Dkceiibee 30, 1898.] 



SCIENCE. 



951 



of Africa. The sum of £1,000 has been sub- 

 scribed from one source towards the expenses 

 of the expedition, which are estimated at not 

 less than £5,000. 



The Washington Academy of Medicine held 

 its sixth annual meeting on December 14th, 

 when Dr. Samuel C. Bussey delivered the 

 presidential address, on ' The History and 

 Progress of Sanitation of the City of Wash- 

 ington and the Efforts of the Medical Pro- 

 fession in Eelation Thereto.' 



The New England Association of Chemistry 

 Teachers will hereafter publish records of its 

 meetings. We have received a report of the 

 nineteenth meeting, held in Boston on No- 

 vember 12th. Dr. H. M. Goodwin, of the 

 Massachusetts Institute of Technology, read a 

 paper on the advance in physical chemistry 

 during the last decade, and a report was pre- 

 sented on the progress of the movement insti- 

 tuted by the Association to promote efficiency 

 in the teaching of chemistry. 



The second annual convention of the di- 

 rectors of physical education of the colleges 

 and universities of the United States will be 

 held at Columbia University, New York, on 

 December 30th. 



M. DussAUD, of Geneva, has sent the Paris 

 Academy of Sciences a description of a new 

 telephone with which he has successfully ex- 

 perimented. From a distant laboratory he was 

 able to send messages that could be distinctly 

 heard in a large room by an audience of 1,000 

 people. 



Me. a. B. Baker, of the National Zoological 

 Park, notes that the large snakes refuse to eat 

 rats captured about the buildings, but quickly 

 devour those caught out of doors. Eats taken 

 indoors were then kept for a day or so in a cage 

 with an earth floor, after which they were 

 readily eaten. A very similar experience was 

 had with smaller snakes, copperheads, these 

 declining to eat house mice, permitting them to 

 run about the cage, or even over their bodies, 

 with impunity, while field mice were quickly 

 taken even after they had been dead for some 

 little time. These facts seem to show that snakes 

 have a very keen sense of smell and are largely 

 guided by it in the choice of their food. 



Professor Behring, in conjunction with 

 Dr. Ruppel, has applied for a German patent 

 for a tuberculosis serum : ' A method for pro- 

 ducing a highly poisonous and immunifying 

 substance from tubercle bacilli or from cultures 

 of tubercle bacilli.' 



The Prince of Wales presided at a private 

 meeting at Marlborough House, on December 

 20th, convened by him to promote a war against 

 tuberculosis. The Marquis of Salisbury, the 

 Earlof Rosebery anda number of men of science 

 and physicians spoke on the urgent necessity of 

 educating the people in the means of prevent- 

 ing consumption and of checking the spread of 

 tuberculous disease among cattle. 



Reutee's agency states that advices from the 

 Russian provinces of Livonia and Courland re- 

 port that leprosy is spreading to a marked ex- 

 tent. The military authorities in these dis- 

 tricts have been compelled to reject for the 

 army many young men found to be infected 

 with the disease. Notwithstanding the precau- 

 tions taken, the number of victims amounts at 

 the present time in Russia to more than 5,000. 



Giving evidence before the Plague Commis- 

 sion, at Bangalore, on December 12th, Colonel 

 Robertson, the Resident at Mysore, stated, ac- 

 cording to the London Times, that the attitude 

 of the people was uncompromisingly hostile to 

 the plague measures. It was impossible in the 

 large cities to deal effectively with the epidemic, 

 the fear of which destroyed natural affection. 

 Captain Roe, chief plague officer, maintained 

 that segregation was unsuccessful, owing to the 

 difficulty of catching the people ; if segregation 

 were abolished the natives would not run 

 away. Major Deane declared that Yersin's 

 serum was useless. Haffkine's serum, he said, 

 conferred a temporary immunity, but not to the 

 extent supposed. Colonel McGann stated that 

 the plague had been prevalent among native 

 soldiers, but not among the Europeans. Haff- 

 kine's prophylactic had been found valuable. 

 The plague was in the middle of December 

 again increasing in Bombay city, but a decrease 

 was reported in the Presidency districts. Mad- 

 ras, Mysore and Haidarabad remain unchanged, 

 but a number of cases have occurred in the 

 Central Provinces. 



