254 



NA TURE 



[July i6, 1896 



then Ihe collection has continued steadily to increase. Mr.ie 

 recently, states the Harvard College Observatory Circular, 

 No. 8, three larjje additions have been made to it : the general 

 library of Harvard University has placed at the Observatory a 

 great number of the meteorological works formerly kept at Gore 

 Hall ; the Blue Hill Meteorological Observatory has made a 

 similar transfer : and the New England Meteorological Society, 

 which has lately dissolved its organisation, has deposited the 

 works contained in its library, and also the remaining copies of 

 its own publications. Special efforts are now in progress to 

 render still more complete the large collection which has resulted 

 from these additions. It is hoped that the meteorological 

 department of the library may be made so complete as 

 greatly to increase its present value in aiding the studies of 

 meteorologists. 



In spite of its limited resources, the British School at Athens 

 contrives to initiate and carry out very valuable archreological 

 work. The report read at the annual eeting of the supporters 

 of the school, held on Monday, gave an encouraging account of 

 the work of exploration and excavation accomplished during the 

 past year. The financial position of the school, though still 

 below that of its rivals, is now upon a footing which is com- 

 aratively satisfactory. The subscriptions, together with the 

 Government grant of /500 per annum for five years, lead the 

 Committee to believe that they may reckon upon an annual 

 income of £\/i,oo for some years to come. Of this it is esti- 

 mated that about £\oaa will be required for the current expenses 

 of the school (including studentships), leaving about £ifx> per 

 annum for excavations. But though the school stands in a 

 better financial position than it has ever been before, its 

 revenue is still modest as compared, for example, with the 

 ;^3ioo a year of the French school, which has, in addition, 

 received a special grant of ^£'30,000 ; the ;£'2400 of the Germans, 

 to whom also the Government has made the contribution of 

 ^40,000 for the excavations at Olympia ; and the United States 

 school, which enjoys £,2000 a year. The school is, however, 

 doing its best on its modest resources, and the archa;ologicaI 

 discoveries made in connection with it are valuable contributions 

 to human knowledge. 



Prof. H. A. Newton has been making a comparison 

 between the mortalities of Vale graduates in the years 1701- 

 1744 and 1 745-1762, to see whether the changes of mode 

 of living and comforts had any effect upon the vital statistics of 

 the two groups of men (Vale, Biographies and Annals). By 

 arranging the mortalities in decades of years from 15 to 75 

 years of age in the case of each group, it was seen that the 

 group 1745-1762 showed a distinct increase of mortality per 

 thousand lives between the ages of 15 and 35; an equality of 

 mortality during the next ten years, and a decided diminution 

 for the ages 46 to 75, when compared with corresponding periods 

 in the group 1701-1744. It is a marked feature of the mortality 

 statistics of American college graduates that there is excessive 

 mortality in the years immediately following graduation. This, 

 Prof. Newlon thinks, is no doubt due to the strenuous efforts of 

 young graduates to attain a good position in their profession. 

 The later favourable experience in the ages from 45 to 75 is 

 presumably due to the fact that they have by that time gained 

 position, or else lost ambition. It would seem that this early 

 strain was experienced by the graduates of the years 1701-1744 

 distinctly less than it was by the graduates of the eighteen years 

 following. It would also seem that the corresponding strain for 

 men between the ages 45 and 75 was much greater than for 

 the later graduates, and perhaps that there had been a decided 

 gain in the modes and comforts of life during the quarter 

 of a century, which on an average separates the two groups 

 of men. 



NO. 1394, VOL. 54] 



The literature of water-bacteriology is fast assuming well- 

 nigh unwieldy proportions ; almost the late.st contribution to 

 hand is an elaborate memoir in Spanish, from the Municipal 

 Chemical Laboratory of Valparaiso, on an epidemic of typhoid 

 fever in this city. Dr. Mourgues, who is responsible for the 

 report in question, claims to have successfully tracked this 

 serious outbreak to the water supplying the city. The chemical 

 analyses already showed it to be badly polluted with sewage : 

 and in this condition, without undergoing filtration, it was dis- 

 tributed for dietetic purposes. By resorting to all the must 

 efficient methods at present at our disposal for the discovery of 

 the typhoid bacillus in water. Dr. Mourgues tells us that he 

 " discovered a bacillus which, according to the majority of the 

 bacteriologists, is the cause of typhoid fever." He exhibits, 

 however, some degree of caution in accepting his own con- 

 clusions, for he tells us that if it was not the typhoid bacillus, 

 it was the B. coli cowmnnis, which, according to Rodet, 

 G. Roux, and Vallet, is also capable of inducing typhoid 

 fever. Dr. Mourgues has produced an able and interesting 

 report quite apart from the credit attaching to his investigations ; 

 for he has brought together, in a brief and handy form, most of 

 the principal work which has been done in recent years on the 

 bacteriology of water in relation to the typhoid bacillus. 



In a letter communicated to the Comples rendtts (June 22), 

 M. Moureaux gives a short account of some recent measure- 

 ments of the magnetic elements which he has made in South 

 Russia. In the neighbourhood of a village called Kotchetovka, 

 at latitude 51° and longitude 6° S' east of Poulkowa, the 

 extreme values of the elements determined in fifteen different 

 stations, scattered over an area of about a square kilometre, were 

 as follows ; — 



Declination 

 Dip 

 Horizontal force 



-1-58° to -43° 



79° to 48° 



o-i66 to o'sSg 



In addition to the extreme largeness of these differences, it is 

 interesting to note that the horizontal force attains in this region 

 a greater value than that found at the equator. Since the dip is 

 not less than 48°, it follows that the value of the total force in 

 some parts of this region is extremely large. At another village 

 (Potrovshoje), about fifteen kilometres to the south of the first, 

 the values of the elements were : — Declination, -V^z" 56' ; dip, 

 81° 45' ; horizontal force, o'og. A series of measurements 

 showed that the dip attained a maximum value of 82° 13' near 

 this point, the value of the horizontal force corresponding to this 

 maximum being 0079. 



The Metopic Suture is the name given by anthropologists 

 to the persistence of the frontal suture. Several investigators 

 have attacked the problem of the significance ol this suture, but 

 the most thorough study is that by Dr. G. Papillault in the 

 current number (tome ii. 3 ser. I fasc.) of the MJmoires de la 

 See. d'Jn/li. de Paris. After a very detailed investigation, the 

 author comes to the following general conclusions : — It has no 

 sexual significance. The brain is the primary cause of metopism ; 

 not that metopics have an intellectual superiority over other 

 people, but a superiority in the relative weight of their brain. 

 There is a preponderance of complicated sutures and wormian 

 bones in metopic crania, but these are less marked in the races 

 in which the weight of the skull increases equally with that of 

 the skeleton ; in other words, in what one generally terms the 

 lower races. Civilisation, in multiplying and knitting the bonds 

 of social union, in augmenting in the struggle for life the power 

 of the intelligence and in diminishing the preponderance of brute 

 force, permits those who are intellectually endowed to live and 

 prosper despite their muscular weakness, and thus it also becomes 

 one of the most important factors of metopism. 



