SCIENCE. 



FRIDAY, AUGUST 27, 1886. 



COMMENT AND CRITICISM. 

 Capt. C. E. Button, of the U. S. geological 

 survey, has been recently engaged in making a 

 study of Crater Lake in Oregon, and the latest 

 advices received from him show that he has dis- 

 covered probably the deepest body of fresh water 

 in the country. Leaving Ashland, Oregon, on the 

 7th of July, his party, escorted by ten soldiers 

 provided through the courtesy of the general com- 

 manding the military department of the Colum- 

 bia, reached the brink of the wall of the lake on 

 the 13th, having brought with them boats so 

 moxmted on the running gear of wagons as to 

 bear transportation over a hundred miles of moun- 

 tain road without injury. The boats bore the 

 transportation without strain or damage, and 

 preparations were at once begun for lowering them 

 nine hundred feet to the water. The steepness of 

 the wall was very great, being at the place selected 

 about 41° or 42°, and the descent partly over talus, 

 above covered with snow, and rocky broken 

 ledges lower down. The boats entered the water 

 quite unharmed. The process of sheathing them, 

 rigging the tackle, and lowering them occupied 

 four days. A couple of days were occupied in 

 making journeys around the walls of the lake by 

 boat, — the only possible way, — and in examin- 

 ing the rocks and structures of the wall in its 

 various parts. Next followed a series of sound- 

 ings. The depth of the lake considerably exceeded 

 the captain's anticipations, though the absence of 

 any thing like a talus near the water line already 

 indicated deep water around the entire shore. 

 The depths range from 853 to 1,996 feet, so far as 

 the S0Tm.dings show, and it is quite possible and 

 probable that depths both greater and shallower 

 may be found. The average depth is about 1,490 

 feet. The descent from the water's edge is precipit- 

 ous ; at four or five hundred yards from shore, 

 depths of fifteen to eighteen hundred feet are found 

 all around the margin. The greatest depths will 

 probably exceed two thousand feet, for it is not 

 probable that the lowest point has been touched. 

 The soundings already made indicate it as being 

 the deepest body of fresh water in the country. 

 No. 186. — 1886. 



The great value of chemical analysis in solv- 

 ing problems which are otherwise incapable of 

 solution, was never better demonstrated than in 

 the recent ice-cream poisoning which occurred in 

 New Jersey. Various theories had been advanced 

 to explain it, any one of which would have ac- 

 counted for the symptoms produced in the suffer- 

 ers. The tyrotoxicon discovered by Prcfessor 

 Vaughan, the vanilla bean used in the flavoring 

 extract, and the gelatine employed to give stiff- 

 ness, w^ere credited with being the possible materies 

 morbi by their respective advocates ; but no one 

 seems to have suspected foul play. The death of 

 one of the victims was followed by a post-mortem 

 examination, and the organs of the deceased were 

 submitted to Professor Austen of Rutgers college* 

 He has just announced the discovery of arsenic in 

 sufficient quantity to cause death. It is more 

 than probable, that, were the truth known, in all 

 the cases of poisoning by food-products, malice 

 would be found to play a more important part 

 than either decomposition or germs introduced 

 from without. 



Two PERSONS are REPORTED as having died 

 from cholera at Chippewa Falls, Wis. That the 

 cause of death in these cases was Asiatic cholera 

 is in the highest degree improbable. Italy seems 

 to be alone among European countries in having 

 this scourge now prevalent, and that any one at 

 so remote a point as the town mentioned should 

 show symptoms of cholera, is hardly to be cred- 

 ited. It is, of course, possible that clothing in- 

 fected with cholera might be carried in trunks, 

 and opened at a point so far removed, and that 

 those exposed might thus contract the disease, 

 for there is good evidence to prove that infection 

 has been thus conveyed ; but it is more than prob- 

 able tliat if cholera reaches this country, it will be 

 from the seaboard. When the facts become 

 known, it will doubtless be found, as has so often 

 happened, that the cause of death in the cases at 

 Chippewa Falls was a severe form of cholera mor- 

 bus. 



Under a recent order of the treasury depart- 

 ment, all restrictions on imported rags have been 

 removed, and they have been placed upon the 

 same footing as other merchandise ; that is, to be 



