May 22, 1896.] 



SCIENCE. 



775 



violets occupies twice as miicli volume as the 

 smell of camphor. They think the method cau 

 be employed to test the hygienic condition of 

 the air of cities. 



At the annual business meeting of the Na- 

 tional Geographic Society the following six 

 members of the Board of Managers were elected 

 for the next three years : Charles J. Bell, G. 

 K. Gilbert, D. T. Day, W. H. Dall, H. G. 

 Ogden and C. W. Dabney. 



It is announced that the Toronto meeting of 

 the British Association in 1897 will be opened 

 on August 18th. 



In a letter to the Secretary of the American 

 Metrological Society, Mr. Horace Andrews, 

 City Engineer of Albany, states that while a 

 change to the metric system would probably 

 occasion more awkardness in an engineer's 

 office than anywhere else, yet he is in favor of 

 change. He calls attention to the fact that in 

 many old deeds and old maps the ' Kyland ' 

 foot and rod were used ; this was probably a 

 'Ehineland' foot, its length being 1.034.5 Eng- 

 lish feet. 



It is stated in New York Evening Post that 

 Dr. William W. Jacques, an electrician of Bos- 

 ton, claims to have solved the problem of ob- 

 taining electrical energy from coal direct. As 

 described by himself, in his application for a 

 patent, he has discovered that "if oxygen, 

 whether pure or diluted as in air, be caused to 

 combine with carbon or carbonaceous materials, 

 not directly, as in combustion, but through an 

 intervening electrolyte, the potential energy of 

 the carbon may be converted directly into 

 electrical energy instead of into heat." His 

 electrolyte is fused caustic soda, into which he 

 places a stick of carbon, the oxygen being sup- 

 Ijlied by pumping in the air. 



AccoEDiNG to Nature, a fine series of pho- 

 tographs of flying bullets, both in free air 

 and in different stages of penetrating through 

 a pane of glass, have been taken in Italy 

 by Dr. Q. Majorana Calatabiano and Dr. 

 A. Fontana, of the Italian Artillery. The 

 apparatus described is a modification of that 

 employed by Prof. C. V. Boys, and these 

 photographs might, perhaps, more correctly 



be described as skiagraphs, since they are 

 shadow-pictures produced on the photographic 

 plate by the light from an electric spark pro- 

 duced by the discharge of a condenser. The 

 chief peculiarity of the present figures is that, in 

 addition to the anterior wave produced by the 

 'advance of the aerial disturbance, they exhibit 

 dark strife just in front of the projectile — a re- 

 sult not previously observed, and which the 

 authors account for by supposing that the sud- 

 den compression of the air causes condensation 

 of moisture producing an opaque cloud. In sup- 

 port of this theory, it is stated that the experi- 

 ments were performed iu a moist atmosphere. 

 This blurred appearance is very similar to that 

 which would be produced by the sparks arising 

 from an oscillatory discharge of the condenser, 

 but the careful precautions adopted by the ex- 

 perimenters to prevent any secondary discharge 

 negative this explanation. 



De. Chaeles H. Judd, who has recently 

 been appointed instructor in psychology in 

 Wesleyan University, is engaged in translating 

 Prof. Wundt's recently issued Grundriss der 

 Psychologic with the cooperation and under the 

 direction of the author. 



We take the following items from the May 

 number of Natural Science: "Dr. K. Lauter- 

 bach, Mr. Tappenbeck and Dr. Kirsting are 

 leading an expedition to the Hinterland of New 

 Guinea." " Dr. Nils Hoist, the Swedish geolo- 

 gist, is to travel for a year in West Australia 

 under the auspices of the Anglo-Scandinavian 

 Exploration Company." " The ' Faraday ' has 

 returned from the Amazons, bringing with her 

 Messrs. Austen and Pickard Cambridge, who 

 have amassed a fine collection, chiefly of 

 Arthropoda, and including several spiders' 

 nests. These will go to the British Museum 

 (Natural History). Some interesting bionomic 

 observations have been made." "In connec- 

 tion with Andree's balloon exhibition to the 

 North Pole, it is hoped to send a zoological ex- 

 pedition, under the direction of G. Gronberg, 

 lecturer at Stockholm University, to the Norsk- 

 oar, near Spitzbergen, from which islands the 

 ascent is to be made. These islands have long 

 been known as one of the richest zoological 

 localities in this region. A Polish contingent 



