NOTES. 



43 » 



trance had been removed, but the other had 

 been forgotten. The spider, which still in- 

 habited the tube, immediately began remov- 

 ing the cotton from the lower end, and cast 

 some of it out. But guided, apparently by 

 its sense of touch, to the knowledge that 

 the soft fibers would be an excellent mate- 

 rial with which to line its tube, it speedily 

 put in a cotton padding for about four inches 

 downward from the opening. Dr. McCook 

 pointed out the very manifest inference that 

 the spider must, for the first time, have come 

 in contact with such a material as cotton, and 

 had immediately utilized its new experience 

 by adding the soft fiber to the ordinary silken 

 linins. 



NOTES. 



The Franklin Institute will open an In- 

 ternational Exhibition of Electricity and 

 Electrical Appliances in Philadelphia, on 

 the 2d day of September next. By a spe- 

 cial act of Congress, all articles " imported 

 solely for exhibition" on this occasion will 

 be admitted free of duty; but, if they are 

 sold or withdrawn for consumption, the reg- 

 ular duties must be paid upon them. 



Victor-Alexandre Puiseux, a French 

 astronomer, died in September last. He 

 was the author of numerous memoirs on 

 astronomical subjects to the Academy of 

 Sciences, and had been occupied very indus- 

 triously with calculations based upon the 

 transits of Venus of 1874 and 1882. 



Dr. J. B. Sutton, of Middlesex Hospital, 

 in a communication to the "Lancet," dis- 

 proves the current opinion that monkeys 

 die chiefly from tubercle. Having been per- 

 mitted to attend the post-morlem examina- 

 tions of animals dying in the Zoological 

 Gardens, Regent's Park, he personally in- 

 spected the remains of ninety-three monk- 

 eys. Of this number, three were found 

 to have died of tubercle, twenty-two of 

 bronchitis, three of lobar pneumonia, seven 

 of lobular pneumonia, one of septic pneu- 

 monia, twenty-three of other diseases, in- 

 cluding three of scrofula and four of typhoid 

 fever, while in thirty-four cases no lesion 

 was met with suflBcient to explain the deaths 

 of the creatures. 



Dr. Conrad Bursian, a distinguished 

 German philologist, died on the 2l8t of Sep- 

 tember, having just a few days before fin- 

 ished his great work on the " History of Phi- 

 lology." He had been a professor succes- 

 sively in the Universities of Leipsic, Tiibin- 

 pen, Zurich, and Munich, and was a member 

 of several learned societies. 



M. Chbtreul, the " dean " of the French 

 Academy of Sciences, reached his ninety- 

 eighth year on the last day of August, and 

 was still physically vigorous and fresh of 

 heart. The President of the Academy, in 

 taking notice of the fact, remarked : " M. 

 Chevreul has belonged to the Academy 

 which he has so much honored by his labors 

 for fifty-seven years ; and he would, in fact, 

 have counted it sixty-seven years, if by an 

 extremely rare sentiment of generosity he 

 had not allowed himself to be passed over 

 in 1816, to give place to a chemist (M. 

 Proust) whom he called his master." 



Statisticians have pronounced the Uni- 

 ted States to be not only potentially but 

 actually richer than the United Kingdom. 

 Counting the houses, furniture, manufac- 

 tures, railways, shipping, bullion, lands, cat- 

 tle, crops, investments, and roads, it is esti- 

 mated that there is a grand total in the 

 United States of $49,770,000,000. Great 

 Britain is credited with something less than 

 $40,000,000,000, or nearly $10,000,000,000 

 less than the United States. The wealth per 

 inhabitant in Great Britain is estimated at 

 $1,160, and in the United States at 8995. 

 With regard to the remuneration of labor, 

 assuming the produce of labor to be 100, in 

 Great Britain 56 parts go to the laborer, 21 

 to capital, and 23 to government. In France 

 41 parts go to labor, 36 to capital, and 23 

 to government. In the United States 72 

 parts go to labor, 23 to capital, and five to 

 government. — London Times. 



M. Joseph- Antoine- Ferdinand Pla- 

 teau, an eminent physicist and emeritus 

 professor at the University of Ghent, died 

 September 15th, in his eighty-second year. 



M. A. Milne-Edwards reports that he 

 i met with great success near TenerifPe on 

 j his deep-sea expedition in the steamer Talis- 

 1 man. The dredging apparatus is strong 

 enough to bring up rocks weighing a hun- 

 dred kilogrammes from the depth of a thou- 

 sand metres. The collections promise to be 

 immense, greater than it will be possible to 

 bring home. Among the species gathered 

 are crustaceans of forms resembling those 

 of the Antilles, curious fishes with luminous 

 organs, crinoids, asterias, strange holuthu- 

 rians, numerous sponges, and mollusks, ex- 

 hibiting a novel mingling of African with 

 Mediterranean and Polar forms. On the 

 Island of Branco, which had never been 

 scientifically visited before, the expedition 

 found large lizards, such as are not known to 

 occur anywhere else, and which appear to 

 have a good living of herbaceous food, al- 

 though the island is nearly destitute of 

 vegetation. 



Dr. J. Lawrenc* Smith, of Louisville, 

 Kentucky, died on the 12th of October last, 

 in the sixty-fifth year of his age. He had dis- 



