March 17, \><S'2.} 



♦ KNOWLEDGE 



430 



^otfsf on art anil ^rirnrr. 



Hair turning Wiiitk. — A person I know of (brother-in-law to an 

 old friend of mine) met with a railway accident, wliicli turned his 

 hair perfectly white. I do not know if instantaneously. Ue lived 

 to be an old man, and after death his hair tnrned, or rather re- 

 turned, to its original colour, dark brown. — John Alex. Ollard. 



ExPEEiMKXTs have repeatedly been made with the object of pro- 



diuinp natural imitations of the craters and inequalities visible on 



tlie moon's surface, and it has been found that tlie tifiures of the 



lunar inequalities can be closely imitated by throwing pebbles upon 



•'.> surface of some smooth plastic mass, such as mud or mortar. 



r. Meydenbauer, of Marburjr, uses a basis of dextrine for the 



rpose, and drops small quantities of the same material from a 



ieratc height upon that basis. A photosn^ph of various figrures 



^ich are thus produced, shows a remarkable resemblance to the 



rious inequalities visible on the moon's surface.— A. MARTn,in the 



.Soot v. Pollen.— I liave often noticed that although the hazel 



>vill grow and Hower freely in the suburbs of London, yet it will 



vily produce fruit. To gather nuts you must go simie miles into 



country. A few days ago, I was examining the catkins and 



■lale (lowers of the hazel (gathered about four miles from the 



t) under the microscope, and 1 was struck by the fact that the 



-;ils were each severally coated with a deposit of soot, sutficicntly 



rk to prevent any chance of fertilisation. The hazel being ane- 



niophilous, the absence of nuts in the neighbourhood of London 



(and, I presume, of other large towns) is thus, I think, sufficiently 



;K-counted for. — William H. Allen. 



MicRocixrci IN Mfups. — The Gazette iledUale says that MM. 

 itan and Charrin, at a recent meeting of the Biological Society 

 . I'aris. gave an account of the investigations which they have for 

 some time been engaged in, on the presence of minute organisms in 

 the blood of persons suffering from mumps. These are multipliable 

 by cultivation in Liebig's broth, and are found to consist of minute 

 batonnets, but chiefly of micrococci, all in a state of motion. These 

 minate organisms, they consider, corroborate the clinical observa- 

 tions which tend to place mnmps among the infectious diseases. 

 The absolute proof that this disease is due to these minute exist- 

 ences, by reproducing it by inoculation of the " cultures," has not 

 been attained by the experiments made to that end. 



English as the Speech of the Fitire. — The success of the 

 English-.speaking peoples as colonists, and their superior prolificness, 

 are not the only reasons for thinking that the English tongue is 

 destined to dominate the world. The flexibility and terseness of 

 the English language has made it the language of international 

 telegraphy, and from statistics just collected it appears to be the 

 great newspaper language. In other words, it about equally 

 di\-ides the newspapers of the world with all other tongues com- 

 bined. The total number of new.spapers and periodicals now pub- 

 lished is given in H. P. Hubbard's forthcoming '" Xewspaper and 

 Bank Directory of the ^Vorld,' as 3I,:;74, with a circulation of 

 about HtJ,000,0<.iO copies, the annual aggregate circulation reaching, 

 in round numbers, 10,000,000,0(0 copies. Europe leads with 19,557, 

 and North America follows with 12,400, the two together maksBg 

 over nine-tenths of all the publications in existence. Asia has 775 ; 

 South America, 009; Australasia, 661; and Africa, 132. Of all 

 tbese, 16,500 are printed in the English language, 7,800 in German, 

 3,850 in French, and over 1,600 in Spanish. There are -1,020 daily 

 newspapers, 18,274 tri-weeklies and weeklies, and 8,5U8 issued less 

 feequently. It appears that while the annual acrgregate circulation 

 of publications in the United States is 2,600,000,000, that of Great 

 Britain and Ireland is 2,260,000.000.- -.SVien(i/ic American. 



The SoiND or Swtm Blahder of Fish. — Perhaps the following 

 quotation from the " Icelandic-English Dictionary," by Cleasby and 

 VigfuBson will be suflicient to satisfy your readers as to the deri- 

 Tation of the word " sound " or " sounds" as expressive of the air 

 or swim-bladder of certain fishes The word is spelt " sund." 

 " Snnd {q.s. svund), [from ' svimma,' dropping the v and changing 

 f» into nj : ' a swimming ' ; " «ic. Some compound words are given 

 as "sund-fjiior " (/. "a swimming feather") ; "sund-foerr" (adj. 

 " a good swimmer ") ; "sund-hreifi" ("a swimming pair"), of a 

 seal with several others. It is said that " swimming was a favourite 

 sport, the antagonists trying to duck one another," and that 

 "snnd " is one of the sports m King Harold's verses. It is also 

 added that the word " snnd," as used to denote a "sound" "or 

 straight, narrow passage," is quite a different word from the pre- 

 ceding, being derived from " snndr," i.e., " that which sunders." 

 So that the proposed connection of fish " sounds " with words 

 (having a Romewhat similar appearance) in the Sanskrit, Assyrian, 

 Chinese, Egyptian languages, &c., denoting "blood," "heart," &c., 



has no real existence whatever. The Scandinavians were doubtless 

 aware of the part which " the sound" plays as an aid to a fish's 

 powers <if swimming, and never attributed to it the function of an 

 aorta. They knew better. — Vf. Hoi'ghiox. 



Animal V.«cin.\tion.— What Pasteur calls the "vaccination" for 

 the "anthrax" disease has been shown by repeated experiments 

 to be absolutely i)rotective. Professor Greenfield has vaccinated 

 cattle from rodents (gnawing aniinals like nits, squirrels, &c.) with 

 the "anthrax disease," and has found that they remain free from 

 all disorder, local or constitutional. The same result has attended 

 M. Tonssaint's experiments with the bacillus "cultivated" in 

 special fluids, not in the living body of any creature ; sheep and 

 dogs inoculated with this cultivalod poison showing no form of the 

 deadly "anthrax" disease. The exj)eriment was conducted on a 

 large scale under the auspices of the provincial agricultural socie- 

 ties of France. A flock of fifty sheep was ])laced at M. Pasteur's 

 disposal. Of these he vaccinated twenty-five with the cultivated 

 "anthrax" poison on May 3, 1881, repeating the operation a fort- 

 night later. AIJ the animals thus treated pa.ssed through a slight 

 illness, but at the end of the month were as well as their fellows, the 

 twenty-five which had not been vaccinated. On May 31, all the 

 fifty were inoculated with the strongest anthrax poison. "M. 

 Pasteur |iredicted that on the following day the twenty-five which 

 were inoculated for the first time would ail be dead, whilst those 

 protected by previous ' vaccination ' with the mild virus would be 

 perfectly free from even mild indisposition. A largo assemblage 

 of agricultural authorities, cavalry officers, and veterinary surgeons 

 met on the field the next afternoon to learn the result. At two 

 o'clock twenty-three of the unprotected sheep were dead; the 

 twenty-fourth died an hour later, and the twenty-five at four.' But 

 the twenty-five 'vaccinated' sheep were all in perfectly good con- 

 dition ; one of them, which had been designedly inoculated -mtU 

 an extra dose of the poison, having been slightly indisposed for a 

 few hours, but having then recovered." — R. A. P., in the Cobnhili. 

 Magazine. 



Mk. RrsKiN on Education.— Mr. E. J. Baillie, of the Rnskin 

 Society, is contributing a series of articles on Mr. Ruskin and his 

 Teachings to House and Home. In the article on " Education, ' 

 Mr. Balilie says: "In one of his books Mr. Ruskin has spoken 

 pointedly upon the prominence and precedence almost invariablv 

 given to what may be termed caste, or class distinction. He has 

 told us that there is a widely expressed desire for 'an education 

 which shall keep a good coat on the back; which shall enable [a 

 son] to ring with confidence the visitors' bell at donble-belled doors - 

 which shall result ultimately in the establishment of a double door 

 to his own house ; in a word, which shall lead to advancement in 

 life; (/us wo pray for on bent knees; this is of/ we prav for 

 It never seems to occur to the parents that there may be an 

 education which in itself is advancement in life. That any 

 other than that may perhaps be advancement in death. 

 To many "advancement in life" means ... in a word the 

 gratification of our thirst for applause. That thirst, if the 

 last infirmity of noble minds, is also the first infirmity of weak 

 ones, and, on the whole, the strongest impulsive influence of avera"e 

 humanity ; the greatest efforts of the race have always been trace- 

 able to the love of praise, as its greatest catastrophes to the love of 

 pleasure.' In the scheme of national education. Mr. Ruskin realises 

 the necessity for national Government schools. He maintains ' there 

 should be training-schools for youth established, at (iovernmcnt 

 cost, and under (Jovornment discipline, over the whole country- 

 that every child born in the countiy should, at the parents' wish be 

 permitted (and, in certain cases, be under penalty required) to pass 

 through them ; and that, in these schools, the child should (with 

 other minor pieces of knowledge hereafter to be considered) impera- 

 tively be taught, >vith the best skill of teaching that the country 

 could produce, the following three things: — (a) 'fhe laws of health 

 and the exercises enjoined by them ; (i) Habits of gentleness and 

 justice ; and (f) The calling by which he is to live.' " 



i&ur iBntbrmntiral Column. 



THE LAWS OF PROBABILITY. 

 Bv THE Editor. 



THE general law enunciated in our last number may be 

 regardeti as the fundamental law of probabilities. Nearly 

 aU problems in probabilities, direct or inverse, depend on this 

 law, to which the more complex cases are reduced by various 

 devices of greater or less simplicity according to the nature of 

 the problem. And again, the value of any chance not relating 

 to tickets in a lottery, or balls in a bag, may readily bo 



