288 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



dimensions regularly decreasing. It is the 

 same with regular curves ; but the a?sthctic 

 influence dwells less in the sensation itself 

 than in the conceptions which it gives of a 

 law. 



Professors Michaelson and IIorley 

 gave accounts, in the American Association, 

 of experiments by wliich they sought to 

 measure the relative velocity of the lumin- 

 iferous ether and the earth. Their method 

 was to determine the interference between 

 two beams of light, which were reflected 

 back and forth a number of times ; one 

 being in the direction in which the ether was 

 supposed to be moving, and the other at 

 right angles to that direction. No effect 

 was found, and it was concluded that the 

 ether must be at rest with regard to the 

 earth. This solution, however, has to en- 

 counter difiiculties, and invites further re- 

 search. 



General Pekier and his Spanish asso- 

 ciate. General Ibanez, have presented their 

 report on the surveys for the geodesic and 

 astronomical junction of Algeria and Spain 

 across the Mediterranean, by which the 

 measurement of the arc of the meridian is 

 completed for 27°, or from the Shetland 

 Islands to Laghouat in Algeria. The inde- 

 pendent geodesic operations executed in 

 Spain and Algeria are shown by the results 

 to have been very precise. It is also shown 

 that the transmission and reception of rhyth- 

 mic luminous signals conveying the time 

 from one station to another are capable of 

 great exactness. 



Dr. TTain, of Ziirich, read a paper at 

 the Swiss Society of Natural Sciences last 

 year on the deformations which fossils un- 

 dergo in mountains through the enormous 

 pressures to which the rocks are subjected. 

 By them Agassiz was misled into distributing 

 the fossil fish of the older rocks into eighty 

 distinct sjjecies ; while many of these sup- 

 posed species were really identical, but 

 deformed in such various ways as to appear 

 different. 



Professor Mees, discussing, in the Amer- 

 ican Association, the velocity of tornadoes, 

 mentioned that straws and bits of hay are 

 often driven like darts into pine boards, .and 

 oven into the dense bark of hickory-trees. 

 He had found that to obtain similar results 

 by shooting straws from an air-gun, veloci- 

 ties of from one hundred and fifty to one 

 hundred and seventy-five miles an hour 

 were necessary. 



Dr. R. W. SntTFELDT has a portrait of Au- 

 dubon which the great naturalist himself 

 painted, with the aid of a mirror. He has 

 had the portrait photo-engraved, and has 

 prefixed the copies to a pajier which he has 

 published giving accounts of this and other 

 mementos of Audubon. 



It is doubtful whether death in Imrning 

 buildings is as horrible as is generally sup- 

 posed. "The Lancet," speaking particu- 

 arly of the affliir of the Opera Comique in 

 Paris, observes that the burning seldom 

 occurs in these cases until after death, or 

 at least insensibility to pain, has been pro- 

 duced. Except under very peculiar condi- 

 tions, the victim is made faint and pulse- 

 less by the carbonic acid, or the carbonic- 

 oxide gas, before the fire reaches his body. 

 It is the experience of persons who have 

 been in a burning house that the heated 

 and smoky atmospliere speedily induces a 

 feeling of powerlessness and of indifference 

 to what is going on around ; and it is gen- 

 erally this stupefaction, with subsequent 

 paralysis of feeling, that prevents judicious 

 means being taken for escape. 



jr. E. Latassecr, of Paris, has shown, 

 by comparing the statistics of 1789 with 

 those of the present, that chances of living 

 long at any given age are greater now than 

 they were before that year. The propor- 

 tions are, for the survival of infants under 

 one year, as 1,460 now, in every 2,000, to 

 1,186 then; for living to be forty as 1,110 

 to 738 ; and for living to be seventy-five, as 

 360 to 144. 



OBITUARY NOTES. 



Professor Kirchhoff, the discoverer of 

 the spectrum analysis, died in Berlin in Octo- 

 ber, aged about sixty-three years. lie was 

 born in Kouigsberg in 1S24, and came to 

 the University of Berlin as a prival docent 

 in 1837. In 1850 he was called to the chair 

 of Physics at Heidelberg, where, with Bun- 

 sen, he prosecuted the researches which 

 have given him a world-wide and lasting 

 renown. He removed to Berlin in 1875. 



Dr. Johannes Skalneit, President of 

 the German Union of Analytical Chemists, 

 and editor of the "Repertorium fiir Ana- 

 lytischo Chemie," is dead. He was the au- 

 thor of many essays and other short works 

 on questions of sanitary science, state medi- 

 cine, and chemical analysis, and was an au- 

 thority on analyses of milk and butter. 



The death is reported of Dr. Johann 

 Krejci, Professor of Botany in the Univer- 

 sity of Prague, and a member of the Bohe- 

 mian Parliament. 



Dr. Henry William Ravenel, botanist 

 to the South Carolina State Department of 

 Agriculture, died in Aiken, July 17. His 

 speciality was fungi. He was best krown 

 by his " Fungi Caroliniani Exciccati," of 

 which he issued a number of pamphlets ; 

 by his "Fungi Americani Exciccati," which 

 he prepared in conjunction with Dr. JI. C. 

 Cooke; and by the papers which he pub- 

 lished on the botanv of his State. 



