February 6, 1891.] 



SCIENCE. 



75 



coal have been known for something like half a century. They 

 crop out all round the bases of lowish hills which fringe the shores of 

 the Gulf of Tonquin. One of the seams is 153 feet thick, of almost 

 solid coal. It is a semi-anthracite of very fine quality, having 

 about 87 per cent of fixed carbon, and from 7 to 13+ per cent of 

 volatile matter, from 2 to 3 per cent ash, free from pyrites, and of 

 course quite smokeless. Asteamernamed '* Fatshan," of fourteen 

 knots speed, has been tried with 300 tons of the coal. The re- 

 sults were very satisfactory, the vessel steaming well at a fully 

 maintained speed, with almost the same consumption as in the 

 case of Cardiff coal. The discovery is a serious one for the Jap- 

 anese coal industry, as Hong-Kong formerly took about 50,000 

 tons monthly. The Japan coal has 33 to 37 per cent of ash, 

 against 3 to 3 per cent in the Tonquin coal. The gain in decreased 

 consumi)tion is enhanced by reason of the increased cargo space 

 available, or, in other cases, in allowing the vessels to keep the 

 sea for a longer time. 



— The lion is eaten by some African races, but its flesh is held 

 in small esteem. The Zulus find carrion so much to their liking, 

 that, according to the late Bishop Colenso, they apply to food 

 peopled by large colonies of larvse the expressive word " uborni," 

 signifying in their uncouth jargon "great happiness." David 

 Xiivingstone, that keen and accurate observer, reminds us that 

 the aboriginal Australians and Hottentots prefer the intestines of 

 animals. "It is curious," he says, "that this is the part which 

 animals always begin with, and it is the first choice of our men." 

 On this point it may be well to remind the civilized reader that 

 the woodcock and the red mullet, or sea woodcock, are both 

 eaten and relished without undergoing all the cleaning pro- 

 cesses which most animals used for food among us generally ex- 

 perience to fit them for the table ; so that our aversion to the en- 

 trails of animals is not absolute, but only one of degree. The 

 hippopotamus is a favorite dish with some Africans when they 

 can get this unwieldy and formidable river monster, and when 

 young its flesh is good and palatable, but with advancing years it 

 becomes coarse and unpleasant. The Abyssinians, the amiable 

 people to whom, according to the Italian prime minister, his 

 •countrymen proposed to teach wisdom and humanity, find the 

 rhinoceros to their taste : so they do the elephant, which is also 

 «aten in Sumatra. Dr. Livingstone describes the elephant's foot 

 as delicious, and his praises will be echoed by many travellers in 

 lands where that sagacious monster still lingers in rapidly decreas- 

 ing numbers. "We had the foot," wrote the doctor, "cooked 

 for breakfast next morning, and found it delicious. It is a whitish 

 mass, slightly gelatinous, and sweet like marrow. A long march 

 to prevent biliousness is a wise precaution after a meal of ele- 

 phant's foot. Elephant's tongue and trunk are also good, and, 

 after long simmering, much resemble the hump of a buffalo and 

 the tongue of an ox ; but all the other meat is tough, and, from 

 its peculiar flavor, only to be eaten by a hungry man." 



— The London Times for Jan. 19 contains some interesting in- 

 formation about the manuscript of Aristotle recently discovered 

 in Egypt, and now in the British Museum. It is described as a 

 ■constitutional history of Athens, and as one of a collection of 

 ■constitutions which Aristotle- accumulated, describing various 

 ancient states, and numbering 158. The treatise in its present 

 form contains 63 chapters of the size of those in Thucydides ; but 

 the first chapter is missing, and a few at the end mutilated. It is 

 ■written on three papyrus rolls, and on what is called the verso, or 

 back, side ; the recto being occupied with the record of the bailiffs 

 receipts and expenditures on a private estate in Egypt, dated 

 month by month in the eleventh year of Vespasian, about A.D. 

 79. This record, which shows some of the peculiarities of writing 

 found in the treatise itself, tends strongly to confirm the genu- 

 ineness of the manuscript, which is further proved by the fact, 

 that, of 91 passages in ancient writers known or believed to be 

 ■quoted from this work, 78 are in this manuscript, and the others 

 may reasonably be referred to those parts that are lost. Of the 

 63 chapters, 41 relate the constitutional changes in the Athenian 

 state from the time of Cylon in G33 B.C., to the restoration of the 

 democracy in B.C. 403, while the remaining chapters describe the 

 duties of the various magistrates. It is said that the work will 



not alter our general views of Greek history, but supplies many 

 new details, and fixes many dates that were heretofore uncertain. 

 One of the most important items thus revealed to us is the fact that 

 Themistocles took a leading part in the overthrow of the Areopa- 

 gus, he being a member of that body at the time. The text of 

 the work has been printed, and will shortly be published, with 

 introduction and notes by F. G. Kenyon, an assistant at the mu- 

 seum in the department of manuscripts; and it will also be issued 

 in facsimile. The finding of this work, together with some dis- 

 coveries of less importance previously made in Egypt, give 

 ground for hope that other classical works, including some of 

 the lost lyric and dramatic poetry, may yet be recovered. 



— Capt. de Place of Paris has invented an instrument for de- 

 tecting flaws in metal castings and forgings, which is called "the 

 " sciseophone." According to the London Times, the apparatus 

 consists of a small pneumatic tapper worked by the hand, and 

 with which the piece of steel or iron to be tested is tapped all 

 over. Connected with the tapper is a telephone with a micro- 

 phone interposed in the circuit. Two operators are required, — 

 one to apply the tapper, and the other to listen through the tele- 

 phone to the sounds produced. These operators are in separate 

 apartments, so that the direct sounds of the taps may not disturb 

 the listener, whose province it is to detect flaws. The two, how- 

 ever, are in electrical communication, so that the instant the 

 listener hears a false sound he can signal to his colleague to mark 

 the metal at the point of the last tap. In practice the listener sits 

 with the telephone to his ear, and so long as the taps are normal 

 he does nothing. Directly a false sound (which is very distinct 

 from the normal sound) is heard, he at once signals for the spot 

 to be marked. By this means he is able not only to detect a flaw, 

 but to localize it. Under the auspices of the South eastern Rail- 

 way Company, a demonstration of the sciseophone was given by 

 Capt. de Place, at the Charing Cross Hotel, in the presence of 

 several members of the Ordnance Committee and other govern- 

 ment oflScials. Mr. Stirling, the company's locomotive superin- 

 tendent, had previously had several samples of steel, wrought iron, 

 and cast iron prepared with hidden flaws known only to himself. 

 The first sample tested by Capt. de Place he pronounced to be bad 

 metal throughout, which Mr. Stirling stated he knew it to be. 

 Other samples were tested, and the flaws localized by means of the 

 apparatus. On some of the bars of wrought and cast iron being 

 broken, the internal flaws, the localities of which were known to 

 Mr. Stirling by his private mark, were found to have been cor- 

 rectly localized by Capt. de Place. On the other hand, some bars 

 were broken at points where the apparatus indicated a flaw, but 

 where the metal proved to be perfectly sound ; so that the appa- 

 ratus is not yet quite trustworthy. 



— Dr. WUliam Crookes delivered his presidential address before 

 the Institution of Electrical Engineers, London, on Thursday, 

 Jan. 15, taking as his subject "Electricity in transitu: from 

 Plenum to Vacuiun" In his introductory remarks, as we learn from 

 Nature, he explained that he was about to treat electricity, not so , 

 much as an end in itself, but rather as a tool, by whose judicious 

 use we may gain some addition to our scanty knowledge of the 

 atoms and molecules of matter, and of the forms of energy which 

 by their mutual re-actions constitute the universe as it is manifest 

 to our five senses. Explaining what he meant in characterizing 

 electricity as a tool, he said, that, when working as a chemist in 

 the laboratory, he found the induction spark often of great ser- 

 vice in discriminating one element from another, also in indicating 

 the presence of hitherto unknown elements in other bodies in 

 quantity far too minute to be recognizable by any other means. In 

 this way chemists have discovered thallium, gallium, germanium, 

 and numerous other elements. On the other hand, in the exami- 

 nation of electrical re-actions in high vacua, various rare chemical 

 elements become in turn tests for recognizing the intensity and 

 character of electric energy. Electricity, positive and negative, 

 effect respectively different movements and luminosities : hence 

 the behavior of the substances upon which electricity acts may 

 indicate with which of these two kinds we have to deaL In other 

 physical researches both electricity and chemistry come into play 

 simply as means of exploration. 



