July 5, 1889.] 



SCIENCE. 



generated by the oil, which ignites easily ; and it has now given an 

 order to a dog-fancier's association for two hundred bull-dogs, 

 to range in age from six months to a year, the price to be fifteen 

 dollars each. The dogs are to be placed where the company has 

 distributing-stations, and used in the field to guard the large iron 

 tanks that are full of oil. The bull-dog watchman certainly has 

 this merit over the average biped private watchman, that he neither 

 smokes, drinks, nor goes to sleep on watch.' " 



— We learn from Nature that the Russian Academy of Sciences 

 ■offers a prize of $2,500 for the best inquiry into the nature and 

 •effects of the poison which develops in cured fish. The objects of 

 competitors must be : " (i) To determine, by means of exact ex- 

 periments, the physical and chemical nature of the poison which 

 develops in fish ; (2) to study, by experiments on animals, its action 

 upon the heart, the circulation of the blood, the organs of diges- 

 tion, and the nervous system ; (3) to determine the rapidity of its 

 absorption by the digestive organs; and (4) to study and describe 

 the characteristics which may serve to distinguish contaminated 

 fish from such as are not contaminated." The fifth and sixth 

 ■questions, with which it may be impossible for any one to deal 

 satisfactorily, relate to the means of preserving fish from the de- 

 velopment of the poison, and to the question of counter-poisons 

 and the medical treatment of poisoned persons. The competition 

 is open to all. The memoirs must be sent in, either in manuscript 

 ■or printed, before Jan. i, 1893, and may be written in any one of 

 the following languages : Russian, Latin, French, English, Ger- 

 man. If none of the papers is deemed worthy of the full prize, the 

 accumulated interest upon the above-named sum may be handed 

 over to the author who presents the best solution of some part of 

 the problem. 



— Arrangements have been made for a daily exchange of tele- 

 graphic weather reports between Washington and Havana during 

 the present hurricane season. Early and reliable information can 

 be obtained at any branch hydrographic office. 



— The forecast of weather on the Atlantic for July by the United 

 States Hydrographic Office is that generally fair weather will pre- 

 vail. Occasional moderate gales, frequently accompanied by elec- 

 tric phenomena, will be felt north of the 40th parallel ; and West 

 Indian hurricanes are apt to occur, especially during the latter 

 part of the month. Frequent fogs may be expected over the Grand 

 Banks, along the northern coast of the United States, and in the 

 neighborhood of the British Isles. Icebergs are liable to be en- 

 countered in the vicinity of the Grand Banks, between the 46th and 

 53d meridians, as far south as latitude 42° 30' north. Field-ice 

 should be looked out for to the eastward and southward of New- 

 foundland and off the coast of Cape Breton Island. 



— On July 22 an electric exhibition will open at St. John, N.B., 

 to last ten days. This is in honor of the opening of the Cana- 

 dian Pacific Railway to St. John. 



— The Canadian Pacific Railway, in spite of its northerly latitude, 

 seems to have overcome the snow difficulty. The total detentions 

 during the past winter from this cause were only seven hours, the 

 snowsheds and split and glance fences protecting the line in a very 

 perfect manner, though some very heavy avalanches fell in the 

 Selkirks. 



— ■ People may walk until they are fatigued through the almost 

 endless buildings on the Champ de Mars, and yet fail to find any 

 great and striking object by which they would especially remem- 

 ber the exhibition of 1889. The place is filled with evidences of 

 untiring industry and skill on every side, but there is a strange 

 absence of great novelties. We believe, however, that the exhibi- 

 tion will be famous for four distinctive features, — in the first place, 

 for its buildings, especially the Eiffel Tower and the Machinery 

 Hall ; in the second place, for its Colonial Exhibition, which for 

 the first time brings vividly to the appreciation of Frenchmer. that 

 they are masters of lands beyond the sea ; third, it will be r«nem- 

 bered for its great collection of war material, the most abaaiibing 

 subject nowadays, unfortunately, to governments, if not to individ- 

 uals ; and, fourth, it will be remembered, and with good cause by 

 many, for the extraordinary manner in. which SoHlh Ameriean 



countries are represented. Several of those nationalities are be- 

 ginning to put themselves forward as appreciable factors in the 

 politics of the world, and, what is of more interest to the manufac- 

 turer, they constitute the richest and largest customers in European 

 and North American markets. Especially this is the case with re- 

 gard to agricultural machinery of all kinds, and those exhibiters 

 are fortunate who are well represented in this respect. 



— Mr. Henry William Bristow, F.R.S., died on Friday, June 14, 

 at the age of seventy-two. In 1842, according to Nature, he was 

 appointed a member of the staff of the Geological Survey of the 

 United Kingdom. Mr. Bristow published various works on 

 mineralogy and geology, and was the author of the mineralogi- 

 cal articles in Brande's " Dictionary of Science, Literature, and 

 Art," and of articles on minerals and rocks in Ure's " Dic- 

 tionary of Arts, Manufactures, and Mines." He became a fellow 

 of the Geological Society in 1843, and of the Royal Society in 1862, 

 and an honorary fellow of King's College, London, in 1863. He 

 received the diploma of the Imperial Geological Institute of Vienna, 

 and from the ICing of Italy the diploma and insignia of an officer of 

 the Order of SS. Maurice and Lazarus. 



— In reference to the destructive volcanic eruption on the Island 

 of Oshima (better known to the Western world as Vries Island), it 

 seems that the first news of it was brought to Yokohama by the 

 master of a passing steamer, who described the mountain Miharai- 

 zan as being in fiercely active eruption on the morning of April 13. 

 The eruption was of such a nature that it attracted attention on 

 board the steamer at a great distance. Afterwards it was ascer- 

 tained that the outbreak was at the western base of the mountain. 

 From this it would appear that a new crater has been formed, as 

 the old crater is at the top of the mountain, though there is a place 

 to the south-west whence smoke is always issuing from the sands. 

 The Japaii Weekly Mail, from which this information is taken, 

 gives the following historical account of this remarkable volcanic 

 island. Miharaizan, according to the oldest Japanese historical 

 records, was an active volcano so far back as 684 A.D., but the 

 earliest authentic notice of its activity appears to have been taken 

 in 1421, when the sea boiled, and the fish died in shoals. In 1684 

 an eruption commenced which lasted seven years; and in 1703 

 there was a great earthquake and tidal wave, and part of the island 

 broke down, and formed the present harbor. In 1777 the moun- 

 tain was in active eruption, and the island was covered several 

 inches deep with ashes, such phenomena being almost constantly 

 repeated from that date till 1792. It was then quiet till 1837, and 

 more or less in action for the following twenty years. Another 

 lull then took place, when, in l868, it again broke out, and con- 

 tinued in action four days. The next eruption occurred in 1876, 

 and lasted nearly two months. The most destructive eruptions of 

 Miharaizan were probably those of 1781 and 1789, as during the 

 latter the village of Shimotaka was entirely destroyed, and the 

 people and their houses were completely buried in ashes. There 

 are at present six villages on the island, containing a population of 

 five thousand persons, mostly fishermen. 



— Maria Mitchell, the well-known astronomer, until recently 

 professor of astronomy at Vassar, died June 28 at Lynn, Mass. 

 Miss Mitchell was born in Nantucket in 1818, and inherited her 

 love of astronomy from her father, a bank cashier who made a 

 hobby of astronomical investigations. It was one of Miss Mitchell's 

 ambitions to discover a telescopic comet, — an ambition that was 

 satisfied in 1847. For this discovery a medal was presented to her 

 by the King of Denmark, although, doubting the reality of her 

 discovery for a time. Miss Mitchell had delayed publishing it, 

 — a delay which came near losing her the honor, as European 

 astronomers had found the same comet, and made earlier pub- 

 lication. It was through the earnest presentation of her case by 

 Edward Everett that the medal reached this famous woman as- 

 tronomer. 



— Theodore Dwight Woolsey, president of Vale College from 

 1846 to 1S71, died July i. He was born in New York, Oct. 31, 

 1 801. Besides his Greek text-books, published early in his car'eer, 

 his sermons and essays. President Woolsey wrote the well-known 

 "Treatise on International Law." 



