3i8 



N All! RE 



\y2ily 18, 1S78 



is the finest publication of the kind we have seen, and the plates 

 are of such a size that they may be hung up on the wall. The 

 plants and various parts of plants in the part sent us are magni- 

 fied from 15 to 8,000 times, and are most beautifully and success- 

 fully coloured according to nature. Explanatory text accom- 

 panies each plate, and as an aid to botanical teaching it would 

 be difficult to imagine anything more useful and attractive ; it 

 would be a boon to teachers and students of botany to have the 

 Atlas published in this country. 



The Harvard Library Bulletin No. 8, the Nation stales, 

 announces that a sufficient subscription to Scudder's " Catalogue 

 of Scientific Serials" has been secured, and that the work will 

 be immediately put to press. 



The eleventh annual report of the Peabody Institute of Balti- 

 more shows that the institution is efficiently serving the various 

 scientific, literary, and artistic purposes for which it was estab- 

 lished. 



Last Friday, at half- past 8 p.m., a magnificent meteor was 

 seen at Privat, in the Ardeche Department. The meteor broke 

 into several pieces and emitted a magpiificent blue light. 



The state of the weather in the principal Algerian towns is 

 posted regularly at the Meteorological Pavilion in the Trocadero, 

 Paris. A special column is devoted to describing the state of the 

 sea, but the writers having the care of translating the telegrams 

 are so ignorant that they have posted a notice for several 

 days telling the Parisians that ** the sea was very smooth at 

 Laghouat and Biskra," two Saharan cities ! 



The French yournal Officiel has published a notice intimating 

 that a school for telegraphy has been established, and that the 

 course of instruction will be opened in October next. Pupils 

 will be admitted after a competition. Preliminary examinations 

 will take place in several cities of France, and the final examin- 

 ation will take place in Paris. A certain number of places is 

 reserved to the pupils of the Polytechnic School, without compe- 

 tition, though it is expected that this privilege will be cancelled 

 by the Chamber of Deputies when deliberating upon the matter 

 next session. 



The inflation of the great Giffard balloon was completed on 

 Sunday evening. Aeronauts are now busy arranging the ma- 

 ncBuvres, and it is expected that the preliminary ascents will be 

 made at the end of this week. Next week M. Tissandier will 

 make a communication to the Academy of Sciences on behalf 

 of M. Giffard, who has appointed him general manager. MM. 

 Eugene and Jules Godard and Camille Dartois have been 

 appointed aeronauts. Free ascents will be made twice a week 

 from the Cour des Tuileries. The reappearance of a monster 

 captive balloon will very likely revive an interest in aeronautics. 

 We have heard of many contemplated experiments on a smaller 

 scale. Some Americans have constructed, with light oiled silk, 

 a cylinder six feet in height and twenty feet long, which has 

 been filled with pure hydrogen. This elongated balloon sup- 

 ports an immense sheet in silk, on which advertisements are 

 to be painted and exhibited at fixed rates per hour. The effect 

 is said to be very graceful indeed. 



It is stated, on the authority of the Agricultural Gazette of 

 Hanover, that a discovery has recently been made of a new 

 remedy for the prevention of ravages to cabbages by the com- 

 mon caterpillar. A steward of an estate in Hanover having 

 observed that one bed of cabbages was left untouched by 

 caterpillars, whilst others were infested with them, found 

 that the healthy bed had a quantity of dill gi-owing on it, 

 the smell of which, apparently, was obnoxious to the cater- 

 pillars. As dill will grow in almost any soil, it is suggested 

 that the experiment might be tried by agriculturists. As in- 

 dicative of the possibility of there being some truth in this, The 

 Colonies and India says :— -" We have heard of the common 



green ("gooseberry") caterpillar being kept off" by planting- 

 broad beans close to the bushes — and the pyrethnim, a strong 

 smelling weed which is cultivated as a garden border flower — Ls 

 said to protect vines from the ravages of the Phylloxera. 



The phenomenon of supersaturated solutions of salts forms 

 the subject of an elaborate study by M. D, Gernez {Ann. de 

 r Ecole normale, 1S78). He finds that besides water a number of 

 other liquids, such as carbon-disulphide, the hydro-carbons, the 

 phenols, and notably the alcohols, afford instances of this pecu- 

 liarity. A substance which does not yield supersaturated 

 solutions with one solvent never yields them w ith another, nor 

 can the phenomenon be produced by the addition of substances 

 such as dextrin, tending to increase the viscosity of the solvent. 

 The salts yielding these solutions most easily are sodium car- 

 bonate, calcium nitrate, magnesium sulphate, plumbic acetate, 

 and alum. In the case of all five cr}'stallisation ensues only on 

 the introduction of crystals of an isomorphous substance, and the 

 latter lose this property if once heated above a certain tempe- 

 rature, for example, 98° for alum. The author gives a list of 

 120 substances which possess the property of yielding these 

 solutions. 



The Ethnographic Congress in connection with the Paris 

 Exhibition was opened on Monday. The President, M, Leoii 

 de Rosny, delivered a somewhat vague and apparently not 

 over scientific address, in which he defined ethnography as 

 the study of conscious humanity, the discovery of the law of 

 the evolution of humanity in its relation with the general laws of 

 the universe. While anthropology studied individuals or grouped 

 them only according to physical affinities, ethnography recog- 

 nised groups formed by collective consent and based on com- 

 patibilities of temperament and intelligence. It was the fashion,, 

 indeed, to decry half-breeds ; but the majority, if not the whole, 

 of nations prominent in history had been mixed races, and this 

 mixture was the law of nature, though, under unfavourable 

 conditions, it sometimes proved a failure. 



The report of the Miners' Association of Cornwall and Devon 

 for the year 1877 is, we are glad to say, as satisfactory as 

 usual. 



Mr. E. Schone, of Moscow, who is making extended 

 researches on the presence of peroxide of hydrogen in the air, 

 communicates recently the results of his investigations on its 

 presence in the solid and liquid depositions from the atmosphere. 

 He finds that in general the percentage of peroxide of hydrogen 

 increases with the height above the earth's surface at which the 

 condensation of the aqueous vapour takes place. Thus rain 

 always contains more than snow — the' rain-clouds moving, as is 

 well known, at a higher elevation than those yielding snow — 

 mists which take their origin near the earth's surface ccntain 

 comparatively little, and dew and frost show no traces. 



The additions to the Zoological Society's Gardens during the 

 past week include a Beatrix Antelope {Oryx bcatrix) from Tyef 

 Hedgar, presented by Commander Burke, s.s. Arcot, two 

 Crested Porcupines {Hystrix cristata), a Banded Ichneumon 

 {Herpestes fasciatus) from East Africa, presented by Dr. G. P. 

 Badger ; four Paradise Whydah Birds ( Vidua paradised), a pin- 

 tailed Whydah Bird {Vidua principalis), three Grenadier Weaver 

 Birds {Euplectes oryx) from East Africa, presented by Mr. Archi- 

 bald Brown ; a Barn Owl {Strix flammed) from Mesopotamia, 

 presented by Commander Wyatt, s.s. Deccan ; a Hawk's-billed 

 Turtle {Chelone imbricata) from the East Indies, presented by 

 Capt. Henderson ; a Water Chevrotain {Hyomoschus aquaticus), 

 an Electric Silurus {Malaplerurus beninensis) from West Africa, 

 a Plantain Squirrel {Sciurus plantani) from Java, purchased ; a 

 Chimpanzee {Troglodytes niger) from West Africa, four Vul- 

 turine Guinea Fowls {Numida lullurina) from East Africa, 

 deposited; a Hairy Tree Porcupine {Sphingunis villosits) boi'n 

 in the Gardens. 



