FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



861 



paints are very stable, but their protecting 

 power is not great. Herr Spennratli has at- 

 tempted to explain the duration of different 

 paints by means of comparative experiments 

 on sheets of zinc. The painted zinc was dis- 

 solved in an acid, and films of paint were 

 obtained and subjected to various tests. AH 

 were rapidly destroyed by the action of dilute 

 hydrochloric or nitric acid, and of the va- 

 pors of sulphuric and acetic acids. Alka- 

 line vapors likewise destroyed them rapidly. 

 Pure water acts more rapidly than salt water, 

 which goes to prove that corrosion by sea 

 water is rather an effect of mechanical wash- 

 ing than of chemical action. Temperature, 

 too, has a considerable influence on the re- 

 sistance of paints. The films became brittle 

 at a temperature of 95° C, and a percep- 

 tible contraction of the layer took place. 

 Similar effects were produced on paints ex- 

 posed for a long time to a low temperature. 



Angast Kcknle. — August Kekul6, Pro- 

 fessor of Chemistry in the University of 

 Bonn, who died July 13th, sixty-six years 

 old, left his mark on the science of chem- 

 istry in a distinct advance to which he gave 

 the impulse. He was born at Darmstadt, in 

 1829, went to school there, and was then 

 sent to Giessen, under the expectation that 

 he would be educated to become an archi- 

 tect. But Liebig was at Giessen, and 

 Kekul6's attention was turned to chemistry. 

 Returning to Darmstadt, he studied chem- 

 istry under Moldeuhauer, and then entered 

 again as a student at Giessen under Liebig 

 and Will. He afterward studied in Paris; 

 sojourned for a short time in Switzerland as 

 assistant to Von Plantu, at Reichenau ; was 

 engaged at St. Bartholomew's Hospital in 

 London ; established a laboratory, whei'e he 

 received pupils, at Heidelberg; and became 

 professor, successively, at Ghent and Bonn. 

 Kekul^'s services to chemistry were chiefly 

 in the theoretical field. The twenty-fifth 

 anniversary of his promulgation of the ben 

 zene theory was celebrated at Berlin, in 

 1890, and the twenty-fifth anniversary of 

 his professorship at Bonn, in that city, two 

 years later. He took up Frankland's theory 

 of valency and elaborated it ; laid the 

 foundation of the study of constitutional 

 chemistry ; gave the start to the fruitful 

 investigation of the carbon compounds ; and 



pointed the way to thousands of important 

 experiments and was the inspiration of hun- 

 dreds of valuable discoveries. 



Drawing Upside Down. — Observations 

 of children drawing upside down have been 

 collected by Mr. Rina Scott, who says, in 

 Nature, that a great many children draw in 

 this way, while many from the first draw the 

 right way up. He relates that a boy of four, 

 when asked to draw a rook on a haystack, 

 began at the bottom of the paper with the 

 rook's back, and gradually worked his way 

 up to the haystack ; then turned the drawing 

 round and asked his observer to look at it — 

 evidently realizing that it was inverted. Mr. 

 Scott does not find the explanation of the 

 peculiarity in any inversion of the retinal 

 image; for, if a child who draws upside 

 down when drawing on a horizontal table, is 

 asked to draw on a blackboard placed verti- 

 cally, he will draw everything the right way 

 upward. He supposes that when the object 

 seen on a vertical plane is to be represented 

 on paper placed in a horizontal plane — in 

 which there is already a considerable diver- 

 gence from the real appearance — it is simply 

 a matter of convenience to him at which end 

 he begins — both being equally wrong from 

 his point of view. So children sometimes 

 look at picture books upside down, and small 

 children are more ready to draw objects 

 which they have been accustomed to see in 

 a horizontal plane, than erect objects. Mr. 

 Alfred W. Bennett relates that he has been 

 able all his life to read easily a book upside 

 down, so that it makes no difference to him 

 which way the book is presented. This is 

 because, as he has been told, he first learned 

 to read, upside down, by standing in front 

 of a brother and looking over the top of the 

 book from which he was being taught to 

 read. The facility curiously extends to 

 books in foreign languages, even those in 

 which other alphabets — as Greek and He- 

 brew — than the Roman are used, and to 

 nearly the same extent to handwriting. Li 

 a similar connection Mr. Hiram M. Stanley 

 speaks of a strong native tendency in some 

 children — and he might have added adults, 

 for we have seen sign-painting in which that 

 style was present — to reverse right and left 

 in drawing such letters as J and L. He 

 compares this confusion, and probably is 



