May 24, 1889.] 



SCIENCE. 



399 



longer than if fastened with pins made of its own species of wood, 

 or any, for that matter. 



— Charles Lamb was possibly not far wrong, says The Horological 

 Journal, when he con-jectured that Adam had a sun-dial in Para- 

 dise. Dials are probably older even than alchemy. The Baby- 

 lonians had them ; though the Egyptians, that wondrous people 

 who knew most of the things the moderns have rediscovered, seem 

 not to have used them. The Babylonians gave them to the Greeks ; 

 the Greeks, to the Romans ; and the Emperor Trajan is credited 

 with an epigram upon the art of dialing. Naturally dials are most 

 frequent in lands where the sun shines, as a matter of course, and 

 not as a rare complacence. French and Italian gardens are full of 

 them. To the walls of sunny chdteaux they are fixed in hundreds. 

 In the old days, when there was time for sentiment, and room for 

 it, sun-dials were favorite gifts from great personages to one an- 

 other, — from people to princes, and from princes to people. 

 Cosmo de' Medici, whose fitful humors so angered Benvenuto Cel- 

 lini, gave one to the Florentine students of astronomy ; and on the 

 wall of Sta. Maria Novella it still marks the time of day. But even 

 in our own cold land of fibre and complexion there are dials not a 

 few. In Mrs. Gatty's book some eight hundred inscriptions are set 

 down ; and, as some favorite legends are common to many dials, 

 the recorded number is probably close upon a thousand. 



— Mr. G. T. Shepley, the architect of the Leland Stanford, jun.. 

 University, states in the San Francisco Builditig Advertiser that 

 the work on the large dormitory in connection with the university 

 has been commenced. The buildings completed, or nearly so, 

 number fourteen, and consist of lecture-rooms, reception-rooms, 

 laboratories, and all the requisite departments for a complete edu- 

 cational course. The dormitory will be situated about a thousand 

 feet from the other buildings. It will be 275 by 145, four stories 

 high, presenting a very imposing structure. The material used is 

 San Jose stone. The building will accommodate two hundred stu- 

 dents. Single rooms will be 18 by 26, and double rooms 24 by 26. 

 Altogether there will be from one hundred and twenty-five to one 

 hundred and fifty rooms. There will only.be one dining-room for 

 the two hundred students, and this will occupy the central portion 

 of the lower floor. The kitchen, laundries, etc., are in the base- 

 ment ; but, as the dining-room is raised considerably above the 

 floor on which it is sitiiated, there will be plenty of light and air 

 afforded for the basement. All the fifteen buildings will be heated 

 by steam and lighted by electricity from one central station placed 

 in the rear of the quadrangle. The university will not resemble 

 any of the Eastern universities to any great extent. All the old 

 colleges are built around quadrangles, and in this one point the 

 Leland Stanford, jun.. University will resemble them, but in no 

 other. There will be a magnificent view from all the sleeping- 

 rooms of the dormitories. 



— M. J. Violle has been investigating the alloy of the standard 

 international kilogram, says Nature. The alloy of platinum and 

 iridium in the proportion of ten per hundred, prepared with the 

 greatest care by M. Matthey, is here found to be still somewhat 

 defective. M. VioUe's researches show that an alloy of nine parts 

 platinum and one iridium yields more uniform and accurate results, 

 both as regards density and specific heat. The density thus ob- 

 tained is an absolute constant, incapable of further modification 

 under cold hammering, annealling, or any other severe test. 



— In the Canadian Record of Science for April, in a paper on 

 the glaciation of eastern Canada, Robert Chalmers, of the Geologi- 

 cal Survey of Canada, maintains that the investigations hitherto 

 made in regard to the glaciation of eastern Canada show, that in- 

 stead of its having been caused by a continenfal ice-sheet moving 

 over the region from north to south, as has been supposed, local 

 glaciers upon the higher grounds, and icebergs or floating ice 

 striating the lower coastal and estuarine tracts, during a period of 

 submergence, were agents sufficiently powerful to produce all the 

 phenomena observed. The latter theory, with some modifications, 

 is the one so long maintained by Sir William Dawson, who has 

 studied the glaciation of this country for forty years or more. A 

 number of other observers have of late years been at work, how- 

 ever, and Sir William's views are now, Mr. Chalmers holds, about 



to receive abundant confirmation. The large mass of new evidence 

 obtained, and now available for co-ordination and study, is, how- 

 ever, so scattered through the reports of the Geological Survey and 

 various scientific periodicals, as to be somewhat difflcult of access. 

 A good deal of unpublished material, too, relating to this subject, 

 is now in the hands of the Geological Survey staff. The object in 

 this paper, therefore, is simply to collect and correlate all the main 

 facts within reach relating to this important question, briefly sum- 

 marizing the results, and referring the student for fuller details to 

 the reports and publications alluded to. 



— The following recommendations are given by the Forestry 

 Division of the Department of Agriculture in regard to the cheaper 

 coatings for keeping moisture out of timber : Never apply paint or 

 any other coating to green or unseasoned timber. If the wood 

 was not well dried or seasoned, the coat will only hasten decay. 

 Good coatings consist of oily or resinous substances which make a 

 smooth coat capable of being uniformly applied. They must cover 

 every part, must not crack, and possess a certain amount of plasti- 

 city after drying. Coal-tar, with or without sand or plaster, and 

 pitch, especially if mixed with oil of turpentine and applied hot 

 (thus penetrating more deeply), answers best. A mixture of three 

 parts coal-tar and one part clean unsalted grease, to prevent the 

 tar from drying until it has had time to fill the minute pores, is 

 recommended. One barrel of coal-tar (three to four dollars per 

 barrel) will cover three hundred posts. Wood-tar is not service- 

 able because it does not dry. Oil paints are next in value. Boiled 

 linseed-oil, or any other drying vegetable oil, is used with lead or 

 any other body, like powdered charcoal, which will give substance 

 to it. Immersion in crude petroleum is also recommended. Char- 

 ring of those parts which come in contact with the ground can be 

 considered only as an imperfect preservative ; and unless it is care- 

 fully done, and a considerable layer of charcoal is formed, the 

 effect is often detrimental, as the process both weakens the timber 

 and produces cracks, thus exposing the interior to ferments. 

 Lastly, in communities where durable timber is scarce, it will pay 

 to establish a plant for impregnating timber with antiseptics by the 

 more costly process described in " Forestry Bulletin," No. I. 



— At Reinickendorf, a village near Berlin, it is reported by 

 Building, a consumptive sanitarium is to be erected on a novel 

 plan, utilizing the supposed therapeutic influence of association 

 with certain animals. A large cylindrical building will be occupied 

 in the upper part by the patients, while the ground floor will be 

 given up to the accommodation of large numbers of milch cows, 

 the exhalations from whkh will be conducted to the apartments 

 above. A whey and buttermilk diet will also be contributed by the 

 under boarders. 



— The iridium anti-friction metal is now being introduced into 

 England. This metal has undergone some very successful tests 

 in America, Professor Thurston having compared the behavior of 

 a brass made of this alloy with one of the Pennsylvania Railroad 

 Company's standard phosphor-bronze bearings. The tests ex- 

 tended over eight hours, the mean speed of revolutions being 400 

 per minute. The pressure at starting on each brass was 200 

 pounds, which was increased by an additional 200 pounds at the 

 end of every two hours. The behavior of the two alloys was, it is 

 stated, practically identical. The iridium metal contains no iridium, 

 the term apparently being used simply to indicate that the material 

 is a hard alloy, though it has a low melting-point, and can be cast 

 round journals in place in the same way as babbitt-metal. If de- 

 sired, however, it can be cast and machined in the same way as 

 ordinary gun-metal. 



— A generous gift of §150,000 was made recently, says The 

 American Geologist, to the University of Minnesota by Ex-Gov- 

 ernor and Regent John S. Pillsbur)- of Minneapolis. It was con- 

 ditioned only on the pledge by the Legislature that the university 

 should not be weakened by the division of the funds that now 

 constitute its endowment, but that the so-called agricultural land- 

 grant (under the law of Congress of 1S61) should remain insepara- 

 bly connected with the university proper. This pledge the Legis- 

 lature gave. The gift will be used, as intended, to complete and 

 furnish the new Science Hall. At the university of California the 



