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SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XIV. No. 356 



or no-breed animals. Proper selection, systematic breeding, and 

 judicious feeding have produced these profitable animals and herds. 

 What has been accomplished by the few should be striven for by 

 the many, and feed must be a prime factor in developing the ideal 

 dairy animal or herd. Careful breeding and selection must hold 

 the most prominent place ; but breeding and selection, unless ac- 

 companied by good care and judicious feeding, will ultimately re- 

 sult in failure. In the October bulletin of the New York Agricul- 

 tural Experiment Station, of which Peter Collier is director, are 

 brought together tables, with proper explanations, showing the 

 composition of cattle-foods, the digestibility of such foods, the 

 amount digested from various foods in general use, and finally 

 several feeding-rations are given, together with those rations fed 

 by a few of the farmers in different parts of the State. 



— According to the Novoe Vreniya, the carrier-pigeon has been 

 turned to a curious use in Russia. It is to convey negatives of 

 photographs taken in a balloon. The first experiment was made 

 from the cupola of the Cathedral of Isaac, and the subject photo- 

 graphed was the Winter Palace. "The plates were packed in 

 envelopes inpenetrable to light, and then tied to the feet of the 

 pigeon, who safely and quickly carried them to the station at Vol- 

 kovo." So we are told ; but there is an extensive hiatus in the ac- 

 count, as pointed out by the British Journal of Photography. 

 The wonderful material on which the negatives were taken is not 

 stated, nor the mode of preserving from light, nor how this is pro- 

 posed to be arranged in a balloon, nor the distance of the bird's 

 flight. This is all a very different affair from the Paris Pigeon 

 Post, the messages in which were photographed by collodion on 

 glass, which was afterwards peeled from its support, and enclosed 

 in a packet attached to, not the bird's feet, but a tail-feather. 

 Seeing that about fifteen grains is looked upon as a practical 

 weight for a bird to carry, it would appear that very little negative 

 and light-tight wrapping could be included in the weight, which 

 does not include much in the shape, for example, of thin paper, 

 seeing that even so slight an object as a five-pound (or any other) 

 bank-note weighs more than that amount. 



— As showing a good reason for the flocking of students from 

 America and England to Germany, the following letter of Professor 

 Silvanus P. Thompson to the London Tijms is in point : " Your 

 Brussels correspondent, who attributes the attendance of English 

 students at the technical high schools (ox polytechiiictims) in Ger- 

 many, and particularly at that in Berlin, to the non-existence of 

 such institutions in this country, must be ignorant of the fact that 

 for five years a really splendid establishment of this character has 

 been actively at work in London. I refer to the Central Institu- 

 tion, founded by the City and Guilds of London, in Exhibition 

 Road. The equipment of this establishment for mechanical en- 

 gineering and for electrical engineering far exceeds that of the 

 Technical High School in Berlin, though in some other depart- 

 ments it is necessarily not equal. The cost of the Central Institu- 

 tion, which is the nearest approach in this country to a true poly- 

 technic, was, however, only ^^90,000, while that at Berlin cost over 

 ;£6oo,ooo. I may add that that other establishment of the City 

 and Guilds of London Institute, the Finsbury Technical College, 

 from which I write, and which has been open somewhat longer, 

 cost about ;£35,ooo only ; but yet it can, in the departments men- 

 tioned, show educational results that will not compare unfavorably 

 with those of the Berlin Technical High School. Yet the entire 

 building at Finsbury could be contained within the entrance-hall of 

 the palatial establishment at Berlin." In this same connection the 

 remarks of the German correspondent of the Daily Telegraph are 

 nteresting, as they give the number of foreign students enrolled 

 on the books of the Technische Hochschule, or " Technical Uni- 

 versity," of Berlin. Since 1884 the palatial Technische Hochschiile 

 of Charlottenburg, near Berlin (called the Berliner Technische 

 Hochschitle), has certainly given instruction to an increasing num- 

 ber of foreign students, but the influx has not been so very extraor- 

 dinary. Since the winter term of 1885, when there were only 

 two British subjects on the books, the numbers have been, winter 

 of 1886, four; summer of 1887, five ; winter of 1887, eight ; sum- 

 mer of 1888, ten ; winter of 1888, eleven ; summer of 1889, thir- 

 teen. Russia heads the list, having contributed, in 1881, thirteen 



pupils, and in the last term, forty-two. Norway comes next, with 

 twenty-five last term. From North America there were seven. 

 Then came Austria, South America, Servia, Switzerland, Sweden, 

 Italy, Roumania, Spain, Holland, Luxembourg, and Greece. The 

 number of foreign students amounted in the last term to 129, some 

 15 per cent of the total number on the books. This, compared 

 with the thirty-three enrolled in 1881, shows a good increase. 

 From the above official figures no deductions of importance can be 

 drawn as to the estimation shown by British technical students for 

 the very excellent Tech?iische Hochschtile of Berlin. 



— It would seem as if the influence of bacteria and micro-organ- 

 isms generally upon higher forms of life was only just beginning to 

 be understood. The researches of naturalists are constantly bring- 

 ing new and unexpected facts to light. For instance : there is 

 nothing better known than the frequent phosphorescence exhibited 

 by marine animals, and especially the Crustacea. This phospho- 

 rescence is frequently infectious ; that is to say, it can be communi- 

 cated by touch. A French naturalist, M. Giard, has just made 

 known the results of some observations and experiments he has 

 been making with Talitrus and other Crustacea. On microscopi- 

 cally examining a brightly phosphorescent specimen he found walk- 

 ing slowly on the beach instead of leaping, as its habit usually is, 

 he traced the phosphorescent light to the presence of bacteria in 

 its muscles, which were greatly altered. On inoculating other and 

 healthy individuals of this and other species, the same disease was 

 produced among them, and M. Giard says that his laboratory was 

 quite lit up at night with these diseased but luminous Crustacea. 

 The inoculation was continued to the sixth generation, apparently 

 without any attenuation of the microbic action. The disease seems 

 to follow a regular course, and the crustaceans died in three or four 

 days. The phosphorescence, however, always lingered a few hours 

 after death. Crabs were inoculated in the same way. 



— Dr. Noetling, of the Indian Geological Survey, to whose re- 

 port on the petroleum deposits of Burmah reference has already 

 been made, gives an interesting description of the native method 

 of digging oil-wells. As soon as a native has made up his mind 

 where he is going to have a new oil-well, as stated in the London 

 Times, the workmen (usually four in number) begin to dig a square 

 shaft, the sides of which measure between four feet and four feet 

 six inches. Over this pit a cross-beam, supported on stanchions 

 at either side, is placed, in the centre of which is a small wooden 

 drum or cylinder, which, with its axis, is made of a single piece of 

 wood, the latter running on coarse ,fork-shaped supports. The 

 leather rope used in hauling up the oil passes over the drum, and 

 on it is fastened the workman who is going to be lowered down, 

 as well as the common earthenware pot in which the oil is drawn 

 up. If possible, the well is so placed that the men or women 

 drawing the rope walk down an inclined plane along the slope of a 

 hill. The tools employed in digging are quite primitive, and can 

 only be used in soft strata. Timber is used to support the walls 

 of the shaft, and the latter is lined with wood. This wooden wait 

 has considerable strength ; but it has to be carefully watched, lest 

 it should give way. The workmen ai'e lowered in an ingenious 

 way. The man sits on two slings formed of strong rope running 

 between his legs and knotted over his left shoulder. To prevent 

 sliding, a thin rope runs down from the knot, across the breast, un- 

 derneath the right shoulder, to the back, where it is fastened to the 

 rope forming the slings. A second rope for the same purpose is 

 fastened round the hips. On account of the explosive gas filling 

 the shaft, no light can be taken down : the workman, therefore, 

 ties up his eyes previous to descending, so as to enable him to see 

 during the short time he is in the well ; otherwise it would take 

 him longer to accustom his eyes to the darkness than he is able to- 

 stay down on account of the gas, which renders breathing difficult. 

 The data obtained by Dr. Noetling as to the time occupied in the 

 ascent and descent, and the period during which the laborer can 

 remain below, show that not 25 per cent of the total working time 

 is really spent in extracting the oil. Two hundred and ninety sec- 

 onds is the longest time any man, however strong, can remain be- 

 low without becoming unconscious, while in some he can only 

 remain sixty seconds. With increasing depths the difficulties in 

 obtaining the oil after the Burmese methods become insuperable r 



