AUGUST 25, 1899.] 
killed within an hour or two of the addition of 
five drops of kerosene, and the many thousands 
in the tank, which was of nearly 300 cubic feet 
capacity, were killed by a teaspoonful in a few 
hours. The experiment is so simple and inex- 
pensive that there seems no reason why it 
should not be tried on a more extensive scale 
in other places. 
ACCORDING to private advices received from 
India, says the London Times, the Board of 
Trustees constituted last spring to carry out the 
scheme approved by the Bombay Legislative 
Council for preventinga recurrence of the plague 
has already notified for execution four plans of 
reconstruction affecting alarge insanitary section 
of the city and involving the laying-out of six 
miles of new streets. The estimated cost of 
these projects is Rx.1,820,000. They are de- 
signed on the recoupment principle, which was 
essential in view of the magnitude of the build- 
ing operations which will have to be carried out 
on both sides of the new thoroughfares. The 
general idea of the scheme, the initiation of 
which was due entirely to Lord Sandhurst, who 
has devoted much time and personal attention 
to the city of Bombay, is to deal effectually with 
the insanitary conditions of the place by remov- 
ing ‘rookeries’ and ‘slums,’ and by providing 
wide thoroughfares in over-crowded localities 
very much on the lines which have been so suc- 
cessfully followed in Glasgow, Birmingham and 
other British towns. The Bombay scheme, how- 
ever, goes further and deals also with a more 
serious condition of affairs. It includes pro- 
vision for the extension of the city by re- 
claiming large areas on the foreshore of 
the island as well as the opening out of 
wide roads, the removal of insanitary dwell- 
ings, and the erection on a very extensive 
scale of new dwellings for the working classes. 
The Board of Trustees, to which is entrusted 
the task of carrying out this work, is subsidized 
by the Corporation of Bombay and endowed 
with the usufruct of certain valuable building 
areas belonging to government and the corpo- 
ration, within the city limits; also with the 
right of reclamation on the foreshore outside 
the limits of the port. The Board consists of 
14 Trustees, partly ex officio, partly elected and 
partly nominated, and all the chief interests 
SCIENCE. 
263 
concerned are fully represented. It has special 
powers to acquire property required for or in 
connection with the several schemes to be 
undertaken, and power, with the sanction of 
the government, to raise loans. The scheme 
involves a new departure of some moment, and 
its operation will be watched with considerable 
interest. In a Western city the project would 
undoubtedly have been left to the ordinary 
municipal organization, but in India, although 
local self-government has developed amazingly, 
it is no disparagement of that principle to 
question its efficiency for carrying out improve- 
ments dealing with vested interests on an enor- 
mous scale, and requiring years of persistent 
effort on systematic lines for their due accom- 
plishment, in addition to the task of adminis- 
tering the ordinary affairs of a great city. 
Sir Ropert S. BALL, in his annual report of 
proceedings in the Cambridge Observatory for 
the year ended May 25, 1899, states, according 
to the report in the London Z%mes, that during 
this period the meridian circle has been used, 
as in the previous year, for the perfection of the 
catalogue by re-observing stars, of which not 
more than two observations had been obtained, 
in order to carry out the original design that 
each place should depend on not less than three 
observations. To this end 2,241 observations 
have been taken of 1,429 stars ; 58 are still in- 
sufficiently observed, and five have not yet been 
re-observed. Theintervals of the transit wires 
were determined afresh, at the beginning of this 
year, from 115 observations of Polaris made in 
1898, and tables were constructed for facilitat- 
ing the reductions to center wire. These in- 
tervals have been used since the beginning of 
1899. A very important addition to the in- 
strumental equipment of the Observatory has 
been made during the past year by the erection 
of the new equatorial, which will be known as 
the Sheepshanks equatorial. A machine for 
measuring the photographs has been designed, 
and is now being constructed by the Cambridge 
Scientific Instrument Company. It is essen- 
tially a form of the instrument designed by Pro- 
fessor Turner for the work of the astrographic 
chart, modified to give the greater accuracy re- 
quired in stellar parallax work. The syndicate 
have pleasure in announcing that they have re- 
