Aveust 4, 1899.] 
count of foreign competition. He points out 
the vast difference between laboratory experi- 
ments and practical pottery, especially with 
reference to leadless glazes. He believes that 
the adoption of the second and third recommen- 
dations, together with monthly medical inspec- 
tion of all workers, would put an end to the 
evils of plumbism. 
THE Zeitschrift fiir angewandte Chemie gives 
an account of a recent explosion in a Swiss 
school in connection with experimentation on 
oxygen. The oxygen was contained in a glass 
gasometer, which had been previously com- 
pletely filled with water, and had been gener- 
ated from potassium chlorate. Unknown to 
the teacher, the gasometer had earlier been 
used for acetylene and the water had not been 
renewed. It seems probable that sufficient 
acetylene had been dissolved by the water to 
give an explosive mixture with the oxygen. 
In the Philosophical Magazine for June, Gerald 
Stoney gives an interesting comparison of the 
amount of oxygen in the atmosphere and in the 
exterior of the earth. Above a square centi- 
meter of the earth’s surface are 234.5 grams 
oxygen. The same amount would be con- 
tained in a column of water of the same sec- 
tion and 264 centimeters deep, and in a still 
shallower column of the earth. Considering 
the earth’s ‘crust’ to be of approximately con- 
stant composition to a depth of seventeen 
miles, the amount of oxygen in it would be 
more than ten thousand times as great as that 
in the atmosphere. 
AT the recent Royal Society’s Conversazione, 
Sir Wm. Crookes exhibited photographs of 
lines high in the ultra violet region, character- 
istic of a new element associated with yttrium 
and separated from it by long fractionation. 
The element has an atomic weight, probably 
near 117, and its oxid in the purest state yet 
prepared is of a pale brown color. The name 
of victorium has been given to the element. 
Note was recently made of the investigations 
of Parmentier, tending to show that fluorin is 
not present in certain mineral waters, as had 
been previously held. In a succeeding number 
of the Comptes Rendus Charles Lepierre main- 
tains that minute traces of fluorin have been 
SCIENCE. 
155 
detected in many mineral waters, and no less 
than ten or twelve milligrams per litre are pres- 
ent in the Gerez water (north Portugal). This 
water is considered very efficacious in liver dis- 
eases. i ; 
A PAPER was recently read before the Royal 
Society by David Gill on the presence of oxygen 
in the atmosphere of certain fixed stars. A 
study of the spectrum of 6 Crucis reveals the 
presence of all the stronger oxygen lines as well 
as all the known helium lines. On the other 
hand, no trace of true nitrogen lines are found 
in the spectrum. Hydrogen is present, and 
probably carbon and magnesium. The spectra 
of 6 and « Canis Majoris and probably 6 Cen- 
tauri are practically identical with that of 
Crucis. Vo Ip, 18L. 
CANNIBALISM IN QUEENSLAND. 
EUGENE F. RUDDER contributes to a recent 
number of Science of Man (Vol. 2, No. 3, Sydney, 
April 21, 1899) interesting personal observa- 
tions on the Blackfellows of Queensland. Acci- 
dentally he stumbled on a silent but apparently 
ceremonial feast on the flesh of ‘a very power- 
ful, well-conditioned black,’ who had been shot 
in an attempt to escape from capture for some 
offense the day before. The skin had been re- 
moved entire and was drying before the fire on 
five spears set in the ground ; and, on detection, 
the group of blacks deserted their work and did 
not reappear. Inquiry among other blacks 
yielded little connected information concerning 
the case, except that ‘It make ’im blackfellow 
strong fellow’; but more general inquiries 
elicited the information that the anthropophagy 
was commonly limited to the bodies of those 
killed in battle or by accident, and that the 
feast was ceremonial and usually limited to the 
kinfolk of the deceased. In one case a girl 
was speared and eaten by two rivals for her 
hand ; the body was cooked on a sort of plat- 
form of green poles, laid above the glowing 
coals of a large fire when nearly burned down. 
Another case was the killing and eating ofa 
female child by the mother; this is said to be 
an established custom in case of excess of female 
children, or in case of deformity, the custom 
being enforced by capital punishment, and the 
