432 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



In the Congress of German Xaturalists 

 and Physicians, Prof. Lehman showed to 

 how great an extent the coarse rye-bread 

 eaten on the lower Rhine is polluted by 

 adulteration. He had procured eighty sam- 

 ples of flour and bread such as are used and 

 sold by the small millers and bakers. All of 

 them were polluted, some to an incredible 

 extent, with earth, excrement of mice, other 

 disgusting but not exactly noxious things, 

 and also with blighted corn, darnel, cockle, 

 and other poisonous seeds. Kone of the 

 samples were free from cockle, and in some 

 there was more than one per cent of it. 



Is the matter of Technical Education in 

 Connection with Agriculture in England, Mr. 

 S. Rowlandson has shown that under the 

 stimulation of a parliamentary grant the 

 Royal Agricultural Society has instituted ex- 

 aminations in the science and theory of agri- 

 culture, a provision for the teaching of ele- 

 mentary agricultural subjects has been in- 

 corporated in the education code, and at- 

 tention has been given to the matter by the 

 Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. The 

 lack of teachers is the chief obstacle to 

 making the benefits of instruction in the 

 subject real and general. 



On the occasion of the transit of Mer- 

 cury, May 10, 1891, Dr. K. Winder, of De- 

 troit, analyzing the solar spectrum at the 

 point where the planet was projected on the 

 sun's disk, observed that the telluric rays in 

 the light from the edge of the planet were 

 strongly marked and extraordinarily dark, 

 indicating the existence of a dense atmos- 

 phere in Mercury and the presence of vapor 

 in it. 



Finnic and Russian Lapland constitute 

 one of the coldest regions of Europe. The 

 whole country is within the isotherm of 0' 

 C, while in its interior the isotherms of — 1° 

 and— 2' describe concentric curves. At 

 Kola the thermometer stands above 0° C. 

 (the freezing - point) only during three 

 months. The winter usually begins on the 

 15th of September. The long winter, end- 

 ing in June, is followed by a spring of fif- 

 teen days ; then summer begins in the first 

 week in July and lasts some six or seven 

 weeks, when the thermometer often shows 

 a considerably warm temperature. In the 

 neighborhood of Enasa the ranunculus 

 blossoms on the 28th of June, chickweed 

 July 3d, meadow geranium July 12th, black- 

 berry July 26th, azalea June 26th, Linnea 

 boi-ealis July 20th, and butterwort July 2d. 



As a test for the detection of fish oil in 

 linseed oil, Dr. Thomas Taylor recommends 

 silver nitrate solution. On its application 

 the fish oil, if any is present, coagulates and 

 falls to the bottom of the test-tube, displacing 

 the nitrate-of-silver solution. The author 

 declares the test infallible, as the effect is 

 not produced with other oils. 



Dr. L. Webster Fox believes from his 

 experiments that savage races have better 

 color-perceptions than civilized races. In a 

 group of one hundred Indian boys he found 

 none color-blind. In another group of two 

 hundred and fifty Indian boys two were 

 color-blind. No color-blind Indian girls 

 were found. 



A CURIOUS instance of " frugality " in 

 bees has been observed by Mr. M. H. Har- 

 ris, of Ealing, England. During rainy 

 weather, which promised to interfere with 

 further honey - making, they proceeded to 

 guard against it by ejecting the larvse of 

 both drones and workers and sucking out 

 the soft contents of the corpses, leaving 

 only the white chitinous covering. 



OBITUARY NOTES. 



Cardinal Hatnald, Archbishop of Ka- 

 locsa, who died on the 4th of July last, was 

 the son of a botanist and made himself emi- 

 nent in that science by his investigations of 

 the flora of Transylvania. Even among his 

 sacerdotal duties and his political ones as 

 member of the Hungarian House of Mag- 

 nates, and the social obligations they im- 

 posed, he found time to continue his botani- 

 cal studies and publish a few special papers 

 and biographical studies of botanists of his 

 acquaintance. His herbarium was the rich- 

 est in Hungary and one of the largest private 

 collections on the continent, and was free to 

 students. 



The death of two well-known contribu- 

 tors to French scientific journals was an- 

 nounced in the same week in- October. M. 

 Edouard Lucas, Professor of Special Mathe- 

 matics at the Lycee Charlemagne, died of 

 erysipelas following a wound in the cheek 

 made by a piece of a broken dining-plate. 

 He had just been presiding over the Section 

 of Mathematics and Astronomy of the 

 French Association for the Advancement of 

 Science. He was the author of a series of 

 curious mathematical recreations and recon- 

 dite calculations — as amusing as they were 

 instructive — of which the most famous was 

 that of the Tower of Hanoi. He frequently 

 contributed articles of this character to the 

 Revue Scientifique and La Nature. M. Felix 

 H^ment had been Professor of Physics and 

 Natural Science at Tournon, Strasbourg, the 

 Lycee Bonaparte, the College Chaptal, the 

 Ecole Turgot, the Ecole Polonaise, and the 

 Israclitish Seminary. He was also a fre- 

 quent contributor to La Nature and the Re- 

 vue Scientifique. 



Mr. Charles Smith Wilkinson, Govern- 

 ment Geologist of New South Wales, died 

 August 26th, forty-seven years old. He was 

 an original member of the Linnsean Society 

 of New South Wales, and its president in 

 1883 and 1884. 



