454 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. VIII., No. 198 



above sea-level. The wind- vane turns the pointer 

 on the dial (seven feet in diameter) so that the 

 wind-direction can be read with a glass from the 

 town below. The Robinson anemometer is con- 

 nected by wire with Mr. Child's office, where it 

 has made continuous record since June 1. During 

 the summer, there has been a Draper thermograph 

 belonging to the New England meteorological so- 

 ciety inside the shelter, and a corresjDonding in- 

 strument belonging to Mr. Childs in the tow^n be- 

 low. Next summer it is proposed to add self-re- 

 cording instruments of the Richard-freres pattern. 

 During the winter, the weekly ascents of the 

 mountain, required for attention to the thermo- 

 graph, have to be given up. 



— M. Meguin claims to be able to determine the 

 date of death by studying the generations of 

 Acarina which have been at work upon the body. 

 Brouardel produced the cadaver of a young 

 woman before the French academy of medicine, 

 which had lain in a cellar for a year. He was 

 able to trace five different species of Acarina, and 

 the order of succession and duration of each 

 species. He found dermestes sarcophagus, lati- 

 crus, and lucina cadaverina. One species con- 

 sumes the fatty acids, another absorbs the fluids, 

 and each dies when its work is ended. The 

 period of life of each in summer is from six to 

 eight weeks. In a case of murder in which the 

 remains of the victim were discovered in a gar- 

 den, Meguin was able to establish the date of 

 burial with great accuracy. The value of these 

 observations and deductions, if confirmed, can- 

 not be overestimated, as hardly a month passes 

 without the discovery of a murdered body, and in 

 the course of the prosecution the probable date of 

 death is always an important factor. So far as 

 we know, no one has taken up this work of Me- 

 guin, Brouardel, and Laboutbene in this country, 

 and yet it would seem that no field offers more 

 inducements to the medico-legal expert than the 

 one just opened by these enterprising French 

 savants. 



— Dr. Lemuseau, in Lemoniteur du practicien , 

 gives a resume of the progress made in the ex- 

 amination of blood and its detection during the 

 last fifty years. At the present time there are 

 four methods employed for the determination of 

 the presence of blood. The first is that by means 

 of the haematine crystals, due to Teichman, and 

 improved by Struve and Morache. The second 

 method is spectroscopic examination. The third 

 is that of Taylor, consisting in the employment of 

 tincture of guaiacum, which, combined with the 

 essence of turpentine or ozonized ether, yields a 

 beautiful blue color if blood be present. The 



fourth is microscopic examination. In reference 

 to the possibility of determining whether a given 

 specimen of blood is human or not, Vibet says it 

 remains .impossible to assert with positiveness 

 that a blood-stain is formed of human blood. It 

 is in certain cases only adaiissible to say that it 

 may be caused by human blood. Sometimes it 

 can be affirmed that the stain is of the blood of 

 some other kind of mammalia, but not of man ; 

 but in order to justify this opinion it will be neces- 

 sary that the blood-corpuscles of the alleged animal 

 be much smaller than those of man. 



— Dr. Tipton of Selma, Ala. , in the Sanitarian, 

 gives some very interesting facts and figures, the 

 result of his life among the blacks of the south. 

 He claims that their death-rate exceeds their 

 birth-rate, the mortality being 30 per 1,000. While 

 during the slave state consumption was practi- 

 cally unknown, now it is the principal factor in 

 the diminution of the race. One-half the male 

 population is syphilitic, and most of the women 

 have uterine disease. Hysteria, rheumatism, and 

 alcoholism are common. If Dr. Tipton's opinions 

 are correct, it is only a question of time when the 

 whole race becomes extinct, unless by intermar- 

 riage with the whites the otherwise inevitable 

 result is altered. Even this will but postpone the 

 blotting-out of this people, if disease prevails to 

 the extent indicated. 



— Lieutenant Yate, who accompanied the 

 Anglo-Russian boundary commission as a corre- 

 spondent, has in press a book entitled 'England 

 and Russia face to face in Asia.' It will describe 

 the work of the boundary commission, the topog- 

 raphy of the country, and the character of the 

 native tribes. Lieutenant Yate is expected to 

 throw new light on what the diplomatists unite in 

 calling the ' affair ' at Penjdeh. 



LETTERS TO THE EDITOR. 

 The teaching of natural history. 



In the last number of Science ' A teacher ' com- 

 plains rather bitterly of your review of French's 

 ' Butterflies,' and adds some comments on methods of 

 instruction in natural history. I have never had 

 any experience as a teacher, but the method of teach- 

 ing natural history has too much influence on the 

 future growth of that science to fail to interest any 

 naturalist, even if he be unconnected with a school 

 or college. 



Without now inquiring whether the demand ex- 

 presses what is best for the advancement of knowl- 

 edge, it seems to me that the actual demand of teachers 

 and learners in entomology in this country is for a 

 handbook of some group of insects on some such plan 

 as is followed in Gray's 'Manual of botany,' in which, 

 by analysis and by the characterization of each 

 category of groups, the relative affi,7iities of the ob- 

 jects under treatment are throughout brought to 



