August 14, 1891.] 



SCIENCE. 



89 



both sets. Mail has already been received from Dr. Kingsbury 

 from San Francisco. 



— Particulars of the observatory which it is proposed to erect 

 on Mont Blanc at the very summit are given in the Neue Zuricher 

 Zeitung, from which Engineering quotes as follows. The idea 

 originated with M. Janssen, who stayed on the mountain some 

 time last summer for the purpose of making meteorological ob- 

 servations. In conjunction with M. Eiffel, and with the support 

 of M. Bischoffsheim, Prince Roland Bonaparte, and Baron Alfred 

 de Rothschild, he has now elaborated the plan of an observatory 

 to be entirely of iron, and to have a length of eighty-flve feet and 

 a breadth of twenty feet. The iron roof is to have a spherical 

 form. The erection of such a building on the highest point of 

 Mont Blanc naturally involves preliminary studies, with which 

 a Ziirich engineer experienced in works on high mountains has 

 been charged by M. Eiffel and M. Janssen. In the first place, it 

 is necessary that a firm foundation should be found for the sup- 

 ports of the building on the rook of the mountain. For this pur- 

 pose a horizontal gallery is to be driven through the ice of the 

 highest glacier until rock is met with, and by means of this gallery 

 the formation and position of the rock buried beneath the ice and 

 snow are to be ascertained and examined. If once this has been 

 accurately determined, a structure is to be designed which will 

 give to the observatory a firm hold by iron pillars founded in the 

 rock. The question of how the heavy materials are to be moved 

 to the top of the mountain does not appear to give much concern, 

 but more is thought of the work of surveying, which was to have 

 been commenced this month. Should the surveys prove the prac- 

 ticability of the plan, it is intended to proceed with the erection 

 in September. 



— In connection with an item from Nature on copepoda in these 

 columns last week, the following communication to the same 

 paper, from Mr. I. C. Thompson of Liverpool will be of interest: 

 "Professor Herdman's practical demonstration at the North Cape 

 confirms a theory I have long held, that the copepoda, which 

 abound in every ocean, sea, and lake, might be largely and advan- 

 tageously made available for human food. It is well known that 

 the species Galamis finmarchicus, so abundant in our nortbern 

 seas, forma the chief food of the Greenland whale. Our own im- 

 mediate coasts abound in this and other equally edible species. 

 During a recent dredging cruise round the Isle of Man, each pull 

 of the tow-net contained thousands of another and larger species 

 of copepod, Anomalocera patersonii ; and Dr. John Murray has 

 found that a still larger species, Eiichceta norvegica, is plentiful in 

 the lower depths of several Scotch lochs. A number of finely- 

 meshed trawls, used off the west coast of Ireland, would, I am 

 convinced, furnish excellent food for starving multitudes in time 

 of need. A propos of the distribution of copepoda, my attention 

 was called a few days ago by the Mayor of Bootle to the filter-beds 

 of the town salt-water baths, which he said were swarming wi'Ai 

 Entomosfraca. The water is supplied direct from the river, and 

 examination showed the presence of copepoda in enormous quan- 

 tities, the bulk of them being Eurytemora hirundo, a species only 

 once before taken in Britain, and then in near proximity to Bootle. 

 Probably other filter-beds are equally prolific, and may prove val- 

 uable hunting-grounds, the copepoda undoubtedly acting as scaven- 

 gers in keeping the water pure from putrefaction." 



— It seems as if the introduction of large engineering views 

 may soon produce a very marked effect upon the future of Egypt. 

 BIr. Willcocks, one of the Inspectors of Irrigation, has communi- 

 cated a letter to the London Times, in which he says that the 

 summer supply of the Nile is lamentably deficient for the existing 

 cotton and sugar-cane crops of Egypt, so that all extensions of 

 these valuable crops are out of the question under existing con- 

 ditions. The Nile Valley in Nubia is eminently suited for storage 

 of water, but up to the present all projects for storiag the muddy 

 flood waters of the Nile below the junctions of the Blue Nile and 

 the Atbara have been condemned, as the construction of solid 

 clams would have resulted in the silting up of the reservoirs them- 

 selves. This difficulty has disapjieared now that it has been dis- 

 covered that open dams can be constructed that will allosv the 

 muddy flood waters to flow through, and store the clear winter 



supply for use in summer. The construction of these dams has 

 been rendered possible by the great success of Stoney's patent 

 roller-gates, which can be worked under heads of 70 feet of water 

 on a scale sufficient to pass the full flood supply of the Nile. At 

 any time now Egypt can construct a reservoir in its own territory 

 by buUding an open dam at the head of the Assouan cataract. 

 If, however, Egypt were allowed to occupy the Nile Valley as 

 far as Dongola, the reach of the river above the Wady Haifa cata- 

 ract would provide the necessary reservoir, and the Philee immer- 

 sion difficulty would be at an end. So far the summer supply 

 needed for Egypt proper. If the Soudan itself is to be devel- 

 oped, it will only be necessary to construct solid dams at the 

 heads of the Ripon Falls and Fola Rapids, and thus secure the 

 Victoria and Albert Nyanza Lakes as magnificent reser- 

 voirs. These reservoirs would not only secure Egypt and the 

 Soudan from drought, but would also, if provided with open 

 dams, secure Egypt from excessive floods. The White Nile as it 

 leaves the two lakes is a clear stream, so that the silting up of the 

 reservoir would be out of the question, leaving alone theu- great size. 



— The success of the University Extension scheme in this coun- 

 try, says the London Educational Times, has attracted much at- 

 tention in educational circles in Prance, and the ministry of edu- 

 cation has decided to have the subject investigated on the spot. 

 Accordingly, M. de Varigny, a member of the University of Paris, 

 has been delegated to study the working of the scheme during the 

 present summer and autumn in England and Scotland, and to 

 make a report upon it. 



— Professor Langley, the director of the Smithsonian Institu- 

 tion, is now in England. A propos of his recent researches on 

 mechanical flight. Nature learns that Mr. Maxim is building a 

 " flying machine," with which a series of experiments is contem- 

 plated. It is now being constructed at Crayford, and is nearly 

 ready for launching. It will be propelled by a light screw making 

 twenty-flve hundred revolutions a minute. The motive power (it 

 is reported) is supplied by a petroleum condensing engine weighing 

 eighteen hundred pounds, and capable of raising a forty thousand 

 pound load. The real suspending power will lie in an enormous 

 kite measuring one hundred and ten feet long and forty feet wide. 



— Mr. Edward Standford has published a pamphlet on "The 

 Spread of Influenza: its Supposed Relations to Atmospheric Con- 

 ditions," by the Hon. R. Russell. The following, says Nature, are 

 some of the author's conclusions as to the conditions which give 

 rise to influenza, and permit it to be spread. Influenza is a disease 

 caused by exceedingly minute microbes, arising from extensive 

 areas of marsh or sodden land in Central Asia, China, or Siberia. 

 The minuteness of the microbes or their spores is shown by their 

 easy transmissibility, and the large number of persons capable of 

 being infected by a single case in a large room, most persons 

 probably requiring many virulent organisms to be inhaled in a 

 short time before the resistant power of the blood is overcome. 

 This microbe, like that of cholera, multiplies with great rapidity, 

 and probably soon produces sufficient poison to terminate its career 

 in the body, but not before multitudes of spores or microbes have 

 been given off by the breath. Given the original conditions of 

 rainfall, soil, and high temperature, the certain result is the de- 

 velopment of inconceivable multitudes of microbes and spores. 

 One species of these is capable of planting itself and living in the 

 tissue and blood of man, of which the temperature is probably near 

 that to which it has been accustomed under the summer sun in wet 

 and drying ground. The somewhat rare and occasional visitations 

 of influenza may be due to at least two or three causes — first, the 

 occurrence of unusual rainfall and favorable summers; second, 

 the prevalence of air-currents from the drying area towards in- 

 habited places; third, adequate communication between these 

 infected places and the towns of Russia, whence progress is rapid 

 towards western Europe. The wind has no influence that can be 

 verified in the transportation of influenza. As for the means of 

 prevention, Mr. Russell thinks that measures of disinfection and 

 isolation of the earliest cases, and rules at ports and landing places 

 similar to those employed against cholera, would probably prove 

 of the greatest service. Inland, every locality should isolate and 

 disinfect its first cases. 



