July 30, 1886.] 



SCIEJSrCE. 



99 



curator department of birds in the Smithsonian 

 institution. The work is to contain some 435 

 ilhistrations suitably executed, and will conform 

 to the geographical limits, classifications, numera- 

 tion, and nomenclature adopted by the American 

 ornithological union. We doubt not it will be a 

 most important contribution to the literature of 

 the subject, and presume that natiu-alist and 

 sportsman alike will find in it an aid. 



— Mr. N. S. Goss's revised list of the 'Birds of 

 Kansas' gives notes on three hundred and thirty- 

 five species occurring in that state, one hundred 

 and seventy-five of which are known to breed 

 within its limits. This little work contains the 

 results of a large amount of labor, and is highly 

 creditable to its author. 



— ' The young collector' (London, Sonnensehein 

 & Co.) is the title of a very cheap and convenient 

 series of small handbooks designed for the ama- 

 teur, tastefully and neatly gotten up, and issued 

 at one shilling each. Four of them, so far, have 

 appeared, on ' Mosses,' by J. E. Bagnall; on 'British 

 butterflies, moths, and beetles,' by V. F. Kirby ; 

 on ' Seaweeds, shells, and fossils,' by Peter Gray 

 and B. B. Woodward ; and on ' English coins and 

 tokens,' by L. Jewitt and B. V. Head. These little 

 handy handbooks contain simple dii'ections for 

 the collection and preservation of specimens, with 

 a general introduction to scientific classification, 

 habits, etc., interpersed with numerous engrav- 

 ings. To the boy or girl with an awakening 

 propensity to collect (and every healthy boy at 

 some period of his career has a more or less en- 

 during hobby of some sort or other), these little 

 works will serve as usefiil guides even in America. 

 Why cannot some publisher get out similar and 

 as cheap handbooks, more expressly serviceable 

 for the young American collector? 



— The longest clock pendulum known is said 

 to be one in Avignon, France, measuring sixty- 

 seven feet, to which is attached a weight of one 

 hundred and thirty-two pounds. Its movement is 

 slow, passing through an arc of between nine and 

 ten feet in four seconds and a half. 



— Mr. J. H. Long, in a recent paper on the mi- 

 croscopic examination of butter, arrives at the 

 conclusions, that, " taking all things into consider- 

 ation, we have no absolutelj^ certain method of 

 distinguishing between butter and some of its 

 substitutes, and that, of all methods proposed, 

 the microscopic are perhaps the least reliable." 

 These conclusions are similar to the ones reached 

 by Prof. H. A. Webster, but are directly opposed 

 to those of Dr. Taylor. 



— The mortality of horses in New York City 



during 1885 reached nearly seven thousand ; and 

 during the past six years nearly forty thousand 

 dead horses were received at the receiving-docks. 



— Recent researches by Messrs. Coleman and 

 McKendrick of England, on the effects of extreme 

 cold on certain microbes, especially those con- 

 cerned in putrefactive changes, show that the 

 organisms are killed by exposure to a temperature 

 of from 80° to 120^ F. below zero, though their 

 germs are unaffected, and speedily develop after 

 an increase of temperature. 



— We learn from the Athenaeum that the neces- 

 sary funds have been granted for the expenses of 

 the British expedition to observe the total eclipse 

 of the sun on Aug. 29. The party, which will prob- 

 ably include Mr. Maunder and Mr. Turner of the 

 Greenwich observatory, will occupy three stations 

 on the island of Grenada in the West Indies. To- 

 tality occurs there about quarter-past seven o'clock 

 in the morning, and lasts very nearly four min- 

 utes. A proposal was made some time ago to de- 

 spatch a German party to Benguela on the west 

 coast of Africa, the most favorable point from 

 which observations could be made ; but we have 

 not heard that it has assumed a tangible form. 

 The bill introduced in congress for fitting out an 

 American expedition seems to have been buried 

 with some committee, and it is now, of course, too 

 late for proper preparation, even if the bill could 

 be pushed through. 



— The president of the province of the Ama- 

 zonas, Brazil, has authorized the employment of 

 Francisco Pfaff, of Geneva, Switzerland, as the 

 chemist of the botanical gardens established at 

 Manaus a few years ago. It will be the duty of 

 the chemist to study and report upon the medici- 

 nal and industrial properties of the plants of the 

 Amazon valley. 



LETTERS TO THE EDITOR. 



«♦* Correspondents are requested to be as brief as possible. The 

 writer's name is in all cases required as proof of good faith. 



Sea-level and ocean-currents. 



The subject of sea-level and ocean-currents is not 

 so simple that there is not room for differences of 

 opinion. It is not to be denied that exceptionally 

 strong winds, such as Texas northers or those of 

 violent cyclones, often cause considerable changes of 

 sea level in shallow water like that of Lake Erie, or 

 of the thin stratuoa of the same depth, and much 

 less near the shoi-e, along the Atlantic coast and the 

 border of the Gulf of Mexico, extending mostly to 

 a distance many miles from the coast, where the bot- 

 tom of the shallow water drops off abruptly into 

 deep sea-water. But the effects of winds of the 

 same strength upon deep sea-water are comparative- 

 ly very small. 



If vve suppose Lake Erie to be two hundred miles 

 in length and two hundred feet in depth, and a wind 



