No. 107 1, Vol. 42] 



NATURE 



35 



valley of the Mississippi while the ice of the glacial period still 

 lingered over a large part of its northern area." This is only 

 the fifth locality in which similar discoveries have been made in 

 America— the other places being Trenton, N.J. ; Madisonville, 

 Ohio ; Medora, Ind. ; and Little Falls, Minn. 



At a recent meeting of the Washington Chemical Society, 

 Dr. Thomas Taylor, of the United States Department of 

 Agriculture, exhibited a new flash-light intended to take the 

 place of several kinds which have proved highly dangerous. 

 The composition, as described by Scie.nce, consists largely of 

 charcoal made from the silky down of the milk-weed — a form 

 of carbon which Dr. Taylor prefers to all others, because of its 

 freedom from ash. A few grains of this composition placed on 

 tissue-paper, and lighted by a "punk-match," produced a 

 prompt and blinding flash. The paper on which the powder 

 rested was not even scorched. The flash being instantaneous, 

 the heat is not sufficient to ignite the most inflammable material 

 on which the powder may rest. An inferior flash-light being 

 used, with the same paper for a base, the paper at once caught 

 fire. This was owing to the comparatively slow combustion of 

 the chemicals used in the inferior grade. Dr. Taylor said the 

 powder of his new flash-light would not explode either by 

 concussion or by friction. 



At the meeting of the French Meteorological Society on 

 April I, the President read a circular from the Minister of Public 

 Instruction, with reference to the Congress of Scientific Societies 

 to be held at the Sorbonne from May 27 to 31. The follow- 

 ing questions to be discussed are those more particularly of 

 interest to meteorologists :^The study of the mistral ; earth- 

 quakes ; researches on the presence of aqueous vapour in the air 

 by astronomical and spectroscopic observations ; comparison of 

 the climates of the different parts of France ; the causes which 

 seem to induce a general decrease in the waters of the north of 

 Africa, and a change of climate ; to fix for certain localities of the 

 Alps and Pyrenees the present superior limit of vegetation, and 

 to study the variations which it has experienced at different 

 epochs ; the study of the periodical phenomena of vegetation, 

 dates of budding, flowering, and maturation ; coincidence of these 

 epochs with that of the appearance of the principal species of 

 insects injurious to agriculture. 



The Meteorological Council have just published the monthly 

 and annual results of the meteorological observations taken at 

 the stations of the Royal Engineers and the Army Medical 

 Department, for the years 1852-86, comprising thirty-three 

 stations, in different parts of the world. In the year 1852, 

 meteorological instruments were supplied to the principal foreign 

 stations of the Royal Engineers, and the observations were con- 

 tinued till March 1862, when the instruments were transferred 

 to the Army Medical Department, as directions had been given 

 by the War Office for similar observations to be taken by the 

 medical officers in the Army, wherever stationed. The observa- 

 tions were partially published by the Board of Ordnance and 

 the War Office, but as it was pointed out in the Meteorologisch 

 Zeitschrift for March 1886, that it was "most desh able, that 

 this valuable store of observations, especially from stations for 

 which hardly any other information for the period exists, should 

 be worked up according to the modern requirements of the 

 science, and then published," the Meteorological Council decided 

 to undertake the work, and a large mass of original observations 

 was handed over to that body. The result is the present volume 

 of 261 -f- xiii. large quarto pages of carefully revised results for 

 separate months and years. The combined results, for as many 

 years as possible for each station, accompanied by a brief dis- 

 cussion of this valuable material, would no doubt be welcomed 

 by meteorologists. 



Dr. Dixon, Professor of Hygiene at the University of 

 Pennsylvania, has been studying air and dust obtained in street 

 cars. .SaVwcv says he has found in them "the germs of many 

 diseases, contagious and otherwise. Better ventilation and 

 more effective cleansing are sorely needed." 



In the current number of the Zoologist, Mr. E. L. Mitford 

 writes of the survival of the beaver in Western Europe. Sonoe 

 fifteen years ago he saw in the museum at Bayonne a very large 

 white beaver, which had been killed in the Rhone. He was 

 told that it was the last of its race found in Europe. But this 

 year, being at Ilyeres, where there is a museum with a very 

 fine collection of indigenous birds and quadrupeds, he found 

 another fine specimen, colour light brown, measuring three feet 

 from snout to end of tail , This was obtained about four or five 

 years ago, and is one of several that were sent to M. Fiepi, a 

 naturalist and taxidermist of Marseilles. They were taken in 

 the Rhone at St. Meree, in the neighbourhood of Aries. M. 

 Catnl, the naturalist of the Hyeres Museum, talking of the 

 subject with Mr. Mitford, said that beavers were more numerous 

 formerly on the Rhone ; that the great floods of 1846 had de- 

 stroyed a large number, and made them more easily captured ; 

 and that subsequent inundations had made them much rarer. 

 They are still to be found on the Rhone and its affluents, the 

 Gardon, the Durance, and the Isere below Valence, also lower 

 down the Rhone at Aries, Beaucaire, and Taralcon. They 

 seem to have abandoned their custom of building huts and 

 dams ; the race no longer being sufficiently numerous to live 

 in communities, they now live in deep burrows. In 1827 a 

 number of the huts of the beaver were found on the Elbe at its 

 meeting with the Nuthe, near Magdeburg. 



The Director of the Norwegian Geological Survey, Dr. 

 Hans Reusch, has lately published a small geological map of 

 the Scandinavian peninsula, Finland, and Denmark. It 

 includes also representations of Greenland, Iceland, Spitz- 

 bergen, and the Faroe Islands. The Norwegian terms used in 

 the explanation of the colours are translated into English. The 

 publishers are H. Aschehoug and Co., Christiania. 



A WORK entitled "Dogs, Jackals, Wolves, and Foxes: a 

 Monograph of the Canidce, " is being prepared by Mr. St. 

 George Mivart, F.R. S. It will contain a description, with a 

 plate drawn and coloured from nature, and often from life, of 

 every species which the author thinks can fairly claim to be 

 regarded as distinct, and also of various marked varieties of 

 what he regards as probably one species. In addition to an 

 account of the habits, geographical distribution, and life-history 

 of each species, there will be given in an introduction, enriched 

 with woodcuts, what the author deems a sufficient description 

 of the anatomy of the group, of the structural relations of the 

 CanidjT to other animals, their position in zoological classifica- 

 tion, and the general relations they bear to the past and present 

 history of this planet. The execution of the plates has been 

 entrusted to Mr. J, G. Keulemans. 



A NEW and most useful edition of the "Guide" to the ex- 

 hibition galleries of the Department of Geology and Palaeonto- 

 logy in the Natural Plistory Museum, Cromwell Road, has been 

 issued. In the preface. Dr. Henry Woodward explains that the 

 publication of Mr. R. Lydekker's Museum Catalogues of the 

 "Fossil Mammalia," parts i.-v. (1885-87), and the "Reptilia and 

 Amphibia," parts i.-iv. (1888-89), has compelled the rearrange- 

 ment of a great part of these collections, and changed the plan 

 of the " Guide." Much additional information is given in the 

 present edition, and the illustrations have been increased from 

 49 to 211. It has therefore been found necessary to subdivide 

 the work into two parts. The first part deals with fossil mam- 

 mals and birds, the second with fossil reptiles, fishes, and 

 invertebrates. 



