December i8, 1891. J 



SCIENCK. 



341 



appears to explain the well-known deleterious effect of rest on a 

 cell. In an ordinary good cell of 45 pints capacity there is suffi- 

 cient active oxygen to convert 3.25 to 7.5 grammos of peroxide 

 of lead into sulphate, or to undo the work of one or two ampere- 

 hours charge. At each reversal, however, the peroxides are bro- 

 ken up, but if the cells stand idle the plates get sulphated, and 

 the amount of active oxygen formed in the next passage of the 

 current shows a marked increase. In sodium sulphate cells the 

 active oxygen is usually less than in plain cells and the hydrogen 

 dioxide always so. The variations in electromotive force appear 

 to depend on which plate hydrogen dioxide is formed at. When 

 present at the peroxide plate it causes a rise, but when diffused 

 through the acid and present at the lead plate it causes a lower 

 ing. 



— At the Methodist Chinese Mission, 305 West 14th Street, New 

 York, a writer in Our Language for December states that he wit- 

 nesj-ed on Nov. 8 a demonstration of the value of phcnetic spelling 

 as a stepping stone in teaching pupils to read oidinary English. 

 A pupil of the school, who had received five lessons a week for 

 three weeks, was examined and found able to read seventy-four 

 pages of "Harper's First Reader." He had been taught hy Mr. 

 Knoflach, using "Sound-English" at first, and pas.-ing from this 

 into the ordinary print. The Chinaman's mission teacher stated 

 that her pupil could neither read nor speak En-lish, except three 

 or four short pbrases, when Mr. Knoflach took him in hand, and 

 she, together with several of the other teachers, expressed much 

 wonder and delight at the aoliievement. The man also read the 

 first eif<ht chapters of Genesis. The teaching is especially difficult 

 in such a case as this, for the pupil cannot understand the instruc- 

 tor's explanations; besides, several sounds in English are strange 

 to Chinese vocal organs. Mr. Knoflach has since begun to teach 

 German and Italian children to read English by the same means, 

 in a New York charity school. 



— NossUof, who has devoted so much time to the exploration 

 of Nova Zembla, spent last winter at the western entrance of 

 Matbew Strait, in a house specially constructed after his own 

 plans and brought from Archangel. Up to November M. Nossilof 

 was able to make excursions into the Kara Sea, collecting birds 

 and animals, surveying the coast, and taking soundings in the 

 sea. The winter was unusually stormy, and the sea remained 

 open until spring. Torrents of rain fell, so that the country was 

 covered with a coating of ice, and the reindeer perished from hun- 

 ger; hundreds of seals were frozen on the ice. and fish were 

 thrown up in heaps on the shoi-e. Changes of temperature oc- 

 curred with great suddenness: from —31'' F. the thermometer 

 rose to 4-37'^ F. in a few hour-. The spring and summer were 

 correspondingly severe, and the temperature did not rise above 

 41° F. up to the end of July. Nevertheles-*, the scientific work 

 of the expedition was carried on without interruption, and large 

 zoological collections were m^de {Scottish Geographical Maga- 

 zine, December). This is the third winter M. Nossilof has spent 

 in Nova Zembla. Ilis next journey will be to the peninsula of 

 Yalmal. 



— The Abhandhmgen of the Royal Prussian Meteorological In- 

 stitute (Bd i., No. 4, 1891) contain the first part of a treatise on 

 the climate of Berlin, referring to rainfall and thunderstorms. 

 Berlin pos-esses a long series of observations, commencing with 

 the beginning of the eighteenth century, but in this investigation 

 some of the earlier observations have not been used. The subjects 

 treated as we learn from Nature, are: (l)The amount ol rainfall, 

 the annual mean being given as 23 inches. The extreme values 

 varied from 14.26 mches in 1887 to 30 inches in 18S2. The wettest 

 months were June and July, yielding together 24 per cent of the 

 annual amount. (2) Rain frequency. The average number of 

 days on which 0.08 of an inch fell was 152. The months of 

 greatest rainfall frequency were November and December. (3) 

 Hail and soft hail {Graiq^el). The former occurred on 2 to 3 

 days and the latter on 3 to 4 days in each year, and mostly in the 

 months of May, June, and July. (4) Snow. A Berlin winter niun- 

 bers on an average 33 snowy days. The distribution according to 

 months is very curious: snow does not occur most frequentlj' in 

 the coldest months; it falls as often in March as in Doceiuber. It 



lies on the ground 49 days on an average. (5) Intensity of rain- 

 fall. Daily falls of more than 2 inches are quite exceptional, and 

 of 1* inches are not frequent. The greatest fall was 1.86 inches 

 in H hours. (6) Wet and dry periods. Attention is more par- 

 ticularly given to periods of short dm-ation; wet periods of five or 

 more days are fewer than dry periols of similar length; the for- 

 mer average 7 5 and the latter 13.3 per year. (7) Thunderstorms. 

 Berlin euj.iys compirative immunity from thunderstorms, as they 

 occrr on an average only 15 days in the year, about half of them 

 being in June and July. Tbis valuable discusiion has been car- 

 ried o It by Professor G. Mellmann. 



— The external part of the laboratory which is being built in 

 the Paris Museum of Natural History for Professor Chauveau, 

 from the designs provided by him, is now finished. This la" 

 boratory will be used only for original research in physiology 

 and bacteriology, an J when completed will be the finest labora- 

 tory in France. But the Museum, according to Nature, is deeply 

 in debt, and this may cause some delay. 



— At the late International Congress of Hygien.- and Demogra- 

 phy, in Section 4, which was concerned with the Hygiene of In- 

 fancy and School-life, a resolution was passed in favor of the 

 teaching of upright penmanship or vertrcal writing, on the ground 

 that spinal curvature and short sight are caused by the faulty 

 position of the youthful student, which is necessitated by slope of 

 the letters. We can ail of ns remember, says Lancet, the trouble i if 

 learning to write, and the mental and physical toil which the 

 making of our first pothooks and hangers involved. The numl/tr 

 of muscles put in action vvben a person is writing is prodigious, 

 and it is probaole that in beginners every muscle of the b.idy must 

 yield its assent before the grapiiic symbols trickle from the pen. 

 The finger-s, wrist, elbow, and shoulder must all ba held steady. 

 Tho spine must be rigid and fixed belo v as well as above. The 

 pelvis must be firm, and to this end the child often gets a suppoit 

 by it~ feet from the legs of the chair. The thorax is more or less 

 rigid, and its raoverirents are determined more by the work of the 

 hand than the respiratory needs. Lastly, the knit brows and pro- 

 truding tongue are unconscious muscul.ir acts which serve to mark 

 the effort, both of body and mind, which the child undergoes 

 when learning to write. It is notorious that in writing our indi- 

 viduality asserts itself in spite of the pedagogue. We are taught 

 certain rules for sitting at the desk and holding the pen, which we 

 ultimately learn to neglect, and finally write in a fashion of ou r 

 own. The great drawback of writing as an exercise for children 

 is the fact that it involves one-half of the body only, and the 

 necessity of fixing the spinal column causes the child instinctively 

 to loll pon its left side w hile the right arm is working. To what 

 extent tlie asymmetry of posture is caused by the fashion of sloping 

 the letters it would be difficult to say, but there can be no doubt 

 that the writing master ought to carefully watch the attitude of 

 the child and endeavor to make it sit square to the desk and main- 

 tain the spinal column vertical. Every child should have a foot- 

 stool to give firm suppoit to the feet, and the seat should not be 

 slippery, so that the fixation of the pelvis may be easy. Vertical 

 writing is very legible, and if it diminishes to any extent the ten- 

 dency to sit "lopsided," it ought to be encoirraged. The true 

 remedy for the evils produced by learning to write seems to us to 

 be to teach the child to use both hands, and to practise alter-nalely 

 with either hand. Vertical writing lends itself more readily to 

 ambi-dexterity than does sloping writing, and there can be no 

 doubt that a clerk who could write with equal facility with either 

 hand, and could rest one side of the body while the other was 

 working, would be little liable to writer's cramp and similar 

 troubles. Seeing how enormous is the muscular effort involved 

 in giving the hand sufficient steadiness, and that the brain fag is 

 scarcely less than the muscle fug, it goes without saying that 

 writing lessons should at first be of very short duration. Ten 

 minutes with each hand ought to amply suffice. 



— Mr. P. H. Rolfs, recently connected with the Iowa Agricul- 

 tural College. Ames, la., has been appointed botanist and ento- 

 mologist of the Florida Agricultural Experiment Station at Lake 

 Citv, Fla. 



