July 12, 1889.] 



SCIENCE. 



27 



— The last international medical congress, which met in Wash- 

 ington in 1887, unanimously selected Berlin as the next place of 

 meeting in 1890. Professors Virchow, Von Bergmann, and Wal- 

 deyer, to whom was confided the preliminary direction of the next 

 -congress, have already taken active steps to make it a success. 

 All the medical faculties and other medical bodies in Germany 

 have been invited to nominate delegates to confer together on the 

 subject this year, at the time of the Heidelberg meeting of the 

 ■German Scientific Association in September. It is proposed that 

 the congress of 1890 should commence its proceedings on Aug. 6, 

 1890. 



— Dr. Oliver P. Jenkins, professor of biology in DePauw Univer- 

 sity, accompanied by Oscar Vaught and G. C. Price, two of his 

 students, sailed June 29 from San Francisco for the Hawaiian 

 Islands, on a scientific fishing expedition. They go under the au- 

 thority and with an appropriation of the university for that purpose. 

 They will return the middle of September. They hope to find a 

 valuable field. 



— Kriiss and Schmidt's statement that both nickel and cobalt 

 contain a small percentage of a hitherto unknown element, gnomium, 

 amounting in the case of one specimen of nickel to as much 

 as 2 per cent (Ber. der deut. chem. Geselhch., xxii. 11 ; Nature, 

 xxxix. p. 325), has not been permitted to pass unchallenged, and 

 •quite recently two papers have appeared which tend to show that 

 the supposed new element is non-existent. At the time when they 

 were led to recognize the presence of this common impurity, says 

 Nature, Kriiss and Schmidt were engaged in repeating Winkler's 

 old determination of the atomic weights of nickel and cobalt, in 

 which the ratio Au : Ni or Au : Co was arrived at from the amount 

 -of gold precipitated by these metals from neutral solutions of gold 

 •chloride. Winkler, in the mean time, has repeated this work with 

 carefully purified materials (Ber. der detit. ckem. Geselhch., xxii. 

 890), and has not only failed to obtain any evidence of the existence 

 of gnomium, but, moreover, calls in question the purity of the me- 

 tallic specimens employed by Kriiss and Schmidt. A communica- 

 tion from Dr. Fleitmann to the Ckemzker Zeitimg (xiii. 757) lends 

 considerable support to this view. Adopting the method patented 

 by Kriiss and Schmidt for separating this common impurity from 

 nickel and cobalt by extracting the hydroxides of these metals with 

 sodium hydroxide, Fleitmann has examined a number of specimens 

 of commercially pure nickel and cobalt, and, so far from obtaining 

 2 per cent of gnomium oxide, has failed to isolate from 50 grams 

 of material a weighable amount of any impurity which would serve 

 to justify the view that a hitherto unknown element was associated 

 with these metals. Fleitmann points out that when the hydrox- 

 ides of commercially pure nickel and cobalt are treated with large 

 quantities of sodium hydroxide, impurities go into solution which 

 vary in composition and amount with the source and degree of 

 purity of the metals. These impurities consist of small quantities 

 of the oxides of lead, zinc, arsenic, manganese, molybdenum, silicium, 

 aluminium, cerium, chromium, etc., together with an amount of 

 nickel or cobalt oxide not exceeding 4^ of one per cent of the 

 hydroxide extracted, and, when separated from the alkaline solu- 

 tion by the addition of an acid and subsequent precipitation with 

 ammonium carbonate, give rise to a highly complex mixture of 

 oxides and acids which can only be separated and identified with 

 considerable difficulty. It is not improbable, therefore, that Kriiss 

 -and Schmidt have been dealing with some of the constituents of 

 this mixture, and that, on further examination, gnomium oxide 

 -will prove to be a mixture of the oxides of elements already 

 Jjnown. 



— At the ladies' conversazione of the London Royal Society, 

 June 19, there were exhibited by Mr. Percy E. Newberry, by kind 

 permission of the director of the Royal Gardens, Kew, a series of 

 ancient funeral wreaths and plant-remains, discovered last year by 

 Mr. W. M. Flinders Petrie, in the cemetery of Hawara, Egypt. As 

 described in Nattire, these consisted of wreaths of Egyptian 

 and Greek manufacture, which were all made in the first cen- 

 tury B.C., and were found in wooden coffins, either resting on the 

 heads or surrounding the bodies of the mummies. Among them 

 the following are of special interest : — (i) A verj' perfect wreath 



composed of the flower-heads of a species of immortelle (Gnapha- 

 liu7n Ititeoalbiim, L.), called by the ancients " helichrysos," and 

 much used by them in making garlands. Helichrysos wreaths are 

 mentioned by Pliny {Hist. Nat., xxi. 96) as having been used in 

 Egypt in Ptolemaic times, also by Theophrastus, Athenasus, Cra- 

 tinus, etc. (2) Portion of a curious garland made of cones of 

 papyrus pith, lychnis and rose flowers, rose petals, and scarlet ber- 

 ries of the woody nightshade. These latter are mentioned by 

 Pliny as having been employed in garland-making by the Egyp- 

 tians. (3) Portion of a wreath of Greek manufacture made of 

 flowers of the Polyanthus narcissus {N. Tazetta, L.). Wreaths 

 made of this flower, the " clustered narcissus " of the ancients, are 

 often mentioned by early Greek poets. (4) Portion of a wreath 

 made of the flowers of a species of rose {Rosa sancta, Richards). 

 (5) A perfect wreath composed of rose-petals threaded by a needle 

 on to strips of twine. " Recently," writes Pliny in his history of 

 garlands, " the rose chaplet has been adopted, and luxury has now 

 arisen to such a pitch that rose garlands are held in no esteem at 

 all if they do not consist entirely of petals sewn together with the 

 needle " {Hist. Nat., xxi. 8). There are also exhibited (6) a portion 

 of a wreath composed of twigs of sweet marjoram {Origanum 

 majorana, L.), lychnis flowers, coils of papyrus pith, and pieces of 

 copper tinsel ; (7) a portion of a wreath composed of chrysanthemum 

 flowers and leaves, purple cornflowers, and petals of the flower of a 

 species of Hibiscus ; (8) a portion of a wreath made of flowers of 

 Matthiola librator, L., flowers of the polyanthus, narcissus, and 

 Hibiscus petals ; (9) portions of two necklaces made of flowers of 

 the date palm threaded on strips of twine ; and (10) a fragment of 

 a necklace made of fruits of the date palm. Among the plant- 

 remains are peach-stones, dates, and date-stones, walnut-shells, 

 currants, pomegranates, plums, figs, chick peas, common garden 

 beans and peas, lentils, wheat, barley, and oats. These are prob- 

 ably the remains of the ancient funeral feasts which were held in 

 the Hawara cemetery by the relatives of the deceased people who 

 were buried there. The whole collection (of which the series ex- 

 hibited is only the third part) is fully described by Mr. Percy E. 

 Newberry in Mr. Flinders Petrie's " Hawara, Biahmu, and Ar- 

 sinoe." 



— Nature announces the death of Signer G. Cacciatore, direc- 

 tor of the Palermo Observatory. He died on June 16, in his seventy- 

 sixth year. 



— In response to demand, a new edition of Professor A. Gray's 

 small work on " Absolute Measurements in Electricity and Mag- 

 netism " will be issued immediately by Messrs. Macmillan & Co. 

 The whole work has been very carefully revised, and several alter- 

 ations and additions made, which it is hoped will bring it into ac- 

 cordance with the present state of practical electricity, and render 

 it still more useful to students and electrical engineers. The 

 preparation of the second volume of the same author's larger 

 treatise on the same subject is being pushed on at the same time 

 as quickly as possible. 



— Years ago, when Mr. Charles Wickes was engaged in the 

 preparation of his work on " Spires and Towers of Medieval Eng- 

 lish Churches," he had the good fortune and good sense to consult 

 certain members of the architectural profession, who earnestly be- 

 sought him to print, before the completion and issue of the more 

 elaborate colored drawings, an uncolored edition of his work for the 

 special use of architects. This work Messrs. Ticknor & Co. have 

 reprinted, and are about to issue, not in its original form of three 

 volumes, but the entire work in a single volume. A certain portion 

 of these plates have already been republished in the imperial edition 

 of the American Architect ; but even subscribers to that edition 

 will probably be glad to find a place for the work in its enlarged 

 and completed form, as the plates which have been printed in the 

 imperial edition of the American Architect are scattered through 

 the issues of that journal during a period of nearly two years, and 

 therefore are not readily accessible. Moreover, the present edition 

 contains in full the valuable notes and criticisms of the original, 

 making forty pages of text and notes, not less valuable than the 

 plates. The work is now in press, and will be ready for sale in the 

 course of a few weeks. 



