88 



NATURE 



[November 28, 1895 



occupation and charge of the undertakers." After discussion the 

 Chairman accepted Clause 41 in the following form : " A suit- 

 able safety fuse or other automatic disconnector shall be inserted 

 in each service line as close as possible to the point of entry in 

 any consumer's premises, and contained within a suitable locked 

 or sealed receptacle of fireproof construction, except in cases 

 where the service line is protected by fuses in a street box." A 

 few other regulations having been discussed, the proceedings 

 of the Conference terminated. 



A RARE British bird invites the attention of ornithologists in 

 the Fish House of the Zoological Society's gardens. This is a 

 Spotted Redshank (Totanus fusciis) in winter plumage, recently 

 obtained from the fens of Lincolnshire, being the first individual 

 of this species that has been received by the Society. 



It is well known that liquid ammonia relieves the effects 

 of the stings of bees. A correspondent informs us that a much 

 more effectual antidote is the mixture known as ammoniated 

 tincture of quinine. On several occasions, when stung by bees, 

 he found that the quinine mixture would give much quicker and 

 greater relief than ammonia alone. 



With reference to their letter on the thermal conductivity of 

 rocks, published in our issue of the 7th inst. , Messrs. Peirce and 

 Willson desire to say that the phrase ' ' recent discussion in 

 Nature " refers to communications printed in these columns 

 previous to June 20. When they wrote their letter, they had 

 not seen the account of the experiments of Lord Kelvin and Mr. 

 Murray, published in Nature of that date (vol. Hi. p. 182). 



A CORRESPONDENT writes : — " On November 19 of this year, 

 some yardsmen were turning over some English oak planks, prior 

 to stacking them, at Messrs. Harry Hems and Sons at P^xeter, 

 when one of the men put his hand in a knot-hole that occurred in 

 a 6-inch thick plank. He instantly withdrew it with a cry, and 

 some wasps flew out. On examination, the hole was found to 

 contain a large nest with sixty or seventy wasps in it. The 

 plank and its living contents had come, with a number of others, 

 from Lincolnshire by rail a few days before. Probably this long 

 ride for a wasp's nest beats the record ! " 



Some of the officers of the new Ashantee Expedition, who have 

 leisure for sporting pursuits on their march up to Coomassie, 

 will do well to secure for the National Collection additional 

 specimens of the Royal Antelope {Neotragiis pygimctis), which 

 are much wanted. This little animal, discovered by Bosnian in 

 1704, and named the " King of Harts," and subsequently figured 

 in Seba's " Thesaurus," although so long known to science, is 

 still a scarce object in our museums. In fact, as Messrs. Sclater 

 and Thomas tell us in their " Book of Antelopes," all the small 

 members of this group, both of West and East Africa, are still 

 very imperfectly known, and additional sjjecimens and informa- 

 tion on them are much required. 



In the course of his researches on the smaller mammals of 

 South America, Mr. Oldfield Thomas, of the British Museum, 

 has made a brilliant discovery. A small rodent, not quite so 

 big as a rat, which he has lately named Ccenohstes obscurus, 

 turns out to be closely related to, and a surviving representative 

 of, some of the Fossil Marsupials recently described by Ameghino 

 from the Santa Cruz beds of Patagonia. It therefore belongs to 

 a new family, quite distinct from all hitherto known existing 

 forms of the Marsupial order. Mr. Thomas's paper on this 

 subject will be read at one of the Zoological Society's next 

 meetings. 



"Carbonic snow," or carbonic acid crystals, form the 

 subject of an interesting paper by MM, P. Villard and R. 

 Jarry in the November number of the Jonnial de Physique. 

 NO. 1 36 1, VOL. 53] 



Using a toluene thermometer, they found that in the open air it 

 kept at a constant temperature of - 79° C. This is in fact its 

 boiling point, but whatever liquid is formed is at once frozen by 

 the cold caused by evaporation. Hence the gas is only slowly 

 given off. To prevent radiation, it should be kept in a glass 

 silvered on the outside. The solid "snow" is, by the way, 

 heavier than the liquid carbonic acid, in spite of its apparent light- 

 ness. No hoar-frost forms on the surface, owing to the constant 

 evolution of the gas. Another vexed question is that of the 

 temperature of the solution of the " snow " in ether. Accurate 

 measurements showed that, contrary to the popular idea, this 

 solution is not a freezing mixture, its temperature being- 79° C, 

 the same as that of the solid. Methyl chloride does, on the 

 other hand, form a freezing mixture of the temperature - 85° C. 

 In a fiat dish this becomes - 88° C . , and when a current of air is 

 blown through, -90°C. In a vacimm of 5m.m. of mercury,, 

 the temperature falls as low as - 125° C. Since this is below 

 the critical temperature of oxygen, there seems no reason why 

 oxygen should not be liquefied by the aid of carbonic acid alone 



The common crow has a bad reputation among agriculturists^ 

 but a report, by Prof. W. B. Barrows and Mr. E. A. Schwarz,. 

 on his habits in the United States (Bulieiin No. vi., U.S. 

 Department of Agriculture), shows that even his character is- 

 not so black as it has been painted. The most important charges, 

 brought against the crow are that it pulls sprouting corn, injures 

 corn in the milk, destroys cultivated fruit, and feeds on the eggs 

 and young of poultry and wild birds. All these charges are 

 sustained by the results contained in the present report of the 

 examination of the contents of nearly a thousand Corvine 

 stomachs. Crows do certainly feed upon the substances named,, 

 but the extent of the injury they do is quite another matter. In. 

 order to ascertain whether the sum of the harm done outweighs 

 the sum of the good, or the contrary, the different kinds of food 

 found in the stomachs have been reduced to (juantitative per- 

 centages, and then compared. The results show that only 3 per 

 cent, of the total food of the crow consists of sprouting corn and 

 corn in the milk ; the remaining 97 per cent, is chiefly waste 

 grain picked up here and there, mainly in winter, and of no- 

 economic value. In the case of cultivated fruits, the loss due to 

 crows appears to be trivial. The same is true of the eggs and 

 young of poultry and wild birds, the total for the year amount- 

 ing, in the cases examined, to only i per cent, of the food. As- 

 an offset to his bad habits, the American crow is credited with 

 the good done in destroying noxious insects and other injurious- 

 animals. Insects form 26 per cent, of his entire food, and the 

 great majority of these are gra.sshoppers, beetles, weevils, cut- 

 worms (larvse of Noctuidfe), and other injurious kinds. To the 

 same side of the scale must also he added the destruction of 

 mice, rabbits, and other injurious rodents by the crow. Where- 

 fore Mr. Hart Merriam concludes, in his introductory note to- 

 Messrs. Barrows' and Schwarz's valuable report, that, in summing 

 up the benefits and losses resulting from the food habits of this 

 bird, the good exceeds the bad, and that the crow is a friend 

 rather than an enemy of the farmer. 



The efficiency of windmills and agricultural apparatus forms- 

 the subject of a note, by Prof. Cleveland Abbe, in the Monthly 

 Weather Review. There are many important and expensive 

 agricultural machines, such as reapers, mowers, windmills, and 

 pumps, to say nothing of portable steam-engines, that are 

 needed on large farms, or the centrifugal separators used in 

 dairies, that fail to give satisfaction because of some inherent 

 mechanical defect. The most efficient machine is that which, 

 produces the best result with the least possible waste of power» 

 Prof. Abbe suggests that there be some recognised authority to 

 come between the manufacturer and the farmer ; some one who 

 shall " standardise" any piece of apparatus when desired, and 



