62 
NAL ORE 
[May 21, 1885 
THE Sanitary Congress opened yesterday at Rome. 
In the Spanish Congress on Monday, Sefor Castelar 
called attention to Dr. Ferran’s experiments in inoculation 
against cholera, and asked the Minister of the Interior to 
give a subvention to enable Dr. Ferran to continue his ex- 
periments on a larger scale. The Minister, in reply, said he 
was unable to do so at present, but as soon as it lay in his power 
he would grant a sufficient sum, although, in his opinion, Dr, 
Ferran’s experiments had not yet reached a sufficient degree of 
certainty to prove a complete success. He added that a com- 
mission of medical men would be appointed to visit Valencia 
and other towns in order to study the experiments that are being 
made. In reference to this subject Dr. Cameron, M.P., writes 
to the Standard that the Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs 
has promised to instruct the British Minister at Madrid to send 
home translations of any reports bearing on the system of inocu- 
lation with cholera virus attenuated by artificial cultivation, as a 
protection against Asiatic cholera, discovered by Dr. Ferran, of 
Valencia. This having come to the notice of Dr. Ferran, 
that gentleman has sent Dr. Cameron a telegram giving 
the results up to date of a great test experiment which is at 
present being conducted by him, under the eyes of scientific 
commissioners at Alcira, a town near Valencia, where an 
epidemic of cholera is raging. According to Dr. Ferran’s tele- 
gram the population of Alcira is 16,000, and since the first of 
the present month 5432 of its inhabitants have been inoculated 
with his protective virus. That would leave the number of 
those not inoculated about 10,500; or, accepting 16,coo as an 
exact figure, precisely 10,568. Of the 10,500 persons who are 
not inoculated, cholera has attacked 64, and proved fatal to 30. 
Of the 5432 who have been inoculated it has, according to Dr. 
Ferran, attacked only 7, and proved fatal in no single case. In 
other words, since the commencement of the experiment on 
May I, one person out of every 163 has been attacked among 
the uninoculated population, and one person in every 352 has 
died of cholera ; while among the inoculated population only 
one person in 776 has been attacked, and not a single person in 
the entire 5432 has died of the disease. Dr. Ferran concludes 
his telegram by expressing the desire that a British Commission 
should be sent to Alcira to verify these results. 
THE floating dome presented by M. Bischoffsheim to the 
Observatory at Nice is now finished, and has been on exhibi- 
tion in Paris during the past week. It is intended to cover a 
colossal telescope; it is 22 m. in diameter inside, and has a 
circumference of 60 m., or 2 m. more than the dome of the 
Pantheon. Instead of rendering it movable by placing it on 
rollers, according to the ordinary method, it is closed below by 
a reservoir for air, which rests on the water in a circular basin. 
This system of suspension is said to be so perfect, that in spite 
of its great weight, a single person can turn it completely round 
the horizon. To provide against the water freezing, it has been 
proposed to dissolve in it a salt to the point of saturation, but it 
is feared that this may cause corrosion of the apparatus. Frosts, 
however, are rare in Nice, and special experiments on this 
subject will be made. 
ON Friday night the House of Commons agreed, without a 
division, toa motion by Sir John Lubbock for a select com- 
mittee to inquire whether, by the establishment of a forest 
school, our forests and woodlands could be rendered more re- 
munerative. The proposer pointed out that, while our interests 
in the subject were greater than those of any other country in 
the world, as we had 2,800,000 acres under wood in Great 
Britain and about 340,000,000 in the Colonies, yet this was 
almost the only country without a forest school. He referred to 
the effect of scientific forestry in the Landes in France, and in 
India, where the net forest revenue fifteen years ago was only 
52,000/., while, since the establishment of a forest department, 
it had risen to over 400,000/. per annum. As a result of neglect 
of the science in this country, students for India had to be 
trained at Nancy, a school of course specially adapted for 
French requirements, and the forests in our Colonies and other 
possessions (Cyprus and the Cape, for example) had to be put 
under the control of foreigners, as there were no Englishmen 
trained for the work. Sir John Lubbock, however, declined to 
commit himself to the establishment of a Government school ; 
it could not be left altogether to private enterprise, because a 
school necessarily required access to a considerable area of forest. 
He thought it worthy of consideration whether some interme- 
diate system might be adopted which would enable some one 
or more existing institutions to benefit by national forests. Mr. 
Gladstone, whose interest in arboriculture is well known, could 
not bind the Government to the establishment of a School of 
Forestry, although he recognised the universal ignorance on the 
subject prevalent amongst land agents and others in England. 
He distinguished the circumstances in India, where there are 
important facts connected with the climate, and with the due 
supply of moisture in the atmosphere, which are not present in 
this country. The School of Forestry, moreover, he said, 
which was established by the Indian Government in England, 
was open to every one who could pay the fees. There was also 
the difficulty that forests of large extent are rare here, and that 
they are kept, not for purposes of profit, but of landscape beauty, 
or pleasure and sport. In conclusion he said the Government 
gave their hearty approval to Sir John Lubbock’s proposal, 
reserving, at the same time, their freedom with regard to the 
recommeudations which the committee might make. 
A TRANSLATION of Prof. Cremona’s well-known work on the 
‘* Elements of Projective Geometry,” by Mr. C. Leudersdorf, 
of Pembroke College, Oxford, will shortly be published by the 
Clarendon Press. It is hoped that this may be useful to stu- 
dents of a subject which has been, comparatively speaking, 
neglected in this country, although much attention has been paid 
to it on the Continent. The opportunity has been taken to 
considerably enlarge and amend the book. All the improve- 
ments to be found in the French and the German editions have 
been incorporated, and a new chapter on ‘Foci ” has been 
added. ‘The text has been carefully revised throughout, and has 
received many additions and elucidations, some due to the author 
himself and others to the translator. 
ON the night of Friday the 15th inst. one of the most terrible 
storms ever witnessed in Vienna occurred there, by which shrubs, 
trees, and even houses were wrecked ; and the cold accompany- 
ing was so severe that several persons exposed to it during the 
night were found frozen to death in the morning. In the Paris 
Bulletin International of the morning of the 16th it is reported 
that 139 millimetres of snow fell at Vienna. In all parts of 
Austria and Hungary snow covers vineyards and fields, where 
the crops were in an advanced condition, and incalculably great 
damage has been done. The festivals of Pancratius, Servatius, 
and Boniface, the Ice Saints of 1885, will long be remembered 
in this part of Europe. 
WE have received the report of the Rugby School Natural 
History Society for the past year. That portion of it which 
relates to the Temple Observatory at Rugby has already been 
noticed in these columns. The editors observe that it appears 
to be a law of the existence of the Society (like that of the 
animalcule Amada proteus) that an infusion of life into one part 
produces a corresponding decline in another. For some years 
the botanical, geological, and archzological sections absorbed 
all energy, but now there is a decided movement towards zoology 
and a decline in those sections once most vigorous. A fair start 
