432 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Concerning certain philological and eth- 

 nological discussions that are going on with 

 considerable warmth, Mr. John Evans said, 

 in his address in the British Association, 

 that it will be for the benefit of science for 

 speculations as to the origin and home of 

 the Aryan family to be rife ; but it will still 

 more effectually conduce to our eventual 

 knowledge of this most interesting question 

 if it be consistently borne in mind that they 

 are but speculations. 



An important manufacture of butter from 

 cocoanut-milk is growing up in Germany. 

 Cocoanuts for the purpose are imported in 

 large numbers from India. 



Recent ir.vestigations by Prof. Geddes, 

 of Edinburgh, have led him to reject the 

 commonly accepted views of the origin of 

 thorns. He has found that there is a 

 more or less developed general contrast 

 in vegetative habit between thornless and 

 thorny varieties. The thorny varieties or 

 species show a more diminishing vegetative- 

 ness than their thornless congeners ; in fact, 

 they frequently develop their thorns by the 

 actual death of their germ points. 



The presidential address of Prof. T. E. 

 Thorpe, in the Chemical Section of the Brit- 

 ish Association, was largely devoted to the 

 vindication of the claims of Priestley to be 

 the discoverer of oxygen and of the non-ele- 

 mentary nature of water, against the attempt 

 of M. Berthelot, in his Revolution Chimique, 

 to appropriate a principal share in the dis- 

 coveries to Lavoisier. 



A notion has been put forth by the ed- 

 itor of a leading dairy paper that neither 

 dipping out milk nor drawing it through a 

 faucetfrom large cans gives portions of 

 equal quality to every customer. The dip- 

 ping method was tested, at Cornell, on three 

 milk routes the conclusion reached being 

 that by this practice " substantial justice is 

 done all the patrons so far as the amount of 

 fat apportioned to each is concerned." 



OBITUARY NOTES. 



Sir Richard F. Burton, who died at 

 Trieste, Austria, October 30th, was one of 

 the most venturesome travelers and explor- 

 ers and voluminous authors of mclem times. 

 He was born in Hertfordshire, England, in 

 1821. Having no taste for the university, he 

 entered the East India and afterward the 

 British diplomatic service, ne visited the 

 holy places of Arabia and won fame by the 

 book he wrote about them ; was the first 

 European to visit Herat ; discovered Lake 

 Tanganyika ; traveled to Salt Lake City and 

 California; spent throe or four years in 

 western Africa ; explored the Brazilian 

 highlands and Paraguay ; spent two vaca- 

 tions in " unexplored Syria " ; visited Ice- 



land ; explored the land of Midian ; and ac- 

 companied Cameron to the Gold Coast. His 

 published works approach eighty volumes, 

 of which thirty-nine are accounts of travel 

 and exploration. Of these the Lake Region 

 of Equatorial Africa is one of the best 

 books on Africa. Burton also published 

 grammars of three Oriental languages, five 

 volumes of folk-lore, three books on fencing, 

 and translations of the Portuguese poet 

 Camoens, and of the Arabian Nights. 



Mr. John Hancock, an English ornithol- 

 ogist, died at his home in Newcastle - on- 

 Tyne, October 11th, at the age of eighty- 

 nine years. 



The death is announced of Dr. Wenzel 

 Leopold Gruber, Professor of Anatomy in 

 the University of St. Petersburg. He was 

 seventy-six years old. 



Prof. Thorold Rogers, the eminent 

 English economist, has recently died at Ox- 

 ford. He was educated at King's College, 

 London, and at Oxford, and began life as a 

 clergyman of the Puseyite school. He after- 

 ward became a " coach " at Oxford, where 

 he wrote a hand-book on Education and a 

 pamphlet on the Law of Settlement. He 

 was made Professor of Political Economy 

 at Oxford in 1862, after which he devoted 

 himself mainly to economical subjects, and 

 entered Parliament in 1880. He published 

 two volumes of Historical Sketches; Cobden 

 and Modern Political Opinion ; Agriculture 

 and Prices in England (his most important 

 work) ; Six Centuries of Work and Labor ; 

 The Economical Interpretation of History ; 

 and the History of Holland in the Story of 

 the Nations series. 



Mr. Robert BRorcn Smyth, of Victoria, 

 Australia, who died in August last, had an 

 important part in the scientific work of the 

 colonies. He was from 1855 to 1858 Di- 

 rector of Meteorological Observations for 

 the Colony of Victoria ; was for some years 

 member and Secretary of the Board of Sci- 

 ence ; honorary secretary and member of 

 the Board for the Protection of Aborigines ; 

 Director of the Geological Survey of the 

 Colony ; and author of many works and pa- 

 pers on geology, ethnology, and philology. 



Captain JonN Page, of the Argentine 

 Navv, a summary of whose lecture on the 

 Gran Chaco and its rivers has been pub- 

 lished in the Monthly, died in June or July 

 while making an attempt to explore the 

 rilcomayo River at about one hundred and 

 fifty leagues from its mouth. The expedi- 

 tion reached the mouth of the river in the 

 small steamer General Paz in April last, 

 and Captain Pngc attempted the ascent 

 thence in a vessel built especially for the 

 service, drawing only eight inches of water ; 

 but even then the ascent was found im- 

 practicable, and the steamer could often be 

 kept afloat only by damming up the stream. 



