864 



POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



one of their number having been taken ill. 

 The Italians remained two hours on the sum- 

 mit, and took scientific observations and 

 photographs. The height of the mountain 

 was for the first time satisfactorily measured 

 and found to be 18,120 feet. In the previ- 

 ous attempts to ascend this mountain the 

 Topham expedition reached a height of 11,- 

 400 feet, and Prof. I. C. Russell, in the second 

 attempt, made under the auspices of the Na- 

 tional Geographical Society hi 1891, 14,500 

 feet. Prince Luigi found nothing to indicate 

 that the mountain had ever been a volcano. 



THE vessel Evelyn Baldwin arrived at 

 Christiania, Norway, August 13th, from Spitz- 

 bergen, whence she had sailed northward to 

 80 46' of latitude and until stopped by pack 

 ice. The expedition has secured valuable 

 geological and botanical collections for some 

 American colleges. 



PROP. S. P. LANOLEY, Secretary of the 

 Smithsonian Institution, recently attended a 

 meeting of the French Academy of Sciences, 

 and spoke concerning his experiments in me- 

 chanical flight. He said he had greatly en- 

 larged the distance which his aeroplanes 

 would run, without much changing his appa- 

 ratus. 



PROF. WOLCOTT GIBBS, who had been 

 designated president, was not able to be 

 present at the Detroit meeting of the Ameri- 

 can Association for the Advancement of Sci- 

 ence, and Mr. W J McGee took his place as 

 acting president. 



A REPORT by Dr. Lambusto Loria on war 

 customs of certain tribes of New Guinea 

 mentions homicide and the " naming of the 

 dead relatives of others " as the two great 

 causes of intertribal war. Homicide is the 

 result of various savage ideas. After a 

 death, " all the gardens and plantations of 

 cocoanuts and betel nuts, etc., belonging to 

 the murdered person are destroyed, to allow 

 the relatives and friends to forget quickly the 

 departed person." Revenge is then decided 

 upon, and preparation is made for it with 

 curious preliminary religious rites. 



IN a paper in the American Association 

 on the Destruction of Forests and its Effects 

 on Drainage and Agriculture, Mr. H. W. De 

 Courcy advised the farmer. Let him but 

 follow the lines of least grade in his tillage, 

 and " he will soon see the effect of his im- 

 proved line of cultivation in better crops, 

 greater resistance to droughts by retaining 

 the drainage water, and his young plantations 

 of trees will gladden his sight on the former 

 bare hillside." A safe guide to the line of 

 least grade is the course of a railroad, if 

 there be one through the farm, which always 

 seeks that line. 



THE French Association for the Advance- 

 ment of the Sciences recently held its meet- 



ing at St. fitienne, and was opened with an 

 address by the president, M. Marey, on The 

 Graphic Method and the Experimental Sci- 

 ences. The review of the past year's work 

 of the association, read by M. Cartaz, in- 

 cludes notices of studies during the interim 

 of historical geography; of legislation for 

 workingmen, by M. Lebon ; of alcoholism, by 

 M. Alglave; a memoir of Pasteur, by M. 

 Brouardel ; and a work on bibliography, by 

 Prof. Charles Richet. The death list is 

 rather large, and includes, among the best- 

 known names, those of D'Abbadie, Daubree, 

 Des Cloiseaux, Schutzenberger, Leon Say, 

 Cernuschi, and Victor Lemoin, physician and 

 geologist. 



THE Hon. Ralph Abercromby, author of 

 some excellent works on meteorology, includ- 

 ing that on Weather in the International 

 Scientific Series, died at Sydney, New South 

 Wales, June 21st, fifty-four years of age. 



THE death was announced in July of J. 

 J. S. Steenstrup, ex-Professor of Zoology 

 and Director of the Zoological Museum in 

 Copenhagen, aged eighty-four years. His 

 studies and his books covered a wide field. 

 His principal work was that on the Alterna- 

 tion of Generations. Besides publishing 

 much on natural history, he studied the pre- 

 historic remains found in Denmark, and in 

 conjunction with Sir John Lubbock contrib- 

 uted, in 1866, to the Ethnological Society of 

 London a memoir on the Flint Instruments 

 recently discovered at Persigny-le-Grand. 



PROF. THIERRY WILHELM PREYER, for- 

 merly of Jena, died in Wiesbaden in July, 

 fifty-six years of age, of Bright's disease. 

 He was distinguished in physiology and psy- 

 chology. He was born in Manchester, Eng- 

 land, in 1841, was taught in London, attended 

 several German universities, and took his 

 degrees at Bonn in 1862 and 1865. He be- 

 gan scientific life as a privat decent at Bonn 

 in 1865, and was appointed Professor of 

 Physiology at Jena at 1869. He retired 

 from this position a few years ago, and went 

 to Berlin and then to Wiesbaden. He was 

 author of a famous work on haemoglobin ; 

 published researches on the mental develop- 

 ment of the child, some of which appeared 

 in The Popular Science Monthly, and some 

 form a volume in Appletons' International 

 Education Series ; carried on researches in 

 acoustics ; investigated the cause of sleep, 

 and published observations on hypnotism ; 

 and was the author of Elements of General 

 Physiology. 



THE distinguished chemist, Prof. Victor 

 Meyer, died at Heidelberg, August 8th. He 

 was born in Berlin in 1 848, and was professor 

 successively at Stuttgart, Zurich, Gottingen, 

 and Heidelberg; was author of numerous 

 original researches in organic chemistry, and 

 also contributed to chemical physics, espe- 

 cially in the field of vapor densities. 



