144 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



associated with the excavations of brickyards. 

 The examination of cases in the suburbs of 

 Boston points to the upper waters of certain 

 streams. 



A VERT simple remedy for the annexa- 

 tion fever now beginning to prevail in Cana- 

 da and the exodus to this country which is 

 in full flow, is proposed by Mr. Allen Prin- 

 gle. It is to " take down the bars " between 

 Canada and her natural market to culti- 

 vate friendly and intimate commercial rela- 

 tions with the United States. 



A PATENTED substance called alumino- 

 ferric is prepared by English manufacturers, 

 to promote the precipitation of sewage. It 

 is used solid, in slabs twenty-one inches long 

 by ten inches wide and four inches thick, 

 which are placed in a cage fixed in the flow 

 of the sewage, or in solution. The " sludge " 

 is deposited, to be separately carried off or 

 made into manure, and clear water flows 

 away. The use of this substance has been 

 very successful. 



PROF. H. CARRINGTON BOLTON has been 

 elected President of the New York Academy 

 of Sciences. 



THE Department of Ethnology and Archae- 

 ology of the Columbian Exposition intends 

 to provide as complete an anthropological 

 library as possible, by aid of which students 

 and educators may be enabled to become ac- 

 quainted with the mass of literature on the 

 subject. All authors, societies, museums, 

 and publishers are invited to contribute from 

 their stoves all publications on the various 

 branches of the subject. A complete cata- 

 logue of the collection will be published and 

 widely distributed. The library will be con- 

 veniently and properly arranged and accessi- 

 ble to students, and full information will be 

 given them respecting the books. At the 

 close of the Exhibition loaned books will be 

 returned, and the rest of the library will be 

 placed in the permanent Memorial Museum 

 of Science which is to be established in Chi- 

 cago. 



IT is said that the passage of boats con- 

 taining naphtha has had the effect of poi- 

 soning the waters of the Volga. A great 

 deal of the liquid is transported in badly 

 built wooden barges, with a resultant loss by 

 leakage of about three per cent. Consequent- 

 ly the fish are decreasing rapidly, and have 

 already become extinct in some places where 

 the boats stop. The naphtha likewise kills 

 off the insect life on which the fish feed, by 

 being carried in times of flood to the adja- 

 cent meadows and destroying the larvas there. 



THE New York branch of the American 

 Folk Lore Society was organized at the house 

 of Mrs. Henry Draper, February 24th, when a 

 constitution was adopted, and officers were 

 elected as follows : President, H. Carrington 



Bolton; vice-presidents, G. B. Grinnell, R. 

 W. Gilder; treasurer, H. M. Lester; secre- 

 tary, William B. Tuthill. These officers and 

 Mrs. Harriet M. Converse, Mrs. Anna P. 

 Draper, and Mrs. Mary J. Field, constitute 

 the Executive Committee. Papers were read 

 at the meeting by Prof. Bolton on Divination 

 by the Mirror as practiced in New York To- 

 day, and by George Bird Grinnell on How 

 the Pawnees stole the Corn. Mr. G. F. 

 Kunz exhibited a human tooth inlaid with 

 jadeite. Mr. Newell, founder and secretary 

 of the National Society, was present and 

 made some remarks. 



OBITUARY NOTES. 



THE death was announced about the be- 

 ginning of the year of General Axel Wilhel- 

 movitch Gadolin, of the Russian army, an emi- 

 nent mineralogist and physicist, and a mem- 

 ber of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He 

 engaged, when not active in military duties, 

 in research into the molecular forces that 

 act in the formation of crystals. His chief 

 work, which is also known to the world 

 through a German translation, was his Deduc- 

 tion of all the Systems of Crystals and their 

 Derivates from a Unique Principle. A paper 

 on the resistance of the walls of a gun to the 

 pressure of gunpowder gases is also notice- 

 able for having given a new formula of 

 minimal resistance. 



NIKOLAI IVANOVITCH KOKSHAROFF, who 

 died in St. Petersburg January 2d, was an 

 eminent mineralogist and author of a work in 

 eleven large quarto volumes, to which a 

 twelfth is to be added, of contributions to 

 the mineralogy of Russia. 



M. FRANCOIS VAN RYSSELBERGHE, Pro- 

 fessor of Electrotechnics in the University of 

 Ghent, and a famous inventor, died suddenly 

 at Antwerp, Belgium, February 3d, in the 

 forty-seventh year of his age. Among his 

 inventions were a universal meteorograph, 

 exhibited at Paris in 1881, which registered 

 periodically on a strip of paper the pressure, 

 temperature, humidity, depth of rainfall, and 

 direction and force of the wind ; and a sys- 

 tem of simultaneous telegraphic and tele- 

 phonic transmission which has come into 

 general use on urban and suburban lines. 

 He was counsel in electrical matters for the 

 Belgian administration of railroads, posts, 

 and telegraphs. 



MR. HENRY F. BLACKFORD, a distinguished 

 geologist and meteorologist of India, died in 

 January. Originally attached to the Geo- 

 logical Survey of India, in connection with 

 which he wrote several memoirs of much 

 value, he afterward became Superintendent 

 of the Meteorological Department of Bengal, 

 and ultimately of the whole of India ; and in 

 connection with this position also he pub- 

 lished useful books and papers. 



