474 



SCIENCE. 



LN. S. Vol. VIII. No. 197. 



the statement that the "War Office authori- 

 ties have decided to do away with part of 

 the scientific training at the Royal Military 

 College at Woolwich, by closing the chem- 

 ical laboratory — a curious step backwards 

 for modern times. 



In investigating pitchblende to fiod why 

 the activity of the Becquerel rays is not 

 proportionate to the amount of uranium 

 present, a rule holding in general for com- 

 pounds of uranium, M. P. Curie and Mme. 

 S. Curie have isolated a new substance 

 which appears to be a new metal. It is, 

 according to the Comptes Rendus, thrown 

 down with the bismuth sulfid and partly 

 separated by heating in vacuum to 700° C, 

 the sublimate obtained having 400 times 

 the activity of uranium. The spectrum, 

 however, emits no characteristic lines. The 

 name of -polonium is suggested for the new 

 substance, from the country where the 

 pitchblende was found. J. L. H. 



ZOOLOGICAL NOTES. 

 In a recently issued excerpt from the 

 Bulletin of the U. S. Fish Commission, 

 Dr. Hugh M. Smith treats of the Florida 

 Commercial Sponges, briefly describing the 

 species taken and discussing the causes of 

 their decrease and the possible remedies 

 for it. The causes of decrease are the 

 usual ones, the taking of small sponges and 

 excessive fishing ; the proposed remedies 

 are the enforcement of the laws against 

 taking small sponges and the prohibition 

 of sponging on certain grounds for defi- 

 nite periods. From the very rapid rate of 

 growth assigned to the most valuable 

 species, the sheepswool sponge; it is evident 

 that the restocking of the depleted sponge 

 beds would be a very simple matter if the 

 above remedial measures could be enforced. 

 Dr. Smith tells us that experiments seem to 

 show that the sheepswool may, under favor- 

 able conditions, attain a weight of one 

 tenth of a pound in six months and reach 



a commercial size in a year. He considers 

 that sponge culture promises well for 

 Florida waters, where, for some reason, 

 growth is more rapid than in the Mediter- 

 ranean. On the other hand, the introduc- 

 tion of Mediterranean sponges is regarded 

 as problematical, and it is a question if 

 the introduced sponges would retain their 

 superiority under the changed environment. 

 The paper is illustrated by numerous half- 

 tone plates of commercial sponges. 



F. A. L. 



CURRENT NOTES ON ANTEBOPOLOGY. 

 THE ZOQUE LANGtTAGE. 



An important contribution to American 

 linguistics is the 22d volume of the ' Biblio- 

 theque Linguistique Americaine' (Paris, 

 Maisonneuve), which has just appeared. 

 It is entitled ' Langue Zoque et Langue 

 Mixe,' and is edited by M. Eaoul de la 

 Grasserie (1898, pp. 384). Most of it is 

 occupied with the Zoque, of which a gram- 

 matical outline is given and a vocabulary 

 of nearly 7,000 words from the MS. of 

 Father Luis Gonzales (1672). This is 

 further compared with the modern Zoque 

 as spoken at present in Chiapas. 



The Mixe is represented by the Grammar 

 of Father Quintana (1730), a short vocabu- 

 lary and some texts. 



The work closes with a comparison of the 

 Zoque and Mixe, showing them rather 

 closely related members of the same stock, 

 though with notable diiferences in words 

 and in morphology, especially that the 

 Mixe prefixes the pronoun in the conjuga- 

 tion, while the Zoque suffixes it. 



M. de la Grasserie has edited these ma- 

 terials with great care, and the volume is a 

 valuable addition to linguistic literature. 



THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF BRUNSWICK. 



On the occasion of the meeting this year 

 of the German Anthropological Society at 

 Brunswick, a little volume has been issued 



