Septembek 6, 1895.] 



SCIENCE. 



299 



out restricting its necessary and desirable 

 use, but no methods were found free from 

 difi&culty. The technical schools teaching 

 sanitary plumbing were commended and 

 their extension advised, as were the pro- 

 fessorships of sanitation in schools of archi- 

 tecture. Wm. Trelat's system of heating- 

 rooms and his formulation of the theory — 

 by no means new — that heat should be 

 radiated into rooms from warm walls, and 

 not introduced by heating the enclosed air, 

 were strongly approved. One method of 

 Mr. Trelat is that of superheating the room 

 before it is required for use, and then, by 

 opening doors and windows, replacing the 

 heated by cold air, thus leaving the heating 

 to be done by radiation from the walls, and 

 yet giving the occupants cold air to breathe. 

 Resolutions were passed in favor of baths 

 in schools, of cheap working-class dwellings 

 and other social and economic improve- 

 ments. The attendance was about three 

 hundred. 



GENERAL. 



The largest steamer yet constructed for 

 carrying freight was launched at Wallsend, 

 Gr. B., recently. The ' Westmeath ' is 465 

 feet long, 56 feet beam, 34^ feet moulded 

 depth, and can carry 10,500 tons dead 

 weight of cargo, or 14,500 tons by measure- 

 ment. The bottom is double and construc- 

 ted as a system of ballast tanks. The en- 

 gines are triple expansion and work at 180 

 pounds pressure. The hull is by Swan & 

 Hunter, the engines by the Wallsend En- 

 gineering Co. 



English express trains between London 

 and Glasgow and Edinburgh have for many 

 years had schedules calling for speeds of 

 50 miles an hour. This has now been 

 bettered by the London- Aberdeen express, 

 which is scheduled to make the 540 miles 

 iu 8 J hours. This was accomplished by 

 the first train a month ago, and with no 

 apparent difficulty, making the mean speed 



including stops over 63 miles an hour, and 

 probably at times between stations on level 

 stretches above 70 miles. 



Professor Sylvanus Thompson, in a 

 letter to the London Times, August 1st, pro- 

 tests against the prejudice attributed to Lord 

 Kelvin and others in favor of continuous 

 currents for general use, and states that ex- 

 perience indicated the alternating currents 

 to be desirable for all but electrolytic work. 

 The obvious advantages of simplicity and 

 relative cheapness of the latter are in no 

 other case considered by the critic to be in 

 any important degree compensated by con- 

 tinuity of current. E. H. Thurston. 



SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS. 



Sir William Turner (Journ. Anat. and 

 Physiol., April, 1895, p. 424) after review- 

 ing the famous examples of the so-called 

 transitional forms between apes and man, 

 and concluding that they are without ex- 

 ception human, gives a detailed account of 

 Dubois' Pithecanthropus erectus. The frag- 

 ments on which this ' genus ' is founded are 

 also thought to be human when the single 

 molar tooth is ehminated. The author 

 holds that, since the crown of this tooth is 

 not worn, while all the sutures of the cra- 

 nial vault are obliterated, the tooth is from 

 another skeleton and in all probability that 

 of an ourang. 



Professor D. D. Slade has written an 

 elaborate paper on The Significance of the Ju- 

 gal Arch. (Proc. Amer. Philosoph. Soc. 

 xxxiv.. May 13th, 1895, pp. 17.) A syste- 

 matic review of the elements entering into 

 the composition of the jugal arch in the 

 mammalia is essayed. The author invites 

 attention to the taxonomic value of the arch 

 in genera and families, while acknowledg- 

 ing that the underlying forces which it is 

 assumed have produced the various forms 

 yet await elucidation. 



At the approaching meeting of the Brit- 

 ish Association for the Advancement of 



