Oct. 24, 1878] 



NATURE 



683 



tinguish it from all our native grasses. He sent a small quantity 

 of the grass to Mr. Thomas Routledge, of Sunderland, who, 

 after experiment, concludes that, taken as dried and put up care- 

 fully in bundles, free from weeds and dirt, its value would be equal 

 to esparto at 5/. per ton dry. " I, however," Mr. Routledge 

 states, "must refrain from r^^oiWRg positively as to its value for 

 paper-making from the result of so small an experiment. I 

 should require at least one ton (more would be better) to test it 

 practically and make paper from it. . . It may be worth more 

 than the value I mention, but only a practical working trial into 

 paper can properly test this point." Mr. Christie writes in the 

 hope that some of our landed proprietors may be sufficiently 

 interested in the matter to send Mr. Routledge a quantity of the 

 grass, so as to repeat his experiment on the large scale. The 

 grass grows in the open parts of woods and on moorlands all 

 over Scotland, and could be cultivated where nothing else of any 

 value will grow. As the plant lasts for several years, the only 

 expense after the first outlay would be that of gathering in the 

 crop. 



A DESPATCH from Poughkeepsie, dated October 4, gives the 

 particulars of a severe earthquake shock along both sides of the 

 Hudson from Marlborough to Peekskill, a distance of twenty- 

 five miles. The shock was first felt at 2.30 o'clock a.m. 

 at West Point. The shock seemed to come from the north and 

 to pass south. For several seconds the earth seemed to rock, 

 and houses were shaken and windows rattled. The rumbling 

 and shock together lasted half a minute. 



In reference to the article in vol. xviii. p. 620, on the balloon 

 experiments at Woolwich, Mr. Percy Smith writes to remind us 

 of the fact that the first aerial voyage made in England took 

 place on September 14, 1784, when Lunardi ascended from 

 London in a balloon thirty-three feet in diameter, and filled with 

 hydrogen. 



M. Am6d£e Guillemin, the well-known author of " Le 

 Ciel " and other works on popular astronomy, has been selected 

 by the Liberal-Republican Committee to stand as a candidate in 

 the next elections for the French Senate, for the Department of 

 Saone et Loire. It is stated that a number of scientific men will 

 contend for other vacant seats. 



A TELEGRAM from Sydney states that it has now been de- 

 finitively decided to hold the International Exhibition in August, 

 1879, as gazetted last February. The Exhibition is being 

 organised under the auspices of the Agricultural Society of New 

 South Wales. 



In connection with the Bristol Museum and Library we have 

 received a syllabus of a course of ten lectures, on literary and 

 scientific subjects, to be delivered in the lecture theatre of the 

 Museum during the winter. The lectures are mostly scientific, 

 and the lecturers men of established eminence in their own 

 departments. 



Austria, Spain, Egypt, China, Morocco, Portugal, Russia, 

 and England, with all her colonies, have presented the French 

 government with all the objects which have been exhibited by 

 them in the ethnographical and pedagogical departments of the 

 exhibition. These invaluable collections will be exhibited in 

 the Ethnographical and Pedagogical Museum, which the French 

 government intends to establish, according to the announce- 

 ment made by M. Bardoux in one of his last speeches. 



The Journal Officiel of the French republic published, on 

 October 19, a decree of the President, appointing a general 

 commission to investigate the means of making the best use of 

 running waters all over France. A systematic inspection will 

 take place. The commission has been divided into the fol- 

 lowing sections: — I. Irrigation; president, M. Andral. 2. 



Supply of cities ; president, M. Magnin. 3. Creation of 

 reservoirs ; president, M. Cocheris. Any person wishing to 

 suggest improvements or useful works is requested to write to 

 the president of the section which his communication concerns. 

 The letters are to be directed to the Ministry of Public Works. 



The number of aeronautical ascents in France is increasing in 

 a most remarkable manner, owing to the splendid working of the 

 Giffard captive balloon. Every Thursday and Sunday two free 

 balloons, inflated with pure hydrogen, have been sent up from 

 the Cour des Tuileries during several weeks. The number is to 

 be enlarged progressively, so that three, four, and at last five 

 mounted balloons will be sent up. 



Two volumes of the Memmrs of the Geneva Society of 

 Physics and Natural History have just appeared. The first, 

 forming the second part of vol. xxv. of these Memoirs, is occu- 

 pied entirely by the sixth fascicule of the " Melanges Orthop- 

 terologiques " of Henri de Saussure, and contains the mono- 

 graph on the Gryllidse. The second volume, forming the first 

 part of vol. xxvi. of the Memoirs, contains (i) a paper by M. 

 J. E. Duby on new or imperfectly known exotic mosses ; (2) 

 a stratigraphical study of the south-west part of the Crimea, by 

 M. Ernest Favre ; (3) researches on fecundation among various 

 animals, by M. Hermann Fol. 



A FINE elephant tusk was found in the month of August last in a 

 locality near Geneva on a hill to the south-west of the confluence 

 of the Arve and the Rhone. It was taken from a gallery in a very 

 compact sand along with beds of hard and tenacious gravels 

 formed of pebbles bound together by calcareous cement. The 

 part of the tusk which has been extracted is about eighty 

 centimetres long ; it is the anterior portion, but the frag- 

 ments left behind lead to the presumption that its total length 

 exceeded I '50 m. The bed in which it was found belongs 

 to the old alluvium, several metres below the glacial earth. 

 Prof. Alph. Favre assigns it to the Elephas antiquus, of 

 which debris were met with in 1786 by H. B. de Saussure in 

 two places in the southern part of the valley of Geneva Lake. 

 A portion of the parenchymatous matter contained in the interior 

 of the tusk has been analysed by Prof. Brun, of the University of 

 Geneva, who, having dissolved it in hydrochloric acid, obtained 

 a residuum of organic particles — charcoal, grains of fecula, 

 spores of algae and of mushrooms, four species of diatoms still 

 living in the waters of the country, and lastly a polycistina, a 

 silicious form not well determined, and discovered previously 

 in the mud of the Lake of Geneva. From the presence of 

 these Prof. Brun concludes that the elephant's tusk must have 

 been a long time in fluviatile waters. 



A THIRD mathematical tract (Invariants) for American 

 students is now being written by Dr. W. J. Wright, recently 

 Professor of Mathematics at Wilson College, Pa. The previous 

 tracts, which we have noticed in these columns, bore the titles 

 of Determinants, Trilinear Co-ordinates. 



On August 29, 1879, a century will have passed since Johann 

 Jakob von Berzelius, the celebrated chemist, was born at 

 Westerlosa, in Sweden. The Swedish papers draw attention to 

 this fact, and request that preparations for a dignified celebration 

 of that day should be made in good time. 



We have received three parts (containing the concluding 

 chapters) of the second edition of Herr F. von Hauer's work, 

 " Die Geologie und ihre Anwendung auf die Kenntniss der 

 Bodenbeschaffenheit der oesterr. ungar. Monarchie" (Vienna, 

 Holder) ; also a German work, by Prof. F. Lorber, " On the 

 Exactness of Measurements of Length." 



The investigations which have been carried on for more than 

 ten years at the Hague, in order to find out the house which 

 Spinoza inhabited from the year 1652 until the day of his death, 

 on February 21, 1678, have at last been crowned with success. 



