FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



863 



of food supply, he reaches the gloomy con- 

 clusion that in a few centuries there will 

 inevitably be too little food to supply all 

 the mouths. Russia alone, at its present 

 rate of births, will in one hundred years be 

 obliged to feed eight hundred million per- 

 sons-. What, he asks, can stem this over- 

 whelming tide of population ? He gives up 

 the problem, and says we must leave it to 

 God, a solution which is more creditable 

 to his piety than to his position as a scien- 

 tist. The real solution is to educate men 

 and women to the point where they will 

 not recklessly produce offspring, nor yet 

 ruthlessly prevent them, as is the case now 

 in some departments of France. Unfortu- 

 nately, prejudice stands in the way of a fair 

 and free discussion of this solution." 



Likk our bison and the giraffe, the African 

 wildebeest, or white-tailed gnu, is at the point 

 of extinction. It is computed, the London 

 Spectator saya, that there are only about five 

 hundred and fifty of these animals surviving 

 in a wild condition, though they were at no 

 great distance of time numbered by tens of 

 thousands. Four herds are mentioned as 

 still surviving in the Orange Free State, 

 three of about one hundred each, which are 

 fenced in, and one belonging to a wealthy 

 Boer farmer, Mr. Plet Terblans, consisting of 

 some two hundred and fifty animals, running 

 perfectly wild, but protected on his wide do- 

 main by the vigilance of his sons and black 

 servants. Having found the dead bodies of 

 twenty-seven of these animals, all shot at one 

 drinking place on the same day, from only 

 one of which the skin and meat had been 

 taken, he determined to stop the slaughter 

 and did it. His farm is thirty square miles 

 in area, and the wildebeests seem to be aware 

 that they are exposed to danger elsewhere. 

 They will go twenty miles in a night to feed 

 upon some particularly good grass on other 

 land, but gallop back to sanctuary at sun- 

 rise. 



NOTES. 



The Report of the New York or American 

 Section of the Society of Chemical Industry 

 for 1896-'97, Dr. H. Schneitzer, New York, 

 local secretary, speaks of the continued 

 growth and prosperity which the section, as 

 well as the society at large, enjoyed during 

 the year. Seventy- nine members were added 

 to the New York section, and the number of 



members residing in America is now four 

 hundred and seventy-one. Seven general 

 meetings were held during the session repre- 

 senting the year, at which, besides the open- 

 ing address of Chairman C. F. Chandler, 

 twenty-four papers were read, most of which 

 have been published in the Journal of the 

 Society in London. The society is regarded 

 by its promoters as a necessary addition to 

 the existing Chemical Society, its aims being 

 the promotion of the industrial and manu- 

 facturing branches of chemistry. 



The British Association at its recent 

 meeting made appropriations for grants for 

 scientific purposes amounting to 1,350. 

 The sum was larger than had been voted for 

 several years, because the committee desired 

 to make some grants for the pursuit of local 

 investigations, to be expended by the vari- 

 ous committees which had been appointed 

 for the purpose of study and research in 

 Canada. These committees relate to the 

 establishment of a meteorological observa- 

 tory on Montreal Mountain, Canadian photo- 

 graphs of geological interest, the biology of 

 the lakes of Ontario, the industrial and so- 

 cial conditions of the northwestern Indian 

 tribes, the organization of an ethnological 

 survey of Canada, and the establishment of 

 a biological station in the Gulf of St. Law- 

 rence. 



Professor Leonard has recently shown 

 that cathode rays in air form regions of mist 

 condensation. A jet of steam, a short dis- 

 tance from the aluminum window of a Crookes 

 tube, becomes of a bright whiteness and of a 

 cloudy nature. The cathode rays seem to 

 act far more powerfully than the X rays in 

 this way. A. Paulsen has formed a cathode- 

 ray theory of the northern lights. 



The scientific value of Prof. 0. C. Marsh's 

 collections just presented to Yale University 

 can not be overestimated. Perhaps the most 

 important of these is the collection of verte- 

 brate fossils, which contains the famous series 

 illustrating the genealogy of the horse. The 

 only conditions attached to the gift are those 

 necessary to insure the permanent care and 

 preservation of the collections themselves. 



The Franklin Institute of Philadelphia is 

 making part of its building fireproof, for the 

 safer storage of its valuable library. In con- 

 nection with the change a much larger space 

 will be provided for the reading room and for 

 the display of models and apparatus and for 

 general museum purposes. 



Bleeding has long been discarded by the 

 doctors, but if the experiments of the Rus- 

 sian physiologist Essipor have any signifi- 

 cance there may be some virtue in it, after 

 all. This gentleman has found that an abun- 

 dant drawing of the blood has important ef- 

 fects on the chemical composition and prop- 

 erties of what is left. After drawing large 

 quantities of blood, amounting to as much as 



