September 24, 1886.] 



SCIEWCE, 



279 



— Decatur, 111., or rather a suburb of that town, 

 is the latest place from which cases of food-poison- 

 ing are reported. This time it is chicken-salad 

 which has produced the evil results. At a recent 

 wedding-party, at v,'hich this dish formed a part 

 of the entertainment, fifty persons were poisoned, 

 but not fatally in any single instance. The illness 

 is attributed to the coj^per from a copper kettle in 

 which the chickens were cooked and ealted. 



— The J. Marion Sims memorial fund now 

 amounts to $7,759.91. The committee who have 

 the fund in charge are about to take steps to erect 

 a suitable bronze monument to the memory of the 

 distinguished American surgeon. 



— Sir Joseph Lister, the great exponent of the 

 antiseptic treatment of wounds which is known as 

 Listerism, has abandoned the use of the sj)ray of 

 carbolic acid which he formerly advocated so per- 

 sistently, on the ground that his later experiments 

 satisfy him that the germicide properties of a 

 solution of 1 to 40 of carbolic acid thrown by a 

 spray several feet into the air are absolutely noth- 

 ing ; and that the success obtained by this treat- 

 ment was due to irrigation and cleanliness. He 

 now employs sal alembroth as a dressing for 

 wounds. This is a salt which was known to the 

 ancient alchemists, and is a double mercurial salt 

 formed by the sublimation of a mixture of per- 

 chloride of mercury and chloride of ammonium. 

 Lister employs this in a solution of 1-1000, soaking 

 in it his dressings of gauze and lint. 



— The English commission for the investiga- 

 tion of hydrophobia is thoroughly organized and 

 equipped for that purpose, but has as yet been 

 unable to take any original steps in that dii-ection, 

 by reason of its total lack of material, no dog 

 having become rabid since its organization. 



— From the Courier record of medicine, we 

 learn that a case of hydrophobia recently occurred 

 at Fort Woith, Tex. After the child was bitten, 

 he was taken to Fort Denton, where a mad-stone 

 was applied, for which the parents paid twenty- 

 fi-ve dollars. Hearing of another mad-stone, and 

 desiring to do every thing in their power to save 

 their child, his parents secured this one at a cost 

 of fifty dollars, and applied it. Within a short 

 time the child developed hydrophobia, and died. 



— We regret to note the death of Prof. H. A. 

 Bayne, Ph.D., of the Royal military college, Kings- 

 ton, Ontario, Canada. Dr. Bayne was a native of 

 Nova Scotia. After graduating in arts at Dal- 

 housie college, Halifax, N.S., he spent five years 

 in the special study of chemistry under Wiede- 

 mann at Leipzig, Bunsen at Heidelberg, and 

 Dumas at Paris, and took his doctor's degree at 



Heidelberg. Eeturning to his native land, he first 

 engaged in organizing the scientific department of 

 the Halifax high school, assisting the faculty of 

 Dalhousie college at the same time to start a science 

 course. In 1879 he was appointed professor of 

 chemistry in the Royal military college, then just 

 founded. Since his appointment his time has been 

 largely occupied with the organizing of his depart- 

 ment, and only during the last year or so has he 

 been able to find time for original research. At 

 the last meeting of the Royal society of Canada, 

 of which he was a fellow, he read a valuable paper 

 on ' Chemical tests of the purity of silk.' He had 

 begun in Germany a series of experiments on the 

 properties of the rarer metals, and hoped to con- 

 tinue them when leisure came ; but with leisure 

 has come disease and death. 



— In a letter to the Beacon, Mr. E. B. Elliott 

 corrects an error made in Science for Sept. 3. In 

 that number, p. 219, sixth line, 287.372 should 

 read 287.03. 



LETTERS TO THE EDITOR. 



*t*Correspo7idents are requested to be as brief as possible. The 

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



A mummified frog. 



Not long ago Mr. James Stevenson of the U. S. 

 geological survey visited me for a day or two at Fort 

 Wingate, and while here invited my attention to an 

 interesting specimen that had fallen into his posses- 

 sion during a recent trip he had made in the coal 

 regions of northern Pennsylvania. The specimen 

 consists of a mummined frog taken from the coal- 

 mine of McLean county, Penn., and the following 

 account of it is from a local newspaper loaned me by 

 Mr. Stevenson for the present purpose. I quote the 

 short notice in full ; and the writer of it says, " One 

 of the most curious finds unearthed lately in this 

 region, and what may yet prove a valuable fact in 

 the study of science and history, was singularly 

 found by Eddie Marsh, the fourteen-year-old sou of 

 Mr. D. B. Marsh, a book-keeper for Stevenson 

 Brothers, hardware dealers. Eddie, becoming im- 

 patient at the fire in the stove, which was not burn- 

 ing vigorously, took the poker and began punching 

 it. A large lump of coal lay smouldering, and he 

 determined to break it ; and. after punching at it for 

 a moment, the lump burst open as if by explosion, 

 and a number of pieces flew out of the stove. One 

 piece he caught, and he was in the act of casting it 

 back into the stove, when its lightness attracted his 

 attention. On viewing it, he saw that it was nothing 

 less than a perfectly formed frog. On last evening 

 a large number of persons viewed the little curiosity. 

 It had been embedded in the centre of the large lump 

 of coal, and its bed was plainly discernible when the 

 lump was laid open. The lump of coal came from 

 the third vein of coal in the McLean county coal- 

 shaft, which is 541 feet under ground. The curiosity 

 apparently was not petrified. Apparently it had 

 been mummified instead. It was shrivelled until it 

 is about half the size of a full-grown frog, and it is 

 light and soft. Its shape is perfect, and the warty 



