FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



575 



so far from land that it can not be felt by 

 those on shore. These instruments, wherever 

 they are established, give information of great 

 seismic disturbances, even when they take 

 place at the antipodes of the place of obser- 

 vation. Hence they enable us to correct, 

 confirm, and even to disprove telegraphic in- 

 formation. 



Thk peach is cultivated in Belgium 

 grafted or budded on the red plum, which 

 imparts much of its superior vitality to the 

 scion. The proper calcareous quality is im- 

 parted to the soil by manuring thoroughly 

 and applying about a bushel of lime to each 

 tree. The trees are trained upon the sunny 

 sides of the houses, and few houses are with- 

 out trees covering their walls. To shelter 

 the buds at the time of flowering branches 

 cut from other green trees are placed among 

 the upper boughs, or they are covered with 

 mosquito netting or other material with 

 meshes large enough to give passage to 

 light and air ; or simply devised shelters of 

 straw are laid over them. The shields are 

 usually placed in position about the 1st of 

 March, and are not removed, except in 

 Cloudy weather, till all danger from frost 

 has passed. 



Among the curiosities of architecture de- 

 scribed by Mr. F. T. Hodgson in Architecture 

 and Building we find the following : " The 

 Exchange building in the city of Copen- 

 hagen has attached to it a tower and spire 

 that is one of the sights of Denmark's capi- 

 tal. It is one of the most remarkable ex- 

 amples of eccentric architecture known, 

 although the architect in his desire for 

 originality has not sacrificed grace of form. 

 The lower part is octagonal in shape; but 

 the uppar part consists of four carved drag- 

 ons whose tails, gracefully entwined, gradu- 

 ally taper away and form the spire of the 

 Exchange. The tower and spire run up over 

 one hundred and sixty-five feet, and the tails 

 of the dragons are 'scaled' or imbricated, 

 and the effect is rather pleasing. The Ex- 

 change was built in 1815." 



Prof. E. Ray Lankester has taken the 

 pains to contradict an assertion that he was 

 opposed to amateurs in science. " There is 

 not a particle of truth in it," he writes ; " the 

 members of the Marine Biological Association 

 are mostly ' amateurs ' ; Darwin was an 



amateur ; it is rare indeed to find a profes- 

 sional naturalist of any merit who is not in 

 the true sense of the term an amateur. I de- 

 sire no better term to describe my relation to 

 biological science than that of ' amateur.' 

 My students in London and in Oxford who 

 have been good for anything in the making of 

 new knowledge have been 'amateurs,' and 

 the whole body of men who have co-operated 

 with me for thirty years in the production of 

 the Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Sci- 

 ence have been, with very rare exceptions, 

 ' amateurs.' It is, consequently, obvious that 

 I have never despised the efforts of amateurs 

 on the ground that they were made by ama- 

 teurs ; but, on the contrary, have been occu- 

 pied entirely with organizing those efforts, 

 and in making and recording observations 

 myself as an amateur. On the other hand, 

 I have but little toleration for incompetence, 

 pretense, or fraud, whether in an amateur or 

 a professional man." 



NOTES. 



One will be impressed with the impor- 

 tance of good roads, Mr. John Gifford re- 

 ports to the Geological Survey of New Jer- 

 sey, by a visit to the forest region of Ger- 

 many, where forest exploitation and road 

 construction go hand in hand, so that inac- 

 cessible forest regions become profitable 

 solely through the construction of excellent 

 roads. In Germany such roads penetrate 

 the forests in almost every direction. In cer- 

 tain parts of France, where a few grapevine 

 twigs a day must serve a family for fuel, in- 

 convenience and sometimes suffering are in- 

 curred for the lack of wood, while not far 

 away, on the shores of the Bay of Biscay, 

 immense quantities of excellent wood are 

 allowed to rot, simply because a lack of roads 

 makes the transportation of the wood un- 

 profitable. 



It is stated in a recent copy of the Lon- 

 don Lancet that Professor Sanarelli has suc- 

 ceeded in obtaining an active immunizing 

 serum against yellow fever. He has at 

 present in his laboratory three dogs and two 

 horses, well " vaccinated," which have 

 yielded serums giving perfect immunization 

 against experimental yellow fever in animals. 



The results of the experiments of Mr. 

 Bokorney upon the relative antiseptic action 

 of various substances give silver nitrate and 

 mercuric chloride as the most effective of 

 the inorganic compounds examined, and as 

 having about the same value. Copper sul- 

 phate is nearly as active, and is followed by 

 zinc sulphate and cadmium sulphate. Lead 

 acetate and nitrate, in a one-percent solu- 



