84 



SCIENCE. 



tVoL. I., No. 3. 



As the iridium does not rust, its advantage over steel 

 plates is obvious. The composition of the bath has 

 not yet been announced. 



— Lewis Boss of Dudley observatory, Miles Kock 

 of the national observatory at Washington, and 

 Charles S. Cudlip, photographer, who were sent by 

 the U. S. transit of Venus commission to Santiago, 

 Chili, have just returned home by way of Panama. 

 They had a very clear day, and obtained good obser- 

 vations of all four contacts, and a complete set of 

 photographs (204). Boss observed with a 5-in. Clark 

 refractor, power 200; Rock, with a .3-in. Clark refract- 

 or, power 200; and the photographs were taken with 

 a horizontal photoheliograph, of 40 feet focal length, 

 forming an image on the photograph-plate abotit four 

 and one-half inches in diameter. In the contact ob- 

 servations the images were almost steady, the defini- 

 tion sharp, and no atmospheric and other phenomena 

 like black drop, etc., were observed, but simple geo- 

 metrical contacts. The narrow ribbon of twilight 

 around Venus was very silvery, and might be mis- 

 taken by inexperienced observers for direct sunlight. 

 This twilight ribbon entirely surrounded Venus more 

 than three minutes before second and after third 

 contact. 



— The annual meeting of the trustees of the Pea- 

 body museum of American archaeology and ethnolo- 

 gy, at Cambridge, was held on the 17th inst., under 

 the chairmanship of the Hon. R. C. Winthrop. The 

 treasurer announced that he had received $900 from 

 subscribers in aid of American research, in addition 

 to the $2,550 mentioned in the last annual report; 

 and the curator was authorized to expend the same 

 for the continuation of explorations under his direc- 

 tion. The curator, in presenting his report, stated 

 that he had also received $775 for special purposes, 

 of which $550 were for Miss Fletcher's researches 

 among the Indians. Twenty-five free lectures were 

 given at the museum during the past year. Numer- 

 ous gifts were made to the library, and the additions 

 to the museum had been larger than in any preced- 

 ing year; the large increase being chiefly due to the 

 special explorations made either by the curator or 

 under his immediate direction through the liberality 

 of patrons of American research. The great impor- 

 tance of systematic explorations was insisted upon; 

 and the curator showed, by his resume of what the 

 limited expenditure had permitted, what might be 

 done were the museum provided with sufficient means 

 for more extended work. He also called attention to 

 the necessity of prompt action on the part of those 

 who were willing to aid the museum in its work if 

 thorough and systematic explorations were to be 

 made in our country; as every year hundreds of 

 mounds, earth-works, and ancient burial-places were 

 destroyed. In concluding his report, he expressed 

 the hope that some liberal patron of science would 

 provide for an increase of the regular income of the 



museum; and also for an addition to the building, 

 since the present accommodations would not permit 

 of the exhibition of more than two-thirds of the col- 

 lections. 



— ' Parish botany ' was the subject of a lecture 

 which Dr. G. L. Goodale gave last Wednesday even- 

 ing before the Divinity school at Cambridge, being 

 one of a course addressed to students of theology by 

 officers of other departments of Harvard university. 

 ' The boundary-line between science and religion ' 

 was the topic discussed by Prof. John Trowbridge a 

 fortnight ago. 



— On the 8th of January was held the first meet- 

 ing of the Colorado scientific society, an association 

 organized for the promotion of scientific intercourse, 

 observation, and record, in the State of Colorado. 

 Its officers for the first year are S. F. Emmons, presi- 

 dent ; Richard Pearce, vice-president ; Whitman Cross, 

 secretary and treasurer; Richard Pearce, Hermann 

 Beeger, A. Eilers, and W. F. Hillebrand, standing 

 committee. The especial attention of the members 

 will be devoted to geology, mineralogy, and chemis- 

 try, and their application to the industrial arts. The 

 society certainly has in Colorado a most interesting 

 field for investigation. 



— At the meeting of the Biological society of 

 Washington, Dec. 22, Prof. C. V. Riley pointed out 

 the real nature of the so-called 'lignified snake of 

 Brazil,' found beneath the bark of a tree: it is, in 

 brief, probably nothing but the excrementitious filling 

 of the burrow of a beetle larva, one of the Bupresti- 

 dae. The head of the supposed serpent is a knot, 

 which has been manipulated to increase the decep- 

 tion its natural form would give; and the tapering 

 and tortuous form of the burrow would be impossible 

 in a snake. Mr. Riley invites the owner to submit 

 his specimen to a crucial test — dissection. Of 

 course the owner declined : his idol would then have 

 perished. 



— Capt. Abney has lately delivered four very inter- 

 esting lectures on recent advances in photography, 

 before the London society of arts. The text is given 

 in full in the last few numbers of the British jour- 

 nal of photography ; but an excellent resume may be 

 found in the Popular science monthly for January, 

 1883. 



— The first part of Vogt and Specht's Natural 

 history of mammals has appeared (Munich : P. 

 Bruckmann), with many well-executed drawings by 

 the last-named author. Tlie work is popular in tone. 



— The British admiralty surveys in 1881, mostly 

 in Asiatic waters, are summarized in the Nautical 

 magazine (November, 1882, 819-828). 



— A representative of the Newfoundland fisheries 

 commission recently visited Washington for the pur- 

 pose of studying the methods of propagating codfish 

 employed by the U. S. fish-commission, with a view 

 of putting them into practice in Newfoundland. 



