January i, 1892.] 



SCIENCE. 



been unable to fulfil the conditions on which that assistance was 

 asked. It is to be hoped that it is not yet too late to lead the 

 movement to a more worthy result. 



— The Telegram Herald of Grand Rapids says that the tallest 

 men of Western Europe are found in Catalonia, Spain; Normandy, 

 France; Yorkshire, England; and the Ardennes districts of Bel- 

 gium. Prussia gets her tallest recruits from Schleswig-Holstein, 

 the original home of the irrepressible Anglo-Saxons ; Austria from 

 the Tyrolese highlands. In Italy the progress of physical degen- 

 eration has extended to the upper Appennines, but the Albanian 

 Turks are still an athletic race, and the natives of the Caucasus 

 are as sinewy and gaunt as in the days of the Argonauts. In the 

 United States the thirty-eighth parallel, ranging through Indiana 

 and northern Kentucky, is as decidedly the latitude of big men as 

 the forty-second is that of big cities. The tallest men of South 

 America are found in the western provinces of the Argentine Re- 

 public, of Asia in Afghanistan and Kaypooana, of Africa in the 

 highlands of Abyssinia. 



— A correspondent of tbe Times of India, referring to recent 

 long fasts in this countrj', says that in India fasts of thirty to forty 

 days are common among the Jains, from among whom, once in 

 each year, some individual comes forward and undertakes to fast 

 thirty-five, forty, and even sixty days. They do this with noth- 

 ing but warm "water to drink, and will die rather than take food 

 during the prescribed period. Quite recently two Jains of Bom- 

 bay fasted, one for sixty-one, the other for forty-eight days, at the 

 end of which time, having been congratulated by twenty-five 

 thousand Jains who went for the purpose, they recommenced 

 taking food in the manner prescribed in their own books and 

 shastras. On Sept. 23, in commemoration of this event, all the 

 chief bazaars in Bombay were closed, and about five thousand 

 Jains, male and female, fasted all day, while a large sum was 

 spent in securing the release of cows and other animals from the 

 slaughter house at Bandora. 



— At a meeting of the Chemical Society of Washington, Deo. 

 10, Professor Wiley and W. H. Krug presented papers on the 

 " So-called Floridite." Professor Wiley described the location and 

 the occurrence in Florida of the samples which had been sent him 

 by Professor Cox. Some of the specimens, he said, were amor- 

 phous masses of almost pure tri-calcium phosphate, others were 

 mixtures, but containing chiefly that compound. He thought it 

 ought not to be defined as a mineral species. He said undue impor- 

 tance had probably been ascribed to commercial fertilizers as plant 

 foods, as experience has demonstrated that mineral phosphates 

 are not readily absorbed by plants even when in a finely divided 

 state, but need to be decomposed by the action of sulphuric acid. 

 The most refractory phosphates, however, with plenty of time are 

 utilized by the plants. Florida phosphates seemed especially 

 capable of assimilation in the natural state, and experiments in 

 tbe use of the natural product were now going on at the sugar 

 station of Runymede, Florida. Mr. Krug spoke of the methods 

 of analysis, gave details of the process as described at a previous 

 meeting, and presented the results of the analyses (Dr. T. M. 

 Chatard, "Notes on the Analyses of phosphate rocks"). He 

 agreed with Professor Wiley as to the non-existence of floridite 

 as a definite species. His paper referred mainly to the determina- 

 tion of fluorine in phosphate rocks, and the method employed is a 

 modification of the Boezelius silica fusion method. Instead of 

 using ammonium carbonate to remove silica and alumina from 

 the alkaline solution, the saturation of the solution with carbonic 

 acid under pressure has been found to give very satisfactory results. 

 He had reason to think that the method might be still further sim- 

 plified. Discussion of the two papers was by Professor Clarke and 

 Dr. Schneider. Professor Clarke thought tbe determination of 

 a mineral species did not depend upon crystallization, as many 

 amorphous minerals, such as torquois, serpentine, and talc were 

 good species Whether it is a distinct chemical compound, is the 

 best basis of determination. If among the phosphates is found a 

 tri-calcium phosphate by itself, he thought it ought to be a mineral 

 species, no matter wliat its derivation. Dr. Schneider described a 

 series of analyses he had made to determine the influence of dif- 

 ferent quantities of fluorine on the loss of silica when evaporated 



with varying amounts of liquid. In a paper on " Meat Preserva- 

 tives," I. T. Davis gave the following list of preservative agents: 

 salt, potassium nitrate, sulphurous acid, benzoic acid, saccharine, 

 salycilic acid, hydro-napthole. The author described their action 

 and the means of their detection. W. F. Hillebrand and Wm. H. 

 Melville presented a paper " On the Isomorphism and Composition 

 of Thorium and Uranous Sulphates." 



— A meeting was held in the Lecture Room of the Brooklyn 

 Institute, 502 Fulton Street, on Saturday evening, Dec. 26, at eight 

 o'clock, for the purpose of organizing a Brooklyn Numismatical 

 Society as a Section of the Brooklyn Institute. The purposes of 

 the society will be the collection of coins, medallions, and kindred 

 works of art, the conduct of courses of lectures on numismatics, 

 the formation of a library of reference on the subject, and to 

 enable students and specialists in numismatology to become better 

 acquainted with one another. Dr. Charles E. West, president of 

 the Archaeological Society of the Institute, gave a brief illustrated 

 lecture on " Ancient Coinage "' after the organization of the sec- 

 tion. 



— In the interesting paper on insectivorous plants, read before 

 the Royal Horticultural Society on Sept. 22, 1891, and reported in 

 Nature, Mr. R. Lindsay refers to the experiments by which Mr. 

 Francis Darwin has shown the amount of benefit accruing to in- 

 sectivorous plants from nitrogenous food. Mr. Lindsay says his 

 own experience in the culture of Dionaea is that when two sets of 

 plants are grown side by side under the same conditions in every 

 respect, except that insects are excluded from the one and admitted 

 to the other, the latter, or fed plants, are found to be stronger and 

 far superior to the former during the following season. He points 

 out the importance of remembering that the natural conditions 

 under which these plants are found are different from what they 

 are under cultivation. In their native habitats they grow in very 

 poor soil and make feeble roots, and under these conditions may 

 require to capture more insects by their leaves to make up for their 

 root deficiency. Under culture, however, fairly good roots for the 

 size of plant are developed. " Darwin," says Mr. Lindsay, " men- 

 tions that the roots of Dionaea are very small : those of a moderately 

 fine plant which he examined consisted of two branches, about 

 one inch in length, springing from a bulbous enlargement. I have 

 frequently found Dioneea roots six inches in length ; but they are 

 deciduous, and I can only conjecture that the roots mentioned by 

 Darwin were not fully grown at the time they were measured. 

 What is here stated of the natural habits of Dionaea applies more 

 or less to all insectivorous plants." 



— At a recent meeting of the New York Academy of Medicine 

 a popular address was delivered by Professor Charles F. Chandler 

 on "Arsenic in Common Life." In this address, as reported in 

 Medical News, he devoted himself to the task of exploding the 

 widely prevalent idea, both in lay and professional circles, con- 

 cerning the dangers from arsenic in wall-paper. He said that he 

 had himself believed in it without ever making any special in- 

 vestigation, up to tbe time when his duties in connection with 

 the Board of Health required him to make it a special study. He 

 then found that the idea had been started by a botanist, and that 

 it was based on the most flimsy reasoning. He next made some 

 experiments in the laboratory by passing air over sheets of paper 

 — some moist and others dry — coated with Paris green. Not a 

 trace of arsenic was found in this air. Much of his address was 

 devoted to a narration of cases that had occurred in Boston during 

 a time when the people in that city were much excited over the 

 supposed dangers from arsenical wall-paper. The most important 

 case was that of an ex-mayor of Boston, who had been supposed 

 to be suffering for a long time from this form of poisoning, but 

 the post-mortem examination showed that he had died from 

 cancer of the stomach. The wall-paper that had been supposed 

 to be the source of the poisoning in his case had not been changed 

 from 1817 to 1891. While it is quite possible that, in the old- 

 fashioned wall-paper, the arsenical dyes were loosely attached 

 to the paper, the arsenic might become detached and diffused 

 through the air, the amount would ordinarily be quite insignifi- 

 cant; and in the wall-papers made in the last fifteen years no 

 arsenical pigments have been used, and the presence of arsenic in 



