March 20, 1891.] 



SCIENCE. 



157 



ment in time of tumult. Some of the exteriors of the mummy- 

 cases are unusually richly decorated with religious subjects, 

 carefully depicted; others of large size enclose mummies in a 

 broken condition, and were apparently procured hastily, as the 

 spaces for the occupants' names are left unwritten upon. The 

 contents of the papyri are as yet unknown, but hopes are enter- 

 tained that the writings are of permanent historical interest, and 

 have been thus hidden to avoid destruction. The mummies are 

 priests and priestesses of Ammon, Anubis, Seti, Mentou, and 

 Queen Aahotep, numbering 163, the latest belonging to the 

 twenty-first dynasty. Seventy-five papyri were found in boxes 

 in the form of statuettes of Osiris. Each mummy is also ex- 

 pected to contain more or less valuable manuscripts. The collec- 

 tion is en route in barges by the Nile, and will probably reach 

 Cairo in a few days." 



— Mr. G. J. Symons, F.B.S., in a letter to the London Times, 

 refers to the remarkable dryness in Great Britain during the 

 month of February as follows: " My observations here have been 

 absolutely continuous for more than thirty years, and hitherto the 

 dryest February was that of 1863, when .31 of an inch fell. In 

 1891 we have less than one-thirtieth of that: we have only .01 of 

 an inch. And if we examine all the other months of the whole 

 thirty-three years, 'we find that the dryest was May, 1885, with 

 .26 of an inch. These two facts sufficiently indicate the excep- 

 tional character of the past month at this station. We had one 

 slight sprinkle in the forenoon of Feb. 7, immediately after one 

 of those intense darknesses (arising from high fog) which are be- 

 coming so sadly more frequent in this wilderness of chimneys. 

 It had been dark, — actually darker than on a clear moonless 

 night. Fine mist hegan to fall. I put some sheets of note-paper 

 in the garden for the rain to fall upon. The shower, if such it 

 could be called, was over in an hour, and every drop had left 

 its inky mark upon the paper. I enclose a portion, that 

 you may have one more proof of the need for drastic measures if 

 London is to be clean enough to live in." Mr. Symons has re- 

 ceived only one retui-n from Eng.'and exceeding .10 of an inch, 

 and this was from th - hills above Ullswater. 



— Professor Seubert contributes an important paper to Liebig's 

 Annalen, in which are presented the final results of his redeter- 

 mination of the atomic weight of osmium. A preliminary account 

 of the earlier portion of this work was published in ihe Beriehte 

 in June, 1888, and a short notice concerning it wns given in the 

 columns of I^ature (vol. xxxviii. p. 183). It was then shown that 

 the atomic weight of osmium was certainly not higher than 191, 

 and was probably a few decimals less. Owing, however, to lack 

 of material, Professor Seubert was not able to complete the work 

 in the unimpeachable manner characteristic of his other atomic- 

 weight determinations, bince that time, however, thanks to the 

 kindness of Professor Lothar Meyer, a sufficient quantity of pure 

 osmium has been placed at his disposal, and the work has been 

 completed in a manner which leaves nothing to be desired. The 

 salts analyzed {Nature, March 5, 1891) were potassium and am- 

 monium osmium chloride, KoOsClg and (NH4)20sCle. The final 

 mean value derived from all the experiments is 190.3, a number 

 which fully justifies the expectations of Professor Seubert that it 

 would fall slightly below 191. The importance of the settlement; 

 of this question cannot be overrated, for it removes the last out- 

 standing exception to the periodic generalization. The metals of 

 the platinum .group, — osmium, iridium, platinum, and gold, — 

 when arranged in the order of their chemical and physical proper- 

 ties, unmistakably take the relative precedence just quoted. If 

 these properties are, as every one now agrees, periodic functions 

 of atomic weight, the atomic weights of these metals should in- 

 crease from that of osmium upwards to that of gold. Previous to 

 the year 1878, however, the accepted atomic weights were: gold, 

 196.3; iridium, 196.7; platinum, 196.7; and osmium, 198.6, — a re- 

 lation which, if correct, was diametrically opposed to the principle 

 of periodicity. In that year Seubert attacked the subject, and the 

 fii-st outcome of his labors was to correct the atomic weight of 

 iridium, which he found to be 193 5, instead of 196.7. It was a 

 most remarkable tribute to the accuracy of Seubert's work, and 

 likewise of his own, that Joly a short time ago obtained for the 



same constant the identical number 193.5. In 1881, Seubert took 

 up the case of platinum, and finally adjusted its atomic weight to 

 194.3,^ a number which was confirmed by a subsequent deter- 

 mination of Halberstadt. In 1887 the position of gold was finally , 

 decided by the remarkably agreeing and almost simultaneous de- 

 terminations of Thorpe and Laurie on the one hand, and Kriiss on 

 the other, the value arrived at in both cases being practically 196.7. 

 Finally we have the just completed work of Seubert upon osmium ; 

 and the four metals, when arranged in order of atomic weight, 

 now take the order, osmium, 190.3; iridium, 193.3; platinum, 

 194.3; gold, 196.7, — an order of precedence in full accord with the 

 order of their chemical and physical properties. 



— The district in northern Persia where olives flourish, as we 

 learn from the Journal of the Society of Arts, London, naturally 

 consists of forty-three villages, which are situated on the confines 

 of the province of Gilan, between Rustemabad on the north, Man- 

 feel on the south, Tarum on the west, and Rahmetabad on the 

 east. The British secretary of legation at Teheran says that this 

 group of villages possesses from 80,000 to 100,000 trees, which 

 yield on an average from six to nine pounds of olives per tree per 

 annum, thus giving an annual produce of 560,000 pounds of olives, 

 if the former average be taken. The quantity of good olive-oil 

 derived from the Persian presses may be estimated at 17 per cent 

 of the olives, which would give 137,000 pounds of good oil. The 

 good oil having been extracted, the residue is again pressed, and 

 an oil of inferior quality is produced, which is used iu the manu- 

 facture of soap. The value of the oil after a good harvest is two 

 krans (about Is. 3d.) per bottle of two pounds weight, at Resht or 

 Teheran, whereas the maximum price paid per bottle after a bad 

 harvest is five krans. In obtaining the oil the following process 

 is employed. The olives are gathered late in the autumn, and at 

 once stored in a kind of large bin, where they are left to ferment 

 till the first spring suns ; that is to say, till about the festival of 

 the Persian new year, March 31. The olives are then spread out 

 to dry on the flat house-tops. When perfectly dried, they are 

 again packed till they ferment. After this second fermentation, 

 they are trodden by men, somewhat after the fashion in which 

 grapes are trodden in the wine-press. After having been thus 

 trodden, they are boiled, and after boiling crushed in a sort of press 

 between flat stones, a receptacle for the oil being placed beneath 

 the stones. A monopoly for the working and purchase of all the 

 olives in northern Persia was granted to a firm of Russian mer- 

 chants in a concession given to them by the Shah in 1890; and, in 

 order that no time may be lost in turning a profitable speculation 

 to good account, a member of this firm has, it is said, been already 

 carefully studying the various methods employed in Europe in the ' 

 pressing and refining of the oil, the method in practice in the 

 olive oil presses of Marseilles having finally been selected by him. 

 Every olive tree in Persia is subject to a government tax of four 

 shahis, or about 1^. English money. 



— Mr. Werner Langguth, writing to TTie Engineering and Min- 

 ing Journal, states that it may be of interest to some to learn of a 

 comparatively cheap and practical method which will furnish an 

 ample supply of pui-e oxygen-gas from a solution of chloride of 

 lime (bleaching-powder). The production of this gas and its 

 method were observed and investigated by Mr. Langguth some 

 years ago, and it has since been practically used by him in the 

 laboratory for various purposes. If this method becomes generally 

 known, it may find manifold application owing to its cheapness 

 and simplicity. If a few drops of a solution of a cobalt salt (nitrate 

 of cobalt, Co(N03)2, for instance) be added to a strong solution of 

 bleaching-powder in water, H^O + CaClg -f- Ca(C10)2, and shaken 

 well, an evolution of gas will be immediately observed, the pro- 

 duction of which will be increased by a slight rise of temperature. 

 The gas thus produced is pure oxygen, free from chlorine, and 

 may be dried, if required, in the usual manner. The evolution is 

 not violent, and the re-action gives an even and continuous flow of 

 oxygen-gas for a long time; that is, until all the bleaching-powder 

 in solution is converted into calcium chloride: 



CaCl„ + Ca(ClO), -I- H„0 = 30 -)- 2GaCU -|- H,0. 

 The few drops of nitrate of cobalt added are precipitated by the 

 bleaching-powder to cobalt hydroxide, which suffers no farther 



