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SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XIV. No. 342 



members of the society, nor to residents in Australia, but is open 

 to all without any restriction whatever, excepting that a prize will 

 not be awarded to a member of the council for the time being ; 

 neither will an award be made for a mere compilation, however 

 meritorious in its way. The communication, to be successful, 

 must be either wholly or in. part the result of original observation 

 or research on the part of the contributor. The society is fully 

 sensible that the money value of the prize will not repay an investi- 

 gator for the expenditure of his time and labor, but it is hoped that 

 the honor will be regarded as a sufficient inducement and reward. 

 The successful papers will be published in the society's annual 

 volume, and fifty reprint copies will be furnished to the author free 

 of expense. Competitors are requested to write upon foolscap 

 paper — on one side only. A motto must be used instead of the 

 writer's name, and each paper must be accompanied by a sealed 

 envelope bearing the motto outside and containing the writer's 

 name and address inside. All communications are to be addressed 

 to the honorary secretaries, A. Liversidge, and F. B. Kyngdon. 



— The English Consul at St. Petersburg says that naphtha re- 

 siduum is being more and more employed as fuel in Russia. All 

 the steamers of the Caspian Sea, and many of those plying on the 

 Volga, have for some time past used it as fuel. At. the present 

 time manufactories and railways are adopting it in the place of 

 wood and coal. It is also being utilized for domestic purposes in 

 stoves of special construction, ingenious specimens of which were 

 exhibited last year at the St. Petersburg Naphtha Products Exhibi- 

 tion. By the employment of this new combustible a considerable 

 saving is effected under the head of fuel. Some large manufactories 

 in Moscow and its immediate neighborhood employ naphtha resi- 

 due in their furnaces, because, in addition to its great cheapness, it 

 possesses the advantage of occupying less space than wood or coal 

 for storage. It is kept underground in large cisterns communi- 

 cating by pipes with the furnaces, and owing to this method of 

 storage it is also less exposed to danger from fire. It is established 

 that the cost of naphtha dregs as fuel is about 35 per cent less 

 than that of wood and coal, and this, too, at Moscow, which is 

 1,500 miles distant from the source of supply at Baku, whence 

 naphtha dregs are conveyed by water to Nijni Novgorod, and be- 

 yond by rail to Moscow. Several manufacturers of the province of 

 Vladimir have also adopted the new combustible, and the railway 

 lines existing in the Tambov and Riazan provinces are on the point 

 of doing the same. During 1888, 867,857 tons of naphtha residue 

 were transported from Baku up the Volga, for use in the interior 

 provinces and in those bordering the Volga. It is expected that in 

 1889 the supply will exceed 1,125,000 tons. In the northern zone 

 of the empire, wood will, it is stated^hold its own as fuel for some 

 time to come. It is specially in the central, south-eastern, and 

 eastern provinces of Russia that the employment of naphtha re- 

 siduum as a substitute for both wood and coal promises to attain 

 great proportions. 



— At the 'Vale Observatory, during the summer months of 18S8, 

 Dr. Elkin completed the measures with the heliometer for the 

 triangulation of the region near the north pole. The reductions of 

 these measures are well advanced. In October they commenced 

 the series of observations on the minor planet Iris in conjunction 

 with the observatories at the Cape and at Leipzig. The autumn 

 months were unfortunately by no means as favorable as usual, 

 and they only secured measures on thirty-four of the sixty-five 

 planned nights. They undertook at the same time a further series 

 for the diurnal parallax of the planet. They are now commencing 

 a similar series on the planet Victoria, to continue through until 

 September ; and a third series on Sappho is to occupy them in 

 September and October. As, in addition to the heliometers used 

 for Iris, those at Bamberg and Gottingen will probably co-operate 

 this year, the three series together will doubtless furnish a very ac- 

 curate value of the solar parallax. The heliometer has also been 

 employed in some supplementary series on the parallaxes of the 

 northern brighter stars, Mr. Hall having taken up Procyon and a 

 Aquilae, and Dr. Elkin, Vega and a Leonis. During the winter, 

 Mr. Hall completed the reductions of his work on the orbit of 

 Titan, the results of which are in very satisfactory agreement with 

 those of Bessel and Hermann Struve. The value found for the 



mass of Saturn is i : 3500.5 of the solar mass, Bessel's revised value 

 being 1:3502.5, and Struve's 1:3498. Dr. Elkin spent the winter 

 months in the West, observing the total solar eclipse of Jan. i, 

 1889, at Winnemucca, Nev., under very favorable circumstances. 

 He used the finder of the heliometer for a general view of the coro- 

 na, and, with the low power and large field of about 4°, could 

 trace the equatorial streamers to a distance of about 100' on either 

 side from the liimb. He devoted a part of the time near the begin- 

 ning and end of totality to a careful scrutiny of a small portion of 

 the outer rays of the corona with a view of detecting any possible 

 rapid changes in the same ; but during the 90 seconds of observa- 

 tion, and in the portion he looked at, nothing of this nature oc- 

 curred. 



— In his annual report on education in Hong Kong, Dr. Eitel, 

 the government inspector of schools, says, according to Nature^ 

 that the total number of educational institutions of all descriptions 

 known to have been at work in the colony of Hong Kong during 

 the year 1888 amounts to 206 schools, with a grand total of 8,717 

 scholars. More than three-fourths of the whole number of 

 scholars — that is to say, 6,728 — attended schools (99 in number) 

 which are subject to government supervision, and either established 

 or aided by government in some form or other. The remainder — 

 viz., 107 schools, with 1,989 scholars — are private institutions en- 

 tirely independent of government supervision, and receiving no aid 

 from public funds, except that they are exempt from payment of 

 rates and taxes. 



— M. Taupin, who was recently despatched by the Governor- 

 General of French Indo-China to the Laos States on an explora- 

 tion, thus sums up the results of his labors : — "I have studied the 

 language and system of writing of the Laos — that is, of the only 

 population in the world possessing a graphic-alphabetical system. 

 Of this there has been up to the present no positive knowledge. It 

 was only known that the Laotian language and writing were some- 

 what similar to those of Siam. The language is spoken by about 

 four millions of people. I have collected interesting information 

 relating to the natural history of these regions, and much com- 

 mercial information. ... I have made numerous meteorological 

 observations, and taken a large number of anthropometrical meas- 

 urements according to the Broca system." 



— At a recent meeting of the Genevan Society of Physics and 

 Natural History, says Nattire, M. Mallet exhibited two balls of 

 almost perfect sphericity, about four inches in diameter, one black, 

 and of vegetable origin, the other white, and of mineral origin, 

 but both produced by a mechanical movement. The black ball 

 had been found with another in a piece of oak which had long 

 served as the shaft of a mill-wheel. A cavity having formed in the 

 wood, through disease or the work of some insect, the dust of the 

 wood, with acquired moisture, had been rolled into this spherical 

 form, growing in size, like a snowball (a slow process of many 

 years probably, as the wheel was very old). The white ball, a 

 calcareous pebble, was found with many others in a grotto trav- 

 ersed by a torrent which flowed into the Rhone. 



— The twelfth annual meeting of the American Society of 

 Microscopists met at Buffalo, N.Y., on Aug 20, in the Library 

 building. On the opening day, Hon. Davis F. Day, President of 

 the Buffalo Society of Natural Sciences, delivered the opening ad- 

 dress, which was followed by a brief address by President Lewis 

 of the Microscopists. The morning session concluded with a 

 paper on " A Microscope Stand," by Professor P. J. Burrill. The 

 afternoon's session consisted of routine business and the reading of 

 papers by Professor W. A. Rogers, " On a New Method of De- 

 termining Temperature from the Readings of Mercurial Ther- 

 mometers ; " by Professor S. A. and Mrs. Susannah Gage on 

 " Staining and Permanent Preservation of Histological Elements 

 Isolated by Means of Nitric Acid or Caustic Potash ; " by Dr. 

 Lucien Howe, on " Microscopic Growths on the Normal and Dis- 

 eased Eye ; " by Professor X>. S. Kellicott, on " A New Rotiferion ; "■ 

 and by Professor W. A. Rogers, on " A Practical Method of Se- 

 curing Copies of the Standard Centimeter Designated Scale A." 

 The society's annual exhibition vi^as held on Thursday evening. 



