57 6 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



roads, and the canals, also owned by the 

 Government, have had something very like 

 what we call a " railroad - war " with one 

 another. The " mixed system " has been 

 abandoned — in Belgium and Prussia, by state 

 management having been made almost uni- 

 versal ; and in Italy by its having been prac- 

 tically given up. 



M. A. Bulle, of Bcsancon, France, has 

 effected the direct electro-chemical deposi- 

 tion of palladium on iron, steel, and other 

 metals. The deposition is made directly and 

 of any required thickness, and constitutes 

 the last process in finishing the manufact- 

 ured article. 



In a paper read before the British As- 

 sociation, Lord Rayleigh described the meth- 

 od of experiments which he had made for 

 measuring the intensity of reflection from 

 glass and other surfaces, and the results. 

 With a piece of optically-worked blackened 

 glass the amount reflected was .058 of the 

 incident light. The amount of reflection 

 depended greatly on the clearness and pol- 

 ish of the surface. In one case repolishing 

 increased the amount from "04095 to "0445. 

 Fresnel's formula gave in this case "04514. 

 Generally it appeared that the amount re- 

 flected was less than according to Fresnel's 

 formula — a result contrary to Rood's. The 

 numbers for polished glass, and for silver on 

 glass, were "94 and "83. 



The Uralian Society of Lovers of the 

 Natural Sciences will open a Scientific and 

 Industrial Exhibition of Siberia and the Ural 

 Mountains, at Ekaterinburg, on the 27th of 

 May, to continue till the 27th of September, 

 1887. The mining and metallurgical enter- 

 prises, for which the Ural is famous, will be 

 fully represented ; in the ethnographic de- 

 partment, the interesting aboriginal tribes 

 of Siberia will be illustrated by groups of 

 living families, with their habitations, fur- 

 niture, implements, and costumes ; and the 

 archaeological collections will be to a large 

 extent composed of objects which have nev- 

 er before figured at an exhibition of the kind. 

 Reduced fares from Nijni-Novgorod will be 

 provided for by the committee, of which Mr. 

 A. Mislawsky is chairman. 



OBITUARY NOTES. 



M. Dunso, a distinguished optician of 

 Paris, died in October. He is best known 

 for having assisted M. Leon Foueault in 

 all his constructions, and especially in the 

 organization of his automatic electric lamp. 



Professor Paul Morthier, for twenty- 

 one years Professor of Botany at the Acad- 

 emy of Neufehatel, Switzerland, has recently 

 died. He studied medicine in his early days, 

 and became a skillful surgeon ; then he 

 studied botany under Dr. Oswald Hecr; 



was appointed to his professorship in 1S62 ; 

 was the founder of the Swiss Botanical So- 

 ciety ; and was regarded as a high author- 

 ity on sponges. 



M. Chancourtois, General Inspector of 

 Mines in France, who has recently died 

 suddenly in Paris, was the author of sev- 

 eral works on geology, and a professor in 

 the School of Mines. 



The death has been reported of Elie 

 Wartmann, Professor of Thysics in the 

 Academy at Geneva, lie was the author 

 of numerous important researches and 

 books, among which were those on Dalton- 

 ism (1840), voltaic induction, the simulta- 

 neous transmission of dispatches in oppo- 

 site directions on the same wire, and on 

 electric currents in plants. He contributed 

 largely to the organization and arrange- 

 ment of the splendid physical cabinet of 

 the University of Geneva. 



Alexander Boutlerow, a Russian chem- 

 ist, has recently died, at the age of fifty- 

 eight years. He was a pupil of Wurtz's, 

 and, as a professor at Kazan and afterward 

 at St. Petersburg, was largely instrumental 

 in introducing modem chemical theories 

 into his country. He took part in the 

 foundation of the University for Women at 

 St. Petersburg in 1879. His most impor- 

 tant researches were on fatty bodies and 

 the isomerism of the hydrocarbons. His 

 treatise on organic chemistry was trans- 

 lated into German. He was interested in 

 apiculture, on which he wrote some popu- 

 lar manuals, and was a believer in spirit- 

 ualism, on which he also wrote a book — 

 " Psychical Studies." 



M. Jules Bouts, an eminent French 

 chemist, member of the Academy of Medi- 

 cine and Professor in the School of Phar- 

 macy, died on the 21st of October, aged 

 eighty-four years. Be studied chemistry in 

 Dumas's laboratory ; distinguished himself 

 by numerous experiments ; and was engaged 

 during a large part of his life in teaching 

 chemistry in various important schools in 

 Paris. 



General JonN TiiEorniLus Beaulieu, 

 F. R. S., who has recently died, at the age 

 of eighty-one years, performed a long serv- 

 ice in India, beginning in 1820. He was 

 for some time Superintending Engineer in 

 the Public Works Department for the North- 

 west Provinces ; founded the system of mag- 

 netic observations in India ; and was the au- 

 thor of a book of logarithms. 



The death, at Berlin, is reported of Dr. 

 A. Fischer, who resided for a long time at 

 Zanzibar, and by whose energy much has 

 been added to our knowledge of the Kili- 

 manjaro region 



