December 25, 1896.] 



SCIENCE. 



939 



surface is the first of tlie kind ever pub- 

 lished. 



NOTES. 



Word has been received of the death, on 

 October 25th, of Dr. Alberto Sanchez, direc- 

 tor of the Meteorological and Astronomical 

 Observatory of San Salvador. 



A PAPER on Climate was read by Dines 

 before Section III. of the Sanitary Institute, 

 at its meeting at Newcastle-on-Tyne last 

 summer, and has been separately published 

 as a reprint from Vol. XVII., Part III., of 

 ^he Journal of the Sanitary Institute. 



E. DeC. Ward. 



Harvard University. 



NOTES ON INORGANIC CHEMISTRY. 



In the last number of the Chemical News, 

 Prof. Crookes describes an examination of 

 the alleged new element ' Lucium ' which 

 was patented by Barriere. The lucium was 

 furnished by M. Barriere, and after both 

 spectroscopic and chemical investigation 

 was found to be impure yttrium. Didy- 

 mium, erbium and ytterbium were also 

 found to be present, which may account 

 for the atomic weight given for lucium, 

 104, that of yttrium being 89. Prof. Crookes 

 also worked up a specimen of monazite ac- 

 cording to Barriere's patent and found that 

 the ' lucium ' obtained was the same im- 

 pure yttrium. 



In the same number of the Chemical News, 

 Prof. Fresenius makes a disclaimer of any 

 confirmation of Barriere's discovery of 

 lucium. 



The constitution of the so-called nitrogen- 

 iodid is the title of a paper in the Proceed- 

 ings of the Chemical Society (London) by 

 F. D. Chattaway. This explosive substance, 

 the exhibition of which is familiar to every 

 student of elementary chemistry, has had 

 several different formulae assigned to it, but 

 its composition has never been satisfactorily 

 settled, in spite of the numerous chemists 

 who have studied it. The author con- 



cludes that it is not a mixture, and that 

 its formula is either NHI^ or NHgl^, most 

 probably the latter, which would make it au 

 additive and not a substitution product. 

 This suggestion appears never to have 

 been put forward before, and accounts well 

 for many of the reactions of the substance. 

 S. Haga in the same Proceedings con- 

 siders how mercurous and mercuric salts 

 change into each other. In general mer- 

 curic salts are changed into the mercurous 

 when in contact with mercury and water. 

 Mercurous salts in solution or moist when 

 exposed to strong daylight are dissocia- 

 ted even at ordinary temperature into mer- 

 cury and mercuric salts. In boiling water 

 the change takes place more readily, the 

 mercury distilling with the steam. Only 

 at a higher temperature than boiling water 

 are mercurous salts oxidized to mercuric, 

 at lower temperatures the change being a 

 dissociation. This would seem to offer 

 an explanation of the darkening which 

 sometimes takes place in calomel. Exposed 

 to sunlight when slightly moist it would 

 dissociate into mercury (occasioning the 

 darkening) and corrosive sublimate. Old 

 calomel is sometimes considered to be dan- 

 gerously active. The physiological action 

 of calomel would also seem to be due, not to 

 an oxidation to the bichlorid, but to a slow 

 solubility of the calomel in the fluids of the 

 stomach and intestine. J. L. H. 



PSYCHOLOGICAL NOTES. 

 The January number of the American 

 Journal of Psychology will contain a char- 

 acteristic and very interesting article by 

 President G. Stanley Hall entitled ' A Study 

 of Fear.' President Hall sent out from 

 Clark University thirty-two questionnaires 

 relating to the child's mind and its develop- 

 ment, and has secured in answer to these 

 an enormous mass of material. He has 

 worked over the data of one of the syllabi 

 only, that concerned with fear, and though 



