February 19, 1892.] 



SCIENCE. 



lOI 



height, and weighing not far from one hundred and forty pounds; 

 of active habits and nervous temperament. A wife and mother, 

 she was strictly a temperate person, accustomed through life to 

 hard work, one who, in addition to her household duties, went 

 wnshing and cleaning, besides doing a good share of the work in 

 a large garden. On the fatal afternoon she had — as the place 

 showed — been clearing a lot of stumps and roots, and had set fire 

 to a pile of roots, from which it had communicated to her clothing, 

 or it had spread into the woodland and had set fire to the clothing 

 during her endeavors to stop it. The body lay about two rods 

 from the burning pile. As proof that the flesh burned of itself, 

 and nothing but the clothing set it afire, it may be stated that the 

 accident occurred after a rain; that the fire merely skimmed over 

 the surface of the ground, not burning through the leaves; that 

 there was nothing but charred leaves under the body; that her 

 straw hat which lay several feet distant was simply scorched; 

 that the wooden handle of the spade was only blackened. The 

 above case is interesting in several particulars. It is the first re- 

 corded case in which a human body has been found burning (that 

 is, supporting combustion) by the medical attendant. It differs 

 from nearly all of the recorded cases, in that it occurred in a per- 

 son in middle life, not very fat, and not addicted to the use of 

 alcohol It is interesting in a medico-legal sense. It proves that 

 under certain conditions — conditions that exist in the body itself 

 — the human body will burn. We have abundant proof in the 

 many recorded cases of so called spontaneous combustion (seventy- 

 three are chronicled in medical literature) that the body has been 

 more or less completely destroyed by tire, under circumstances 

 that show that it will support combustion, and this has given rise 

 to the belief in the spontaneous origin of the fire.'' 



— A gentleman in New York has recently tested the result of 

 preserving a turkey in a refrigerator for ten years, says the Boston 

 Medical and Surgical Journal. This time having elapsed, the 

 fowl was removed from the refrigerator, and after being properly 

 cooked was eaten by a party of gentlemen. While putrefactive 

 changes seem to have been entirely absent it was found that the 

 meat was practically tasteless. 



— The annual general meeting of the Royal Meteorological So- 

 ciety was held on Jan. 27. Owing to the absence of the president, 

 Mr. Baldwin Latham, through an attack of influenza, his address 

 on "Evaporation and Condensation" was read by the secretary. 

 The question of evaporation is of as great importance as the study 

 of the precipitation of water on the face of the earth, as the 

 available water supplies of the country entirely depend upon the 

 differences between these two sets of observations. The earth re- 

 ceives moisture by means of rain, dew, hoar-frost, and by direct 

 condensation. It loses its moisture very rapidly by evaporation. 

 Although evaporation mainly depends upon the difference between 

 the tensional force of vapor due to the temperature of the evapo- 

 rating surface and the tensional force of the vapor already in the 

 atmosphere, yet it is largely influenced by the movement of the air 

 and by its dryness, or the difference between the dew-point and 

 the actual air temperature. Evaporation goes on at night so long 

 as the water surface is warmer than the devv-point. With sea- 

 water the evaporation is about 4^ per cent less than with rain- 

 ivatef, while with water saturated with corsmon salt the evapora- 

 tion is 15 per cent less than with rain-water. In his experiments 

 Mr. Latham used an evaporating gauge made of copper, one foot 

 in diameter, and containing one foot in depth of water, which was 

 floated by means of a hollow copper ring placed six inches distant 

 from the body of the evaporator and attached to it by four radial 

 arms. This form of evaporator was found extremely convenient 

 in carrying on all evaporation experiments; it was floated in a tank 

 four feet in diameter, containing thirty inches depth of water. 

 During the period of thirteen years, from January, 1879, to De- 

 cember, 1891, this evaporator has never once been out of order or 

 been interfered with in the slightest degree by frost. Experi- 

 ments were made with some 5- inch evaporators as to the effect of 

 color on the amount of evaporation, one being painted white, an- 

 other black, and the results given by these gauges were compared 

 with a copper gauge exposed under similar conditions, "^his com- 

 p^-'son was the means of showing that the greatest errors in 



evaporating gauges arise from the capillarity of the water ris.ng 

 on the sides of the gauge and thus inordinately increasing the 

 amount of evaporation. Consequently a small gauge having a 

 larger amount, in proportion, of side area than a larger gauge, 

 gives a very much greater amount of evaporation. The results 

 from the floating evaporator, one foot in diameter, show that the 

 average amount of water evaporated annually during 1879-91 was 

 19.948 inches. It was found, however, that, as a rule, during the 

 period from October to March, there were certain occasions when 

 condensation was measured. The amount of these condensations 

 in thirteen years averaged .308 of an inch per annum The 5-inch 

 evaporating gauge, freely exposed to atmospheric influences, gave 

 during the same period (1879-91) an average annual depth of 

 evaporation equal to 38. 185 inches. The average annual evapora- 

 tion during the three years 1879-81 from the 5-inch copper gauge 

 standing in water was 37.90 inches, from one painted black, 22.97 

 inches, and from another painted white, 21.74 inches, whilst a 

 gauge of the same dimensions, freely exposed in the atmosphere, 

 gave in the same period 36.96 inches, and the 1-foot floating evap- 

 orator, 19.40 inches. The 5 -inch copper gauge gave a larger 

 amount of evaporation than the gauge painted black. Mr. 

 Latham next described some percolation experiments which were 

 carried out by Mr. C. Greaves at Old Ford, by Messrs. Dickinson 

 and Evans at Hemel Hempstead, and by Sir J. B. Lawes and Dr. 

 Gilbert at Rothamsted. He then detailed the results of his own 

 experiments, and also the gaugings of the underground waters in 

 the drainage areas of the rivers Wandle and Graveney. He fur- 

 ther stated that in the course of his observations on the flow of 

 underground water he had observed that at certain particular 

 seasons of the year it was possible to indicate the direction and 

 volume of the flow of underground streams, even when they were 

 at a considerable depth, owing to the formation of peculiar lines 

 of fog. Dr. C. Theodore Williams was elected president for the 

 ensuing year. 



— The British Medical Journal, in commenting on the death of 

 a boy who died from drinking hot tea without milk, says that the 

 tea had been left in the oven for some time, so that it had become 

 a strong decoction of tannin. In being drunk without milk, the 

 tannin was not brought into a relatively harmless albuminous 

 tannate. It is on account of this method of making tea that it is 

 so injurious to digestion. Neither the Chinese nor the Japanese, 

 who know how to make tea, use milk with it; but with them the 

 hot water is poured on and off the leaves at table, and it is drunk 

 as soon as it becomes a pale straw color. No people in the world 

 drink so much tea as the Japanese, yet in Japan it is never injuri- 

 ous to the digestion, as by their method of preparation the tannin 

 is not extracted from the leaves. 



— There will shortly be opened, probably early in March, in the 

 Museum of Archaeology of the University of Pennsylvania, a loan 

 collection of objects used in religious ceremonies, including charms 

 and inplements used in divination. The basis of the exhibition is 

 the collection of oriental idols of the Board of Foreign Missions of 

 the Presbyterian Church in the United States, comprising objects 

 sent home by foreign missionaries through a period of sixty years. 

 They include a series of Indian brass and marble idols, and a 

 representative collection of Chinese deities and ancestral tablets. 

 There are also a number of African idols from the well-known 

 missionary station on the Gaboon River. This collection is sup- 

 plemented by numerous loans from private collections and objects 

 from different sections of the museum. A catalogue is in course 

 of preparation -vhich will contain sketches of the great religions 

 of the world by Mrs. Cornelius Stevenson, Dr. Daniel G. Briaton, 

 Dr. Morris Jastrow, and others. Ancient Egypt, India. Burma, 

 China, Thibet, Japan, Aboriginal America, Polynesia, and Equa- 

 torial Africa will be represented by appropriate specimens, which 

 are now being arranged and catalogued. 



— At the opening session of the seventy-first meeting of the 

 American Institute of Mining Engineers at the Johns Hopkinr 

 University, Baltimore, Md., on Tuesday evening, Feb. 16, ? 

 George F. Kunz read a paper on the mining of gems and mine 



in the Ural Mountains, illustrating his remarks with lantern s' 

 made by himself on his trip last summer. 



