NOTES. 



H3 



resources for fuel. A very fine vein of gas 

 has been found by sinking a well within 

 the limits of the city, and several manufact- 

 urers have begun boring for it on their 

 premises. Twenty-six wells are now fur- 

 nishing gas to manufacturers in the Pitts- 

 burg district, and new ones are added from 

 time to time. They are estimated to be 

 furnishing a supply of fuel equivalent to 

 from 5,000 to 7,000 tons of coal daily, or 

 from 1,800,000 to 2,500,000 tons a year. 

 The gas makes a nice and even fire in grates 

 and stoves, but objection is made to its use 

 in private houses on account of its freedom 

 from odor, by which the detection of leaks is 

 prevented, and the danger is incurred of the 

 air of the house being fatally poisoned before 

 any one becomes aware that anything is 

 wrong. Its light is too weak to make it suit- 

 able for illuminating purposes. Its advan- 

 tages over coal lie in the possibility of sup- 

 plying it at much less expense, and in its en- 

 tire freedom from soot and smoke — a mat- 

 ter of extreme importance in such a city as 

 Pittsburg. 



NOTES. 



An " American Electrical Exhibition " 

 will be opened in the Massachusetts Chari- 

 table Association Building, Huntington Ave- 

 nue, Boston, November 24th, and will be 

 continued till January 3, 1885. It is in- 

 tended to make the exhibition complete and 

 comprehensive in every particular, and to 

 exceed in novelty any that has ever been 

 held in New England. The rooms will be 

 open for the reception of exhibits frem No- 

 vember 5th to November 19th. Applica- 

 tions for space must be made by November 

 1st. Communications should be addressed 

 to " American Electrical Exhibition, Post- 

 Office Box 1130, Boston, Massachusetts." 



Mr. D. H. Talbot describes, in the 

 "American Naturalist," a specimen of the 

 ground squirrel in a state of hibernation 

 which he had an opportunity of observing. 

 It was rolled up in a perfect ball, with its 

 head resting forward of the root of the 

 tail, and the tail cui'led carefully up on 

 the body. It was resting in a perfectly 

 closed ball of hay twelve or fourteen inches 

 in diameter in the center of a hay-stack. It 

 was evidently alive and healthy when found, 

 though quite dormant, but either in conse- 

 quence of having been inconsiderately ex- 

 posed unwrapped to extreme cold by the 

 finder, or of some change that took place 

 while it was in Mr. Talbot's keeping, it grew 

 limp, suffered hajmorrhage, and died. 



A CORRESPONDENT calls attention to a 

 clerical error — a genuine case of what Rich- 

 ard Grant White would call heterophcmy — 

 that escaped notice in the proof-reading, by 

 which we were made, in the September 

 number, in recording the death of Ilenry 

 Watts, to say that he had been a " demon- 

 strator of anatomy " in University College, 

 London. " Director in the laboratory " was 

 what it should have been, and what was in- 

 tended. 



Mr. W. H. Preece stated in the British 

 Association that he had been fairly success- 

 ful in telephoning through the cable between 

 Dublin and Holyhead, a distance of sixty 

 miles. Accurately heard conversation, how- 

 ever, could not be carried on through cables 

 beyond a distance of twenty-five miles ; and 

 it seemed at j^resent impracticable to use 

 underground wires in cities for distances of 

 more than twelve miles. On overgroimd 

 wires he had no difficulty, with an arrange- 

 ment of double lines, in speaking through 

 two hundred and forty miles. 



Professor Clatpole read a paper, be- 

 fore the Geological Section of the British 

 Association, on the crumpling of the earth's 

 crust as shown by a sixty-five-mile section 

 across Huntingdon, Juniata, and Perry 

 Counties, Pennsylvania, in which he esti- 

 mated by mathematical methods that the 

 strata had been shortened, by the foldings 

 they had undergone, from an original 

 length of about one hundred miles. That 

 the contraction had been so great was dis- 

 puted by some of his hearers, but Professor 

 Claypole held to his conclusions. 



The commission, appointed by the French 

 Minister of Public Instruction, to verify the 

 results of M. Pasteur's experiments on the 

 prevention of hydrophobia by inoculation, 

 has pronounced them decisive. The prob- 

 lem whether inoculation of a human being, 

 after he has been bitten, can be relied upon 

 to secure him against contracting the dis- 

 ease, is still under investigation. Time and 

 many subjects will be needed before a rig- 

 orously exact solution of it can be reached. 



The temperatures of the boiling-points 

 of the liquid forms of certain gases, as de- 

 termined by Mr. Wroblewski, were given in 

 our September number with the minus-signs 

 undesignedly omitted. Most readers would 

 understand, as of course, that temperatures 

 below zero were intended. For the benefit 

 of those to whom this may not have oc- 

 curred, we repeat the temperatures : oxygen 

 — 299°rahr. ; atmospheric air— 314°; ni- 

 trogen — 315"5° ; carbonic oxide — 314'4° ; 

 and we may nov7 add, hydrogen— 351°. 



Sir John Lawes and Dr. Gilbert main- 

 tained, in a paper before the British Asso- 

 ciation, that the view which has been held 



