376 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. I., No. 13. 



mell gave an investigation of "Alignment curves on 

 any surface, witli special application to the ellipsoid." 



— Mr. A. W. Cramer reports the capture of two 

 specimens of Catocala unijuga Walk., last autumn, in 

 mid-ocean off the coast of Newfoundland, on board a 

 steamer bound for Europe. 



— Prof. G. F. Wright, in the Cleveland leader of 

 April 9, gives an account of his successful search for 

 the continuation of the great terminal moraine across 

 the Ohio Kiver in Kentucky. The marks of glacia- 

 tion disappeared suddenly, "almost exactly upon the 

 line between Campbell and Pendleton counties." 



^ Prof. H. Carvill Lewis has reprinted his lecture 

 before the Franklin institute on The great ice age 

 in Pennsylvania, with a shaded map indicating the 

 southern limit of the glaciated area from the Atlan- 

 tic to the eastern border of Ohio. 



— At the recent yearly meeting of the Brookville 

 (Ind.) society of natural history, the following oflB- 

 cers were elected: Rev. D. R. Moore, president; D. 

 W. McKee, vice-president; Amos W. Butler, secre- 

 tary; Edgar R. Quick, corresponding secretary. 



— G. Pouchet of the Museum of natural history of 

 Paris is soon to visit the Azores on a scientific excur- 

 sion. The municipal council of Paris has voted eight 

 thousand francs towards his expenses. 



— P. Sacconi has established his station at Harrar, 

 Somali-land, and has despatched two caravans to the 

 coast. The town is a miserable place, and hyenas 

 prowl about its streets at night. Sacconi plans to go 

 on to the unvisited district of the Ogadin Somali. 



— Consul O'Neill has received a grant from the 

 Royal geographical society to aid his explorations 

 from Mozambique toward the snowy mountains, re- 

 ported on his last expedition. He will go up the Shire 

 River, and return overland north-eastward to the coast. 



— The Bengal administration report for 1881-82 

 states that the Calcutta zoological gardens are in a 

 very flourishing condition. Two new buildings have 

 been constructed through the generosity of Messrs. 

 Ezra and Gubhoy, citizens of Calcutta. The number 

 of visitors for tlie year was 120,749, being an average 

 of 331 daily. The gardens are open upon Sunday. 



— M. Fan intends soon to set out from Wargla, 

 Algeria, for the Tuareg country, Hausa, and Tim- 

 buctu, following the line of Flatters's disastrous ex- 

 pedition. 



— According to recent calculations by A. J. Skene, 

 surveyor-general of Victoria, the area of Australia, 

 as closely as it can now be determined, is 2,944,019 

 D miles. This is nearly 30,000 less than the previous 

 official estimates. The population -according to the 

 census of 1881 was 2,144,550, —an increase of 36.92 % 

 in ten years. 



— The name of Buckland revives the days of child- 

 hood and geology, as a chiming bell in a foreign land 

 recalls to the traveller memories of home. The U. S. 

 bureau of ethnology has received from Miss A. W. 



Buckland a bound volume containing her collected 

 essays upon various subjects relating to the natural 

 history of man, embracing: The first metallurgists 

 (1875); The origin and development of man (1875); 

 Early phases of civilization (1876) ; Primitive agricul- 

 ture (1877); Stimulants among savages and among 

 the ancients (1879); Mythological birds (1879); Cor- 

 nish and prehistoric Irish monuments (1879) ; Rhab- 

 domancy and belomancy (1879) ; Surgery and super- 

 stition in neolithic times (1881) ; Our anthropological 

 museum (1877). Other essays are bound in the vol- 

 ume, but they are not purely anthropological. 



— Dr. Koner's list of publications of all kinds re- 

 ferring to geography for the year ending November, 

 1882, fills one hundred and forty-four p.ages in the 

 recent number of the Zeitsc.hr. f. erdkunde of Berlin. 

 Of these, the United States require only five; while 

 Africa has eighteen, Asia twenty, and Europe thirty- 

 five. 



— At a recent meeting of the Northumberland and 

 Durham medical society, several forms of electric- 

 light apparatus, devised by Mr. J. B. Payne for the 

 illumination of internal cavities, were shown. A 

 Swan lamp not larger than a bean is used. A battery 

 of two or three Grove cells is sufficient to render the 

 carbon filament incandescent. 



— Prof. H. W. Wiley, former occupant of the chair 

 of chemistry in Purdue university, Lafayette, Ind., 

 has just been appointed (April 9) to the position of 

 chief chemist of the IT. S. department of agriculture. 

 Professor Wiley is a native of Indiana, and a graduate 

 of Harvard. His standing as a chemist is high among 

 scientific men ; and his paper on the relation of science 

 to the industries and arts, read last January at one of 

 the conventions held in the department building, at- 

 tracted much deserved attention. Mr. Collier, whom 

 he supersedes, was also an excellent chemist; and his 

 abrupt dismissal by the commissioner of agriculture, 

 after five years of service, and without justifiable 

 reason as far as we can learn, merits the severest 

 condemnation. 



— The second biennial report of the director of the 

 North-Carolina agricultural experiment station con- 

 tains an outline of tire work performed at the station 

 during 1881 and 1882, a plan and description of the 

 new apartments recently occupied by it in the build- 

 ing of the department of agriculture at Raleigh, a 

 statement of some changes in the law establishing 

 the station, and some account of the growth and 

 present extent of the fertilizer-trade in the state. 



The station has also published, in the form of 

 bulletins, some analyses and investigations of horn, 

 leather, and wool-waste, and the fertilizers contain- 

 ing them; of finely-ground phosphates, or 'floats;' 

 and of kainite ; as well as a list of analyses and v,alua- 

 tions of all fertilizers examined up to March 1, 1883. 



The finely-ground phosphates are the product of 

 the Due mill, working chiefly on South Carolina phos- 



