2l6 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XVIII. No. 454 



petent instructors will be on hand to show the would-be photogra- 

 pher "how to do it." This department gives especial attention 

 to the photographing of buildings, country seats, vessels, ma- 

 chinery, and to the developing and printing of exposures made Uj 

 amateurs and others. In addition to these departments, Queen & 

 Co. operate three factories and a brass foundry. Their largest 

 factory is devoted to the manufacture of the various instruments 

 of precision. Another factory is for the manufacture of thermome- 

 ters only. The optical factory is for the manufacture of spectacles, 

 e\e-glasses, lenses, etc. They employ in the neighborhood of two 

 liiindred hands in the various departments of their business. 



— Three letters from Alexander Agassiz, published in the Bulle- 

 tin of the Museum of Con)parati\e Zoology, give some interesting 

 particulars of the expedition of the '"Albatross" The deep sea 

 fauna in the neighborhood of Panama is poor compared to that of 

 the eastern shores of the continent. Probably this poverty is due 

 to the absence of a great ocerinic current, bringing supplies of food. 

 West Indian forms preponderate. The southern slope of the 

 Galapagos also rlid not yield the rich fauna that was expected, 

 though It lies in the track of a great current from the south. A 

 gif antic ostracod, more than an inch long, was dredged up be- 

 tween Cape San Francisco and the Galapagos and also in the Gulf 

 of alifornia. 



— Mr. John Bogart, State Engineer of New Yi rk, has sent in a 

 report concerning the recession of Niagara Falls. In lt^43 Pro- 

 fessor James Hall made an accurate survey, and a comparison of 

 his results with those of 1890, made in a bulletin of the American 

 Geographical Society, shows that the annual recession at the 

 American Fall has been 7 63 inches, and at the Canadian, or Horse- 

 shoe Fall, 3 feet 2.16 inches. During this period the crest line of 

 the American FaH has sunk from 1,080 to 1,0G0 feet, and that of 

 the Canadian has risen from 2.260 to 3,010 feet. The ar^a of rock 

 which has been carried away during those forty-eight years is 

 33,900 square feet at the American Fall and 2T5 400 square feet 

 at the Canadian Fal'. 



— Sparrows do not seem to lo.=e in New Zealand any of the 

 audacity for which they are famous in Europe, says Nature. In 

 a paper read some lime ago before the New Zealand Insiitute, and 

 now printed in the Transactions, .Mr. T. W. Kirk gives an example 

 of what he calls their -'daring and cool impudence." Between 

 Featherston and Martinborough he heard one day a most unusual 

 noise, as though all the small tirds in the country had joined in 

 one grand quarrel. Looking up, he saw a large hawk (C. Qouldi 

 — a carrion- feeder) being buffeted by a flock of sparrows. They 

 kept dashing at him in scores, and from all points at once The 

 unfortunate hawk was quite powerless ; indeed, he seemed to have 

 no heart left, for he did not attempt to retaliate, and his defence 

 was of the feeblest. At last, approaching some scrub, he made a 

 rush indicative of a forlorn hope, gained the shelter, and there 

 remained. Mr. Kirk watched for fully half an hour, but he did 

 not reappear. The sparrows congregated in groups about the 

 bushes, keeping up a constant chattering and noise, evidently on 

 the look-out for the enemy, and congratulating themselves upon 

 having secured a victory. 



— Some interesting observations relating to the surgical treat- 

 ment of wounds by birds were recently brought by M Fatio before 

 the Physical Society of Geneva. According to the Medical liecord, 

 he quoted the case of the snipe, which he had often observed en- 

 gaged in repairing damages. With its beak and feathers it makes 

 a very creditable dressing, applying plasters to bleeding wounds, 

 and even securing a broken limb by means of a stout ligature. 

 On one occasion he killed a snipe which had on the chest a large 

 dressing com[X)sed of down taken from other parts of the body 

 and securely fixed to the wound by the coagulated blood. Twice 

 he had brought home snipe with interwoven feathers strapped on 

 to the site of fracture of one or other limb. The most interesting 

 example was that of a snipe both of whose legs he had unfortu- 

 nately broken by a misdirected shot. He recoviered the animal 

 only on the day following, and he then found that the poor bii-d 

 had contrived to apply dressings and a sort of splint to both limbs. 



n carrying out this operation some feathers had become entangled 



around the beak, and not being able to use its claws to get rid of 

 them, it was abnost dead from hunger when discovered. In a 

 case recorded by M. Magnin, a snipe which was observed to fly 

 away with a broken leg was subsequently found to have forced 

 the fragments into a parallel position, the upper fragments reach- 

 ing to the knee, and secured them there by means of a strong 

 band of feathers and moss intermingled. The observers were par- 

 ticularly struck by the application of a ligature of a kind of flat- 

 leafed grass wound round the limb, of a spiral form, and fixed by 

 means of a sort of glue. 



— There are three electrolytic processes now in commercial 

 opei-ation for the production of aluminum. These, as described in 

 Engineering, are the Hall process, worked by the Pittsburg Reduc- 

 tion Company; the Heroult process, worked by the Aluminum In- 

 dustrie Actiea Gesellshaft, at Neuhausen, Sivitzerland, and by the 

 Societe Electro-Metallurgique de France at Froges; and the Minet 

 process, used at the works of Bernard Brothers, at Creil. France. 

 The two former processes, and the works where they are carried 

 on, have been fully destrihed within the last year. The last con- 

 sists in electrolyzins< a mixture of sodium chloride with alumi- 

 num fluoi'ide, or with the double fluoride of sodium and aluminum, 

 and is being carried out successfully. The metal ordinarily sold 

 contains two to three per cent of impurities. — generally silicon 

 and iron, — and is usually benefitted by the presence of the former, 

 as it adds hardness and strength. Aluminum becomes pasty at 

 about 1,000° F , and melts at 1,300°. It loses much of its tensile 

 strength at 400" to 500° F , at which temperature it anneals. The 

 coefficient of linear expansion under heat when of 98.5 per cent 

 purity is .0000206 per degree Centigrade between the freezing and 

 boiling points of water. This nearly corresponds with the expan- 

 sion of tin. which is .0000317. The specific heat is .3143, and the 

 thermal conductivity 73.6, silver being taken as 100 Recently a 

 way of soldering aluminum has been discovered, with hard and 

 soft solder, and « ith an alloy of zinc and aluminum. The nature 

 of the soldering fluid has not yet been published. The shrinkage 

 of aluminum in casting is JJ of an inch pier foot, or about 3.26 per 

 cent of the length of the mould. 



— MM. Rousson and Willems have completed the exploration of 

 the northern extremity of the main island of Tierra del Fuego. 

 and have communicated the results to the French Minister of In- 

 struction {Vompte Rendu of the Paris Geo. Soc, Nos. 7 and 8, 

 1891). The part referred to is bounded towards the south by a 

 line drawn from Useless Bay to the Bay of San Sebastian. It is 

 traversed by a chain of mountains, which rises suddenly at Cape 

 Eojueron to a height of 1.600 feet, and terminates at Cape Espiritu 

 Santo. The rest of the country, according to the t^cottisfi Oeo- 

 graphical Magazine, consists of great plains watered by numerous 

 rivers, many of which dry up in summer. The most important 

 is Rio del Oro, which flows into Philip Bay. Tierra del Euego 

 has a great variety of climates, but on the whole the cold is not as 

 severe as might have been expected. The lowest temperature ob- 

 served was 43'^ F., and the highest 69°. The nights are always 

 cold. The barometer is subject to very sudden and considerable 

 changes, and the winds are frequent and violent, those from the 

 west often attaining a velocity of nearly a thousand feet per sec- 

 ond. The Onas, who inhabit the northern part of the island, are 

 very tall, sometimes six feet six inches, or more, in height. They 

 are copper-colored, have oval faces and long hair plastered with 

 clay, small eyes, prominent cheek bones, large mouths, and a few 

 hairs on the chin. Their only clothing is a cape of guanaco or 

 fox skin, and, sometimes, a triangular covering of leather on the 

 head. The men occupy themselves solely in fighting with their 

 neighbors and hunting, their chief weapons being bows and ar- 

 rows tipped with pieces of glass, found on the shore, or flint. All 

 the household labor falls on the women. Their encampments 

 consist of circular holes, five feet in diameter and sixteen inches 

 deep, dug out of the side of a mountain, with stakes set up roimd 

 them to support a covering of skins. The Onas are not cannibals, 

 as some travellers have asserted, nor do they burn their dead> 

 The native population cannot be estimated at more than three 

 hundred, but in summer the number of inhabitants is largely in- 

 creased by miners, who return to Punta Arenas in winter. The 



