574 



TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



thimbleful of tobacco — enough for two or 

 three whiffs — and we were kept busy fill- 

 ing and lighting them. 15. Land-turtles 

 with their eggs in castor-oil — abominable. 

 16. Ends of ham — good. 17. Breast of 

 fowl with sour cabbage — no delicacy. 18. 

 Stale eggs (these eggs had been kept one 

 month in salt and two months in moist 

 earth). The whites looked like burned su- 

 gar, and were transparent. The yolks hud 

 a greenish color, and the embryos appeared 

 dark, rolled together, and perfectly recog- 

 nizable — a terrible dish. Dessert : Conserve 

 of sitzon, a red fruit that looks like a shad- 

 berry, and tastes like a kind of currant — 

 good. Dark-green fruits, having oval seeds 

 like those of the plum, preserved in brandy 

 — good. Crabs' tails cooked in castor-oil. 

 A green, oval fruit with a long, hard seed, 

 resembling a large green olive, but sharp 

 and sour, and disagreeable to the European 

 taste. Light cakes — very fine. Nuts, al- 

 monds, and castor-oil seeds, roasted and 

 candied with sugar — good, even to the cas- 

 tor-oil seeds. Macaroni with sesame-seeds 

 and three-cornered cakes covered with cas- 

 tor-oil seeds — passable. Various bonbons 

 very moderate ; baked lichis. The lichi is 

 the finest of Chinese fruits, having a white 

 flesh with the taste of the best grapes — ex- 

 cellent. Shaddocks and mandarin oranges 

 — good. The only drinks were tea, very 

 weak and without sugar, and samion, a rice- 

 wine, which is drunk hot like tea, and is 

 wretched stuff. 



Tompcratnre of Germination.— M. Ilell- 

 riegcl has undertaken, in a series of experi- 

 ments on eighteen species of cultivated 

 plants, to ascertain the lowest temperature 

 at which seeds are capable of germinating. 

 The seeds, sprinkled with distilled water, 

 were planted in large receptacles filled with 

 vegetable mold that were raised to constant 

 temperatures of 48°, 40°, 38°, 35°, and 32°, 

 and kept there from thirty-five to sixty 

 hours. It was found that rye and winter 

 wheat germinated at 32°. Barley and oats 

 showed their cotyledons at 32°, but did not 

 start till 35° were reached. Indian corn re- 

 quired 48°. The turnip germinated at 32°, 

 flax at 35°, the pea and clover at 35°, the 

 bean and lupin at 38°, asparagus at 35°, the 

 carrot at 38°, and the beet at 40°. The re- 



spiratory function requires little heat, and 

 operates even in the entire absence of light. 

 Ileat and light are, however, most favorable 

 for the assimilation of carbonic acid and its 

 conversion into carbon. But little impor- 

 tance is attached to the color of the light. 



Dnst in Rooms. — Professor W. Mattieu 

 Williams contends that minute particles of 

 dust are repelled or driven away from heated 

 bodies, and that the rcpuls^ion operates in 

 the open air and confined spaces alike. 

 Large bodies, he adds, are similarly re- 

 pelled, but as the repulsion acts only super- 

 ficially and the inertia of a mass of given 

 matter increases with the cube of its through 

 dimension, and its surface only with the 

 square of the same, the repulsion of such 

 masses demands special and delicate arrange- 

 ments to render it visible. Assuming this 

 view — that dust is repelled from warmer to 

 cooler bodies, be those bodies solid or gase- 

 ous — to be proved, then, " if the walls, 

 floor, ceiling, and furniture of a room be 

 warmer than the air of the room, the dust 

 will be repelled from the walls, etc., to the 

 air; while if the air be warmer than the 

 walls the dust will be projected from the 

 air to the walls." Hence those methods of 

 warming rooms are to be preferred which 

 heat the air rather than the solid objects ; 

 and this, in Mr. "Williams's opinion, should 

 exclude open fires. 



NOTES. 



The committee of the American Asso- 

 ciation on Indexing Chemical Literature, at 

 the last meeting of the Association reported 

 progress, by Professor William K. Is'icliols, 

 on carbon monoxides ; Professor L. P. Kcn- 

 nicutt, on meteorites ; and Professor C. E. 

 Monroe, on explosives. Dr. II. C. Bolton 

 has published a catalogue of chemical pe- 

 riodicals, and Hans Wilder, independently 

 of the Association, a list of nearly nine hun- 

 dred chemical tests known by the names 

 of their authors. Dr. Bolton's second in- 

 dex of the literature of uranium has been 

 accepted. Dr. F. E. Engelhardt has offered 

 to imdcrtake an index to the literature of 

 common salt. The committee's report pre- 

 sents a scheme for indexing scientific litera- 

 ture, in both author .nnd subject indexes, 

 prepared by Professor William Frear. 



M. Demar^av, liy means of an induc- 

 tion-coil made of comparatively large and 



