864 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Gabriel Gust ay Valentin, till 1881 Pro- 

 fessor of Physiology in the University of 

 Berne, died May 24th. He was an excellent 

 teacher and a profound physiologist, and 

 was the author of several scientific works 

 on physiological subjects, among them two 

 in Latin. His " Text-Book of Physiology " 

 was translated into English by the late Dr. 

 Brinton. 



Madame de Colbert has intrusted the 

 French Academy with some valuable manu- 

 scripts of her grandfather, Laplace, which 

 she has recently discovered, on condition 

 that they shall not be opened till 1930. 



Mr. H. W. Eaton, of Louisville, Ken- 

 tucky, has described, in " Science," a female 

 negro child which was born in that city in 

 March, having what appeared to be a rudi- 

 mentary tail. The tail was visible as a 

 "fleshy peduncular protuberance," about 

 two and a quarter inches long, and measur- 

 ing an inch and a quarter around at the 

 base, closely resembling a pig's tail in 

 shape, but showing no sign of bone or carti- 

 lage, situated about an inch above the lower 

 end of the spinal column. It had grown 

 about a quarter of an inch in eight weeks. 



Professor James Hall has been elected 

 a corresponding member of the French 

 Academy of Sciences, mineralogical section, 

 in place of the late Professor J. Lawrence 

 Smith. 



Among the important enterprises under- 

 taken by the United States Coast and Geo- 

 detic Survey are the measurement of the arc 

 of the thirty-ninth parallel, which is nearly 

 50° long, and of the meridian of the ninety- 

 ninth degree of longitude, which stretches 

 nearly 23° through the United States, and 

 may be extended north and south to a length 

 of 50°. This will furnish two lines of the 

 highest value in solving the great problem of 

 the figure of the earth. 



Grape-seeds contain about eighteen per 

 cent, by weight, of oil, which is largely ex- 

 tracted at Modena and other places in Italy, 

 and used for purposes of illumination. 



OBITUARY NOTES. 



Ferdinand von Hochstetter, the Ger- 

 man mineralogist and geologist, is dead, in 

 the fifty-fifth year of his age. His earlier 

 scientific work was done in New Zealand, 

 when, having left the Novara expedition, 

 he began geological investigations about 

 1857. He was afterward Professor of Min- 

 eralogy and Geology in the Polytechnic In- 

 stitute of Vienna, and President of the 

 Vienna Geographical Society. Besides 

 works relating to the topography, geology, 

 and palaeontology, and the boiling springs 

 of New Zealand, he was the author of 



books on the geology of Eastern Turkey 

 and the Ural, and of various popular pub- 

 lications. 



The July death-list contains the names 

 of three of the scientific men of Sweden : 

 the geometrician, August Pasch, who was 

 fifty-one years old; the botanist, Dr. Lar 

 Magnus Larsson, of the high-school at Carl- 

 stad, sixty-two years old ; and the chemist. 

 Professor Sten Stenberg, who died in the 

 sixtieth year of his age. 



The death is announced of the Abbe 

 Fran9ois Napoleon Marie Moigno, at Saint- 

 Denis, France, at the age of eighty years. 

 The abbe was of Breton birth, and was 

 educated for the Church. Displaying a 

 taste for science, the Jesuits made him a 

 teacher of mathematics in one of their 

 seminaries. In 1861 the superior of the 

 order directed him to suspend the publica- 

 tion of a work on the calculus which he 

 was preparing, and assigned him a chair 

 of Hebrew and History. He preferred sci- 

 entific studies, and left the order rather 

 than give them up. He became a scientific 

 contributor to the journals, and founded the 

 " Cosmos," which eventually gave place to 

 the journal " Les Mondes." He was author 

 of books on electric telegraphy, the stereo- 

 scope and the saccharimeter, modem optics, 

 a course in popular science, analytical me- 

 chanics, several volumes of " Scientific Ac- 

 tualities," and " The Splendors of Faith." 



Dr. Erasmus Wilson, a well-known 

 English medical writer, died August 9th, 

 in the seventy-sixth year of his age. His 

 specialty was diseases of the skin, and he 

 founded chairs of Dermatology at the Col- 

 lege of Surgeons and at Aberdeen, as well as 

 the Museum of Dermatology at the former 

 institution. 



Professor Karl Richard Lepsius, the 

 oldest Egyptologist in Europe, died in Ber- 

 lin in July last. He was born in 1810; 

 having studied philology at the German 

 universities, he gave his attention to the 

 examination of the Semitic and other al- 

 phabets, and of the hieroglyphic alphabet ; 

 published studies of various important 

 Egyptian tablets and inscriptions, and of 

 the " Book of the Dead " ; and went upon 

 his scientific expedition to Egypt in the 

 fall of 1842. He published his "Einlei- 

 tung," or " Introduction to Egyptian Chro- 

 nology," in 1849; his great " Denkmaler," 

 or portfolios of all the Egyptian monu- 

 ments, between 1849 and 1860; his "Ko- 

 nigsbuch," or lists of kings, in 1858; and 

 his "Standard Alphabets," in 1860. He 

 began the publication of a periodical de- 

 voted to Egyptology and archaeological re- 

 search in 1864 ; and he was the discoverer 

 and the translator of the celebrated trilin- 

 gual " Decree of Canopus." 



