

 of France an eminently well-merited ap- 

 pointment. Dr. Brown-Sequard is a native 

 of Mauritius, born in 1818, soon after that 

 island had been taken from the French and 

 made a British possession. His father, Dr. 

 Edward Brown, was a native of Philadel- 

 phia, and his mother a native of Mauritius 

 and of French origin. He is eminent as an 

 investigator of brain and nerve organiza- 

 tion. 



It has been observed by Pasteur that 

 some bacteria are killed by a temperature 

 of 109 Fahr. This fact he uses to explain 

 the impossibility of inoculating birds with 

 anthrax or carbuncle. But if the tempera- 

 ture of birds be lowered artificially, they 

 would, he inferred, be inoculable, supposing 

 the temperature to be the obstacle. This 

 inference he confirmed by experiment ; hav- 

 ing kept a fowl for some time in water of 

 75 Fahr., he succeeded in inoculating it 

 with anthrax. 



We have to record the demise of two Eu- 

 ropean astronomers of note namely, Prof. 

 Wolfers, of Berlin, editor of the " Year- 

 Book " of the observatory attached to the 

 university of that place ; and Rev. R. Main, 

 F. R. S., director of the Radcfiffe Observa- 

 tory, England. The former died in the sev- 

 enty-sixth year of his age and the latter in 

 the seventieth. 



Magnus Nyren writes to the St. Peters- 

 burg Academy of Sciences that the great 

 earthquake on the South American coast, in 

 May, 1877, was perceptible at Pulkowa by 

 a tremor of the instrument with which he 

 was observing the passage of a star. He 

 further states that the tremor continued 

 sufficiently long to be satisfactorily verified, 

 and that there was no disturbance in the 

 neighborhood by which it could have been 

 occasioned. 



In Natal, South Africa, grass is kept in 

 the moist state for months by being buriod 

 in pits, the process being known as " ensi- 

 lage." A pit is dug in the ground in a dry 

 situation, and filled with fresh-cut grass, 

 which is packed closely down and then cov- 

 ered with a thick layer of soil, to exclude 

 the air. Grass thus stored is apparently 

 unchanged in its nutritive properties ; cat- 

 tle consume it with avidity, and thrive well 

 upon it. 



A statue commemorative of Giordano 

 Bruno, the philosopher and martyr of sci- 

 ence, will be dedicated at Rome on Febru- 

 ary 17, 1879. He was burned at the stake 

 in that city on the same day of the year 

 1600, on the charge of being an " obstinate 

 heretic." 



