144 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



Dr. Edward Davy, who is now living in 

 Australia at the age of seventy-seven years, 

 appears to have anticipated all other claim- 

 ants in suggesting the use of electricity for 

 telegraphing. He published a paper on 

 the subject in the " Mechanics' Magazine " 

 in 1838 ; but there has recently been found, 

 among his old manuscripts, an outline, 

 dated in 1836, "of a new plan of tele- 

 graphic communication, by which intelli- 

 gence may be conveyed with precision to 

 unlimited distances in an instant of time, 

 independent of .fog and darkness." His 

 first idea was to use static electricity, but 

 he afterward adopted electro-magnetism, 

 with deflections of the galvanometer. He 

 used half as many wires as there are letters 

 of the alphabet, making each wire, accord- 

 ing as it \^orked a deflection to the right or 

 to the left, answer for two letters. 



Dr. Henry Macauley, of Belfast, Ire- 

 land, has suggested a plan for making the 

 sun do direct service in cooling the air it 

 heats, by using Mochot's solar -engine to 

 pump cold air into dwellings, factories, etc. 

 The drawback to his proposition is, that it 

 depends upon ice to furnish the cooling in- 

 fluence, and this is not always on hand in 

 tropical countries. 



The great collection of fungi of Baron 

 Felix von Thiime-n, of Vienna, was offered 

 for sale a few months ago. It includes, in 

 two hundred and twenty-one portfolios, more 

 than thirty-five thousand specimens, repre- 

 senting one thousand genera, and fifteen 

 thousand species and varieties, besides forty 

 portfolios more recently acquired, contain- 

 ing fifteen thousand specimens of five thou- 

 sand species and varieties, still unarranged. 

 It furnished the material by the aid of 

 which Dr. A.' Minks's " Symbolae Licheno-my- 

 cologicse " was prepared. 



Dr. Crosskey writes : " It is a wonder- 

 ful thing to see the power of experimental 

 science over the roughest lads. My own 

 belief is that, in our young blackguards, we 

 have a most amazing reserve power of sci- 

 entific research; they are alive in every 

 sense, and I have watched them at the 

 science-lessons as keenly interested as if 

 they were up to mischief in the streets." 



It appears from a recent observation by 

 Dr. Fleitman, that much less time than has 

 been generally supposed is required for the 

 formation of mineral veins. About two 

 years ago. Dr. Fleitman filled up a ditch 

 with common clay containing iron. Having 

 had occasion to dig out the ditch anew, he 

 was surprised to find that the character of 

 the clay had been changed, and it had 

 turned white. It was also permeated in 

 various directions by cracks from a twenty- 

 fifth to a sixth of an inch in section, which 

 were filled with compact iron pyrites. 



The death is announced of Frangois Le- 

 normant, one of the most distinguished 

 scholars of the age in Oriental archaeology. 

 While he was at home in all branches of 

 this subject, his work was more especially 

 concerned with the Asiatic civilizations and 

 the cuneiform inscriptions. His book on 

 the "Beginnings of History" is a real store- 

 house of the results of the latest researches 

 in this field, aud is one of the most satisfac- 

 tory compendiums of extremely ancient his- 

 tory. He was a devoted Koman Catholic, 

 but did not shrink from the boldest conclu- 

 sions which the students of the ancient rec- 

 ords have reached ; and he had no trouble 

 in satisfying himself of their complete har- 

 mony with the biblical record and Jewish 

 traditions rightly interpreted. 



Mr. D. E. Salmon has shown, in a com- 

 munication to " Science," that the micro- 

 coccus which is the cause of typhoid in 

 hogs was discovered by Dr. Detmers of 

 our Department of Agriculture, and was de- 

 scribed by him, with additional knowledge 

 each time, in the reports giving the results 

 of his investigations from 1878 to 1882. 

 Mr, Salmon, co-operating also with the De- 

 partment of Agriculture, demonstrated that 

 this micrococcus exists in the blood during 

 the life of the animal, that it can be cul- 

 tivated in flasks, and that the sixth succes- 

 sive cultivation is still competent to produce 

 the disease. Thuillier, working with Pas- 

 teur, made an independent discovery of the 

 same organism, without knowledge of the 

 American work, in 1882. Before either of 

 these discoveries, Klein, in 18*76, encount- 

 ered the organism, but failed to connect 

 it with the virus of the disease, and after- 

 ward assigned the malady to a different 

 schizophyte. 



Dr. D. J. Macgowan, in his " Notes on 

 Earthquakes in China for 1882," mentions 

 three classes of earthquakes as distinguish- 

 able in that country — insular, littoral, and 

 interior. Earthquakes in Formosa and Hai- 

 nan arc frequently felt on the mainland to 

 the coast-mountains, but not above tide- 

 water, except in the basin of the lower 

 Yangtse. They are sometimes accompa- 

 nied by marine disturbances, and are often 

 followed by increased action in the solfa- 

 tara and complaints of malaise^ consequent, 

 doubtless, upon the emission of hydrosul- . 

 phuric gases. Of the three principal in- 

 terior seismic foci, Szechuen, Shansi, and 

 Kansuh, the two former are situated far 

 from volcanoes, and their shocks are often 

 reported as continuous for considerable pe- 

 riods. 



A movement has been started in Brad- 

 ford, England, to test the legality of the 

 imposition of home-lessons on the children 

 in the elementary schools. 



