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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



The London Sanitary Protective Associa- 

 tion, at the close of its second year, had five 

 hundred and thirty-three members. During 

 the year it had secured the inspection of 

 three hundred and sixty-two houses, with 

 the discovery and correction of many serious 

 errors in sanitary arrangements. Six per 

 cent of these houses had their drains choked 

 up so that the foul water from the sinks 

 simply soaked into the ground ; in thirty-two 

 per cent of them the soil-pipes were leaking, 

 and sewer-gas could escape into the house ; 

 in thirty-seven per cent the overflow-pipes 

 from cisterns passed direct into the drains 

 or soil-pipes, admitting sewer-gas into the 

 water of the cistern and into the house ; and 

 in three fourths of the houses waste-pipes 

 from baths and sinks led direct into the 

 drainer soil pipes instead of, as they should, 

 direct into the open air. Professor Huxley 

 resigned the presidency of this society, and 

 was succeeded by the Duke of Argyll. 



Mr. Harold Palmer, an English health 

 inspector, has reported an infectious form of 

 pneumonia in his district. A man was at- 

 tacked with symptoms suggesting that septic 

 poison and bad sanitary conditions might 

 be around, and examination confirmed the 

 opinion. Three other persons were seized 

 with the disease, and two of the patients, in- 

 cluding the medical attendant, died. Other 

 similar cases have been observed, in one of 

 which inflammation of the lungs and death 

 followed a single visit to a house where the 

 disease was prevailing. 



Dr. a. J. C. Geerts, Professor of Natu- 

 ral Sciences, etc., in Japan, died recently at 

 Yokohama, aged forty years. He was in- 

 vited by the Japanese Government, in 1868, 

 from a professorship at Utrecht, to fill a 

 similar position in the new medical school 

 at Nagasaki. He afterward became a mem- 

 ber of the health department at Tokio, and 

 established chemical laboratories at Kioto 

 and Yokohama. He contributed to the two 

 learned societies of Japan, published a Jap- 

 anese pharmacopoeia, and began a colossal 

 work on the " Products of Nature in Japan 

 and China." 



Railroad CARS are indicated by Judge 

 Lawrence Johnson, of Holly Springs, Mis- 

 sissippi, as vehicles by which destructive 

 moths are carried from one part of the coun- 

 try to another. In traveling last year he 

 was often struck by the numbers of Aletice 

 on the trains ; and he observes that there 

 was a sort of coincidence last season be- 

 tween lines of railroad and abundance of 

 cotton-worms. 



Mr. W. a. Forbes, Prosector of the Lon- 

 don Zoological Society, died on an expedi- 

 tion up the Niger, January 11th, of dysen- 

 tery at less than thirty years of age. He was 

 a well-known writer on zoological subjects. 

 He contributed a memoir on the petrels to 



the reports of the Challenger Expedition, and 

 edited the collected papers of Professor Gar- 

 rod, his predecessor as prosector. 



The Board of Trustees of Johns Hopkins 

 University announce, as a special feature 

 of the university course of instruction in 

 physics for lS84-'85, a series of eighteen 

 lectures, to be delivered by Sir William 

 Thomson, in October, on " Molecular Dy- 

 namics." The programme also includes 

 lectures by Professor llowland, on " Elec- 

 tricity and Magnetism " ; by Associate Pro- 

 fessor Craig, on " Analytic Mechanics,'' 

 " Hydrodynamics," and " Partial Differen- 

 tial Equations " ; and by Dr. Franklin, on 

 "Problems in Mechanics," with general 

 lectures by Dr. Kimball. 



Henry Watts, F. R. S., editor of the 

 " Dictionary of Chemistry," died of syncope, 

 from failure of the heart's action, June 30th, 

 in the seventieth year of his age. He was 

 graduated Bachelor of Arts in the Univer- 

 sity of London in 1841, and was Demon- 

 strator of Anatomy in University College, 

 London, under Professors Fownes and Will- 

 iamson, from 1846 to 1857. He translated 

 and supplemented Gmelin's " Handbook of 

 Chemistry," composing a work of eighteen 

 volumes. Having begun a new edition of 

 Ure's " Dictionary of Chemistry and Min- 

 eralog)' " in 1858, he soon found that, to 

 bring it up with the times, the book would 

 have to be rewritten. Calling in the aid of 

 other students, he produced his great work 

 in five volumes, in 1868. Three supple- 

 ments were added to it, in 18*72, 1875, and 

 1879-81. He also brought out three edi- 

 tions of Fownes's " JIanual of Chemistry," 

 and had a fourth ready. 



Alphoxse Lavallee, a distinguished 

 French student of trees, and writer upon 

 them, died at his home in Segrez, on the 

 3d of May, in the fiftieth year of his age. 

 His collection of trees and shrubs is the 

 richest and most complete arboretum ever 

 established. In preparing the catalogue of 

 it some years ago, he introduced consider- 

 able reforms in nomenclature and synony- 

 my, which he elaborated in the second edi- 

 tion of the work. Among his works was 

 the "Arboretum Segrezianum," intended to 

 furnish descriptions of the rarest plants of 

 his collections, richly illustrated with steel- 

 plate engravings, and an illustrated folio on 

 large-flowered clematises. He was about to 

 publish a similar work on Cratcegus, or the 

 thorn. He was President of the Central 

 Horticultural Society of France. 



M. E. Bergman has observed that formic 

 and acetic acid occur in the protoplasm of 

 all the plants he examined for them, being 

 found in the colorless cells and in the green 

 tissues; and he considers it probable that 

 several other acids of the fatty series are 

 equally diffused in the vegetable kingdom. 



