74 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XIV. No. 339 



account of the present state of the electric light and power indus- 

 tries. The executive committee will report through its chairman, 

 Mr. Benjamin Rhodes, who will record the general work of the 

 association for the last six months, and more particularly that por- 

 tion of it not fully covered in the other committee and official re- 

 ports. This will be followed by the usual report of the secretary 

 and treasurer. The committee on harmonizing the electric-light 

 and insurance interests will report through its chairman, Mr. P. H. 

 Alexander, who will present elaborate statistics on the fire losses 

 collected and the insurance premiums paid by electric-light com- 

 panies ; the committee will also recommend measures by which 

 insurance rates on electric-light stations may be lowered. The 

 national committee on State and municipal legislation will report 

 through its chairman, Mr. Allan R. Foote of Cincinnati. This 

 committee, which is now composed of twenty-six gentlemen from 

 as many different States, and whose object was set forth in Bulle- 

 tin No. I of the National Electric Light Association of New York, 

 is now fully organized and ready for work. The committee on the 

 revision of the constitution will report through its chairman. Dr. 

 Otto A. Moses, who will submit a carefully considered revision of 

 the present constitution. Dr. Moses will also address the conven- 

 tion on the recent movement in New York State to introduce kill- 

 ing by electricity as a substitute for hanging in legal execution. 

 He will supplement his remarks with well-digested statistics. The 

 following papers will be read : " The Value of Economic Data to 

 the Electric Industry," by Mr. Allan R. Foote of Cincinnati ; 

 " Electric Street-Railways," by Mr. George W. Mansfield of Bos- 

 ton ; "An Ideal Station," a paper in two parts, — from an elec- 

 trical standpoint, by Mr. Marsden J. Perry of Providence ; from a 

 mechanical standpoint, by Mr. John T. Henthorn of the same city ; 

 " The Economic Size of Line- Wire," by Benjamin Rhodes of 

 Niagara Falls ; " Station Accessories in the Shape of Measuring- 

 Instruments," by C. C. Haskins of Chicago ; " The Development 

 and Progress of the Storage- Battery," by Mr. William Bracken of 

 New York ; " The Theoretically Perfect Arc-Light Station," by M. 

 M. D. Law of Philadelphia ; and " The Electrical Transmission of 

 Power," by Professor E. P. Roberts of Cleveland. Mr. A. J. De 

 Camp will address the convention on " The Methods of Arriving 

 at the Cost of the Products of a Station." Gentlemen who pro- 

 pose attending the Niagara Falls convention are reminded, that, to 

 get the two-thirds rebate on their return railroad-ticket, it will be 

 necessary for them to procure a Trunk Line or Central Traffic As- 

 sociation certificate from the ticket-agent when they buy their 

 ticket to Niagara Falls. The secretary and treasurer, Allan V. 

 Garratt, will be at the Electric Club Saturday and Sunday even- 

 ings, Aug. 3 and 4, and at the Erie Railroad Depot, at the foot of 

 Chambers Street, New York, at 8.45 o'clock a.m., Monday, Aug. 5, 

 to supply tickets and certificates for the special train at 9 o'clock 

 A.M. on the same day. 



— Mr. D. W. Langdon, jun., who has been for a number of 

 years connected with the Alabama Geological Survey, has entered 

 upon the duties of geologist and consulting mining engineer of the 

 Chesapeake and Ohio Railway, probably with headquarters at 

 Richmond, Va. 



— Professor G. E. Morrow of the University of Illinois is now in 

 Europe, in behalf of the United States Department of Agriculture, 

 to make a report on the five-stock exhibited at the Royal Agricul- 

 tural Society show at Windsor. He will also visit the Continent, 

 and especially France and Germany. 



— On July 15 a deep-sea exploration party started from Kiel, on 

 board the steamer " National," for the Greenland coast, where they 

 propose to carry on a series of submarine soundings and investiga- 

 tions. The expedition is directed by Professor Hensen. 



— The next international archaeological congress is' to be held in 

 Christiania in 1891. It was originally intended that it should be 

 held in London. Dr. Ingvald Undseth of Christiania is the general 

 secretary. 



— According to a correspondent of the Artisan, a simple plan 

 of preventing sheet-iron stacks from rusting is as follows : if be- 

 fore raising the new chimney, each section, as it comes from the 

 shop, be coated with common coal-tar, then filled with light shav- 



ings and fired, it will resist rust for an indefinite period, rendering 

 future painting unnecessary. In proof of this, he cites a chimney 

 which was erected in 1866, treated as above described, and is to- 

 day as bright as it was the day it was raised, without having a 

 particle of paint applied since. The theory by which he accounts 

 for this result is that the coal-tar is literally burned into the iron, 

 closing the pores, and rendering it rust-proof. 



— In the Engineering and Mining Jotirtial for July 27, Henry 

 Wurtz maintains that asphalts and asphaltoids are mainly pro- 

 duced from rock-oils by polymerization of certain constituents of 

 such oils under the influence of the air, or of the sun's rays, or of 

 both, together with the influence of acid, saline, or other polymeriz- 

 ing agents incidentally present ; and the author defines polymeriza- 

 tion as due to and dependent on the coalescence of two or more 

 molecules of an element or compound into one ; being inclusive 

 and explanatory, as thus regarded, of the allotropism of Berzelius. 



— From some notes on the color of the eyes and hair in Norway, 

 by Drs. Abbo and Faye, with tables and annotations by M. Topi- 

 nard, in the Revue d' Anthropologie, it appears that the population 

 of Norway exhibits a higher percentage (97.25) of light eyes than 

 any other country in Europe. Flaxen hair occurs in 57.5 per cent 

 of the people of the northern provinces ; and, while absolutely 

 black hair is found only in the ratio of 2 per cent, red hair does not 

 rise higher than 1.5 per cent in the scale of hair-coloration. 



— Nature gives the following summary of a paper on " Hallstatt 

 in Austria, its Places of Burial, and its Civilization," by Dr. Homes : 

 " This is an extremely interesting summary of the important dis- 

 coveries made within the last few years in the Hallstattian burying- 

 grounds of Slavonian Austria, more especially at Watsch in Car- 

 niola, where the beauty and finish of the carved baldrics and belts 

 have led contemporary paleontologists to regard them as an 

 evidence of the existence in central Europe of an early civilization, 

 which had already attained to considerable artistic culture before 

 its extinction under the weight of advancing hordes of barbarian 

 invaders. The necropolis of Hallstatt, for our acquaintance with 

 which we are indebted to Baron Sacken, still remains unrivalled 

 for the splendor and variety of its antiquities, notwithstanding the 

 marvellous results of the recent Carniolian and Croatian finds. 

 Between 1846 and 1S63, Sacken and Ramsauer published reports 

 of their explorations of nearly 1,000 tombs, while since that pe'riod 

 the number of graves explored has risen to nearly 1,900. Both at 

 Hallstatt and Watsch the rites of interment and incineration had 

 been followed with nearly equal frequency ; but, although in the 

 case of the latter the graves appear to have been most richly sup- 

 plied with gold ornaments and carved bronze arms, the abundance 

 of yellow amber and of decorative objects of the toilet, which are 

 found buried with the unburnt skeletons, renders it difficult to de- 

 cide which of the two methods of disposing of the dead was re- 

 garded as the more distinguished. The cranial type is generally 

 dolichocephalous, with a retreating forehead and long, slightly 

 prognathic face, resembling what is known in Germany as the 

 ' Reihengrabertypus.' According to Sacken, the necropolis of 

 Hallstatt dates from the third or fourth century B.C., revealing the 

 presence in those regions of the eastern Alps of the so-called Galli 

 Faurisci, who, prior to the Roman domination, must have been 

 familiar with an advanced stage of civilization and decorative art, 

 in which the influence of Greek art is undeniable. This is indeed 

 strongly manifested both in the workmanship and the forms of 

 multitudinous objects revealed by the exploration not merely of the 

 Hallstattian tombs, but of the prehistoric station of Salzberg, 

 whose discovery last year has added new interest to the still con- 

 tested problem of the origin of the early culture of the Alpine races 

 of central Europe." 



— A successful experiment is reported to have been made re- 

 cently at the laboratory of the Joseph Dixon Crucible Company, in 

 Jersey City, N.J. A piece of iron ten inches long, two inches wide, 

 and a sixteenth of an inch thick, was used, and one-half of its sur- 

 face painted with silica-graphite paint, while the other half was left 

 unpainted. It was suspended for several days in a bath of dilute 

 sulphuric acid. This bath was much stronger than any sulphur- 

 water met with in mining. On taking the iron from the bath, the 

 unpainted part was found eaten off to about one-half its original 



