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NATURE 



[November 4. i.'^q; 



Thk first number (November) of ihe new volume of the Century 

 Magazine contains several contributions of scientific interest. 

 Prof. 11. F. Osborn writes an appreciative notice (accompanied 

 by a portrait) of the late Prof. Cope. Shortly before his death 

 Prof. Cope communicated to Mr. W. H. Ballou a number of in- 

 teresting views which he held as the result of many years' study 

 of the skeletons of Saurians, or lizard-like reptiles, found in 

 various beds of the Rocky Mountains and other regions of the 

 United States. He had arrived at some original and ingenious 

 speculations with regard to the structures and habits of these 

 animals, and, in addition, he completed the evolution of the 

 carnivorous line of Saurians. Mr. Ballou now presents these 

 views in an interesting article containing several vigorous illus- 

 trations, in which Mr. Knight well conveys Prof. Cope's impres- 

 sions of how ancient Saurians lived and moved. — Mr. Jonas 

 Stadling, who witnessed the start of Herr Andree's balloon 

 expedition towards the north pole, contributes to the Century a 

 short description of the preliminary arrangements, accompanied 

 by several reproductions of photographs of the balloon when 

 beginning its journey. Mr. Stadling states that the balloon lost 

 about fifty cubic metres of pas every twenty-four hours when it 

 was standing filled in the balloon-house, from which rate of 

 escape of gas it is concluded that the balloon would float about 

 thirty days. — Accompanying an article upon Mrs. Cameron and 

 lier photographs, in the Century, is a fine reproduction of her 

 successful portrait of Sir John Herschel. 



The continually increasing difficulty of dealing with the 

 sewage of large towns lends an interest to any scheme which 

 appears to give satisfactory results in the purification of the 

 effluent from the sewers so as to render it fit to flow into the 

 rivers without polluting the water, and creating a nuisance. So 

 great is the difficulty and cost of purifying the sewage up to the 

 required standard, that Manchester has been advised that the 

 only practicable way of disposing of the effluent from the sewage 

 tanks, which now flows into and pollutes the Ship Canal, is 

 by constructing a culvert fifteen miles long for the purpose 

 of conveying it to the estuary of the Mersey at a cost of 

 258,000/., and it is intended to apply to Parliament in the 

 ensuing session for the necessary power to carry this work out. 

 The sludge from the tanks is to be taken out to sea. The 

 County Council of London employ a fleet of six steamers which 

 are regularly engaged in conveying the sludge deposited in the 

 outfall tanks at Barking and Crossness a distance of fifty miles 

 to Barrow Deeps at an annual cost of 32,000/. ; the material so 

 removed amounting to over two million tons a year. At Exeter 

 a new system of "septic" treatment has been tried, and it 

 is described by Mr. Cameron, the City Surveyor, in a paper 

 read before the Devon and Exeter Architectural Society. It is 

 claimed for this system that the sewage treated by this process 

 in the tanks is brought under the influence of micro-organisms ; 

 the decomposition of the matters which would otherwise under- 

 go putrefaction being effected by the presence of these micro- 

 organisms, their products being ammonia and carbonic acid 

 with some other gases. The bottom of the tanks after six 

 months' use, when exposed, showed only a thin layer of black 

 earthy matter, together with mud and grit. The effluent is not 

 offensive, and it is stated that it does not ferment. At Wolver- 

 hampton recent experiments have shown that filtering the 

 sewage through coal-dust is an effectual way of purifying it, 

 and that a very satisfactory effluent can be obtained by passing 

 200 gallons of sewage through one square yard of filtering 

 material in twenty-four hours. 



The interest of the many recent observations of earthquake- 

 pulsations has led Dr. M. Baratta, who is preparing a history 

 of seismology, to search for early accounts of these phenomena 

 in various scientific works. He has succeeded in discovering 

 NO. 1462, VOL. 57] 



several forgotten records, which are described in a paper in the 

 Rivista Geografica Italiana (1897, fasc. viii.). Those of pul- 

 sations observed with magnetic apparatus date back to 1681, 

 with astronomical instruments to 1767, and with levels to 1833. 

 Dr. Baratta's examples are taken from French and Italian 

 sources ; and it can hardly be doubted that others, equally in- 

 teresting, would be obtained from an examination of English 

 and German works. 



In an interesting and well-illustrated little memoir on 

 " L'Echelle reduite des experiences geologiques," in the Revue 

 de rUniversitd de Bruxelles, M. W. Prinz sets himself to answer 

 the question whether experiments conducted to explain geolog- 

 ical phenomena become untrustworthy on account of the small 

 scale and different materials with which they are necessarily 

 performed. His answer is decisively negative. The results of 

 experiments like those of Cadell on the production 'of "plaiies of 

 major and minor thrust are exactly similar to those produced in 

 the planing of steel, the difTerence in scale between the two 

 classes of experiments being greater than that between Cadell's 

 thrusts and those of the Highlands which they were intended to 

 explain. With regard to difference of material results similar 

 to those of Daubree on plate-glass may be reproduced in mastic, 

 cast-iron, modelling clay, and half-solid mortar ; in all cases 

 cracks similar to the joints and cleavage in rocks are produced. 

 Again, the differential movement which makes marginal cre- 

 vasses in glaciers may be imitated in the cutting of glass by a 

 wheel, by drawing a needle over dry plaster, by a pencil on 

 paper, by footsteps, or by dragging a cane over thick snow, and 

 even by moving a cart-wheel over a muddy road. Further 

 instances, including the action of a diamond on glass, and a 

 bibliography, conclude this interesting memoir. 



Mr. Albert F. Woods, of the Division of Vegetable 

 Physiology and Pathology, United States Department of Agri- 

 culture, describes in the Botanical Gazette a novel method of 

 preserving the green colour of plants for exhibition purposes. 

 The principle involved is to bring about a combination of the 

 chlorophyll in the cells of the plant with copper. The result- 

 ing compound, copper phyllocyanate, is practically insoluble 

 in any of the ordinary preserving media except strong alcohol, 

 and is not destroyed by light. The resulting green can scarcely 

 be distinguished from the normal chlorophyll green. The pro- 

 cess described is a somewhat complicated one. After removing 

 the air as completely as possible from the surface and from the 

 intercellular spaces by immersion in 90-95 per cent, alcohol, 

 or by means of the air-pump, the tissues are placed in a 5 per 

 cent, solution of glycerol containing enough dissolved copper 

 sulphate or copper acetate to give it a bluish tint. The un- 

 combined copper is dissolved out by a dilute glycerin-formalin 

 solution, and the object may be preserved in this solution or 

 in any of the usual media except strong alcohol. 



The number of printed specifications of patents in the Patent 

 Office Library at the present time is well over a quarter of a 

 million. To search through these specifications in order to 

 obtain information as to the novelty of an invention is thus a 

 tremendous task even for the trained expert ; yet by omitting such 

 a search many a patentee has found, after paying his fees, that 

 his patent was worthless, because it had been anticipated ; for 

 the Patent Laws of this country make no provision for an official 

 search as regards novelty, and all patents are taken out at the 

 risk of the inventors. The searcher is, however, greatly assisted 

 in his task by a series of indexes and abridgments published by 

 the Patent Office as a guide to the specifications themselves, and 

 freely distributed to the principal public libraries in this country. 

 The abridgments give a general description of the nature of 

 every invention patented, and the object of their publication is 

 to enable the would-be patentee to carry out, at any rate in some 



