2l6 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XVI. No. 402 



what is plainly a barrier of nature. And science has a duty in 

 pointing out that no devotion or enthusiasm can give any man a 

 charmed life, and that those who work for the highest ends will 

 best attain them in humble obedience to the common laws. 

 Transcendentally this may be denied; the warning finger may be 

 despised as the hand of the coward and the profane: but the fact 

 remains, — the fact of an awful chain of English graves stretch- 

 ing across Africa. 



Hairs as Records of Emotional Distutbances. 

 Dr. Pineus of Berlin claims to be able, by the aid of the polari- 

 scope, to detect certain traces of past emotions in the hairs. He 

 explains, that, under the influence of mental disturbances of a 

 violent kind, the hairs become decolorized at the junction of the 

 lower two thirds with the upper third, reckoning from the surface 

 of ihe skin to the root of the hairs. The observation, if exact, is 

 interesting, but the recollection of such emotions is generally too 

 vivid to render any artificial aid to memory necessary. If Dr. 

 Pineus could only devise a means of detecting emotions to come, 

 says the Medical Press, his procede would excite a vast deal more 

 curiosity. 



NOTES AND NEWS. 



In the course of an article on recent progress in Egypt, the 

 London limes says, " Both Egyptians and English are now alive 

 to the need of educational progress. The people are no longer 

 apathetic, as they were in the days of Meheniet All, vrho collected 

 his pupils by force as he did his conscripts, and only kept them 

 together by giving them food, lodging, clothing, and a monthly 

 money payment of considerable value. Parents no longer believe 

 the Koran contains every thing, or, rather, that what it does not 

 contain is worth nothing. They ate not yet alive to the advan- 

 tages of trade or handicrafts, but they are fully alive to the ad- 

 vantages of government employment; and even in the villages a 

 better class of education is urgently demanded. But want of 

 funds stops the way. A general system of sound elementary 

 education throughout the country would be one of the greatest 

 blessings the English could confer; but it would cost money, and 

 it cannot be done. All attention is concentrated on the higher 

 schools in the big towns and in Catro. You might as well try to 

 build a pyramid without a base. Then, again, there are no 

 teachers to teach the pupils. Inspection of such teaching as there 

 is, and the establishment of normal schools for the training of 

 the teachers of the future, are sadly wanted. Although the ob- 

 vious duty of the English is to produce a class of Egyptian teach- 

 ers, still the higher schools must remain for some time in the 

 hands of professors from Europe. The educational system does 

 not look so bad on paper. There are over 7,000 schools in the 

 country, and 7,764 teachers; but the teaching is miserable, and out 

 of a population of nearly 7,000,000 of people, only 200,000 can read 

 and write." 



— In Austria there is not only a high school of agriculture, 

 costing the state 125,000 florins a year, but there are fifteen inter- 

 mediate and eighty- three primary agricultural schools, besides nine 

 chairs of agriculture in polytechnic establishments and agricultural 

 experiment stations. Moreover, as stated in the London Educa- 

 tional limes, there are 162 courses of agricultural lecture.", at- 

 tended, on an average, by about 10,000 persons a year. The whole 

 expense of agricultural subventions is set down in the Austrian 

 Estimates for the present year as 1,777,034 florins. 



— At a meeting of the International Meteorological Congress, 

 held in Paris last September, the Rev. Father Denza read a paper 

 on " The Decrease of Temperature in the Vertical Line.'' Accord- 

 ing to the figures he produced, the annual mean ascent required 

 to obtain a decrease of one degree of temperature was 150 metres 

 in the valley of Aosta, and 191 at Moncalieri (Monte Cenis), while 

 193 was the mean for the whole of Italy. At Pike's Peak, 

 Colorado, 159 metres is the height required. In the winter months 

 the heights in the valley of Aosta and at Moncalieri are 189 and 

 375 respectively, and 289 is the mean for Italy. It frequently hap- 

 pens that the temperature rises until a certain height is reached, 

 and then decreases. This was particularly noticeable in January, 

 J 887, when the temperature increased up to 700 metres (at out 2,200 



feet), and then dipiinished according to the ordinary law. The 

 barometric pressure was high, the air dry and calm. This phe- 

 nomenon was confirmed by observations referred to by other 

 members of the congress, and Pere Dechevrens pointed out the 

 necessity of taking the barometric pressure into account in com- 

 paring changes of temperature in the vertical. In China, at an 

 observatory situated on a mountain in the midst of a vast plain, a 

 rise of ten degrees of temperature is always observed for a fall of 

 20 millimetres in barometric pressure; and at Mount Washington, 

 when the wind blows at the rate of 100 miles an hour, the varia- 

 tion of the temperature is thirty degrees for the same decrease of 

 pressure. 



— In the Teachers' School of Science of the Boston Society of 

 Natural History, Dr. J. Walter Fewkes will give a series of tea 

 lessons (Lowell free courses) during the winter of 1890-91, " On 

 Common Marine Animals from Massachusetts Bay." The general 

 scope of this course will embrace the ordinary marine animals of 

 New England. It is intended to give special attention to the 

 mode of life, difi'erences in external forms, local distribution, 

 habitats, methods and proper time to collect the eggs, young, and 

 adults. The anatomy, embryology, and morphology of the spe- 

 cies considered will be dealt with incidentally, wherever these 

 branches of research can be used advantageously. The introduc- 

 tory lecture will give an outline of the course. The relative 

 abundance of species and individuals, local causes which influence 

 distribution, the rocky or sandy nature of the shores and their 

 characteristic faunte, and the influence of depth of water, tides, 

 and temperature, will bo considered. The relations and bounda- 

 ries of the marine fauna of New England will be treated of under 

 the following headings: comparison of the fauna of Massachusetts 

 Bay with that of Narragansett Bay and the Bay of Fundy, and 

 causes of the differences observed; pelagic animals; littoral and 

 shallow-water genera; introduced and indigenous marine animals;, 

 marine animals which inhabit both brackish and fresh water. In 

 the remaining lessons the principles discussed in the first lesson, 

 will be aflplied to the life histories of various characteristic species 

 among the lower forms of marine animals. The course will be 

 illustrated as far as possible. For further information address 

 the secretary of the Boston Society of Natui'al History. 



— Writing to Nature on the subject of sonorous sand, Mr. Henry 

 C. Hyndman asks whether Professor H. C. Bolton is aware of an 

 inland locality in South Africa, where, it is stated, the sands are 

 sonorous. In a recent letter to the Scotsman, Mr. Hyndman men- 

 tioned that he had come across a paragraph in a work entitled! 

 "Twenty-five Years in an African Wagon," by Andrew A. Ander- 

 ton, published in 1887, in which the author said, "Before leaving 

 this part of the Griqualand West, I should like to describe that 

 peculiar sand formation on the west side of the Langberg Mountain, 

 which is in fact part of it. I heard from many of the Griquas 

 and Potgielet living near it, that the lofty hills are constantly 

 changing; that is, the sandhills, 500 and 600 feet in height, in the- 

 course of a few years subside, and other sandhills are formed 

 where before it was level ground." And then in a footnote it i& 

 added, " I regret very much that the description of this sand for- 

 mation has been left out, it being the only extraordinary geologicaT 

 formation known in Africa, and fully describes the musical sand.'" 



— A means of easy intercommunication between writers, editors, 

 and publishers has long been needed. To supply this need, the 

 editor of The Writer, the Boston magazine for literary workers,, 

 has undertaken to compile a "Directory of American Writers,. 

 Editors, and Publishers," which will be published at the earliest 

 possible day. No charge whatever will be made for the insertion, 

 of names and addresses in this directory, the usefulness of which, 

 particularly to editors and publishers who wish to communicate- 

 with writers, will be evident at a glance. The desire of the editor 

 is to make the directory as nearly complete as possible, but the 

 army of minor writers is so great that it will be necessary to limit 

 the number of addresses in some reasonable way. It has been/ 

 thought best, therefore, to include in the first edition only the- 

 names of writers who have had a contribution printed in some 

 one of the leading magazines or weekly periodicals during the 

 last five years, rr who have had a book published within the 



