7H 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Sixth Annual Report of the Illinois State Board 

 of Health. Springlield, III. 18S4. Pp. 324. 



Memoir upon the Formation of a Deaf Variety 

 of the Uumao Kace. By Alexander Graham Bell. 

 Pp. »6. 



Kesearche.s on Solar Heat and its Absorption by 

 the Earth s Atmosphere. A Report of the Mount 

 AVhitney Kxpedition. By 8. P. Langley. Wasb- 

 iugton : Government Priniing-Ollice. 1834. Pp. 

 242. 



The Story-Hour. For Children and Youth. By 

 Susan H. Wixon. New York : The Truth-Seeker 

 Company. 18S5. Pp. 222. Illustrated. 



POPULAR MISCELLANY. 



Electric Lighting in America. — At the 



meeting of the Society of Arts on December 

 3d, Mr. W. H. Preece read a paper in which 

 he stated that electric lighting is flourishing in 

 America much more than in England. There 

 are probably ninety thousand arc-lamps 

 alight every night in the United States. He 

 had found it a dismal experience to be trans- 

 ferred from the brilliantly illuminated ave- 

 nues of New York to the dark streets of 

 London. On the evenmg of October 21st 

 he drove from the Windsor Hotel, New York, 

 to the Cunard wharf, a distance of about 

 four miles, through streets entirely lighted 

 by electricity. On arriving in London, he 

 drove from Euston to Waterloo without see- 

 ing a single electric light. In Montreal, 

 Philadelphia, Buffalo, Cleveland, Chicago, 

 St. Louis, Indianapolis, and Boston, he found 

 the principal streets and warehouses, as well 

 as stores and places of public resort, lighted 

 by arc-lamps. Police supervision of the 

 streets is rendered far simpler when they 

 are brilliantly illuminated by the electric 

 light. It is with arc-lighting that the great- 

 est advances have been made in the States. 

 In Chicago the number of arc-lamps installed 

 has doubled during the past twelve months ; 

 it is now two thousand, and increases daily. 

 More than one electric light company pays 

 dividends to its shareholders, and all of the 

 manufacturers of supplies are busy. The 

 great ferry-boats of the Pennsylvania Rail- 

 road are lighted by electricity ; those mag- 

 nificent hotel-steamers that ply between New 

 York and Fall River, those on Lake Supe- 

 rior, on the Mississippi and other large riv- 

 ers, are either so lighted or are gradually 

 being fitted for the lamps. Mr. Preece said 

 that electric wires carried overhead, in the 

 unsightly fashion which prevailed in the 

 United States, were hideous in the extreme, 



and the only advantage he had found for 

 them was that they aftbrded a welcome shade 

 from the fierce glare of the sun. He had 

 counted 144 wires on one post in New York, 

 and six lines of posts might be found on 

 Broadway, there being thirty-two companies 

 in the city carrying wires on poles. There 

 was no necessity for it at all, for it was 

 found by the English Post-Office that, when- 

 ever the number of wires through a town ex- 

 ceeded fifteen, it was cheaper to put them 

 underground than overhead. 



The Oldest Land-Animal. — Mr. Lind- 

 strom, of Stockholm, has described a fossil 

 scorpion which has recently been found in 

 the Upper Silurian strata of the Island of 

 Gottland, Sweden. According to photographs 

 forwarded to the French Academy of Sci- 

 ences, the specimen is fairly well preserved, 

 with the chitinous cuticle still visible. The 

 cephalothorax can be distinguished, together 

 with the abdomen with seven dorsal lamince, 

 and the tail of six segments, the last of 

 which is contracted into a point and forms 

 the poisonous sting. The superficial struct- 

 ure of the animal is quite similar, with its 

 tubercles and longitudinal keels, to that of 

 recent scorpions. One of the stigmata is 

 visible on the right, to indicate that the 

 animal was an air-breather, and the whole 

 organization shows that it lived on the land. 

 Mr. Lindstrom regards this as the oldest 

 land-living animal yet discovered, the fossil 

 dragon-flies of Canada having been found 

 in the Devonian. It is remarked of this 

 animal that the large and pointed character 

 of the four thoracic paws is characteristic 

 of the embryos of several other Trachcata, 

 and had disappeared from fully-developed 

 scorpions as early as the Carboniferous pe- 

 riod. A similar fossil scorpion has just 

 been found in the Upper Silurian of Scot- 

 land. 



Parasites in Domestic Fowls. — On dis- 

 secting a fowl which had died from sickness, 

 Thomas Taylor, M. D., of the Department of 

 Agriculture, found reddish markmgs on the 

 rib-muscles and the lungs, which under the 

 microscope were seen to consist of numer- 

 ous mites, closely resembling Cytolcichus 

 sarcoptoides (Megnin), a species not hitherto 

 reported in America. When the skin was 



