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Apropos of the preceding, Mr, J. G. George, of Nassau, 
Bahamas, describes in the American Naturalist for December 
1872, a gigantic Octopus, measuring 10 ft. long, and each arm 
5 ft., the weight being estimated at between 200 and 300 pounds. 
The monster was found dead upon the beach and bore marks 
of injury. Mr, George adds that this is the first specimen he 
has seen during 27 years’ residence in Bahamas, although they 
are traditionally of immense size. 
M. E. REVERCHON, naturalist, of Briangon, Hautes Alpes, 
France, offers to supply or to complete collections of the plants 
of Dauphiny and the south of France. 
THE first ordinary meeting of the new Medical Microscopical 
Society will take place at the Westminster Ophthalmic Hospital 
on the 17th inst., at 8 o’clock, when the President, Mr. Jabez 
Hogg, will give an introductory address. 
THERE has just died at Paris M. Olivier Charles Camille 
Emmanuel, Vicomte de Rougé, Professor of Archzology in the 
Collége de France, and keeper of the Egyptian Museum in the 
Louvre, aged upwards of 61 years. He was the most eminent 
of French Egyptologists. 
Mr, F. J. WILLIAMSON has received a commission to execute 
a statue of Dr. Priestley, to be erected in Birmingham. It will 
be 8 ft. high, and in white marble. 
A Company has been recently started in Glasgow for the 
manufacture of asbestos into steam packing, for which purpose 
it has been found to exceed in durability and general usefulness 
every other material hitherto employed. The company, we 
believe, intend to put this hitherto unworkable material to a 
variety of other uses, it having been found, the Glasgow Herald 
says, perfectly practicable to manufacture asbestos boats, tubs, 
boxes, waggon bodies, and even railway carriages. 
Mr. Epwarp Tuomas, F.R.S., late of the East India Com- 
pany’s Bengal \Civil Service, has been elected corresponding 
member of the French Academy, for his contributions to Oriental 
numismatic archeology, 
Dr. G, IscHERMAK, Director of the Imperial museum of 
Mineralogy of Vienna, has published a catalogue of the 
meteorites in the museum up to October 1, 1872. The collec- 
tion is arranged according to the system of MM. G. Rose and 
Rammelsberg. 
WE learn from the Atheneum that Prof. A. C. Ramsay, of the 
Geological Survey of the United Kingdom, has been elected 
Associate of the Royal Academy of Science, Belgium. 
THE Institution of Civil Engineers has now been in existence 
fifty-five years, having been established on January 2, 1818. It 
was incorporated by Royal Charter on June 3, 1828, and the 
numbers of the several classes constituting the corporation on 
the Ist inst., were 16 Honorary Members, 759 Members, and 
1,151 Associates, with a class of Students attached of 267, 
together 2,193. Ten years ago there were on the books 20 
Honorary Members, 413 Members, 574 Associates, and 10 
Graduates, together 1,017 of all grades. The class of Graduates 
was abolished in the year 1867, when the class of Students was 
instituted, 
THE Government have agreed jto the request of the Daily 
Telegraph to grant Mr, George Smith leave of absence for the 
purpose of proceeding to the East in order to make further dis- 
coveries among the Assyrian ruins. The sum placed at Mr. 
Smith’s disposal in the meantime by the proprietors of the 
Telegraph is 1,000 guineas, and, they anticipate that within six 
———— 
———— eee 
months he will be able to accomplish much. . Whatever relics 
may be the result of the excavations, will be presented to the 
British Museum. 9 
AN unusually large number of Journals connected more or less 
intimately with science, have been started this new year. One of 
them is the /rish Hospital Gazette, intended to fill up the place 
left vacant by the Dudlin Hospital Gazette, and to be especially 
a medium for the investigations of the physicians and surgeons 
of Ireland. The first number is a good one, and we hope the 
journal will meet with encouraging support. “a 
ACCORDING to the correspondent of the ew York Herald, 
an ingenious plan has been adopted by Prof. Agassiz’s expedi- 
tion for determining how far the submarine regions are pervious _ 
to light. A plate prepared for photographic purposes is enclosed 
in a case so contrived as to be covered by a revolving lid in the 
space of forty minutes. The apparatus is sunk to the required 
depth, and at the expiration of the period stated is drawn up and 
developed in the ordinary way. 
thus been obtained of the operation of the actinic rays at much 
greater depths than hitherto supposed possible. 
The number for January 4 of the Revue Scientifique contains the 
translation of a long and remarkably clever paper by E. von 
Hartmann, the purpose of which is to show that the differences 
between the animal and vegetable kingdoms are very much 
fewer than is dreamt of in the most generally accepted philo- 
sophy, that these kingdoms ought not to be classed as subordi- 
nates, but as co-ordinates, and that there is great likelihood 
that plants are capable in some degree of sensation and per- 
ception. 
Dr, EvuGENE Robert, in Les Mondes for January 9, ascribes ; 
the disappearance of the fallen leaves of autumn to multitudes of 
earth-worms, which drag them into their underground galleries 
by means of the crooked hairy appendages with which their 
foremost rings are provided, 
THE two principal articles in the Revue Scientifique for 
January II, area translation of part of Prof. Tyndall’s recent 
work on ‘Glaciers and the Transformations’ of Water,” and — 
of Mr, J. Evans’ paper on ‘‘ The Alphabet and its Origin.” 
THE two principal papers in the Moniteur Scientifique Quesne- 
ville are ‘‘ On the Respiration and the Nutrition of Vegetables,” 
by M. Ch. Blondeau, in continuation of three previous ones, and 
the eighth and conclusive paper by M. Emile, ‘‘ On Anthracite 
and its Derivatives.” M. Blondeau concludes from his inquiries 
that vital force is essentially the same, and mabhifests itself in 
similar effects, whether it animates vegetables or animals, and 
regards as a popular delusion the belief that plants decompose 
and restore purified to the atmosphere the carbonic acid which 
results from animal respiration. 
THE first annual report of the Society of Telegraph Engineers 
shows that it is prosperous, and is doing good work. 
WE have received a second edition of ‘‘A Catalogue of the 
Birds of Kansas,” contributed to the Kansas Academy of Science, 
by Mr, F. H. Snow, Professor of Natural History and |Meteor- 
ology, in the University of Kansas, It contains 282 entries 
and seems carefully compiled. 
THE Memorie della Societd degli Spetiroscopisti Italiani for Sep- 
tember contains Father Secchi’s paper on the Variations of the 
Solar Diameter, illustrated by a carefully drawn diagram. A 
translation of this paper is the first article in Der Maturforscher 
for December, most of the other articles being translations from 
the Comptes Rendus, Poggendorf’s Annatlen, the American Fournal 
of Sctence,'and the publishedjproceedings of foreign societies. 
Yan. 16,1873. 
It is said that evidence has. 
