848 TRANSACTIONS OF THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 



wholly independent of the peculiarities in the form of apparatus, 

 in the number of prisms, their refractive and dispersive powers, 

 and their positions. His map is based on the wave length of 

 spectral lines, which do not vary with the material of which the 

 prism is composed. Angstrom's measurements were selected as 

 standards; these being in ten-mill ionths of a Paris inch have been 

 reduced by Prof. Gibbs to millionths of a millimeter. A new 

 method of determining wave lengths b}^ comparison was described 

 by the author. The chart accompanying his paper contained the 

 wave lengths of 187 lines, with a probable error not exceeding 

 two millionths of a millimeter. The lines being ruled by a 

 dividing engine upon a copper plate are correct upon the chart 

 to about one-tenth of a millimeter. 



New Mode of Killing Whales. 

 The chief danger attending Tf hale-fishing has been removed by 

 the invention of M. Thiercelin of France. Instead of fasteninjj to 

 a whale by means of a harpoon, the inventor fires into the animal 

 an explosive shell within Avhich is a deadly poison, made by mix- 

 ing a salt of strychnine with l-20th of the Indian poison called 

 curare or wourali, the origin of which is not definitel}^ known, but 

 w'hich occasions a general parlysis, and by controlling the organs 

 of respiration, proves fatal. Wourali, or, as it is sometimes called, 

 woorara, when absorl)cd by ihc blood, has the effect of relaxing 

 the muscular system, while strychnine, on the contrary, produces 

 an excessive contraction of that system. The remarkable effect of 

 a C(mj unction of these two agents is to occasion almost instant 

 death, if administered in a dose of half a milligramme per kilo- 

 gramme of the animal's weight, provided the weight does not 

 exceed ten kilogrammes. If larger, the dose must be proportion- 

 ately increased. Thirty grammes (one ounce) is enough to kill an 

 animal weighing GO, 000 kilogrammes. In a late Avhaling voyage 

 ten whales received M. Thierceliu's missiles, and all died within 

 from four to eighteen minutes after they were wounded. These 

 animals were cut up and their remains handled by men who had 

 scratches and sores on their skin, without the slightest injury, thus 

 proving that the poison cannot be transmitted from marine mammals 

 to man. 



Platinum. 

 The heaviest and one of the most infusible of metals, platinum, 

 has lately been discovered in large quantities in New Zealand. 



