POPULAR MISCELLANY. 



715 



only on or near to the surface of the earth. 

 Without mechanical aids he could walk for 

 several hours at a speed which was ordinarily 

 from three to four miles per hour. Under 

 exceptional circumstances he had accom- 

 plished over eight miles in one hour, and an 

 average of two and three quarter miles per 

 hour for a hundred and forty-one hours. In 

 running he had covered about eleven and a 

 half miles in an hour. The power of the liv- 

 ing human mechanism to withstand widely 

 diverse and excessive strains was altogether 

 unapproachable in artificial constructions. 

 Thus, although fitted for an external atmos- 

 pheric pressure of about fifteen pounds per 

 square inch, he had been able, as exemplified 

 by Messrs. Glaisher and Coxvvell in 1862, to 

 ascend to a height of seven, miles and breathe 

 air at a pressure of only three and a half pounds 

 per square inch, and still live. And, on the 

 other hand, divers had been down eighty feet 

 deep, entailing an extra pressure of about 

 thirty-six pounds per square inch, and had 

 returned safely. One had even been to a 

 depth of one hundred and fifty feet, but the 

 resulting pressure of sixty-seven pounds per 

 square inch cost him his life. No animal 

 burrowed downward into the earth to a 

 greater depth than eight feet, and then only 

 in dry ground. 



The Phillips Prize Essay Fund. The 



Herbert M. Phillips prize essay fund of five 

 thousand dollars of the American Philo- 

 sophical Society was founded by Miss Emily 

 Phillips in memory of her deceased brother, 

 who was an honored member of the society. 

 Its purpose is the provision of prizes, to be 

 awarded from time to time from the income 

 of the fund, for the best essay of real merit 

 on the science and philosophy of jurispru- 

 dence. In pursuance of the conditions of 

 its establishment, a prize is now offered by 

 the society, to be awarded during 1895, of 

 five hundred dollars lawful gold coin for the 

 best essay on either of the following sub- 

 jects: 1. The sources, formation, and de- 

 velopment of what is generally designated 

 the common law of England. 2. The the- 

 ory of the state, treated historically, and 

 upon principle, with a discussion of the 

 various schools of classical, mediaeval, and 

 modern thought upon the subject. 3. The 

 historical and doctrinal relations of the Ro- 



man law and the English law, illustrated by 

 parallels and contrasts. The essays of com- 

 petitors should be in possession of the so- 

 ciety before the first day of January, 1895, 

 and should be sent addressed to Frederick 

 Fraley, president of the society. 



Oxygen as a Remedy for Choke Damp. 



A committee appointed at the Edinburgh 

 meeting of the British Association, 1892, to 

 determine whether oxygen gas was useful as 

 a restorative in cases of carbonic-acid poison- 

 ing, and particularly in those of choke-damp 

 asphyxia in mines, reported to the recent 

 meeting its conclusions, from experiments on 

 rabbits, that oxygen was of no greater service 

 than air. It suggested, however, that the 

 experiment of keeping a few cylinders of 

 air with nose and mouth pieces ready for use 

 in those parts of the workings where men 

 could be most easily imprisoned might be 

 attended with valuable results. It seemed 

 quite reasonable that where a person had to 

 be dragged long distances through a con- 

 taminated atmosphere the chances of ulti- 

 mate recovery would be greater if the 

 effects of this poisonous atmosphere were 

 neutralized at the commencement and dur- 

 ing the progress of the work of rescue than 

 if no such attempt were made until fresh air 

 was reached in the ordinary way. 



Isolation of Fluorine. A demonstration 

 of the isolation of fluorine was made before 

 the British Association by Dr. Meslans, the 

 representative of the French chemist, M. H. 

 Moissan. The apparatus employed consists 

 entirely of platinum and fluorspar. A power- 

 ful current of electricity is passed between 

 platinum electrodes through anhydrous liquid 

 hydrogen fluoride mixed with one of its 

 salts, and cooled to a very low temperature 

 by means of methyl chloride. Under these 

 conditions fluorine is given off from one of 

 the electrodes, and hydrogen gas from the 

 other. The fluorine is an almost colorless 

 gas, and its presence is made evident by 

 its action on various compounds. Crystal- 

 lized silicon, amorphous boron, phosphorus, 

 sulphur, alcohol, and various metals take fire 

 at the ordinary temperature and bum bril- 

 liantly in a current of the gas. These phe- 

 nomena were exhibited to the section, and 

 the demonstration was in every way success- 



