384 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. VIII, No. 195 



yet made knowD. M. H. considers that it causes 

 great loss of force to put the motor power in the 

 basket, and that, if it were applied on the sides 

 of the balloon, a great deal less would be required 

 to give much more satisfactory results, as the 

 power would act at the point where the resist- 

 ance is greatest. So he has given his balloon 

 a cigar-like shape, and, instead of a propeller un- 

 derneath it, he has used a pair of wings on the 

 sides of the balloon : they are put in motion by 

 electricity, which is generated in the basket, and 

 conducted by two wires to the wings. With this 

 contrivance, M. H. believes he can obtain the same 

 results as MM. Renard and Krebs, with less power. 

 A public experiment, some days ago, gave, it 

 seems, very satisfactory results, and the baUoon 

 was worked very well. Another balloon is being 

 prepared, and M. H. is confident that it will be 

 quite a success. 



M. d'Arsouval, an able physiologist, and assist- 

 ant to Dr. Brown-Sequard, published some time 

 ago some interesting facts concerning the produc- 

 tion of heat in muscular tissue. The fact that 

 heat is developed when a muscle contracts, is well 

 known. Many physiologists have made the ex- 

 periment, which co^jsists in a repeated and violent 

 stimulation of the motor nerve, inducing tetanic 

 spasms and a rise of temperature in the muscles. 

 M. d'Arsouval has shown that it is not necessary 

 to stimulate the nerve in such a manner as to in- 

 duce tetanic spasms : weak stimulations, that do 

 not bring on any contraction whatever, being too 

 weak to do so, are accompanied by a thermic rise. 

 Of course, the rise is not a high one, but it is 

 measurable. M. d'Arsouval does not believe that 

 the development of heat in organic bodies is a 

 primary fact: on the conti-ary, he thinks that 

 electricity is the first agency, and that heat results 

 from the transformation. However, new experi- 

 ments are necessary to ascertain this point. 



M. L. Grandeau, the director of the agricultural 

 station of Nancy, has recently published two 

 interesting papers concerning a trip he made in 

 Switzerland, dui-ing which he gave much atten- 

 tion to the agricultural productions of that coun- 

 try. There are in Switzerland some 30,000 square 

 kilometres devoted to agricultm-al pursuits, 21,600 

 to pasture-land, 7,700 to forests, and 300 to vine- 

 yards. The greater part of the 21,600 is merely 

 pasture-land (70 per cent): the remainder (80 per 

 cent) is used to grow wheat. The pasture-land is 

 used only for cattle-raising. Horses would not do 

 well in Switzerland, on account of the climate. 

 In Europe the increase of population has been 

 much greater than that of meat-production. 

 There is less meat to be had to-day per individual 

 than there was fifty or sixty years ago. Cattle- 



raising is a profitable business, but it cannot yet 

 become important enough in Switzerland to allow 

 of exportation. If some cattle are exported, many 

 more are imported : the excess of importation 

 over exportation is fifty per cent, and more. As 

 most Swiss peasants have only one or two cows 

 (38,000 have only one, and 52,000 have three or 

 four), an association system has been organized 

 in many parts of Switzerland, after an old custom 

 of Franche-Comte. It works as follows : some 

 twenty or thirty peasants put their cows together 

 in a herd, sending only as many as the lands they 

 dispose of in the mountains can feed. A man is 

 in charge of the herd, who every day milks the 

 cows and cares for them, and makes the cheese 

 during the summer season. When the cold sets 

 in, the herd is brought down to the valley, and the 

 cheeses are sold. The profits are distributed among 

 the proprietors of the cows, according to the 

 quantity of milk given by each of them. This 

 quantity is carefully noted every day by the milk- 

 man. The result is, that, as cheese sells much 

 better than milk, the benefits for each proprietor 

 are nearly double what they would have been 

 had the milk been sold as such. The whey is 

 generally used to feed pigs, but of late it has been 

 proposed to make milk-sugar from it. One litre 

 of the whey contains some four or five grams of 

 this sugar, which sells at one hundred or one hun- 

 dred and ten francs per hundred kilograms. In 

 Switzerland as well as elsewhere, the association 

 system among small proprietors or producers 

 proves very profitable and useful. M. Grandeau 

 gave an interesting account of his visit to the 

 Swiss works of the Anglo-Swiss condensed-milk 

 company, built in the village of Cham, by your 

 countrymen MM. Page. The idea of condensing 

 Swiss milk originated in 1866, and was put forth 

 by M. G. Page, at that time American consul in 

 Zurich. He imported the instruments in use in 

 the states, and began immediately. In 1867 the 

 milk was furnished by 263 cows, and the works 

 prepared 137,000 cans of milk. In 1886, twenty 

 years after the first start, the works of Cham con- 

 dense the milk of 8,000 cows (60,000 litres per 

 diem), and sell some 15,000,000 or 17,000,000 cans. 

 We hear from Bologna that a committee has 

 just been appointed to celebrate the centennial of 

 the discovery of animal electricity by Galvani. It 

 is a pity that frogs cannot speak, for the speech 

 their delegate would deliver on that occasion would 

 be worth while hearing. From the day Galvani 

 noticed the movements which put him on the 

 scent of his discovery, to the present minute, how 

 many of these unfortunate creatures have died 

 cruel and lingering deaths ! The balcony is yet 

 shown in Bologna on which Galvani suspended his 



