OcTOBER 29, 1897.] 
ditions. Mr. Preece, the Chief of the Tele- 
graph Department, although he does not per- 
sonally conduct the experiments, goes down oc- 
casionally to witness them and compare results, 
and advise as to future operations. The au- 
thorities are endeavoring to obtain as satisfac- 
tory results as those achieved by Marconi, but 
up to the present time they do not appear to 
have been so successful. The receiving appa- 
ratus is sent out every morning on a trolley, so 
that it can be transferred to different parts of 
the country to be experimented with. Strict 
secrecy is maintained in regard to the instru- 
ments, and when the experiments are con- 
cluded at the end of the day the apparatus is 
brought back to Fort Burgoyne and carefully 
guarded. The experiments are now being made 
within a radius of three miles of the Fort. 
Hitherto they have been confined to two miles 
with the most successful results, messages being 
freely and distinctly transmitted. At the three 
miles’ radius, it is stated, the results are not 
nearly so satisfactory. In order to transmit to 
a greater distance the height of the vertical 
wire has to be increased. As the pole at Fort 
Burgoyne is already a considerable height, the 
use of the flying kite has been resorted to in 
order to test at still greater heights. The kite 
is composed of thin copper, a wire running 
from the tail to the transmitter. 
It is said that Dr. Alexander Edington, Bac- 
teriologist to the Cape of Good Hope govern- 
ment, has found that the blood of animals af- 
fected by rinderpest, when treated with citric 
acid and kept for such a time as to ensure the 
death of the contagium, will, when injected, 
immunize all animals exposed toinfection. Dr. 
Edington has practiced his protective injection 
on several large herds, and always with satis- 
factory results, the largest mortality haying 
been a little over 3 per cent., or eight animals 
in a herd of 284. 
Ir is stated in Natural Science that the trus- 
tees of the Albany Museum, Grahamston, have 
decided to erect a new and more commodious 
building. The necessary funds are already in 
hand, and the work is to be proceeded with at 
once. The plans have been prepared by Mr. 
Viesebosse, architect of the Cape Town Museum. 
SCIENCE. 
663 
The new museum will be a two-storied build- 
ing, 150 feet long by about 60 feet deep. 
We learn from Garden and Forest that the lum- 
bermen now controling a large block of Big Tree 
forest, on the western slope of the Sierra Nevada, 
in California, are making a determined effort to 
obtain from Congress authority to cut the Se- 
quoia timber in the General Grant National 
Park. This particular portion of the Sierra 
Reservation includes about fifteen hundred 
acres, and is covered with an exceptionally fine 
growth of Sesquoias and Sugar Pines, probably 
the oldest living organisms on the face of the 
globe. As Garden and Forest says, every indi- 
vidual is a monument which should be sacredly 
preserved for the benefit of future generations. 
To cut down one of these trees is a crime, and 
it should be a matter of national humiliation 
that a considerable part of the Sequoia forest 
has been allowed to pass from government 
control into the hands of lumbermen. There 
was no excuse for this; there would be less 
excuse in allowing those portions of the Sierra 
forest which have already been reserved for the 
benefit of the people to be opened to entry. 
The lumber, even, is not needed by the com- 
munity, which can be abundantly supplied 
from the Redwood forests, and no one but a 
little group of men who expect to make money 
by this transaction has any interest in the suc- 
cess of the movement. 
THE usual annual compilation of statistics 
relating to mines and quarries in the United 
Kingdom in 1896 has been issued by the Home 
Office and is abstracted in the London Times. 
The sources from which minerals are obtained 
in the United Kingdom are classed under five 
heads: (1) Mines under the Coal Mines Regula- 
tion Act; (2) mines under the Metalliferous 
Mines Regulation Act; (8) quarries more than 
20 feet deep, which are now under the Quarries 
Act; (4) quarries les than 20 feet deep, which 
are not under the Quarries Act; (5) brineworks. 
Except in the case of iron ore and a few less 
important substances, the present volume con- 
tains no account of minerals raised from the 
quarries less than 20 feet deep. It is true that 
the amounts of clay, brick-earth, sand and 
gravel so obtained must be large; but without 
