228 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. VIII, No. 188 



LONDON LETTER. 



Another of the veteran English naturalists has 

 just passed away, after a long illness, in the per- 

 son of Mr. George Busk, F.R.S., F.G.S., etc. By 

 profession a medical man, and for many years 

 consulting surgeon to the Seamen's hospital at 

 Greenwich, he was one of those who sacrificed his 

 professional prospects to a love of science for its 

 own sake, and made his reputation chiefly as a 

 teacher and examiner in the subjects of com- 

 parative anatomy and histology, in connection 

 with the Royal college of surgeons and the Uni- 

 versity of London. He was one of the translators 

 and editors of KoUiker's ' Manual of human 

 histology,' and sole editor of Wedl's ' Rudiments 

 of pathological histology.' In 1872-73 he was 

 vice-president of the Royal society, and for about 

 ten years was the secretary of the Linnean society. 

 When an inspector of physiological laboratories 

 was needed under the vivisection act, Mr. George 

 Busk was appointed to the post, which he held, 

 with great advantage to science, up to the time of 

 his death. 



A severe colliery explosion has just taken place 

 in one of the deep pits (1,410 feet) of the Lanca- 

 shire coal-fields, by which nearly forty lives were 

 sacrificed ; but one of the few survivors is able to 

 give most important evidence on the behavior of 

 the Davy lamp, and its share in causing this par- 

 ticular explosion. From the heaving of the coal, 

 a sudden rush of gas came out upon his i^artner's 

 lamp, the flame rapidly elongated inside, and in a 

 very short time the gauze was seen to burst, and 

 the explosion took place. This danger was not 

 unknown to Davy, but it has liitherto been con- 

 sidered that the elongation of the flame gave suf- 

 ficient warning to enable the miner to escape to 

 a place of "safety. In the present instance it 

 seems clear that the three stages followed each 

 other too quickly, the result being a lamentable 

 sacrifice of life. 



Considerable attention has been directed of late 

 to the performances of the Marchant engine, for 

 which it is claimed that the difficult problem of 

 the return to the boiler of steam which would 

 otherwise be wasted has now been practically 

 solved by it. Several stringent tests have been 

 made of this engine under the superintendence of 

 responsible engineers previously unacquainted 

 with it, and the result of one of the most recent 

 maybe here given. "The stated effective horse- 

 power of the engine (93.3) was therefore obtained 

 at the expenditure of 0.803 pounds Welsh coal per 

 horse-power per hour, and we hereby certify to 

 such ascertained result." The boiler pressure was 

 241 pounds per square inch ; the average vacuum 

 in the condenser, 17 inches ; and the speed, 125 



revolutions per minute. The results thus obtained 

 work out to a fraction over half a pound per 

 indicated horse-power per hour. The economy in 

 coal is such, that it is calculated that the Penin- 

 sular and oriental steamship company would 

 save £1,000 ($5,000) per day by the use of such 

 engines. As the condenser occupies only a 

 sixteenth of the space of an ordinary water-con- 

 denser, it is adaptable to locomotives, which 

 might, says Mr. Marchant, the inventor, be built 

 to run 1,000 miles without a fresh supply of water. 



The season of annual congresses has now well 

 begun. Allusion was recently made in this cor- 

 respondence to that of the naval architects in 

 Liverpool, a concise summary of whose work ap- 

 pears in Nature for Aug. 12, and will well repay 

 careful perusal. The mechanical engineers hold 

 theu-s in London during the present week. The 

 controversy upon women's education, revived by 

 Dr. Withers Moore in his presidential address at 

 the British medical association last week, has 

 already received contributions by cable from the 

 United States, and has attracted much attention 

 here. The educated layman's view of it is forcibly 

 set forth in an article headed ' A plea for silly 

 mothers ' in the Pall Mall gazette, from which 

 the following sentences may be quoted. " Where 

 Dr. Moore has gone astray is, that while he wants 

 to prove that the higher education unfits women 

 to be mothers, all he does is, that overpressure 

 does so : of course it does. Overpressure is bad 

 for women ; so it is for men. Some women are 

 not fit for professional careers ; neither are some 

 men. . . . We no longer aspire to shut women 

 out of the world in mediaeval seclusion ; our aim 

 is rather to keep them among its stir and strife in 

 protected and shepherded peace, and in that work 

 there is as much call upon the new chivalry as 

 ever was made in an earlier civilization upon the 

 knights of the lance and spear." 



Dr. J. S. Billings's address on the position and 

 prospects of the medical profession in America 

 excited very great interest, as did the invitations 

 from the American representatives to attend the 

 International medical congress to be held next 

 year in Washington. The present meeting has 

 been more cosmopolitan than any former one, a 

 hundred members coming from the continent. 

 United States, or colonies, while there were mem- 

 bers from Costa Rica, Calcutta, Japan, and South 

 Africa. 



A very interesting discussion, which has a 

 scientific side to it, is going on with reference to 

 the permanency of water- color pictures ; and so 

 much public interest has been aroused, that a 

 committee has been appointed by the ' lords of the 

 committee of council on education ' to investigate 



