346 
NATURE 
[August 12, 1886 
sea, but to effect a great economy in coal-consumption. 
Since then the new system has come rapidly into use, 
and shipbuilders and marine engineers are now looking in 
the direction of triple and quadruple expansion-engines 
for the economical advantages of high-pressure steam in 
future ships. 
It is estimated that the present triple-expansion marine 
engine, with 150 lbs. of steam-pressure, has an advantage 
of from 20 to 25 per cent. in economy of coal consumption, 
over the ordinary compound engine with go lbs. pressure, 
which it is rapidly supplanting. These results have been 
achieved through a clear appreciation of the waste of 
energy which is caused by the alternate heating and 
cooling of a steam cylinder that takes place in conse- 
quence of the difference of temperature at which the 
steam enters and leaves it. The steam-jackets introduced 
by James Watt as a cure for this were imperfect and 
wasteful in their action. An effectual remedy has been 
found as the result of many years of study and experi- 
ment by men of science and engineers, by expanding the 
steam successively in several cylinders, so as to make the 
variation of the temperature of the steam in each cylinder 
as small as possible. 
NOTES 
WE greatly regret to announce the death of Mr. George 
Busk, F.R.S., the well-known surgeon and naturalist, in the 
seventy-eighth year of his age. We must reserve a detailed 
notice of Mr. Busk’s life and work. 
GEOLOGISTS will be sorry to hear of the death of Mr. Gerrard 
Kinahan, son of the well-known geologist of the Geological 
Survey of Ireland. Last October he accepted an appointment 
in the service of the National African Trading Company. The 
last letter received from hin gave an interesting account of his 
explorations up the southern tributaries of the Niger. He died 
on May 23 from a wound with a poisoned arrow in a fight with 
the native tribes at a place called Anyappa. His training as a 
chemist and geologist at the College of Science in Dublin and 
also at the School of Mines in London had thoroughly qualified 
him for original research, and his quietly enduring temperament 
and kindliness of nature augured a most successful scientific 
future, whether at home or abroad. But he has been cut down 
on the very threshold of his career—ancther young victim to 
the dangers of African exploration. 
THE death is announced of Dr. R. J. Mann, F.R.C.S., 
aged sixty-nine. Dr. Mann was for three years President 
of the Meteorological Society, and was a Member of the 
Astronomical, Geographical, Photographic, and other Socie- 
ties. He gave up his medical practice to take a Govern- 
ment appointment in Natal, where he served as head of 
the Education Department and Medical Officer for many years. 
On his return, about 1864, he became Emigration Agent for the 
Colony, and when, some ten years later, he resigned that post, 
he devoted himself to his favourite scieatific pursiits. He was 
a popular and prolific writer. The protection of buildings from 
lightning was a subject on which he wrote a g 01 deal, and for 
which he did much valuable work. 
M. CHEVREUL, the illustrious French chemist, will complete 
his hundredth year on Monday next. 
seum in honour of the occasion is being organised. Delegations 
from foreign countries as wellas from the provinces are expected. 
In one of the sa//es at the Museum there is to be an exhihition 
presenting a 7dswmé of the scientific labours and discoveries of 
M. Chevreul. The banquet will be at noon, in order that the 
famous centenarian may himself be present. 
Our Vienna correspondent writes:—‘‘ Dr. von Frisch, 
having recently experimented on preventive inoculations for 
hydrophobia, has made a preliminary communication to the 
A grand fé/e at the Mu- | 
Vienna Academy of Sciences, in which he states that it was im- 
possible for him to prevent the breaking out of rabies by means 
of Pasteur’s method if the infecting virus (of at least fourteen 
days’ incubation) were administered to previously healthy 
animals by trepanning. This latter method of artificial infection 
of animals Dr. von Frisch suggests to be the only safe one. He 
made his experiments on rabbits and on dogs. At first sixteen 
healthy rabbits-were trephined, and the virus (of sixteen days’ 
incubation) was injected under the dura mater. Fifteen of these 
rabbits were then subjected at intervals to the usual preventive 
inoculations, the remaining one not being inoculated. All these 
animals except one, which, as Frisch believes, was not sufficiently 
infected, died between the fourteenth and thirty-third day after 
infection, with symptoms of rabies, and if particles of their 
spinal cord were injected into healthy rabbits, the latter also 
became rabid. Similar experiments were then made on dog , 
and with the same results. But a series of rabbits infected by 
subcutaneous injection of the virus, and then treated by Pasteur’s 
method, continue healthy up to the present time.” 
THE Grosvenor Museum for Chester and North Wales was 
opened at-Chester on Monday by the Duke of Westminster. 
The new museum is intended as the home of four influential 
local societies—namely, the Chester Society of Natural Science, 
founded by Charles Kingsley; the Chester Archeological 
Society, which is closely associated with the name of the late 
Dean Howson ; the Chester Schools of Art ; and the Chester 
Science Classes. The first floor is devoted entirely to science, 
except one room to be used as a laboratory, a committee-room, 
anda model-room for the school of art. The upper floor is entirely 
devoted to the school of art. In the several rooms there are 
exhibited specimens illustrative of the natural history of the 
district, water-colour drawings, collections of antiquities, oil 
paintings, wood carvings, a collection of pictures by members of 
the Art Club, appliances for science teaching, memorials of 
Canon Kingsley and Dean Howson, a collection of objects 
illustrative of Oriental art, a magnificent collection of tapestry, 
choice embroidery, lace, porcelain, textile fabrics, &c. 
THE autumn congress of the Sanitary Institute of Great 
Britain will be held in the city of York on September 21 and 
following days, under the Presidentship of Sir T. Spencer 
Wells, Bart. 
THE summer meeting of the Institution of Mechanical En- 
gineers will be held on Tuesday morning, August 17, and 
Wednesday morning, August 18, at 25, Great George Street, 
Westminster. The following papers have been offered for read- 
ing and discussion after the address by the Pre ident :—Experi- 
ments on the steam-jacketing and compounding of locomotives 
in Russia, by M. Alexander Borodin, of Kieff ; on the working — 
of compound lecomotives in India, by Mr. Charles Sandiford, of 
Lahore; description of a portable hydraulic drilling-machine, 
by M. Mare Berrier-Fontaine, of Toulon ; description of the 
Blackpool electric tramway, by Mr. M. Holroyd Smith, of 
Halifax ; on triple-expansion marine engines, by Mr. Robert ~ 
Wyllie, of Hartlepool. i 
THE French Association for the Advancement of Science 
begins its annual meeting to-day at Nancy. 
Tue lectures recently delivered at Oxford by Prof. Sylvester 
on his ‘*New Theory of Reciprocants,” will appear in the 
coming numbers of the American Fournal of Mathematics. The 
lectures are presented in quite simple style, and will be exceed - 
ingly interesting to all students of the modern algebra, or, more 
accurately, of the theory of invariants. The first eight or nine 
lectures will appear in the forthcoming number of the Fournal, 
vol. viii. No. 3. 
A Society for the study of anthropology has been founded in 
Bombay. Before the departure of the East Indian mail the 
