Feb. 10, 1870] 
NATURE 
389 
THE purity of the metropolitan water supply has been seriously 
affected by the winter floods. Professor Frankland, in his last 
monthly report, states that the water supplied by the East London 
Company was very turbid and contained vibrios. This is the 
first occasion in which Dr. Frankland has detected these organisms, 
which are abundant in putrid sewage, in the London water. 
A VERY interesting paper on the Pearl, Coral and Amber 
Fisheries, was read at the meeting of the Society of Arts held 
on the r9th inst. The chair was occupied by Professor Owen, 
who in proposing a vote of thanks to the lecturer, Mr. T. L. Sim- 
monds, made some instructive remarks on the origin of pearl, 
coral and amber. Both the paper of Mr. Simmonds and the 
observations of Professor Owen, will be found at full length in 
the last number of the Society’s Journal. 
WE are glad to know that an ‘‘ Athenzeum ” has been estab- 
lished in Belfast. It contains a large reading-room, provided 
with most of the daily and weekly papers and the monthly and 
quarterly reviews. There is also a commercial, literary and 
scientific reference library and all the usual accessories of a club. 
Such an undertaking deserves every support. A series of lec- 
tures on scientific and literary subjects has already been com- 
-menced in connection with this institution. 
THE Lowndean Professor of Astronomy in the University of 
Cambridge intends to give a course of lectures on the Lunar 
Theory, with special reference to M. Delaunay’s method of 
treating the subject. 
Land and Water announces that the Prince Pless, who has 
large possessions in Siberia, has succeeded in crossing the com- 
mon Red Deer with the Wapiti (Cervus Canadensis) and the 
perfect fecundity of the hybrids appears to be well established. 
ACCORDING to Les Mondes, the Mont Cenis tunnel will cer- 
tainly be finished during the present year. On the Ist ult., 
the galleries opened measured 10,595 metres and there only 
remained 1,621 metres to be excavated. 
THE Photographic News announces that a Photographic Society 
has just been formed at Dresden. Among the members are the 
names of Krone, president, Hahn, Hanfstengl, &c. The 
society publishes a monthly journal entitled /e/ros, this being 
the sixth photographic journal published in Germany. 
Is Sicily about to lose the monopoly of sulphur which she has 
so long enjoyed? By recent intelligence from America, we 
learn that a bed of pure sulphur, 135 feet in thickness and 
about 530 feet below the surface, has been discovered on 
an island in Bayou Choupique, in the delta of the Mississippi. 
The place is within ten miles of the sea, from which it 
may be anticipated that shipment of the mineral will be 
comparatively easy. The extent of the deposit has not yet 
been ascertained; but the local formations are such as to lead to 
the inference that it is ‘‘immense.” Besides the sulphur, there 
is a deposit of gypsum, of perhaps equal extent ; hence we 
may anticipate that the company formed to work the one, will 
also turn the other to profit. Sulphur is so much in demand for 
the manufacture of sulphuric acid and for many other purposes 
in the arts, that this discovery of a deposit in a country teeming 
with energy and enterprise, seems opportune. When in full 
work it will most likely occasion a fall in the price of sulphur 
and a corresponding falling off in the use of pyrites. This 
sulphur bed was discovered during the sinking of a well 
in search for petroleum. But instead of ‘‘ oil” the boring dis- 
charges a copious stream of water, which is described as a 
saturated solution of sulphuretted hydrogen, combined with a 
small amount of gypsum and common salt. It is clear that the 
company which is about to explore the sulphur, will have to 
provide for an abundant drainage, as well as for ventilation. 
The locality may be found on a good map, near Lake 
Calcasien, on the western border of the Mississippi delta. 
SCIENTIZIG SERIALS, 
THE new number of Pfliiger’s Archiv. (III. i.) contains a 
paper by Prof. L. Hermann ‘‘On the absence of currents in 
uninjured inactive muscle.” Munk’s views are criticised and a 
new experiment described, in which the gastrocnemius of a frog 
is prepared for investigation, in such a way that no contact 
between the cutaneous secretion and the surface of the muscle 
(a source of currents in previous observations) takes place. 
With a galvanometer of 1,600 windings, giving a deviation of 
300 sc. for an ordinary nerve current, the muscle so prepared 
gave only a deviation of 10 to 20 se. ‘* Weare hereby justified,” 
says the author, ‘‘in supposing that with a still more careful 
method of preparation, by the avoidance of yet other unknown 
causes of injury, we shall at last get a muscle ferfectly free 
from currents.” 
In another paper ‘On the course of the development of 
currents in dying muscle,” Prof. Hermann shows that when 
part of a muscle is killed and rendered rigid by exposure to a 
temperature of 40° C., the development of the current takes 
place just at the moment when 7igor mortis makes its appearance. 
The same author has also a paper ‘‘ On the danger of drinking 
cold water when the body is heated,” in which an attempt is 
made to submit the matter to an experimental inquiry. The 
only result obtained, however, was that in curarized animals, 
the injection of ice-cold water into the stomach caused a sudden 
and great rise in the arterial tension in the carotid and crural 
arteries, apparently from spasm of the visceral arteries in the 
neighbourhood of the stomach. Such a sudden increase of ten- 
sion would prove dangerous in the case of unsound vessels. 
When the animals, however, were not curarized, very little rise 
of tension was observed, suggesting the idea that some compen- 
sating mechanism was at work, ¢.g. respiratory movements. 
There are also papers ‘‘On acute phosphorous poisoning,” 
“On convulsions due to disturbances of the cerebal circulation 
(venous obstruction) ” and *‘ On simultaneous contrasts” by Prof. 
Hermann and his pupils; ‘‘On the action of Hydrocyanic acid 
on the red blood corpuscles” by Geinitz; ‘‘On the interference 
of the bile with gastric indigestion ” by Hammarsten; and, ‘‘On 
serum-albumin ” by Zahn. 
Revue des Cours Scientifiques, February 5.—This number con- 
tains an interesting paper read by M. P. I. Van Beneden, of 
Louvain, at the Belgian Academy of Sciences, on what he terms 
““commensalism” in the animal kingdom, or certain associations 
of animals for feeding purposes, which are not, in the ordinary 
sense, cases of parasitism. ‘The author gives several illustrations 
of this fact, and he defines the parasite as an animal which lives 
upon another, while the commensal or messmate is merely a 
feeding companion. He distinguishes free and fixed commensals. 
Of the former there are numerous instances in the class Crustacea. 
The most interesting examples of the latter are the 7xdicinella 
diadema or coronula covering the skin of whales; the Remora, 
found in the Mediterranean, and made use of, in fishing, by the 
inhabitants of Mozambique after the manner of a falcon on land. 
This number also contains a lecture by M. Ch. Robin, on 
Histology, delivered at the Faculté de Médicine in Paris. 
In Si/liman’s Fournal for January, Professor B. Silliman 
has a paper on the relation between the intensity of light 
produced by the combustion of coal gas and the volume of gas 
consumed, read at the Salem meeting of the American Associa- 
tion for the Advancement of Science last year, in which he gives 
as the result of many trials the theorem that, within ordinary 
limits of consumption, the intensity or illuminating power of 
gas flames increases as the square of the volume of gas consumed, 
according to which the method of computation hitherto adopted 
in photometry, would involve an error amounting to 40 per cent., 
in the case of rich gas, burning at the rate of 34 feet an hour 
with an observed effect of 20 candles—the illuminating power 
reduced to the standard consumption of 5 cubic feet an hour, 
being in this case equal to 40 candles instead of 28°57 candles. 
Hence it follows that all photometric determinations obtained by 
computation from volumes greater or less than the standard of 5 
cubic feet an hour, in the simple ratio af the volumes consumed, 
must be considered as absolutely worthless. This applies also to 
the case of sperm candles burnt at a rate different from the 
standard of 120 grains per hour. As a consequence of these 
observations it would appear to be essential for photometric ob- 
servers, in their determinations, to bring the rates of consumption 
both of gas and sperm to the agreed standards. For the con- 
sumer of gas it is evident, also, that where it is important to obtain 
