204 



SCIENCE 



[Vol. XVI. No. 401 



SCIENCE 



J WEEKLY NEWSPASER OF ALL THE ARTS AND SCIENCES. 



PUBLISHED BY 



N. D. C. HODGES, 



47 Lafayette Place, New York. 



Subscriptions.— United States and Canada S3.50 a year. 



Great Britain and Europe 4.50 a year. 



Communications will be welcomed from any quarter. Abstracts of scientific 

 papers are solicited, and twenty copies of tbe issue containing such wiU be 

 mailed the author on request in advance. Rejected manuscripts will be 

 returned to the authors only when the requisite amount of postage accom- 

 panies the manuscript. Whatever is intended for insertion must be authenti- 

 cated by the name and address of the writer; not necessarily for publication, 

 but as a guaranty of good faith. We do not hold ourselves responsible for 

 any view or opinions expressed in the communications of our correspondents 



Attention is called to the "Wants" column. All are invited to use it in 

 soliciting information or seeking new positions. The name and address of 

 applicants should be given in full, so that answers will go direct to them. The 

 " Exchange " column is likewise open. 



NEW YORK, October 10, 1890. 



No. 401. 



CONTENTS: 



The Electro-Maonet 197 



Notes and News 202 



An Important Meeting of Min- 

 ing AND HeTALLURGICAL ENGI- 

 NEERS 204 



Wheat Smut 204 



Health Matters. 

 The Diaphanous Test of Death. . 205 

 Impurities under Finger-Nails. . . 205 

 Some Cases of Prolonged Want 



of Food 205 



Long-Immersed Human Sub- 

 jects 205 



Medical Students Abroad 206 



Letters to the Editor. 

 On the Minerals contained in a 

 Kiowa County (Kansas) Mete- 

 orite. E. H. S. Bailey 206 



The Unit Measure of Time 



C. MacdonaM 206 

 Book-Reviews. 



Elliptic Functions 20" 



The Principles of Psychology 207 



The Theory of Determinants 208 



An Introduction to the Logic of 

 Algebra 209 



Among the Publishers 209 



AN IMPORrANT JIEETING OF MINING AND METALLDE- 

 ■ GICAL ENGESTEERS. 



A JOINT meeting of the American Institute of Mining Engi- 

 neers, the Iron and Steel Institute of Great Britain, and the Verein 

 Deutscher Eisenhuettenleute of Germany, was held in this city last 

 week. The meeting of the American Institute of Mining Engi- 

 neers occupied the first two days, the sessions being held in 

 Chickering Hall. At the first session, on Monday afternoon, 

 addresses of welcome were delivered by J. F. Lewis and Hon. 

 Abram S. Hewitt. Then, after some routine business, the read- 

 ing of papers began, the first being on ' 'Explosions from Unknown 

 Causes." by J. C. Bayles. Five other papers, by John C. Fowler, 

 F. H. McDowell, Clemens Jones, C. M. Ball, and Oberlin Smith, 

 were read by title. 



At the Monda.v evening session papers were read by W. B. Pot- 

 ter and W. F. Darfee. 



The first paper of the Tuesday morning session, by H. H. 

 Campbell, was read by title and not discussed. In the next paper, 

 by H. C. Spaulding, which treated of electric power-transmission 

 in mining operations, and in the discussion of it, the advantages 

 of the alternating current for the distribution of power over long 

 distances were clearly set forth. The other papers at this session 

 were read only by title. 



On Tuesday afternoon only two papers were read and discussed; 



namely. "Recent Improvements in German Steel-Works and 



-JRollmg-Mills." by R. M. Daolen, and "Machinery for Charging 



and Heating Melting-Furnaces," by S. T. Wellman. Several other 

 papers were read by title. 



At the Tuesday evening session Alphonse Fteley read a paper 

 on "The Water-Supply of New York City." The concluding^ 

 papers of the session were by James Douglas, jun., and Eckley B.. 

 Coxe. 



On Wednesday morning the Iron and Steel Institute began its 

 meeting. President Sir James Kitson in the chair. Andrew Car- 

 negie, chairman of the reception committee, delivered the address 

 of welcome, which was responded to by the president, who then 

 read his formal presidential address. The usual routine business 

 of the institute was then disposed of. Technical papers were read 

 by James Gayley and E. S. Cook. In the afternoon all who de- 

 sired went on an excursion up the Hudson. 



On Thursday the Bessemer gold medal and diploma were for- 

 mally presented to Hon. Abram S. Hewitt. In the afternoon 

 James Dredge, editor of Engineering, delivered an address on the 

 late Alexander Lyman Holley, after which tbe audience went in 

 a body to Washington Square, where a statue of Holley was un- 

 veiled. The evening was devoted to banquets and receptions. 



On Friday visits were made to points of interest in and about 

 the city, and on Saturday the visitors departed for Philadelphia. 



WHEAT SMUT. 



Bulletin No. 13 of the Experiment Station of the Kansas State 

 Agricultural College, Manhattan, Kan , is on some "Preliminary 

 Experiments with Fungicides for Stinking-Smut of Wheat." In 

 very many localities, in nearly every wheat-growing country, the- 

 crop is more or less injured, and sometimes seriously damaged, by 

 a disease called "stinking-smut," "bunt," or simply "smut."' 

 This disease is not detected until the plants have headed out, and 

 even then it is often overlooked . Before the grain ripens, a care- 

 ful examination reveals the fact that certain heads have a dark, 

 bluish-green color, while healthy plants present a lighter, yellow- 

 ish-green color. During and after ripening of the grain, the 

 smutted heads have a paler appearance than healthy ones. Atnc 

 time do the smutted heads present the yellowish shade so .charac- 

 teristic of ripening wheat. When the smutted heads are examined,, 

 it is found that the grains have become dark and moi-e or less 

 swollen. They are at first of a greenish color, but become brown- 

 ish or grayish when fully ripened. Because of their being usually 

 swollen, the smutted grains push the chaff apart more than the 

 sound kernels do, giving the head ashghtly inflated and somewhat 

 abnormal appearance. If one of the swollen smutted grains he- 

 crushed, it is found to be filled with a rather dull-brownish pow- 

 der, which has a very disagreeable and penetrating odor. Often- 

 the disease is not discovered till the grain is threshed, when it is 

 recOijnized by the odor arising from the smutted gi-ains crushed 

 by the machine. The smut may also be recognized during the 

 milling, both from the odor arising during the grinding and by 

 the dark streaks found in the flour. The dissemination of the 

 disease is brought about by the use of smutted seed. The brown 

 powder (smut) lodged in the threshing-machine may infect the- 

 seed, or the smut remaining in the Held may, perhaps, through, 

 the soil, infect the succeeding crop. A summary of the results of 

 the experiments at the Kansas Station, which were carried out by 

 the botanists W. A. Kellerman and W. T. Swingle, shows that 

 the stinking-smut of wheat is a destructive disease, caused by two 

 closely allied, parasitic fungi called 7'illetia foetens and Tilletia 

 Tritici ; that these two species of smut differ only in a few micro- 

 scopic characters, and both produce the same disease; that the 

 disease is spread by spores of these fungi adhering to the sound 

 grains before they are planted, or perhaps rarely by spores present 

 in the soil; that the damage from this disease is often very con- 

 siderable, sometimes amounting to from one-half to three quarters 

 of the whole crop; that in ordinary cases the disease can be en- 

 tirely prevented by soaking the seed fifteen minutes in water 

 heated to 133" F. ; that the other fungicides used, when decreas- 

 ing the amount of smut, at the same time also interfered with the 

 germination, and reduced the vigor of the plants; and that seed. 

 from clean fields (if the adjoining fields were not smutty) will 

 produce a crop of wheat free from smut. 



