NOTES. 



143 



ed by the use of a rotating frame, which 

 causes the cells of the comb placed in it to 

 be emptied by centrifugal force. The empty, 

 uninjured comb is afterward replaced in the 

 hive, and again used by the bees. As about 

 three fourths of the time of the bees, it has 

 been computed, is taken up in the construc- 

 tion of the comb, it will be seen that by 

 these contrivances a great saving of bee- 

 labor is effected. 



Brain-Textnre and mental Make-ap. — 



The members of the Paris Anthropological 

 Society were not a little surprised by the 

 tenor of a report made by M. Thulie upon 

 the appearance of the brain and cranium 

 of M. Asseline, one of their fellows, lately 

 deceased, at the age of forty-nine. M. As- 

 seline belonged to a "society for mutual 

 autopsy," and the examination of his brain 

 was made by his bereaved cosociefaires, who 

 were prepared to find in it all the common- 

 ly received external indications of a highly 

 refined and intellectual nature. He had 

 been a republican and a materialist ; pos- 

 sessed enormous capacity for work, great 

 faculty of mental assimilation, and an ex- 

 traordinarily retentive memory ; had a gen- 

 tle, kindly disposition, keen susceptibilities, 

 refined taste, and subtile wit. As a writer 

 he had always displayed great learning, un- 

 usual force of style, and elegance of diction ; 

 and in his intercourse with others he had 

 been unassuming, sensitive, and even timid. 

 But " the autopsy showed," says " Nature," 

 " such coarseness and thickness of the con- 

 volutions that M. Broca presumed them to 

 be characteristic of an inferior brain. The 

 fossae or depressions regarded by Gratiolet 

 as of a simian character, and as a sign of 

 cerebral inferiority, which are often found 

 in women, and in some men of undoubted 

 intellectual inferiority, were very much 

 marked, especially on the left parieto-oc- 

 cipital. But the cranial bones were at some 

 points so thin as to be translucent ; the cer- 

 ebral depressions were deeply marked, the 

 frontal suture was not wholly ossified, a 

 decided degree of asjTnmetry was mani- 

 fested in the greater prominence of the 

 right frontal, while, moreover, the brain 

 weighed 1,468 grammes — i. e., about sixty 

 grains above the average given by M. Broca 

 for M. Asseline's age." 



NOTES. 



The important statement is made by 

 Professor C. V. Riley that for the feeding of 

 silkworms there is no appreciable dilier- 

 ence between the leaves of the osage or- 

 ange and the mulberry, provided care is 

 taken to reject the more tender and milky 

 leaves of the former, as they are apt to pro- 

 duce flaccidity and disease. 



A WRITER in " Nature" suggests the em- 

 ployment of carrier-pigeons in the British 

 meteorological service as a means of bringing 

 accounts of the weather at different points 

 in the Atlantic Ocean 300, 400, or even 500 

 miles out, the pigeons being dispatched on 

 outward voyages of ships leaving such 

 ports as Queenstown, Southampton, etc. 

 The present great difficulty of the meteoro- 

 logical service of Europe is that storms 

 reach the coast unannounced over the At- 

 lantic. 



Upon the publication of Siemens's re- 

 marks on conveying to a distance, by means 

 of electricity, the power developed by the 

 Falls of Niagara, several electricians de- 

 clared the idea to be preposterous. Thus 

 one writer calculated that the thickness of 

 the cable required to convey to the distance 

 of several hundred miles the current which 

 could be produced by the power of Niagara, 

 would require more copper than exists in 

 the whole of the Lake Superior region. 

 Another statement estimates the cost of the 

 cable at about sixty dollars per lineal foot. 

 But calculations made by Professor Elihu 

 Thomson and Edwin J. Houston, of Phila- 

 delphia, show that these estimates are er- 

 roneous, and that it is possible to convey 

 the total power of Niagara a distance of five 

 hundred miles or more by a copper wire not 

 exceeding one half inch in thickness. Even 

 though in practice this result be unattain- 

 able, the important fact still remains that, 

 with a cable of very limited size, an enor- 

 mous quantity of power may be transferred 

 to considerable distances. 



Bernhard von Cotta, the eminent Sax- 

 on geologist and Professor of Geology in 

 the University of Freiberg, died at that 

 place September 14th, at the age of seventy- 

 one years. He was an indefatigable student 

 and writer, and his published works are 

 very numerous. His first book, on " The 

 Dendroliths," was written while he was yet 

 a student at Freiberg. Later he was asso- 

 ciated with Naumann in preparing the geo- 

 logical map of Saxony. The first volume 

 of his " Geognostic Travels " appeared in 

 18.S6, and the second in 1838. One of his 

 principal works, namely the " Introduction 

 to the Study of Geognosy and Geology," 

 first published in 1839, passed through sev- 



