June 26, 189 .] 



SCIENCE. 



353 



— • A press dispatch from San Francisco says that the Czar of 

 Russia has presented the Stanford University with a complete col- 

 lection of Russian and Siberian minerals taken from the St. Pe- 

 tei'sburg Museum. The collection is valued at about $35,000, and 

 comprises some eight hundred specimens. Mrs. Stanford will, in 

 return, it is stated, send the Czar a collection of California miner- 

 als and precious stones. 



— The object of the Society of American Friends of Russian 

 Freedom, recently organized by well-known Americans, is to aid 

 by all moral and legal means the Russian patriots in their efforts 

 to obtain for their country political freedom and self-government. 

 Those who wish to join this society and receive also Free Russia 

 (published monthly), should send their names and post-ofBce j ad- 

 dresses, with the membership fee of one dollar, to Francis J. Gar- 

 rison, treasurer, 4 Park Street, Boston, Mass. 



— A meeting of the Baltimore Branch of the ArchEeological 

 Institute of America was held on April 26, Major J. W. Powell 

 of the United States Geological Survey spoke of the Zuni Indians. 

 Officers were elected as follows: president, Daniel C. Gilman; 

 vice-presidents, Mendes Cohen, Basil L. Gildersleeve, William W. 

 Spence, and Arthur L. Frothingham, Jun ; treasurer, Henry F. 

 Thompson ; secretary, J. Le Roy White ; delegates to the council, 

 David L. Bartlett and Arthur L. Frothingham, Jun. 



— According to the Pedagogical Seminary, in Russia, Servia, 

 Roumania, and Bulgaria over 80 per cent of the population are 

 illiterate, Spain 63 per cent. Italy 4S per cent, Hungary 43 per 

 cent, Austria 39 per cent, Ireland 21 per cent, France and Belgium 

 15 per cent, Holland 10 per cent. United States (whites) 8 per cent, 

 Scotland 7 per cent, Switzerland 3.5 per cent, some parts of Ger- 

 many 1 per cent In Sweden, Denmark, Bavaria, Wurtemberg, 

 and Saxony only rarely a person cannot write. 



— Esquirol called attention to the fact that idiots without the 

 power of speech could sing. Dr. Wildermuthof Stettin compared 

 180 idiotic children with 80 normal children in regard to vocal 

 range, sense of harmony, and memory for melody; and 27 per 

 cent of the idiots and 60 per cent of the normal children were 

 classed as musical in the highest degree, 11 per cent of the idiots 

 and 2 per cent of the normal children were without musical abil- 

 ity. This remarkable relative development of the musical sense 

 in idiots, says the Pedagogical Seminary, is the more striking as 

 there is no evidence of any other artistic taste. The practical 

 outcome of Wildermuth's observations is to emphasize the neces- 

 sity of vocal culture in the training of idiots. 



— The Society of Arts, London, offers a gold medal or £20 for 

 the best invention having for its object the prevention or extinc- 

 tion of fires in theatres or other places of public amusement. In 

 cases where the invention is in actual use, reference should be 

 made to places where it could be inspected. A full description of 

 the invention, accompanied by such drawings or models as are 

 necessary for its elucidation, must be sent in on or before Deo. 31, 

 1891, to the secretary of the Society of Arts, John Street, Adelphi, 

 London. 



— Those interested in questions relating to physical education 

 will find much to please them in a paper, in the June number of 

 Physique, by the Rev. T. A. Preston. Many boys are not much 

 attracted by games, and it seems hard that in such cases any sort 

 of compulsion should be used. Why not have various alternative 

 ways of securing exercise, any one of which might be chosen ? 

 Mr. Preston shows with great force, says Nature, and in a very 

 interesting manner, with how much advantage the study' of natural 

 history might in some instances be substituted for cricket and 

 football. Boys out for a field excursion take a great deal more 

 exercise, he maintains, than is ever taken at cricket. '■ With 

 those who are keen naturalists," he says, "the mere exercise taken 

 in any one day (not in an excursion) is often such that it might 

 almost be said to require moderating. I have no hesitation in 

 saying that, if exercise alone is to be considered, a field naturalist 

 will take far more than any one at games." 



— A series of experiments with regard to evaporation from free 

 water surfaces and from earth saturated with water, in sun and 

 in shade, has been recently made by Signer Battelli. Nature 



states (quoting from // Nuovo Cimento) that he used three large 

 tubs or vats, two holding water, and the third earth on a grating, 

 to which water was admitted from a pipe entering the bottom. 

 One water-tub and the earth-tub stood a few yards apart on the 

 north side of a high wall ; the other water-tub was in the open, antl 

 embedded in the ground. Signor Battelli's results are these: The 

 quantity of water evaporated from moist earth is in general greater 

 than that from a free stagnant water sui-face, when the air tem- 

 perature rises; but less, when the latter falls. With increasing 

 wind-velocity, evaporation increases more rapidly from the water 

 surface. The moister the air, the greater (other things equal) 

 seems to be the ratio of the water evaporated from the moist eartli 

 to that from the stagnant water surface. The evaporation of -x 

 water surface exposed to the sun's rays is greater than that of a 

 shaded one, not only by day, but in the following night. Willi 

 rising temperature, the ratio between the water quantities from 

 these two surfaces increases somewhat more quickly; with risin.^ 

 wind-velocity, this ratio diminishes. 



— Dr. S. V. Clevenger, in the Alienist and Neurologist for July > 

 1890, describes an infant prodigy, Oscar Moore. Two little colored 

 children were reciting the multiplication table at their home, in a 

 little cabin in Texas, as they had repeatedly done before, and one 

 of them asserted that four times twelve was fifty eight, whereupon 

 a thirteen months old baby, Oscar Moore, who had never spoken 

 before, corrected the error by exclaiming, " Four times twelve are 

 forty -eight ! " There was consternation in that humble home un- 

 til the family became reconciled to the freak. Oscar was born in 

 Waco, Texas, in 1885; his father is an emancipated slave, his 

 mother is a mulatto. He was born blind; the other senses are 

 unusually acute; his memory is the most remarkable peculiarity. 

 He is intelligent and manifests great inquisitiveness: his memory 

 is not parrot like. When less than two years of age he would re- 

 cite all he heard his sister read while conning her lessons. He 

 sings and counts in different languages, has mastered an appalling 

 array of statistics, and is greatly attracted by music. The writer 

 concludes that Oscar is not mentally defective, but may possess 

 extraordinary mental powers. 



— A direct observation of hail in the process of formation is 

 recorded in the Naturwissenshaftliche Rundschau and noted in a 

 recent number of Nature. In the afternoon of a squally day Pro- 

 fessor Tosetti, looking eastwards through the window of a house 

 (in northern Italy) which, with two others, inclosed a court, saw 

 the rain which streamed down from the roof to the right, caught 

 by a very cold wind from the north, and driven back and up in 

 thick drops. Suddenly a south wind blew, and the drops, tossed 

 about in all directions, were transformed into ice balls When the 

 south wind ceased, this transformation also ceased, but whenever 

 the south wind recurred, the phenomenon was reproduced, and 

 this was observed three or four times in ten minutes. 



— So much has been said and written upon the smoke-abate- 

 ment question in England that the idea of utilizing this dire enemy 

 of public health and cleanliness so as to actually make its ex- 

 istence a source of profit is somewhat attractive. In a lecture 

 recently delivered by Professor V. B. Lewes, reference was made 

 to certain facts in this connection, of high interest. As given in 

 Invention, one of these facts was that at three or four Scotch iron- 

 works the Furnace Gas Company are paying a yearly rental for the 

 right of collecting the smoke and gases from the blast-furnaces. 

 These are passed through several miles of wrought-iron tubing, 

 diminishing in size from si.x feet down to eighteen inches, and as 

 the gases cool there is deposited a considerable yield of oil. At 

 Messrs. Dixons' at Glasgow, which is the smallest of these in- 

 stallations, they pump and collect about 60,000,000 cubic feet of 

 furnace-gas per day, and recover on an average 25,000 gallons of 

 furnace oil per week, using the residual gases, consisting chiefly 

 of carbon monoxide, as fuel for distilling and other purposes, while 

 a considerable yield of sulphate of ammonia is also obtained. In 

 the same way a small percentage of the coke-ovens are fitted with 

 condensing gear, and produce a considerable yield of oU, for which, 

 however, in its crude state, there is but a limited market, the chief 

 use being for lucigen and other lamps of the same description, and 

 for treating timber for railway sleepers. In view of such arrange- 



