696 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. II., No. 42. 



ing of hoc-land under the trinoda necessitas resem-, 

 bled the holding of a benefice in later times; but the 

 holders of hoc-land were not vassals of a lord. Their 

 services were due to the state rather than to the king. 

 The king was not the universal landlord until after 

 the conquest, when the Norman lawyers persisted in 

 describing proprietorship as a tenancy. At the same 

 time a great deal of proprietorship was converted into 

 tenancy. The position of the isolated proprietor was 

 unsafe ; and proprietors very generally converted their 

 inheritances into tenures, under the overlordship of 

 the khig or some other great lord. M. Glasson de- 

 scribes the various forms of tenure which existed 

 under the feudal system, and the condition of the ten- 

 ants. A large part of the work is devoted to legal 

 procedure and judicial organization. — [Edinburgh 

 rev., July, 188.3.) d. w. e. [408 



NOTES AND NEWS. 



The death of Dr. John L. LeConte at his home in 

 Philadelphia on Thursday of last week, at the age of 

 fifty-eight, removes one who has long been the leader, 

 facile princeps, of American entomologists. With his 

 death, the younger men are completely separated 

 from the former generation of workers in this field, 

 and they will lose a friend and teacher to whom they 

 constantly looked. Dr. LeConte was as highly hon- 

 ored abroad as at home, and has been an. active in- 

 vestigator for nearly forty years. His death occurred 

 during the session of the National academy, of which 

 he was a member, but was not known in New Haven 

 until its close. We shall give in a future number an 

 account of his services to science. 

 . — President Arthur, in carrying out an act passed 

 by Congress, has invited the various countries to 

 send representatives to an International conference 

 at Washington, the date of which is not yet fixed, to 

 establish a common prime meridian. The govern- 

 ments of Austria, Norway, and Sweden, have de- 

 clined; but the latter two approve of the object. 

 Spain is favorable, but has deterred its reply. Bel- 

 gium is uncertain, but Denmark and Portugal have 

 accepted the invitation conditionally. Switzerland, 

 Venezuela, Mexico, Turkey, Greece, China, Japan, 

 Hawaii, Hayti, Liberia, Holland, Canada, Guate- 

 mala, Eoumauia, Nicaragua, and Honduras have 

 accepted. Replies are expected from Italy, Great 

 Britain, Russia, France, Chili, Brazil, and Germany. 



— Mr. Edward Atkinson has pi-epared a plan for a 

 textile laboratory and museum in Boston. He thinks 

 that a hundred thousand dollars would be ample foi* 

 the construction of a proper building, and its equip- 

 ment, which should be an adjunct of the Massachu- 

 setts institute of technology. The purpose is to afford 

 special training for yoving men intending to pursue 

 textile manufacture. The first two years' course of 

 instruction in the institute is suited as a basis for the 

 future special study of textile manufactures; and 

 it is in the next two years of the curriculum that 

 special training should be followed. The first two 

 years would ground the student in modern languages 

 and mathematics, in mechanical drawing, in general 



geology and chemistry, as well as in the practical 

 work of the physical and chemical laboratories, and 

 will thus prepare him for entering upon the special 

 course of textile industry. The professional studies 

 would include geology, botany, mechanical engineer- 

 ing, building and architecture, mechanics, textile de- 

 sign in all branches, industrial chemistry, history, 

 and political economy. 



— Professor Balfour Stewart and Mr. W. L. Car- 

 penter discussed, before the British Association for 

 the advancement of science, the supposed sun-spot 

 inequalities of short period. Putting aside for the 

 time the question of true or nearly apparent periodi- 

 city, they exhibited certain results obtained by appli- 

 cation of a method of detecting unknown inequalities 

 in amass of observations. Thirty-six years' observa- 

 tions of sun-spots were divided into three series of 

 twelve years each. Two apparent sun-spot inequali- 

 ties of about twenty-six days came out very promi- 

 nently, appearing for each of the twelve years in the 

 same phase, and to very nearly the same extent. 



— A design for a new high-level bridge at Newcas- 

 tle-on-Tyne has been prepared by W. G. Laws, city 

 engineer. It shows a clear span of six hundred feet, 

 and a clear headway above high water of eighty-two 

 feet. The bridge will be of steel, and the cost of 

 superstructure, foundations, and approaches, is esti- 

 mated at two hundred and fifty thousand pounds. 



— Sir J. Whitworth & Co. have lately completed 

 and tested a 9-inch (23 centimetres) gun for the 

 Brazilian government. The peculiar feature of this 

 system is the hexagonal section of the bore of the 

 gun. The material is compressed cast steel, which is 

 superior to other steels in its combined ductility and 

 tenacity, and in its perfect soundness. This gun, on 

 trial, threw a shell of the weight of oOO pounds (136 

 kilograms) 7,876 yards (over 7,000 metres), and drove 

 a steel shell weighing 400 pounds (181 kilograms) 

 through a wrought-iron plate IS inches (48 centime- 

 tres) in thickness; and its backing broke up a cast- 

 iron plate supijorting it, and finally buried itself in 

 the earth. Such results are not attainable, so far 

 as experience has yet indicated, by any other system 

 of ordnance. 



— An electric tram-car was recently tried in Paris 

 very successfully. It was driven a distance of thirty 

 miles in about three hours without accident or deten- 

 tion. The current was supplied by Faure accumu- 

 lators placed under the seats, and driving a Siemens 

 dynamo under the floor at the rate of twelve hun- 

 dred revolutions per minute. The car-wheels turn 

 sixty times to twelve thousand revolutions of the 

 dynamo. The speed attained was five and a half to 

 nine miles an hour, according to the gradient. 



— In a paper before the British association, Pro- 

 fessor Boyd Dawkins remarked that the classification 

 of the tertiary rocks, sketched out some fifty years ago, 

 and since then altered in no important degree, is out 

 of harmony with our jiresent knowledge, and the 

 definitions of the series of events which took place 

 in it has been greatly modified by the process of dis- 

 covery in various parts of the world. The terms ' eo- 

 cene,' ' miocene,' and ' pliocene ' no longer express the 



