864 



POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



operation was begun about two years ago. 

 It has happily secured the support of gov- 

 ernments and scientific societies in all parts 

 of the world, and the meeting is very widely 

 representative. The United States is repre- 

 sented by Dr. John S. Billings and Prof. 

 Simon Newcomb; Canada by the Hon. Sir 

 Donald A. Smith ; and Great Britain by a 

 large number of its most distinguished sci- 

 entific men. Sir John A. Gorst, the British 

 Government representative, was chosen presi- 

 dent. Prof. Newcoinb is one of the vice- 

 presidents. The proceedings of the confer- 

 ence will be in English, French, and German, 

 as the official languages. 



NOTES. 



It is stated that in Como, Italy, arrange- 

 ments are being made for the holding in 

 1899 of an electrical exhibition and congress, 

 to commemorate the centenary of the inven- 

 tion of the voltaic battery. Alessandro Volta 

 was born in Como in 1*745, but it was while 

 Professor of Natural Philosophy at the Uni- 

 versity of Pavia that he made the discoveries 

 that have immortalized his name. 



This result of an inquiry made by the di- 

 rectors of the German telegraphs into the 

 effect of the network of telephone wires in 

 the large cities has been, according to Das 

 Wetter, to show that the presence of the 

 wires tends to reduce the violence of thun- 

 der and to diminish the dangers from light- 

 ning. 



Probably the earliest known example 

 of piece-molding among European bronze 

 foundries is a mold for a spear head which 

 was found at Thonon, France, among the 

 relics of the lake dwellers. It is described 

 by Mr. George Simonds as having been com- 

 posed of two slabs of stone, on each of which 

 a spear head was cut out to a proper depth. 

 The two stones, being placed face to face and 

 bound together, would form a very simple but 

 close mold from which many casts could be 

 taken without injury to the mold itself. 



It is stated by Mr. F. T. R. Carulla (Eng- 

 land) that no effective remedy has yet been 

 found for preventing the rusting of outdoor 

 iron and steel work, and that in new railway 

 lines iron and steel bridges are excluded wher- 

 ever practicable. He stated, for instance, 

 that over twenty tons of rust were taken 

 from the Britannia Bridge during the first 

 sixteen years after its completion. 



A trial for larceny is mentioned in the 

 Green Bag as having recently taken place 

 in Ohio, in which the detective work of a 

 dog was put in evidence. Some of the stolen 

 property was found near the scene of the 



theft and was shown to the dog ; he was then 

 shown footprints close to it. Then, being 

 put on the trail, he followed it unhesitat- 

 ingly about two hundred feet to a gate, 

 then inside the gate up to two front outside 

 doors, of which he chose the left-hand one, 

 and inside to the prisoner's door. He had 

 been trained to this business, and could trail 

 a culprit thus even along a track twenty or 

 forty hours' old. The evidence was ad- 

 mitted. 



The special commission appointed by the 

 International Meteorological Congress in Mu- 

 nich in 1891 for the organization of obser- 

 vations on the direction of movement and 

 the height of clouds having completed its 

 work, observations were to be begun in all 

 parts of the world on the 1st of May last, 

 and are to be continued one year. The 

 classification of clouds proposed by Hilde- 

 brandsson and Abercromby will be used as far 

 as possible. 



The death is announced, June l*7th, of 

 Lord Lilford (Thomas Lyttleton Powys), an 

 eminent English ornithologist, in "the" sixty- 

 fourth year of his age. He had a famous 

 collection of wild animals, particularly full 

 in the group of cranes, at his estate of Lil- 

 ford Hall, and in knowledge of the habits of 

 wild creatures, especially of birds, " had 

 few equals." He was President of the Brit- 

 ish Ornithologists' Union, was a frequent 

 contributor to The Zoo logist and The Ibis, was 

 author of the Birds of Northamptonshire, 

 and had nearly completed a book of Colored 

 Figures of the Birds of the British Islands. 



Dr. Heinrioh Ernst Beyrich, Professor 

 of Geology in the University and Director 

 of the Natural History Museum in Berlin, 

 recently died there, in his eighty-first year. 

 He was a younger brother of the famous 

 chemist, Ferdinand Beyrich, who died in 

 1869, and " was a most inspiring academical 

 teacher, and gave a lively impulse to geologi- 

 cal research." He published many papers 

 on geology and paleontology, and was chief 

 in making the geological map of Prussia and 

 the Thuringian states. 



Sir William Grove, an eminent lawyer, 

 but most eminent as a man of science, died in 

 London, August 1st. He was born at Swan- 

 sea in 1811 ; was graduated from Oxford in 

 1830; was called to the bar in 1835, but, 

 being in ill health, devoted himself to elec- 

 trical researches, and in 1839 contrived the 

 powerful battery that bears his name. By 

 this and his researches on the conservation 

 and transformation of energy he wa3 best 

 known. He was one of the original mem- 

 bers of the Chemical Society, and was Presi- 

 dent of the British Association at the Not- 

 tingham meeting in 1866. A sketch of him, 

 with portrait, was given in the Popular Sci- 

 ence Monthly for July, IS15 (vol. iii, p. 363). 



