August 23, 1889.] 



SCIENCE. 



131 



— Count Joseph Florimond Loubat of New York has given to 

 the Academy of Sciences of Berlin $5,500, as a fund the income of 

 which is to be given in prizes every five years. Count Loubat has 

 given the academy also money to be expended on a first set of 

 prizes in 1891. The special object of this gift is to encourage an- 

 thropological studies of matters pertaining to North America. For 

 the prize of $750, to be awarded in July. 1891, articles published 

 between July i, 18S4, and July I, 1889, will be accepted for com- 

 petition, provided they are sent to the Academy before July i, 1890. 

 The subject for this first prize will be the colonization of America 

 by Europeans up to the present day. 



— Elias Loomis, Professor of Natural Philosophy and Astron- 

 omy at Yale, died at New Haven, Aug. 15, 1889, of Bright's dis- 

 ease. He was born at Wilmington, Conn., Aug. 7, 181 1. His 

 education began at a tender age, and at the age of nineteen he 

 graduated from Yale. Three years later he was appointed a tutor 

 at that college, a post he retained for three years. A year was 

 then spent in Paris, after which Loomis was elected to a profes- 

 sorship of mathematics and physics in Western Reserve College in 

 Ohio. In 1844 he accepted a similar position in the University of 

 the City of New York ; and it was during his incumbency of this 

 chair that Professor Loomis wrote the many text-books on' mathe- 

 matics, astronomy, natural philosophy, and meteorology that have 

 made his name so well known. An extraordinary success attended 

 this series, the total circulation coming to more than 500,000 copies. 

 Some of these books were used abroad, and translations were made 

 into even Chinese and Arabic. In i860 Professor Loomis returned 

 to Yale, where he remained till his death, devoting much time to 

 his contributions to meteorology aside from his work as a teacher. 



— The Delegates of the Clarendon Press have the following 

 works ready for early publication : an edition, with notes for stu- 

 dents, of Tertullian's " Apology," by Mr. T. H. Bindley of Merton 

 College; "Selections from Burns," by Mr. J. Logie Robertson 

 (uniform with " Selections from Clarendon," just published) ; Mr. 

 Oliver Aplin's " Birds of Oxfordshire." In mathematics they will 

 issue shortly the second volume treating of Electro-Dynamics of 

 Messrs. Watson and Burbury's " Mathematical Theory of Electri- 

 city and Magnetism," and a new edition of the fourth volume on 

 the dynamics of material systems (which has long been out of print) 

 of Professor Bartholomew Price's " Treatise on Infinitesimal Cal- 

 culus." 



— The Washington Life Insurance Company reports a decided 

 tendency to increase of suicides in recent years. Shooting is the 

 means selected in about one-half the cases. It is more frequent 

 among the young than among the old, and on this account the 

 company's a priori expectation had been in the direction of a de- 

 crease in this cause. This expectation has been balked, and the 

 writer of the report goes so far as to say that the increase in recent 

 years has not been purely a matter of accident, and that the deci- 

 sions of the courts have not been such as to discourage suicide 

 among the insured. 



— According to the London Electrical Review Dr. J. A. Fleming 

 has designed an incandescent lamp slide-rule, by which any of the 

 calculations with regard to lamps may be performed with readi- 

 ness. Thus if we have given the current, the terminal volts, and 

 the candle-power, the scale shows the watts per candle ; or given 

 the watts per candle-power, and the candle-power, we can find the 

 current corresponding to any voltage ; or from the volts and cur- 

 rent we can read off the hot resistance ; and finally, when we know 

 the volts and current when the lamp is burning at normal brilliancy, 

 the rule shows the approximate candle-power. We imagine that 

 electric light engineers and their assistants will find this little de- 

 vice, which is issued by the Edison-Swan Company, very handy. 



— The agents of the California State Board of Horticulture, says 

 Garden and Forest, are now raising the Australian ladybird in 

 such numbers that colonies are furnished to all applicants whose 

 trees are infested with the cottony cushion scale. These imported 

 insects have proved effective destroyers of the scale, and there 

 seems to be a reasonable ground for hope that this most serious 

 enemy of the orange, the lemon, and other trees of that family can 

 now be held in check. 



— Birds of the crow-tribe, especially the raven, the carrion-crow, 

 the hoodie, and the magpie, are in ill-repute in England for stealing 

 eggs, and, when opportunity serves, for murdering chickens, duck- 

 lings, etc., but in the north of Norway these depredators are much 

 bolder. They will even attempt to carry away the eggs and the 

 young brood of the eider-duck, and too often succeed in their foray ; 

 but if the drake is near at hand, they are frequently defeated. He 

 siezes the crow by the wing or neck and plunges down with him 

 into the sea.- Being a good diver he feels no inconvenience, whilst 

 the carrion-crow, however brave and strong in the air, is helpless 

 in the water, and the end of the struggle is soon shown by his life- 

 less body floating on the surface. Sometimes even the raven is 

 disposed of in the same manner. It is a curious fact that young 

 sea-fowl, when swimming or diving in waters which literally swarm 

 with cod, halibut, and other greedy and hungry fishes, are not 

 often snapped up and swallowed. Yet veteran lobster fishermen, 

 no small part of whose life has been spent in disembowelling such 

 fishes, declare that they never find a young bird in the stomach of 

 their prey. 



— In commenting on the behavior of the machinery of the Brit- 

 sh war- ships during the recent naval display at Spithead, Engi- 

 neering says that such a complication of machinery crowded into 

 so small a space can only be run with success at the high duty 

 demanded in war-ships by means of the most skilled attention. 

 Want of room adds immensely to the difficulty of attending to 

 machinery, and it is only by men being thoroughly conversant with 

 all the ways of a ship that they can hope to keep things in good 

 going order. We have nothing but admiration for the officers and 

 men of the engineering branch of the navy, nevertheless there was 

 perhaps not a single ship in all the vast fleet collected last week at 

 Spithead which had a fairly competent engine-room staff. The 

 reason is that the complements in many cases were not filled up, 

 and even if they were filled up, the men are too new to the ships to 

 know their way about. We can quite understand the fervour with 

 which the chief engineer of one our leading armour-clads ex- 

 claimed, "Thank God they axe peace manoeuvres and not war ma- 

 noeuvres !" This war vessel was one-third short of her proper com- 

 plement of artificers, and only the chief amongst the officers knew 

 his way properly about the engine-room, and that was quite an ac- 

 cident. 



— The trustees of the Hoagland Laboratory make the following 

 announcement. Dr. George M. Sternberg, U.S.A., will continue 

 as general director of the laboratory ; George T. Kemp, Ph.D., 

 Johns Hopkins University, will be associate director of the depart- 

 ments of physiology and experimental therapeutics ; and Dr. B. 

 Meade Bolton has been appointed director of the department of 

 bacteriology, assuming charge of that department in September. 



— At a meeting of the Russian Mineralogical Society, K. D. 

 Chrustschoff, it is said, demonstrated the existence of a new metal 

 which he has just discovered and named " russium." The metal 

 approximates closely in its properties to thorium, and its existence 

 was predicted by Mendeleeff. 



— In a letter to Science Gossip, Mr. T. A. Dukes writes: "I 

 .have always understood that a thunder-clap was a necessary result 



of the electrical discharge which caused a lightning flash, but last 

 night, while watching those splendid natural fireworks — a thunder- 

 storm — I thought there seemed to be many more flashes than 

 thunder-claps. So, at the height of the storm, as indicated by the 

 loudness of the thunder, and the position of the lightning nearly 

 overhead, I began to count them, and while there were thirty-nine 

 flashes there were only fourteen claps. Still unconvinced, I. with 

 a pencil and paper, recorded each as it occurred — fifty-five flashes 

 to nineteen claps ; and again, during five minutes, there were fifty- 

 six flashes to twenty- three claps, and yet I tried to favor the 

 thunder. It was not the distant ' summer ' lightning, but • forked ' 

 lightning, some flashes consisting of as many as 4.075 simultaneous 

 zigzag cracks in heaven ; indeed it seemed to be steadily lightning 

 all the while, yet the thunderings, though loud, were not ppu^pnged. 

 I would be obliged if some one would explain this, or sho\^i|ne my 

 error. Many of the flashes were behind some clouds, for they 

 lighted up their background and left them in relief ; could it be 

 that these clouds reflected the sound so that it did not reach me ? " 



