March ii, 1892.J 



SCIENCE. 



145 



from the previous reports on the same subject. Among other 

 changes, the number of plants, etc., selected for observation has 

 been greatly reduced, while the number of observers has consid- 

 erably increased. The winter of 1890-91 proved in England very 

 destructive to the root crops, as well as to green vegetables and 

 tender shrubs. Birds also suffered severely. In Scotland and 

 Ireland, however, there was scarcely any severe weather until 

 March. The flowering of wild plants was greatly retarded by cold 

 in the spring, but during the summer the departures from the 

 average were not so great. The harvest was late and its ingather- 

 ing much interfered with by stormy weather. 



— Recent experiments by Messrs. W. Thomson and F. Lewis on 

 the action of metals on india-rubber, according to Engineering, show 

 that that of copper is the most deleterious. Platinum, palladium, 

 aluminium, and lead act only very slightly, while magnesium, 

 zinc, cadmium, cobalt, nickel, iron, chromium, tin. arsenic, anti- 

 mony, bismuth, silver and gold have no action whatever on this 

 material. Of metallic salts, those of copper are very destructive, 

 but nitrate of silver, manganese oxide, and several less common 

 salts are equally so. The nitrates of iron, sodium, uranium, and 

 ammonia have also a deleterious action, though less pronounced 

 than in the case of the salts previously mentioned. 



— At the anniversary of the British Geological Society, held on 

 the 19th of February, the retiring president, Sir Archibald Geibie, 

 gave the annual address, which was devoted to a continuation of 

 the subject treated of by Mm last year. He now dealt, according 

 to Nature, with the history of volcanic action in this country 

 from the close of the Silurian period up to older Tertiary 

 time. The remarkable' volcanic outbursts that took place in the 

 great lakes of the Lower Old Red Sandstone were firs-t described. 

 From different vents over central Scotland, piles of lava and tuff, 

 much thicker than the height of Vesuvius, were accumulated, 

 and their remains now form the most conspicuous bill-ranges of 

 that district. It was shown how the subterranean activity grad- 

 ually lessened and died out, with only a slight revival in the far 

 north during the time of the Upper Old Red Sandstone, and how 

 it broke out again with great vigor at the beginning of the Car- 

 boniferous period. Sir Archibald pointed out that the Carbonif- 

 erous volcanoes belonged to two distinct types and two separate 

 epochs of eruption. The earlier series produced extensive subma- 

 rine lava-sheets, the remains of which now rise as bread terraced 

 plateaux over parts of the lowlands of Scotland. The later series 

 manifested itself chiefly in the formation of numerous cones of 

 ashes, like the pttys of Auvergne, which were dotted over the 

 lagoons and shaJlow seas in central Scotland, Derb.vshire, Devon- 

 shire, and the south-west of Ireland. After a long quiescence, 

 volcanic action once more reappeared in the Permian period ; and 

 numerous small vents were opened in Fife and Ayrshire, and far 

 to the south in Devonshire. With these eruptions the long record 

 of Palseozoic volcanic activity closed. No trace has yet been dis- 

 covered of any volcanic rocks intercalated among the Secondary 

 formations of this country, so that the whole of the vast interval 

 of the Mesozoio period was a prolonged time of quiescence at last 

 vs-hen the soft clays and sands of the Lower Tertiary de- 

 posits of the south-east of England began to be laid donn, a stu- 

 dendoua series of fissures »vas opened across the greater part of 

 Scotland, the north of England, and the north of Ireland Into 

 these fissures lava rose, forming a notable system of parallel dykes. 

 Along the great hollow from Antrim northwards between the 

 outer Hebrides and the mainland of Scotland, the lava flowed out 

 at the surface and formed the well-known basaltic plateaux of 

 that region. The address concluded with a summary of the more 

 important facts in British volcanic history bearing on the investi- 

 gation of the nature of volcanic action. Among these Sir Ai-chi- 

 bald laid special stress on the eviiience for volcanic periods, during 

 each of which there was a .gradual change of the internal magma 

 from a basic to an acid condition, and he pointed out how this 

 cycle had been repeated again and again even within the same 

 limited area of eruption. In conclusion, he dwelt on the segre- 

 gation of minerals in large eruptive masses, and indicated the im- 

 portance of this fact in the investigation, not only of the constitu- 

 tion and changes of the volcanic magma, but also of the ancient 



gneisses where what appear to be original structures have not yet 

 been effaced. 



— Dr. L. Swift of Rochester, N.Y., discovered a bright comet 

 on the morning, of March 6. The object is in R,A. 18 h. 59 m., 

 Dec. south 31" 20'. It is moving easterly. 



— .^s bearing on the vital question of the exhaustion of the 

 coal resources of Belgium Engineering states that, while the aver- 

 age depth of the French coal mines is 1,056 feet, the average 

 dejith in Hainaut is 1,773 feet; that in the Mons Basin there is a 

 pit now being worked of 2,988 feet in depth, and another un- 

 worked pit in the same district of 3,801 feet; while in April last 

 it was reported that in a Borinage pit, known as " Sainte Henriette 

 des produits," at Flenu, a rich seam of coal had been discovered 

 at the extraordinary depth of 4,130 feet. These figures tend to 

 show that Belgium is rapidly exhausting the " cream of the coal 

 resources" of the country — that is, coal found within 2,000 feet 

 of the surface. 



— A. Coppen Jones, writing from Davos Platz, Switzerland, to 

 Nature, says: "In 1889 a French naval surgeon, M. Ledantec, 

 published in the Annales de VInstltut Pasteur the result of some 

 investigations he had made into the nature of the arrow poison of 

 the natives of the New Hebrides. Wounds from these arrows 

 give rise, as is well known, to tetanus, and M. Ledantec was able, 

 by the subcutaneous injection of the scraped off poison, to kill 

 guinea-pigs under typical tetanic symptoms. He learnt from a 

 Kanaka that they are prepared by smearing the arrow-heads 

 (which are made of human bone) first with tree gum and then 

 with mud from a swamp, which mud he found to contain num- 

 bers of Nicolaier's letanus bacillus. As far as I am aware, this 

 has been recorded only of the natives of the New Hebrides and 

 some of the neighboring groups (the arrow poison of Stanley's 

 dwarfs is certainly not the same), and I was therefore much in- 

 terested some days ago by coming accidentally upon an old record 

 which seems to show that the natives of the Cape Verd coast were 

 accustomed, more than three hundred years ago, to get rid of 

 their enemies in a similar manner. In Hakluyt's "Voyager's 

 Tales," published in 1589 (I refer to the little reprint edited in 

 1889 by Henry Morley), is the narrative of one Miles Phillips, in 

 which cccur-s the following passage: 'Upon the 18th day of the 

 same month (November, 1567) we came to an anchor upon the 

 coast of Africa at Cape Verde, in twelve fathoms of water, and 

 here our General landed certain of our men, to the number of 160 

 or thereabouts, seeking to take some negroes. And they, going 

 up into the country for the space of six miles, were encountered 

 with a great number of negroes, who with their envenomed arrows 

 did hurt a great number of our men, so that they were enforced to 

 retire to the ships, in which contest they recovered but a few 

 negroes; and of these our men which were hurt with their en- 

 venomed arrows, there died to the number of seven or eight in a 

 very strange manner, with their mouths shut, so that we were 

 forced to put sticks and other things into their mouths to keep 

 them open.' In the language of modern medicine, they suc- 

 cumbed to tetanus traumalicus. The voyagers left the coast soon 

 after, and there is no further mention of the natives or of the 

 wounded. There is, of course, no proof that the arrows were 

 poisoned with mud or earth, but the probability is considerable. 

 The chief interest lies in the age of the record, which forms in 

 some manner a pendant to the researches of M. Bossano [Comptes 

 rendus, 1.S88), which showed the tetanus bacillus to have a very 

 wide distribution in space. It is a curious consideration that this 

 and the other famous arrow poison, curare, both kill by their ac- 

 tion on the voluntary muscles, the action of one being diametri- 

 cally opposed to that of the other." 



^The Electrical Review, New York, the first electrical weekly 

 published in this country, issued a decennial number dated Feb. 

 20, 1892, in commemoration of its tenth birthday. The past dec- 

 ade of electrical progress is presented, and what may be expected 

 in the future of this science is outlined. Articles specially con- 

 tributed to this issue by leading electrical workers fipjicnr, with 

 many portraits of interest. 



