386 



8CIENCE. 



[Vol. Vlll., No 195 



heartily congratulate all students and readers in 

 the great fields of political and social science that 

 it has been found possible to found in a single 

 year two American quarterlies to deal with those 

 subjects, and both of the liighest order of merit. 



— A hand-book of school superintendents, for 

 1886 and 1887, has been issued by The writers' pub- 

 lishing company, No. 21 University place. New 

 York. 



— In the last number of the Philosophische 

 monatschrifte, Professor Schaarschmidt announces 

 that Professor Natorp of Marburg will hereafter 

 be associated Avith him in the conduct of that jour- 

 nal. 



— ' A manual of lithology,' by E. H. Williams, 

 jun. (New York, Wiley, 1886), may be of value to 

 engineers and others who wish to know something 

 of the names and composition of the commonest 

 rocks in a superficial way ; but its title, ' A manual 

 of lithology,' is certainly not wai'ranted by any 

 thing which it contains. The author regards 

 only the macroscopical characters of minerals and 

 rocks, which modern students know are, by 

 themselves, most unsatisfactory and often mis- 

 leading. After a few preliminary definitions, the 

 commonest rock-forming; minerals are men- 

 tioned, and a few of their characters given with 

 more or less accuracy in tabular form. Then fol- 

 lows an enumeration of the principal rock-types, 

 with the briefest possible description of each. 

 The nomenclature here is quite antiquated, and 

 employed apparently with no knowledge of the 

 recent advances in petrographical science. The 

 author's difliculty in distinguishing between crys- 

 talline and amorphous bodies leads him through- 

 out the work into curious blunders. Why the 

 peridotite rocks should have been placed in the 

 group of 'special rocks,' it is difficult to see. 

 Altogether this little book is very unsatisfactory, 

 even for the extremely limited field which it at- 

 tempts to cover. 



— A fatal case of poisoning by bisulphide of 

 carbon has recently occurred in England. The 

 patient was a shoemaker, who was under the 

 influence of liquor at the time that he drank the 

 poisonous liquid. Although a physician was in 

 attendance within fifteen minutes after the bisul- 

 phide was taken, and applied the proper treat- 

 ment, the man died in two hours. 



— A correspondent of the British medical 

 journal, who has had large experience in the treat- 

 ment of hydrophobia, says that the usual duration 

 of the disease, from the time of attack to death, is 

 from three to five days. He had but httle diffi- 

 culty in administering liquids, if they were of a 



dark color, and given from a vessel which was 

 not transparent, so that the contents would not be 

 seen until the vessel was placed to the lips. 



— Dr. Joseph Jones of New Orleans recommends 

 most highly the drinking of large quantities of 

 fresh milk in cases of arsenical poisoning. His 

 explanation of its action is, that it dilutes the 

 poison, encloses it in its coagula, sheathes the in- 

 flamed surface of the mucous membrane, and, 

 when the stomach is capable of absorption and 

 digestion, it forms an aliment of the greatest 

 value. His experience includes more than thir- 

 teen cases, all of which recovered. 



— Dr. Morse of Amissville, Va., claims to have 

 treated one hundred and twenty-five cases of 

 diphtheria without a fatal result in a single case. 

 Although he employs other remedies as adjuvants, 

 he attributes his success to bicarbonate of potas- 

 sium, which he gives to an adult in doses of from 

 ten to twenty grains every two hours, with the 

 view of saturating the system as soon as pos- 

 sible. 



— A student at an Arkansas college, while 

 making hydrogen gas, applied a match to the 

 tube from which the gas was escaping, and, the 

 air not having been expelled, an explosion fol- 

 lowed which burst the retort, the pieces of glass 

 flying in all directions. One of the student's eyes 

 was injured at the time ; and as the trouble was 

 lately increasing, the eye having in the mean 

 while become blind, and as it was feared the sound 

 eye might be sympathetically affected, the dis- 

 eased eye was removed, and embedded in the 

 tissues was found a piece of glass 15 millimetres 

 long, 13 wide, and li thick. 



— The Marchant steam-engine, now being in- 

 troduced in England , shows a remarkable advance 

 in efficiency, unless there be some undiscovered 

 source of error in recent tests made. According 

 to reports published in the London Electrical re- 

 view, in a run of six hours and a half the engine 

 developed ninety-eight horse-poTver upon a con- 

 sumption of fuel of 77.54 pounds of coal per hour, 

 or 0.791 of a pound of coal per horse-power hour. 

 The accuracy of the methods employed in making 

 the tests has been questioned by experts, and the 

 resulting controversy will only be ended by fur- 

 ther and more extended tests under conditions 

 satisfactory to all. The action of the engine is as 

 follows : the steam, at its initial pressure, passes 

 from the boiler to the high-pressure cylinder, 

 whence one third of the steam is taken to the low- 

 pressure cylinder, expands, does its work, and is 

 exhausted into the vacuum maintained in the con- 

 denser, converted into water, and finally con- 

 ducted to the pumps as feed-water ; the other 



