686 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. IV. No. 97. 



and if the volume of tlie ocean be consid- 

 ered 300,000,000 cubic miles, a total amount 

 of gold in sea water of sixty billion tons. 

 Yet this amount is probably insignificant 

 in comparison with the amount of gold 

 disseminated in crystalline and sedimen- 

 tary rocks apart from gold in veins and 

 other deposits. Experiments seem to indi- 

 cate that sea water contains about the same 

 amount of silver and gold. 



Prof. F. P. Yenable's work on ' The De- 

 velopment of the Periodic Law ' has just ap- 

 peared from the press of the Chemical Pub- 

 lishing Company. It is a book of over 

 three hundred pages, dealing exhaustively 

 with subjects from the days of Dalton and 

 Prout down to the present year, and cov- 

 ering a phase of chemical history hitherto 

 vacant. 



On October 1st appeared the initial num- 

 ber of a new periodical in chemical tech- 

 nology, the Chemische Rundschau : Zeitschrift 

 fur die gesammte chemische Industrie. It is a 

 quarto of twenty-four pages, to appear semi- 

 monthly, at sixteen Marks per year. Its 

 editor is Dr. Franz Peters, assistant at the 

 Technische Hochschule at Charlottenburg, 

 and it is published in Berlin. The first num- 

 ber contains several pages of original mat- 

 ter, a rather larger number devoted to ab- 

 stracts, and quite full trade notes, together 

 with book reviews, society proceedings and 

 patent lists. 



The idea suggested by Prof. Eamsay in 

 connection with his work on Helium, that 

 it is possible that all atoms of the same 

 chemical element do not possess exactly the 

 same weight, and which was also suggested 

 by Prof. Crookes in connection with his 

 work upon the rare earths, is by no means 

 new. Before Stas entered upon his great 

 work on atomic weights he raised the ques- 

 tion as to whether these weights were un- 

 changeable, but after experiment decided it 

 in the af&rmative (Stas: Untersuchung 



iiber die Gesetze der chemischen Propor- 

 tionen, etc. Deutsch von L. Aronstein, 

 Leipzig, 1867, p. 3). Again in 1883, work- 

 ing on the analysis of Caucasian petroleum, 

 Schiitzenberger was unable to explain certain 

 quantitative anomalies in the amount of 

 carbon dioxid obtained, and Butlerow pro- 

 posed as a most probable cause a variation 

 in weight of the carbon atom (Bull. Soc. 

 Chim,, 39 : 258, 263) . This question has also 

 been discussed on theoretical grounds by 

 Marignac, Kremers and Cooke. Prof. Eam- 

 say 's promised experiments on the frac- 

 tional diffusion of oxygen and nitrogen 

 through clay septa will be awaited with 

 interest as a valuable contribution to the 

 subject. J. L. H. 



SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS. 



A BUILDING FOR THE SCIENTIFIC SOCIETIES OF 



NEW YORK. 



Mr. Charles F. Cox, Treasurer of the New 

 York Academy of Sciences, has addressed a let- 

 ter to the editor of the Evening Post appealing 

 to a man of wealth or a group of men to pro- 

 vide a suitable building for the societies com- 

 posing the Scientific Alliance of New York. 



The counsel of the Alliance was last year in- 

 corporated under a charter which gives it power 

 to receive gifts and bequests and to hold real 

 estate for the benefit of the organizations which 

 it represents. The combined membership of 

 these societies is now over 1,000. Nearly 

 all of them issue valuable publications ; sev- 

 eral of them own important libraries and 

 growing collections of specimens, and all are 

 actively engaged in original research as well as 

 the popular presentation of scientific topics. 



The societies suffer from lack of a suitable 

 building similar to that of Burlington House, 

 London, but in New York this can only be pro- 

 vided by the enlightened liberality of private 

 citizens. The proposed building should be lo- 

 cated in the center of the city, and should be 

 large enough to contain: a lecture-hall having a 

 seating capacity of not less than 1,200, in which 

 free popular lectures could be given frequently; 

 a library with shelf-room for not less 100,000 



