454 



SCIENCE, 



[N. S. Vol. IV. No. 91. 



We record with much regret the death of 

 William Crawford Winlock, assistant in charge 

 of the oflace of the Smithsonian Institution. He 

 died at Bay Head, N. J. , on September 20th, at 

 the age of thirty-seven years. Mr. Winlock was 

 the son of the eminent astronomer, Joseph Win- 

 lock, and had himself made valuable contribu- 

 tions to astronomy while occupied with execu- 

 tive work of much importance for the advance- 

 ment of science. 



Mr. Enoch Pratt, who endowed a free 

 library in Baltimore with over $1,000,000, 

 and had given other sums for educational and 

 philanthropic purposes, died at Baltimore on 

 December 17th, at the age of eighty-eight 

 years. 



M. Henri Ebsal died at Annemasse, Haute- 

 Savoie, on August 22d, at the age of sixty-eight 

 years. M. Eesal was the author of many 

 works on mining engineering, a member of the 

 Paris Academy of Sciences and editor of the 

 Journal des mathematiques pures et appliquees. 



The Marine Biological Association, at Ply- 

 mouth, England, is about to publish, through 

 Macmillan & Co., a book on the natural history 

 of commercially valuable sea fishes, entitled 

 ' The Marketable Marine Fishes of the British 

 Islands.' The work, which is now in press, has 

 been prepared by Mr. J. T. Cunningham, with 

 the assistance of Prof. E. Eay Lankester and 

 the Council of the Association. 



Mr. R. Ellsworth Call has in preparation 

 a work on the Mammoth Cave of Kentucky 

 which will be in large quarto with about 30 

 plates. The edition is limited to 200 copies, and 

 will be sold only by subscription, which should 

 be sent to the author, care of John P. Morton 

 & Co., publishers, Louisville, Ky. 



Messrs. D. Appleton & Co. make the follow- 

 ing additional announcements : Dynamic Soci- 

 ology, by Lester F. Ward ; Pioneers of Science in 

 America, edited by Dr. W. J. Youmans ; The 

 Evolution of the Art of Music, by C. Hubert H. 

 Parry, new volumes in the International Scien- 

 tific Series ; Our Juvenile Offenders, by W. 

 Douglas Morrison, a* new volume in the Crimi- 

 nology Series ; Genius and Degeneration, by Dr. 

 William Hirsch. 



A SEVERE earthquake occurred in Iceland on 



August 26th and 27th, causing the destruction 

 of many buildings. 



Dr. Max Wolf discovered, at Heidelberg, on 

 the evening of September 7th, four new minor 

 planets; he had discovered one on September 

 3d, and their number now amounts to about 420. 



Mr. Max Osterberg, of Columbia Univer- 

 sity, will give a lecture on the possibilities and 

 limitations of the Rontgen Rays in Association 

 Hall, New York, on the evening of September 

 25th. The proceeds will be devoted to secur- 

 ing apparatus with which to illustrate the in- 

 struction in the class room of the Y. M. C. A. 



According to Electricity, in twenty-five years 

 the total number of United States patents rose 

 from 98,460 to 568,619. Of the latter number, 

 electric generators claim 3,117 ; electric rail- 

 ways, 2,019; electric lighting, 3,622; electric 

 power, 1,183 ; telegraphy, 3,205, and telephony, 

 2,459. 



The Railway Gazette quotes, from the Bulletin 

 of the Society of Engineers of France, experi- 

 ments made on the use of pneumatic tires ; the 

 results obtained showed that with an empty 

 carriage moving at a walk through the snow 

 the draft was 35.9 lbs with the iron wheel, and 

 but 25.2 lbs. with the pneumatic tire. At a 

 trot, with a load of 660 lbs., the pull was 68.6 

 lbs. and 39.5 lbs. respectively. In the mud, 

 under the same condition of load and speed, 

 the pulls were 35.2 and 50.7 lbs. for the iron 

 wheel, and 23.1 and 31.2 lbs. for the pneumatic 

 tire. The other tests consisted of pulls of vary- 

 ing speeds over macadam, paved and ordinary 

 roads, and in every instance the pneumatic tire 

 showed a saving in pulling power of from 30 to 

 nearly 50 per cent. 



The Japan Mail Steamship Company pro- 

 poses to run a line of steamships between Japan 

 and Seattle, Washington. The company is 

 said to be very successful and already to own 

 fifty steamships, while twelve new steamships 

 will be constructed for oceanic service. 



'The Lounger' writes in The Critic: 

 ' ' Display headlines give the London Daily 

 Mail quite the air of an American newspaper 

 * * * That the sensational aspect imparted 

 by the glaring headlines does not always belie 

 the text, is clearly shown in its cablegrams 



