August 7, 1891.] 



SCIENCE. 



75 



— The attendance at the lectures of the Society for the Exten- 

 sion of University Teaching for the past season, as reported from 

 the general offices of the society at Philadelphia, was exception- 

 ally large, as compared with any previous experience either in 

 this country or England, and, as a result, many may hesitate to 

 form centres because they see no prospect of getting two or three 

 hundred to follow the lectures of the course. Perhaps it may be 

 well in this connection to notice the fact that in the printed report 

 of the London society the average number present at each lecture 

 in many centres is found to vary between eight and fifty. In 

 many cases, certainly, the attendance was much larger, but it is 

 by no means clear that the smaller centres were not fully as suc- 

 cessful in several important particulars. It has been observed, for 

 example, that the percentage of those in attendance at the lec- 

 tures, who also took part in the class work, was greater in the 

 smaller groups. Since so many of the bene6ts of extension work 

 are dependent upon a participation in the lectures by the class, 

 one must conclude that proportionately the smaller centi-es were 

 more successful. Wherever there are a score of persons who wish 

 to hear a given course, there should be no hesitation on account 

 of the srnall numbers. Better results in many ways will be ob- 

 tained under these circumstances. 



— During recent year's a good deal has been said amongst ma- 

 rine zoologists of the use, as a food supply, that might be made of 

 the enormous numbers of copepoda that swarm in the surface- 

 waters of the sea, says a Norwegian correspondent of Nature, and 

 the Prince of Monaco has pointed out the value this widely-dis- 

 ti'ibuted nutritious matter might have to shipwrecked sailors; but 

 I am not aware that any one has yet actually made the experi- 

 ment of cooking and eating copepoda, so the following record may 

 be of some interest. While tow-netting during the last few days 

 about the North Cape, we have had some large hauls of copepoda; 

 and it occured to us last night, while watching the midnight sun 

 oflE the entrance to the Lyngen fjord, that one gathering might be 

 spared from the preserving bottle and devoted to the saucepan. 

 We put out one of the smaller tow-nets (3| feet long, mouth one 

 foot in diameter) from 11.40 p.m. to midnight, the ship going dead 

 slow, and traversing in all, say, a mile and a half during the 

 twenty minutes. The net when hauled in contained about three 

 tablespoonfuls of a large red copepod {Calanus finmarchiaus, I 

 think), apparently a pure gathering — what Haeckel would call a 

 monotonic plankton. We conveyed our material at once to the 

 galley, washed it in a fine colander, boiled it for a few minutes 

 witb butter, salt, and pepper, poured it into a dish, covered it 

 with a thin layer of melted butter, set it in ice to cool and stiffen, 

 lad it this morning for breakfast on thin bread and butter, and 

 found it most excellent. The taste is less pronounced than that 

 of shrimps, and has more the flavor of lobster. Our twenty min- 

 utes' haul of the small net through a mile or two of sea made, 

 'when cooked in butter, a dishful which was shared by eight ijeo- 

 ple, and would probably have formed, with biscuit or bread, a 

 nourishing meal for one person. It would apparently, in these 

 «eas, be easy to gather very large quantities, which might be pre- 

 served in tins or dishes, like potted shrimps. 



— The annual meeting of the Society for the Preservation of the 

 Monuments of Ancient Egypt was held last week, says Nature of 

 July 23, in the rooms of the Society of Antiquaries at Burlington 

 House. Lord Wharncliffe, president, occupied the chair. The 

 report stated that there was little to report of success attending 

 the proceedings of the society for the past year. Its energies had 



. been directed principally to two points, the necessity for an official 

 inspector or superintendent in Egypt, whose duty should be the 

 care of the ancient monuments, and an endeavor to do something 

 towards arresting the gradual destruction of the Great Temple at 

 Karnak. Reports concerning a proposed scheme for barring the 

 Nile below Philse, to make a vast reservoir for purposes of irriga- 

 tion, had appeared in the public papers from time to time, and 

 recently various more definite communications had been received 

 by the committee on the same subject. The result would be, it 

 was acknowledged, to completely cover this beautiful island and 

 temple with water. There had been some correspondence on this 

 subject with the authorities in Egypt; but as nothing had as yet 



been decided as to any scheme otjirrigation, and as a committee 

 would be appointed to consider the whole question, it might be 

 considered as suspended for the present, and the committee had 

 thought it best to wait before taking any further action ; but they 

 would not lose sight of this important matter, and would oppose 

 to the utmost of their power any engineering scheme which would 

 involve injury or destruction to this world-renowned spot. Gen- 

 eral Donnelly moved the adoption of the report; and the motion 

 was seconded by Sir Edmund Henderson, and agreed to. The 

 committee for the coming year was then elected, and a discussion 

 subsequently took place as to the proposed scheme for barring 

 the Nile below Philse, the opinion of the meeting being evidently 

 strongly opposed to the adoption of any system of irrigation 

 which should involve damage to the temple. Mr. J. Bryce, M.P., 

 spoke of the wanton injury which was often inflicted on monu- 

 ments in Egypt, and said that he thought it would be necessary, 

 in dealing with that matter, to bring the question of jurisdiction 

 to the attention of those from whom any system of inspection or 

 care was to emanate. 



— The most remarkable example of reclamation by means of 

 artesian well-water, says United States Irrigation Commissioner 

 Hinton, in an official report, is found in the desert provinces or 

 departments of Algeria under the French rule. The area, offi- 

 cially given, of French Algeria, is 184,465 square miles. The 

 outlying jjortion is put at 135,000 square miles. In this total of 

 over 329,415 square miles one-half belongs to the Sahara or desert. 

 The European population in 1887 was about 250,000; the natives 

 and naturalized were 3,328,549, making a total of 3,578,549. 

 Cultivation by means of flowing well-waters has been sedulously 

 fostered by the French colonial government for both political and 

 economic reasons. Such wells as a means of reclamation began 

 systematically to be bored in 1857, the French engineer M. Jus 

 having demonstrated in 1856 that the desert was endowed with 

 large supplies of underground water. The total number of wells 

 that have been bored since that date in the departments of Al- 

 giers, Oran, and Constantine is stated at 18, 135. These wells 

 range from 75 to 400 feet in depth, and the low pressure common 

 to the majority of them forces the water to a distance of about 

 two feet above the ground. The waters are then collected in 

 small ditches, which convey them to the vineyards, date-trees, 

 and fields of durra, millet, wheat, etc., which comprise the chief 

 products. In all, about 12,000,000 acres have been reclaimed in 

 this way. The government bores are at least one-tenth of the 

 whole number. As an illustration of the reclamation brought 

 about by this well irrigation, the following figures from a report 

 made in 1885 will be of value, but they relate solely to the culti- 

 vation of the grape for wine-making purposes. In the province of 

 Algeria there are 60,322 acres; in Constantine, 25,031 acres; in 

 Oran, 26,114. Under this species of cultivation Algeria is becom- 

 ing a great wine growing country. It sent to France during 

 eleven months of 1886, 10,513,966 gallons of wine; and of cider in 

 the same year, 219,277,124 gallons were made. The date-palm is 

 the largest product of the desert oases proper. The total area un- 

 der colonization or settled occupation in 1887 is given at 49,400,- 

 000 acres; under cultivation by irrigation in wheat, barley, oats, 

 vines, olives, dates, tobacco, etc., at 17,041,133. The forest plan- 

 tations cover 5,000,000 acres. 



— Professor Louis Bevier of Rutgers College has been appointed 

 to organize the work of university extension in connection with 

 that institution. 



— Professor Jeremiah W. Jenks of the University of Indiana 

 has accepted the chair of social, political, and municipal institu- 

 tions in Cornell University. 



— W. F. Durand, late of the Agricultural College of Michigan, 

 is now professor of mechanical engineering at Pardue University, 

 Lafayette, Ind. 



— Professor A. T. Woods, well-known as a writer on mechani- 

 cal topics, has resigned the professorship of mechanical engineering 

 in the Illinois State University to become professor of dynamic 

 engineering in Washington University at St. Louis. 



