August 



30, i! 



SCIENCE. 



149 



city. The Shaw estate is estimated to be worth $2,500,000, and it 

 is thought the greater part will be left to St. Louis in various be- 

 quests. 



— The Royal Danish Academy of Sciences invites research on 

 the following among other subjects : Compounds of alcohol radicals 

 with copper, silver, or gold, and compounds of polyvalent alcohol 

 radicals with metals (all unknown at present): prize, a gold medal. 

 The fatty acids in the fat of butter ; to be isolated and determined, 

 and relations indicated especially between the quantities of oleic 

 acid and those of palmitic acid and their higher homologues : prize 

 about $160. The MycorJiiza of the beech; are they different in 

 different kinds of humus? does the structure of the mycelium give 

 a basis for classitication .? is there a reciprocal symbiosis, the fungus 

 preparing food for the plant, etc.: prize, about $160. Memoirs to be 

 sent to Professor Zeuthen of Copenhagen before Oct. 31, 1890, ex- 

 cept in the last case, for which the date is Oct. 31, 1 891. 



— The drawf trees which the Japanese horticulturists are show- 

 ing at the Paris Exhibition are attracting much attention. Pines, 

 thujas, and cedars, said to be one hundred or one hundred and 

 fifty years old, are only eighteen inches high, and with such speci- 

 mens, as Garden and Forest says, it would be easy to have a 

 coniferous forest on a balcony. These arboreal deformities are 

 produced by great labor, and, if the truth is told about their ages, 

 this work of arresting the tree's development and forcing it into 

 contorted forms must be persisted in by several generations of for- 

 esters. All this painstaking is hardly paid for by the beauty of the 

 resulting abortions, but, as has been suggested, a look at these trees 

 will explain where the fantastic forms come from which serve as 

 models for the plants we see on the lacquered trays, bronzes, and 

 embroideries which come from Japan. 



— Until recently very little was known of the fossil flora of Ja- 

 pan. The first systematic treatment of it is found in the work of 

 Dr. H. T. Geyler who, in 1S77, described and figured twelve spe- 

 cies of Jurassic plants collected by Dr. J. Rein in the valley of the 

 Tetorigawa in Kaga. Three years later the same author referred to 

 the occurrence of Carpinus grandis Unger in the tertiary forma- 

 tion of Mikawa in Honsha. This was the only literature relating 

 to the fossil flora of Japan down to the year 1881, when for the first 

 time. Professor A. G. Nathorst of Stockholm published a prelimi- 

 nary communication on more than seventy species of tertiary plants 

 collected by Professor Nordenskiold on his visit to Japan during 

 the famous Vega expedition around the Asiatic continent. This 

 work was soon followed by a more complete one, in which leaves 

 collected by Hilgendorf are also described. The work principally 

 treats of the young pliocene, or, perhaps, the oldest quaternary 

 flora of Mogi, a very important group, from which the author was 

 able to draw interesting conclusions as to the origin and climatic 

 relations of the recent flora. In this work he also mentions twelve 

 species of the older tertiary plants from Ezo (Hokkaido) and Hon- 

 shu determined by Leo Lesquereux, but which were up to that 

 time yet unpublished. During the last two years the Geological 

 Survey has sent to Professor Nathorst a large collection of tertiary 

 plants for investigation, on a part of which he has already drawn up 

 a brief preliminary report. These were exclusively from northern 

 and central Japan. For the most part they belonged to the older 

 tertiary, corresponding in age to the floras of Sachalin and Alaska. 

 Professor Nathorst mentions in this paper plants collected by Mr. 

 Petersen at Nagasaki. About these, and the plants last sent, 

 chiefly including those of Shikoku and Ivyushu, he will write other 

 memoirs. By the study of these fossils quite a comprehensive idea 

 may be formed regarding the tertiary flora of Japan ; but as to the 

 mesozoic flora nothing further has been done since the publication 

 of the work by Dr. Geyler. Since Dr. Rein's discovery of Jurassic 

 plants, the valley of the Tetorigawa has been twice visited by ge- 

 ologists. The first visit, a very short one, was made in 1S80 by 

 Dr. B. Koto. On his return he made a brief report, accompanied 

 by a sketch-map of the river valley and four geological sections. 

 The second and more extensive visit was undertaken by Mr. Ta- 

 datsugu Kochibe. In 1883 the Imperial Geological Survey under- 

 took the reconnoisance of various parts of central Japan, one of 

 which was a region including the provinces of Kaga, Hida, Echi- 

 zen, and Etchu, between the parallels of 35° and 37° north lati- 



tude. The survey was conducted by Mr. T. Kochibe as geologist 

 and Mr. K. Kodari as topographer. This survey, which lasted 

 three months, brought back many interesting fossils, some of which, 

 together with those formerly collected by Dr. Koto, form the sub- 

 ject of a paper, by Matajiro Yokoyama, recently published in the 

 Journal of the College of Science of the Imperial University of Ja- 

 pan. As a detailed account of this survey will appear in future 

 reports of the Geological Survey, the gentleman mentioned merely 

 indicates briefly the general outline of the geographical and geo- 

 logical features of this part of Japan. 



— In February of this year, the Deutsche Heeres-Zeitung gave 

 some interesting particulars of the new, almost smokeless powders 

 which are being made by the united Rhine and Westphalian fac- 

 tories. With a 0.5-centimetre Krupp gun, 35 calibres long, an 

 initial velocity of 527 metres was given to a projectile of 18 kilo- 

 grams, with 3.9 kilograms of the powder, under a pressure of 

 1,955 atmospheres. It is now reported that, at a subsequent trial 

 with the same gun, a projectile of 18.15 kilograms received an 

 initial velocity of 542 metres, with a pressure of only 1,942 atmos- 

 pheres, 4 kilograms of the powder being used, while, when the 

 charge was increased to 4.5 kilograms the velocity was 586 

 metres, and the average pressure 2,300 atmospheres. The follow- 

 ing are the results with another variety of the same large-grain 

 powder. With a 12-centimetre gun and projectile or 26.2 kilo- 

 grams: Charge, 5 kilograms; velocity, 472 metres; pressure, 

 1,240 atmospheres. Charge, 7.5 kilograms; velocity, 621 metres; 

 pressure, 2,270 atmospheres. Gun of 13 centimetres, and projectile 

 of between 30.01 and 30.27 kilograms: Charge, 5.5 kilograms; 

 velocity, 512 metres ; pressure, 1,340 atmospheres : Charge, 6.5 kilo- 

 grams ; velocity, 625 metres; pressure, 2,010 atmospheres. Gun 

 of 15 centimetres, and projectile of 51.5 kilograms: Charge, 10 

 kilograms; velocity, 501 metres; pressure, 1,630 atmospheres. 

 Charge, 14 kilograms; velocity, 617 metres ; pressure, 2,550 at- 

 mospheres. 



— In summing up the Maybrick case. Justice Stephen's remarks 

 were rather severe upon expert testimony, medical and other. He 

 warned the jury about the uncertainty of medical science, or rather 

 art, and reminded them of the old saying which described a doctor 

 as " a man who passed his time in putting drugs of which he knew 

 little into a body of which he knew less." He also had a fling at 

 the experts in other fields who appear before parliamentary com- 

 mittees and the like. He said a man going on the stand, and 

 " calling himself this, that, or the other, by no means qualified him 

 to receive unhesitating belief." " A great deal of what he might 

 call scum had to be taken off the testimony of skilled witnesses, 

 for — of course, probably insensibly to themselves — they were apt 

 to become advocates rather than witnesses." 



— Some new light on the subject of indirect vision, i.e., vision 

 with the lateral parts of the retina, is thrown by recent experiments 

 made by Kirschmann, and reported in Nature. The common iilea 

 that the sensitiveness of the retina diminishes outwards to the 

 periphery appears to be incorrect. There is an objective diminu- 

 tion of light-iction when a source of light is moved away laterally 

 from the middle of the field of vision, for the mass of penetrating 

 light gets less. Hence, were the diminishing sensitiveness a fact, 

 a luminous surfai,e should seem to lose brightness when moved to 

 the side ; but it does not, though it appears less distinct in outline 

 and modified in color. Kirschmann placed two rotatory disks 

 made up of moveable black and white sectors, giving any degree of 

 brightness, before the observer; who shut one eye, and looked at 

 the middle of one disk, about a metre and a half from him, while 

 he gave his attention to comparing the brightness of the second 

 disk, seen at different angels, by indirect vision. The figures from 

 numerous experiments prove that in the horizontal meridian the 

 sensibility to brightness has a maximum at 22'^ to 25'^ from the 

 centre, while in the vertical direction the maximum is at 12° to 15°. 

 The growth of sensibility is much greater in the horizontal than 

 in the vertical direction, and the upper part of the retina is superior 

 in this respect to the lower. This corresponds to the needs of 

 vision. Indirect vision with lateral parts of the retina is more im- 

 portant than that with the upper and lower regions, and the upper 

 half is more important than the lower. 



