SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XIV. No. 341 



NOTES AND NEWS. 



The eighth congress of Russian naturalists will be opened at 

 St. Petersburg on Jan. 7, 1890, and will last a week. 



— We regret to have to announce the death of the Rev. J. M. 

 Berkeley, the eminent cryptogamic botanist. 



— Mr. Henry Shaw, the founder of the celebrated botanical 

 gardens in St. Louis, has just celebrated his eighty-ninth birth- 

 day. 



— We learn from Nature that the professorship of civil engi- 

 neering and mechanics in the University of Glasgow is likely to be 

 vacant by the resignation of Professor James Thomson, on account 

 of weak health. 



— Actual elevations taken since the recent disaster at Johns- 

 town, Penn., show that during the flood the water in the neighbor- 

 hood of Conemaugh and the South Fork bridge reached an aver- 

 age height of forty feet above low-water mark. At the big viaduct 

 on the up-stream side the water was seventy-nine feet deep. 



— The Russians have recently improved on the sleeping-coaches 

 of the railway and the perambulating schoolmaster of the rural re- 

 gions. They have provided a school-wagon which is furnished 

 with a room for the teacher, a classroom or study, and a library, 

 all suitably supplied with the necessary material. This wagon will 

 be on the line of the Transcaspian Railway all round the year, re- 

 maining as long as may be deemed necessary at districts which are 

 not provided with a school. 



— The Imperial University of Tokio, in Japan, is making rapid 

 progress. The number of professors and teachers amounts this 

 year to 138, of whom only i5 are foreigners, the rest being Japan- 

 ese. The attendance of students has risen to 788. New buildings 

 for technical education, and a new chemical laboratory, have been 

 erected at the cost of nearly $300,000, and more money is promised 

 by the government for further extensions. 



— It is stated that the Electro-Automatic Transit Company, 

 whose railway system was described in Science of July 12, has 

 succeeded in running its experimental car at the rate of 120 miles 

 an hour for a distance of ten miles. The experiment was performed 

 at the company's two-mile circular track at Laurel, Md. The 

 company intends to construct a five-mile experimental road in the 

 neighborhood of this city, upon which to test the applicability of 

 their system to passenger service, only light packages and mail 

 matter having been experimented with heretofore. 



— The eleventh congress of the Sanitary Institute, which is to 

 meet at Worcester, Eng., from Sept. 24 to 28, will be divided into 

 three sections : viz.. Section I. Sanitary Science and Preventive Medi- 

 cine ; Section II. Engineering and Architecture; Section III. 

 Chemistry, Meteorology, and Geology. Each section will begin its 

 work on a separate day. A conference of medical officers of health 

 will be held during the congress ; and there will be a health exhibi- 

 tion in the skating-rink and special additional buildings from 

 Sept. 24 to Oct. 19. This exhibition will include sanitary apparatus 

 and appliances, and articles for domestic use and economy. 



— "Now, children," said a teacher, after reading the old story of 

 Washington's exploit with his hatchet, " write me all you can re- 

 member of that pretty story I have just read to you." The follow- 

 ing was the result : Slate I. (Teddy, 8 years old). " George Wash- 

 ington is our father did he tell a lie no he never did he did 

 with a hatchit ; " Slate II. (Ethel, 7). " george Washington was the 

 father of is countre hes father sed did you do it he sed i wud not 

 lie i did it with my Hathit and then he busted in tears ; " Slate III. 

 (Georgie, 9). " George Washington is the father of our country and 

 he did it with his hatchit and he sed father I did it did the boy 

 deny it o no did he try to put it on some other feller No He did 

 not tell no lie he burst into tears." 



— It is generally supposed that oak is much stronger than fir, 

 but a series of tests made recently at the car-shops of the Northern 

 Pacific Railroad, in Tacoma, show that the reverse is actually the 

 case. The tests were made by actual breaking strain, on^ sticks 

 two by four inches, and four feet long, the weight being applied in 



the middle of a span of three feet nine inches. The results of five- 

 tests were as follows : first, an old piece of yellow fir, six years ex- 

 posed to the weather, broke at 3,062 pounds ; second, a new soft 

 piece of fine-grain yellow fir broke at 3,062 pounds ; third, old 

 piece of yellow fir, coarse grain and hard, broke short at 4,320; 

 pounds ; fourth, a new piece of fir from the but of a tree, coarse 

 grain, broke with a stringy fracture at 3,635 pounds ; fifth, a new 

 piece of Michigan oak broke nearly short off at a weight of 2,^28 

 pounds. The deflections before breaking were as follows : the 

 first and second pieces, half an inch ; third, three-eighths of an 

 inch ; fourth, five-eighths of an inch ; fifth, the oak piece, one-inch 

 and an eighth. 



— The three teaching universities of Australia — Melbourne, 

 Sydney, and Adelaide — all admit women to their lectures and 

 degrees. It appears that there are now thirty-nine women study- 

 ing in Melbourne University, twenty-three in Sydney, and thirty- 

 four in Adelaide, the latter figures not including a number of stu- 

 dents who are not qualifying for degrees. Adelaide first admitted 

 women students in 1876 ; Melbourne and Sydney, in 188 1 and 

 1882. Ten ladies have graduated in Melbourne, nine in Sydney, 

 and only two in- Adelaide. In all three universities, all prizes,. 

 scholarships, and university privileges generally are open to women, 

 who are also eligible as lecturers and professors. In Melbourne 

 they are debarred from membership of the senate, but this seems 

 to be the only barrier of any kind placed in their way. 



— In connection with the recent heavy rainfall in the neighbor- 

 hood of New York, it is interesting to note that at a meeting of the 

 Royal Society of New South Wales, June 5, in the course of some 

 remarks respecting the recent heavy rainfall, Mr. Russell (the gov- 

 ernment astronomer) stated that he had no hesitation in saying 

 that if rain equal to that which fell in and around Sydney (i.e., 

 20 to 26 inches) had fallen generally over the catchment areas of 

 Windsor, Richmond, the upper parts of the Hawkesbury, and in 

 the valley of the Hunter, most if not all of the towns on their banks 

 would have been swept away. 



— In a recent work by Professor Hartig it is stated, says Garden 

 and Forest, that a count of the annual rings of a tree when cut 

 three or four feet from the ground may not give the accurate age 

 of the tree. Where trees are crowded in a forest, and have de- 

 veloped feeble crowns, the greatest annual increment is just below 

 the crown, and it diminishes regularly downwards. When the- 

 leaf-area is not sufficient to afford food-material to provide for a 

 sheet of cambium all over the tree, the growth stops before reach- 

 ing the bottom, and the ring which is found twenty feet up the 

 trunk may fail altogether before it reaches the ground. In such 

 trees there may be rings lacking at three feet high for certain years, 

 and the total number of rings would be less than the number of 

 years in the tree's life. 



— The Newfoundland bait act, prohibiting the export of fish- 

 bait from that island, instead of having a prejudicial effect upon 

 the French bank fisheries, as was expected, may have the opposite 

 effect. According to the Montreal Witness, the French fishermen 

 have discovered, through necessity, the fact that on the fishing- 

 banks they can catch unlimited quantities of large periwinkles, 

 which, when removed from the shell, and used as bait on their 

 trawls, are a bait which codfish take most ravenously. It t"hus be- 

 comes possible for the fishing-smacks to remain on the banks till 

 their take is complete, hauling up bait on one side of the vessel, 

 and cod on the other, instead of running in to port at intervals, 

 and paying an exorbitant price for bait. 



— At a meeting of the London Chemical Society, June 20, as re- 

 ported in Nature, a note on a yellow pigment in butterflies was 

 read by Mr. F. G. Hopkins. The color effects on the wings of 

 lepidopterous insects are for the most part probably due to purely 

 physical causes, but in some cases pigments are undoubtedly pres- 

 ent. . A yellow pigment, which is found in its purest form in the 

 common English brimstone butterfly, and may also be detected in 

 the wings of a very large number of day-flying Lepidoptera, can 

 be obtained from the wings by simple treatment with hot water, in 

 which it is freely soluble, and may be identified by its yielding a 



