Fuly 14, 1870] 
NATURE 
217 
Since writing the above, I have had two samples of 
green tea sent me which have been offered for sale in 
London during the past week. One sample is composed 
of nearly or quite half its weight of the young fruits of 
the tea-plant about the size of small peas, the remainder 
being made up of broken tea-leaves agglutinated and 
rolled together, and enclosing fragments of various 
matters, mineral as well as vegetable, which, of course, 
are included for the purpose of increasing its weight and 
bulk. The other sample consists principally of leaf stalks, 
a few leaves, rice husks, and the pappus fruits of 
some Composite. Truth compels me to say that all 
the leaves I have examined out of these samples 
have been leaves of the true tea-plant, or rather 
fragments of such, but all artificially coloured, and so 
superficial is the colouring that it can be easily wiped off 
with the dry finger. These teas have been offered for sale, 
one at 1jd. and the other at 14d. per lb., the duty 
paid on them being equal to that charged on the best 
teas—namely, 6d. per Ib. 
This class of tea can, of course,only find a sale amongst 
unscrupulous tradesmen, who buy it to mix with good teas, 
and where a comparatively small proportion of this 
rubbish is mixed with a large quantity of good tea, but 
yet in sufficient bulk to increase the tradesman’s profits, 
it is difficult for the purchaser to detect a few hundred 
or more such leaves in the thousands which go to form a 
pound of tea. It is high time there was some regular 
system of examination of such articles directly they come 
into port. J. R. JACKSON 
NOTES 
PROFESSOR HELMHOLTZ has left Heidelberg for Berlin, to 
occupy the position left vacant by the death of Magnus, but with 
the title of Professor of Physiology. 
At the meeting of the French Academy on the 4th inst., 
Professor Brandt was elected a correspondent of the section of 
Anatomy and Zoology. In the final election he received twenty- 
two votes out of thirty-eight, the remaining sixteen being in favour 
of Mr. Darwin. In the first ballot Professor Huxley received 
three votes, and M. Loven one. 
ONE of the improvements in the management of the Hunterian 
Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, introduced by the 
present Conservator, has been the publication of an annual 
report of the progress and condition of the collection, and the ex- 
hibition in the theatre of the College, of the specimens that have 
been added to the Museum during each twelvemonth. As the 
College year ends at Midsummer, this exhibition has just taken 
place, and has enabled those interested in the Museum to judge 
of the nature and value of the additions, and the mode in which 
they have been prepared. The new specimens include fifty-five 
specimens of pathological anatomy, one hundred and eleven of 
normal human and comparative anatomy ; the latter chiefly 
prepared from animals which have died in the Zoological 
Society’s Garden, and a considerable series of skeletons and 
skulls, We propose to refer more fully to Professor Flower’s 
Report on a future occasion, 
THE naturalists of Switzerland have decided to form a scien- 
tific congress devoted to the study of the natural phenomena of 
the Swiss Alps, to include the geologists and paleontologists of 
France, Germany, and Italy, who have paid special attention to 
this subject, to be held in Geneva on the 31st of August and 
Ist and 2nd of September, and to be called the Congress of 
Alpine Geologists. Among the promoters of the congress 
are Prof. Studer, of Berne; Prof. Mérian, of Bale; Prof. 
Escher de la Linth, of Ziirich; Prof. Desor, of Neuchatel ; 
Prof. Favre, of Geneva ; Profs. de Loriol, Heer, and Mousson, 
of Ziirich ; Prof. Riitimeyer, of Bale ; Prof. Renevier, of Lau- 
sanne ; Profs. Vogt and Pictet, of Geneva. A committee for the 
organisation of the congress has been formed at Geneva, with 
M. Pictet as president, M. Alphonse Fayre as vice-president, 
and MM. Emest Fayre and E. Sarazin as secretaries. All 
geologists interested in the subject are invited to be at the 
president’s reception on the evening of August 30th, and anyone 
wishing to communicate any address or paper is requested to 
write to M. Ernest Favre, 6, Rue des Granges, Geneva. 
WE are pleased to hear that the Government of Demerara 
has re-considered its resolution for discontinuing the geological 
survey of that colony, and has now resolved to complete it, 
under the direction of Mr, Charles B. Brown, an associate of the 
Royal School of Mines. 
A SPECIAL extra meeting of the Syro-Egyptian Society of 
London will be held on Tuesday, July 19, at half-past seven 
p.M., for the exhibition of a collection of drawings of Egyptian 
antiquities, by the late R. Hay, F. Arundale, and C. Laver, 
Esqs. Messrs. Simpson and Bonomi will give explanations. 
AT a meeting of the trustees of Owens College, Manchester, 
held on Thursday, the 7th inst., the vacancy caused by the resig- 
nation by Professor W. Jack, M.A. of the Natural Philosophy 
Professorship, was filled up by the appointment of Dr. Bal- 
four Stewart, F.R.S., superintendent of the Kew Observatory, 
to the Senior Professorship, and of Mr, James Thomson Bottom- 
ley, M.A., F.C.S., Demonstrator and Lecturer in Natural 
Philosophy in King’s College, London, to the Junior Professor- 
ship of Natural Philosophy. Dr. Stewart was also appointed 
Director of the Physical Laboratory which is about to be estab- 
lished in the college. We are informed that Mr. Bottomley 
has since withdrawn. 
M. CLAUDE BERNARD has been elected a member of the 
Imperial Council of Public Instruction in France for the year 
1869-70; M. Briot has been appointed Professor of Mathemati- 
cal Physics and the calculus of probabilities in the Faculty of 
Sciences at Paris ; and M. Emery, Professor of Geology, Mine- 
ralogy, and Botany in the Faculty of. Sciences at Dijon, 
THE annual public meeting of the Paris Academy of Sciences 
for the distribution of prizes and rewards, which should have 
been held in December last, was postponed till the present 
month, and is now again put off for some unexplained cause. 
Ir is with great pleasure we hear that the London Institution, 
in Finsbury Circus, has appointed Mr. John Cargill Brough to 
the post of Librarian. The library of this Institution is so valu- 
able that it is fitting it should be under the care of a man who 
combines literary and scientific qualifications in so eminent a 
degree. It was right that an office once filled by such men as 
Maltby and Brayley, should have fallen into good hands. 
We understand that Dr. B. H. Paul has been appointed 
editor of the Pharmaceutical Fournal, the new series of which 
we recently announced. 
THE list of members of the Institution of Civil Engineers, 
corrected to July 1, 1870, contains the names and addresses of 
16 honorary members, 702 members, 999 associates, and 177 
students, making together 1,894 of all classes. 
THE House of Commons decided on Friday last that the land 
belonging to the Thames Embankment shall be kept entirely 
free from building. The Natural History Museum will there- 
fore occupy the ground already indicated by us on the space 
adjoining the Royal Horticultural Gardens. 
Apropos of this subject, one of our daily contemporaries (and 
by no means the worst informed on scientific subjects) makes 
Indicrous blundering. While generously affirming that ‘‘any 
