May 31, 1889.] 



SCIENCE. 



421 



card. Whenever a hole has been punched in a card, the corre- 

 sponding pin passes through into a mercury-cup beneath, com- 

 pleting an electric circuit. These circuits, one for every hole, pass 

 out to a large number of counters which operate electrically, and 

 which add upon their dials all items of the same kind upon the 

 same dials : as, for instance, all white men upon a dial marked 

 " white males ; " all business or professional people, upon dials 

 which indicate their particular business or profession. The cards, 

 as they leave the press, are all sorted by means of an electrical 

 sorting device, whereby they may be separated into groups or 

 States of the Union. It will thus be seen that the machines are 

 much more reliable than the most accurate human agency, and 

 that one machine will do the work of a large number of clerks. 

 The next census of this country will be taken with these machines, 

 and two will be sent to New York soon for the 1890 census-tak- 

 ing." 



— The report of the royal commission appointed to consider the 

 expediency of establishing a teaching university for London has 

 been laid on the table of the House of Commons, and Nature s^zXss 

 that the Blue Book may be expected soon. The commissioners are 

 agreed, first, that the petition of the Royal Colleges of Physicians 

 and Surgeons to be authorized to grant degrees in medicine should 

 not be entertained ; second, that it is desirable that London should 

 have a teaching university. On the third point — whether a charter 

 shall be granted to the associated colleges of King's and University, 

 constituting these colleges the Teaching University of London — the 

 commission are divided. The three commissioners connected with 

 the teaching profession (Sir William Thomson, Professor Stokes, 

 and Mr. Welldon) are in favor of it ; the three lawyers (Lord Sel- 

 borne. Sir James Hannen. and Dr. Ball) are opposed to it. The re- 

 port ends with a request that this question be referred back to the 

 ■commission for their further consideration, in order that they may 

 •determine whether it is not possible to devise a scheme of common 

 action between the two colleges and the existing University of Lon- 

 don. 



— The Swedish Government has decided. Nature announces, to 

 •send a man-of-war to New York to bring home the body of Capt. 

 Ericsson, who expressed a strong desire to be buried at Langban- 

 shyttan, in Vermeland, the place of his birth. In his will no direc- 

 tions are given as to the disposal of his valuable collection of models, 

 but Swedish journals state that the executors will present them to 

 the Smithsonian Institution. 



— According to Allen's Indian Mail, the Madras Museum now 

 possesses the skeleton of the largest elephant ever killed in India. 

 This elephant was the source of great terror to the inhabitants of 

 South Arcot, by whom it was killed and buried. The museum 

 authorities despatched a taxidermist to the spot to exhume the 

 bones and transfer them to Madras. The skeleton is exactly 10 

 feet 6 inches in height, being S inches higher than the highest 

 hitherto measured in the flesh by Mr. Sanderson. 



— The Upsala University and the Swedish Geographical Society 

 have sent Dr. Carl Forsstrand to study the marine fauna of the 

 West Indian Islands during the present summer. 



— Mr. Chardonnet has succeeded in preparing a new artificial 

 silk, — a silk which bears the same relation to the natural article as 

 celluloid does to ivory. Its preparation is somewhat as follows : 

 Cellulose (cotton, or whatever may be available), after being 

 treated with a mixture of nitric and sulphuric acids in equal pro- 

 portion, as for the m.aking of gun-cotton, is dissolved in a mixture 

 of alcohol and ether, to which is added some perchloride of iron or 

 protochloride of tin and tannic acid. The solution thus obtained is 

 placed in a vertical vessel terminating in a small tube or in a dia- 

 phragm pierced with fine holes, so that it can run out into a vessel 

 full of water slightly acidulated with nitric acid. The fine fluid 

 filament which comes out takes on immediately a more or less solid 

 consistency, and forms a thread, which can be wound on a spool. 

 The thread thus obtained resembles silk very closely, and is equally 

 strong and elastic. It is not attacked by water, cold or warm, nor 

 by the acids and alkalies moderately concentrated. By introdu- 

 cing into the solution coloring-materials, one may obtain threads of 



any desired shade. This artificial silk is said to be e-xtremely 

 inflammable, — an objection which it is hoped to overcome. It is 

 probable that the nitric acid can be replaced by some other which 

 will render it less combustible. When this progress has been real- 

 ized, we shall have a new textile fabric of the greatest importance. 



— Madrid has for a long time shared with St. Petersburg and 

 Buda-Pesth the monopoly of being one of the most unhealthy cities 

 in Europe. From 1880 to 1887 the number of deaths averaged 41.2 

 per thousand. In 1887, on account of epidemics of scarlet-fever 

 and diphtheria, this figure rose to 45 per thousand. As a result, 

 the public and the authorities have been aroused, and the govern- 

 ment has just ordered certain measures to improve the sanitary 

 condition of the city, including improved drainage systems, meth- 

 ods of disinfection, the inspection of the food-supplies, the organi- 

 zation of proper hospitals, etc. 



— Laura Bridgman, the famous deaf and blind mute, died May 

 24 in the Perkins Institution for the Blind in South Boston, of ery- 

 sipelas, which finally attacked the heart. She had been ill for 

 about three weeks, and retained her consciousness almost unto the 

 last. The story of her afflictions, and of the wonderful way in 

 which she was enabled to triumph over them, had made her name 

 known throughout the civilized world. She was born in Hanover, 

 N.H., Dec. 21, 1829, and, although subject to fits in infancy, was 

 an intelligent and healthy child, with all normal faculties, at two 

 years old. At that time she was prostrated by a fever, which 

 raged for seven weeks, destroying sight and hearing, and blunting 

 the senses of taste and smell. She did not recover her health for 

 two or three years, and was cut off, necessarily, from all ordinary 

 human communication, although she exhibited signs of intelligence, 

 and proved her recognition of different members of her family by 

 certain motions which she herself invented. She was seven years 

 old when she was put under the control of Dr. Samuel G. Howe in 

 the institution of which she remained an inmate for so many years, 

 and her education was begun. 



— A writer in the Pall Mall Gazette says, that, including five 

 drowning cases, the fatal accidents from all causes in connection 

 with the Forth Bridge amount to 53. As regards those killed in 

 the actual construction of the bridge, there have been 44 lives lost, 

 death taking place either at the time of the accident or soon after. 

 The total number of accidents which had occurred up to Septem- 

 ber, 1888, — mostly in the four years beginning with September, 

 1884, — was 543, of which the greater part, of course, were of the 

 description ranging from " serious " to " slight." Of these 543 

 cases, 84 were treated in hospital, and 459 at the homes of the 

 injured persons. The following hair-breadth escapes are recorded : 

 One man trusted himself to work at a height of 120 feet over the 

 waters of the Firth, simply grasping a rope. His hands got numbed 

 with cold, his grasp relaxed, he fell backwards down, and down, 

 into the water ; and he was fished up alive. In another instance a 

 spanner fell a distance of 300 feet, knocked off a man's cap, and 

 fell on the wooden stage at his feet, and went clean through a four- 

 inch plank. In another case somewhat similar, a spanner which 

 fell from a great height actually tore a man's clothes from his 

 waistcoat to his ankle, and left him uninjured. One of the most 

 thrilling incidents heard of was that in which the " staging," or 

 scaffolding on which the men work high up in mid-air, gave way, 

 carrying a number of poor fellows in its fall. Two of these men, 

 striking some portion of the work in their descent, were killed be- 

 fore they reached the water ; one or two others who fell clear of 

 the girders were rescued from the Firth little the worse for their 

 fall and immersion ; two others, however, managed as they fell to 

 grasp at one of the struts high up above the w-ater, and there they 

 clung for dear life. To effect their rescue was itself an undertak- 

 ing of no slight danger ; but efforts were promptly made, and be- 

 fore long the man who happened to be nearest the rescuer was 

 reached. And this brave fellow, hanging there to the ironwork, 

 actually persuaded the rescuers to delay taking him off before they 

 saved his companion. " Never mind me I " he said : " I can hold 

 a bit longer ; go and see to my mate, for he's getting dazed, and 

 he'll drop." We are glad to record that this hero, and his mate 

 too, were saved. 



