March 9, 1S99] 



NATURE 



447 



tended for the advancement and not for the diffusion of scientific 

 knowledge, and is to be used to defray the actual expenses of 

 investigation, rather than for the personal support of the investi- 

 gator during the time of his researches, without absolutely 

 excluding the latter use under the most exceptional circum- 

 stances. Although intended primarily to assist American in- 

 vestigators, foreign workers may occasionally receive benefit from 

 the fund. Application for appropriations from the income of 

 the fund should be made by letter to the Directors, at i6 

 Craigie Street, Cambridge, Mass., U.S.A., stating the amount 

 desired, the nature of the proposed investigation, and the manner 

 in which the appropriation is to be expended. 



The National Geographic Society of America offers two 

 prizes of 150 dollars and 75 dollars respectively for the best 

 essays on Norse discoveries in America. Essays submitted in 

 competition must be type-written in the English language, not 

 exceed 5ooo words in length, be signed by a pseudonym, and 

 received not later than December 31 of the present year. 



Pl.\ns have been made for the erection of a State meteor- 

 ological station on the summit of Schneekope, one of t he 

 Riesengebirge, Silesia, which is 1605 metres in height. 



Silence states that in the Museum of the Brooklyn Institute a 

 department will be established in which natural history and 

 technology will be exhibited in a manner that will interest and 

 instruct children. This, according to our contemporary, is a 

 new departure for America. 



The Times correspondent in Ziirich writes that a Volta 

 commemoration is to be held in May next at Como, where the 

 great electrician was born, and where he died in 1S27. The 

 files at Como are to celebrate the centenary of Volta's dis- 

 covery of the electric pile, in honour of which event an 

 exhibition of inventions in electricity will be opened on May 

 14, the town contributing some 500,000 francs to the pre- 

 liminar)' expenses. Como has always been proud of its greatest 

 citizen, and Volta's memorials are carefully preserved in its 

 Museo Civico, where can be seen his first electric pile, mnny 

 of his scientific instruments, an electric pistol, and an electric 

 lamp of his invention, besides many of his manuscripts, sketches, 

 and designs. Exhibits are announced from, all parts of Europe 

 and America, and a congress of electricians and telegraphists 

 will be held at the same time. In connection with the Volta 

 commemoration an exhibition of Italian silk industries will be 

 opened simultaneously with the electric exhibition. The 

 exhibition buildings face the lake, on which the latest inven- 

 tions in electric boats and launches will form a conspicuous 

 feature of the files. Volta's electric pile was first described in 

 England in a letter to Sir J- Banks, then president of the 

 Royal Society. This letter is dated JIarch I, iSoo, and was 

 read before the Society on June 26 of the same year. 



According to Engineering the Belgian Society of Elec- 

 tricians is organising an electrical exhibition to be held at 

 Brussels next June, in the Central Telephone Building, Rue de 

 la Paille. The scope of this exhibition is a small one, as it is 

 intended to illustrate only the domestic applications of elec- 

 tricity, but it promises to be one of great interest. The 

 contents will be divided into two sections, and fourteen classes. 

 The first section comprises four classes as follows: (l) Light- 

 ing. (2) Electric heating. (3) Power. (4) Batteries and ac- 

 cumulators, including every variety of primary and secondary 

 cells. The second section includes ten classes. (5) Telephones 

 and telegraphs, especially adapted for private service. (6) Safety 

 and control apparatus. (7) Clocks, chronographs, and other 

 similar instruments. (S) Hygiene. (9) Medical electricity. (10) 

 Miscellaneous, such as lightning conductors, luminous signs, the 

 seasoning of wines and alcohols electrically, (n) Music. (12) 

 NO. 1532, VOL. 59] 



Electric locks and other safety devices. (13) Electric toys and 

 jewellery. (14) The combination of furniture and decoration 

 with electrical appliances. No generators will be admitted for 

 exhibition, but current will be supplied gratuitously to all ex- 

 hibitors. A charge for space will be made, varj-ing according 

 to the location allotted, and whether isolated or grouped. 

 Further information respecting the exhibition can be obtained 

 by application to the Secretary of the Executive Committee, iS 

 Rue Melsens, Brussels. 



The tenth meeting of the International Congress of Hygiene 

 and Demography will be held in Paris in August 1900. The 

 division of Hygiene will comprise seven sections, of which the 

 following is a list: (i) Microbiology and parasitologj' applied 

 to hygiene, in which the questions to be discussed are the 

 measurement of the activity of serums ; the prophylaxis and 

 preventive treatment of diphtheria ; meat poisoning, its causes 

 and the means of its prevention ; pathogenic microbes in soil 

 and water (cholera, typhoid fever, and other diseases) ; the part 

 played by water and by vegetables in the etiology of intestinal 

 helminthiasis. (2) Chemical and veterinary sciences applied 

 to hygiene ; alimentary hygiene, in which the questions to be 

 discussed are tinned provisions and the means of preventing 

 accidents ; unification of international control ; the establish- 

 ment of a general and uniform system of inspection of slaughter- 

 houses, &c. (3) Engineering and architecture applied to 

 hygiene, in which the question to be discussed is the protection 

 of water supplies. (4) Personal hygiene, in which the question 

 to be discussed is contagious patients from the hospital point of 

 view. (51 Industrial and professional hygiene. (6) Military, 

 naval, and colonial hygiene, in which the question to be dis- 

 cussed is the means of ensuring the purity of water from the 

 point of view of colonial hygiene. {7) General and inter- 

 national hygiene (prophylaxis of communicable diseases; 

 sanitary administration and legislation^, in which the ques- 

 tions to be discussed are the prophylaxis of tuberculosis in 

 regard to individuals, families, &c. ; the compulsory notification 

 of communicable diseases, its necessary consequences (isolation, 

 disinfection) and its results in different countries ; the pro- 

 phylaxis of syphilis ; and the international prophylaxis of yellow 

 fever. 



Ox Sunday morning, at about twenty minutes past two, a 

 disastrous explosion occurred at the Lagouban Naval Magazine, 

 which is situated on a hillside about two and a quarter miles from 

 Toulon. It is said that the magazine contained 50,000 kilogrammes 

 (or nearly fifty tons) of black powder : and, as every one agrees 

 that only one report was heard, the whole must have been blown 

 up simultaneously. Many of the effects of the explosion are of 

 interest. For nearly two miles round, the country has been 

 swept almost bare. Houses are razed to the ground, trees are 

 overturned, or bent and distorted to the most extraordinary 

 shapes, the fields are devastated and covered with stones and 

 fine impalpable black dust. One stone, weighing nearly fifty 

 kilogrammes, fell in the suburb of Pont de Las. Windows 

 were shattered and doors battered in at St. Jean de ^'ar, five 

 miles from Lagouban. The explosion was heard and felt at 

 Nice (84 miles), where it was at first supposed by some to be 

 a slight earthquake ; and it is also said to have been felt across 

 the frontier at Ventimiglia, which is at a distance of about 

 9S miles. 



.\t a meeting of the Society of Arts, on the 17th ult., the 

 Rev. J. M. Bacon read a valuable paper on the balloon as an 

 instrument of scientific research. The author reviewed the 

 subject from the time of the ascents organised by the Russian 

 -Academy at the beginning of this centur)-, until the recent re- 

 searches under the auspices of the international organisation 

 now in active progress in various countries, and including the 



