March 16, 1871} 
NATURE 
393 

NOTES 
In the second report of the Royal Sanitary Commission, just 
published, the Commissioners appear to be under the impression 
that no branch of science other than that of medicine is to any 
great extent involved in sanitary questions, and therefore recom- 
mend that the 4,000 medical men appointed under the Poor-law 
Board should be the inspectors under the proposed new sanitary 
department ; mentioning, however, the probability of a variety 
of officers being requisite for scientific purposes only. We 
think that, in order to carry out sanitary reform efficiently, the 
new department should have the means of consulting the highest 
authorities in most of the branches of physical science, and here, 
as in many other cases, we see the necessity for a Board of 
Science, whose duty it should be to advise the Government on 
all scientific questions. 
WE regret to state that the work at the new buildings at Bur- 
lington House for the learned societies has come to a standstill, 
owing, we are informed, to the failure of the contractors. 
Our Paris correspondent reports the death, at the age of 80, 
of M. Becquerel, the celebrated electrician. He died in Nor- 
mandy during the siege of Paris. 
THE series of afternoon scientific lectures to be delivered in the 
Lecture Theatre of the Royal Dublin Society is as follows :— 
March 25—G, J. Stoney, A.M., on the Sun, April 1—Profes- 
sor Traquair, M.D., on the Vertebrates of the Cual Period. 
April 8—Dr. C. Cameron, on the Source of Muscular Force. 
April 15—Professor J. R. Greene, on the Phenomena of Sleep 
and Dreams, April 22—Professor W. 1’. Dyer, on Recent Ad- 
ditions to our Knowledge of Fossil Plants. April 29—Professor 
T. Andrews, F.R.S., on the Continuity of Liquid and Gaseous 
States of Matter. May 6—Professor P. Redfern, M.D., Illus- 
trations of the Advance of Physiology. May 13, Dr. J. E. 
Reynolds, on the Chemistry of Milk, and a new mode of testing 
its quality. 
WE are glad to hear that the Hackney Scientific Association 
is in an active and prosperous condition. In another column we 
print a very short abstract of a paper read at a recent meeting on 
the fossil remains of mammalia found in the Lea Valley. 
THE Moniteur Scientifique, edited by Dr. Quesneville, is the 
only scientific paper which continued to be published in Paris 
regularly throughout the siege. Since the 1st of October its cir- 
culation has been necessarily confined to its subscribers in Paris ; 
but we have now received a parcel of ten of its fortnightly num- 
bers, and heartily commend it to the notice of men of science in 
England. 
THE following is the substance of a communication on 
the periodicity and heliographic distribution of sun-spots, 
addressed by M. Zéllner to the Astronomische Nachrichten or 
March 2nd:—The sun-spots are slaglike by the radiation of 
heat on the glowing and liquid surface of the sun; the products 
of the cooling having again dissolved, in consequence of the 
disturbance of equilibrium produced by themselves in the at- 
mosphere. When these disturbances are not only local, but 
generally distributed, the formation of new spots is but little 
favoured at the times of such general motion of the atmosphere, 
because then the most essential conditions of the surface are 
wanting for a severe depression of temperature by radiation, 
namely, the rest and clearness of the atmosphere. But when 
the surface has again gradually become quiet after the dissolution 
of the spots, the process again recommences, and acquires in this 
manner a Zeriodic character, in consequence of the mean relation- 
ships of the surface of the sun, which may be considered as 
attaining an average in long periods. The distribution of the 
spots in area must, according to this theory, be determined by 

the zones of greatest atmospheric clearness, which, as has been 
shown, generally coincide with the zones of the greatest abund- 
ance of spots. 
THE following are our American notes for, the week, for 
which we are again indebted to Harper's Weekly :—The 
eighty-fifth number of the Proceedings of the American Philo- 
sophical Society, lately published, and completing the eleventh 
volume, is, like many of its predecessors, nearly filled with im- 
portant communications from Professor Cope, whose industry in 
publishing accounts of new, recent, and extinct zoological forms 
is untiring. One of the most important of these communications 
is an article upon certain fresh-water tertiary fishes from Idaho, 
collected by Mr, Clarence King, and embracing twelve species 
of six genera, These all belong to the Cyprinidz, with the ex- 
ception of one species of the trout family. With these fish were 
three species of Astacus, also described by Professor Cope in 
another communication.—We have already referred to one 
ofthe papers of Professor Cope, in which he describes a 
new species of mosasauroid, called Ziodon dyspelor, basel 
upon specimens from New Mexico in the museum of the 
Smithsonian Institution, and which, according to Professor Cope, 
probably exceeded one hundred feet in length, and may be con- 
sidered as the longest reptile of which we have any account.— 
We have frequently called attention to the interest and value of 
the dredging operations conducted by Count Pourtales in behalf 
of the coast survey, in the deep seas adjoining the southern coast 
of the United States. The results of these labours are being 
published by the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Cambridge, 
Massachusetts ; and there has just appeared an elaborate memoir 
upon the crustaceans by Dr. William Stimpson, of Chicago. A 
large number of new genera and species were detected in the 
ccllection, and a portion of these are numerated in the report re- 
ferred to, which embraces only the Brachyura, the remainin.: 
families being reserved for a future memoir.—The Commissioner; 
of Fisheries for the State of New York have lately announced in 
the public papers their readiness to furnish, free of expense, 
living black bass, cat-fish, white bass, rock bass, roach, perch, 
sunfish, and pike-perch, for stocking the waters in any part ot 
the State of New York, provided parties desiring them will sen.1 
an agent to receive and take charge of them. All of these are 
now bred at the State establishment at Caledonia, and applica- 
tions for them are to be made to Seth Green, Rochester.—One 
result of the completion of the Pacific Railroad has been the in- 
troduction into Eastern markets of Western game. We see 
it stated that two hundred antelope were sent to Boston during a 
single week, and three hundred saddles of deer, of both the white- 
tailed and black-tailed species. The antelope brought from fifteen 
to twenty cents per pound wholesale, and the venison from 
twenty to twenty-five. 
THE first annual report of the Asso. iatiou for the Improvemcnt 
of Geometrical Teaching has just been issued. Gentlemen who 
may desire to have a copy of the same, or to receive information 
on matters connected with the Association, will perhaps be glad 
to know the names of the local London secretaries, who are Mr. 
C. W. Merrifield, F.R.S., Royal School of Naval Architecture, 
South Kensington, and Mr, R. Tucker, M.A., University Col- 
lege School, W.C, 
Tue Proceedings of the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal for 
January contains a drawing of a remarkable case of polydac- 
tylism ina horse from Bagdad. Mr. Wood-Mason, who exhibited 
the specimen, remarked that the splint-like rudiments of the 
metacarpals of the fourth toe on each fore foot had given rise to a 
supernumerary digit provided with the regular number of 
phalanges, and encased in an asymmetrical hoof, the asymmetry 
of which was such that the presence of another of the sanie 
shape internally to it would have formed a symmetrical pair like 
