SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XV. No. 363 



burial, and the funeral festival among the Dajaks ; and one in 

 English, by Prof. H. H. Giglioli, on a singular obsidian scraper 

 used at present by some of the Galla tribes in southern Shea. 



— Mr. Charles Hallock, the founder of American journalism on 

 field and water sports, and one of the most eminent writers on 

 outdoor life, is now permanently associated in the editorial conduct 

 of The American Angler. 



— Harper & Brothers have just published Stanley's letters, tell- 

 ing the story of Emin's rescue, accompanied by illustrations and a 

 map showing the traveller's route from the Kongo to the coast. 

 Sir William Mackinnon, chairman of the Emin Pasha Relief Com- 

 inittee, adds some interesting material to the volume. It is of 

 course understood that this book will not in any way trench upon 

 Mr. Stanley's great work, which cannot possibly be published for 

 several months. 



— The J. B. Lippincott Company publish this week " A Conver- 

 sation on Mines Between Father and Son," a lecture on the atmos- 

 phere and explosive gases by William Hopton, to which are added 

 questions and answers to assist candidates to obtain certificates 

 for the management of collieries ; and " A Text-Book of Assay- 

 ing," by J. J. and C. C. Beringer, for the use of students, mine 

 managers, etc. 



— D. Lothrop Company publish this week a little volume ad- 

 dressed to all workers with hand and brain, entitled " The Shop," 

 devoted to the pos_sibililies and probabilities of social, home, 

 church, and political reform, by Albert E. Winship, editor of the 

 Journal of Education. 



— The second report of the committee appointed by the British 

 Association to inquire into, and report upon, the present methods 

 of teaching chemistry, which was presented at the Newcastle meet- 

 ing, and to which attention was called in Nature a short time ago, 

 has now been put on sale by the Council. It may be obtained from 

 the office of the Association, 22 Albemarle Street, London, W. 



— A new fortnightly scientific periodical is about to be published 

 in Paris. It will be entitled Revue Generale des Sciences Ptires et 

 Appliqtiees, and will deal with the mathematical, physical, and natural 

 sciences, and with their applications in geodesy, navigation, en- 

 gineering, manufactures, agriculture, hygiene, medicine, and sur- 

 gery. According to the preliminary statement, the new periodical 

 will take as its model the method of exposition adopted in Nature. 

 The editor is M. Louis Olivier, and the list of contributors includes 

 many of the most eminent French men of science. The first num- 

 ber will appear on January 15, 1890. 



— In the article which Herbert Ward will contribute to the 

 February Scribner's, on " Life Among the Congo Savages," there 

 will be an account of the human sacrifices which take place on the 

 ■death of an African chief. Mr. Ward's article is to be a descrip- 

 tion of the manners and customs which prevail in that region which 

 Stanley has opened to commerce. Colonel W. C. Church, in his 

 first article on John Ericsson, in the same number, relates that, as 

 the last hour in the life of the great engineer was drawing to its 

 close, he called to his bedside his faithful friend and secretary, and, 

 looking into his face with a smile, said : " Taylor, this rest is 

 magnificent ; more beautiful than words can tell." William Henry 

 Bishop, the American novelist, tells in the February Scribner's of 

 ■a recent visit to Galdos, the author of " Dona Perfecta," in his 

 Madrid home. " He came into the room with a hard-at-work air 

 ■and a cigarette between thumb and finger. He is a dark, slender 

 man, of good height, rather loose-jointed, forty-four years old, and 

 with a young look." Galdos, it is said, has had himself elected to 

 the Chamber of Deputies in order to have a chance to study legis- 

 lative manners at first hand for literary material. W. H. Mallock, 

 author of " Is Life Worth Living ? " who has written for the num- 

 ber an article on Hungarian castles — the fruit of a recent visit to 

 that country — says: "Hungary still remains a very interesting 

 study; and though it may at first disappoint those who expect 

 to find in it castles and peasants like the back scene of an opera, it 

 retains enough of the substance, if not of the surface, of the past to 

 throw a considerable light on what has really been achieved, in the 



way of changing or bettering the conditions of life generally, by 

 that extraordinary movement which we especially associate with 

 the present." 



— The article which is likely to attract most attention in the 

 January number of the New England Magazine is that on " The 

 New England Meeting-House and the Wren Church," by Mr. A. 

 R. Willard. Mr. Willard shows how Sir Christopher Wren, who 

 was rebuilding the sixty or seventy London churches, after the 

 Great Fire in 1666, just as our New England fathers were getting 

 able to build meeting-houses with towers and steeples, set his 

 stamp upon our entire church architecture, in city and country, 

 almost from that time to this. The article is illustrated with pic- 

 tures of Wren's steeples and of our own old meeting-houses. The 

 other illustrated articles are on Montreal in Winter, and the Boston 

 Musical Composers. Professor Jameson of Brown University, in a 

 paper entitled " Did the Fathers Vote.'" shows, in a way that is 

 gratifying to those who believe in progress, that however neglectful 

 we are of our political duties, we are in this respect ahead of our 

 fathers in the " good old times " that the croakers talk about. Mr. 

 William F. Dana writes about the Behring Sea Controversy. Mrs. 

 Nina Moore Tiffany begins a series of " Stories of the Fugitive 

 Slaves," telling here of the escape of William and Ellen Craft. 

 Edward Everett Hale, in his " Tarry at Home Travel," talks this 

 month about the Boston Parks and about Concord. Edward 

 Everett Hale, jr., contributes a chapter of colonial history, under the 

 head of " Edward Bendall and the ' Mary Rose.' " " Candlelight 

 in Colonial Times " is another bit of New England history. Brown- 

 ing receives notice in two articles, one by Mr. Robert Niven of 

 London, on " Browning's Obscurity," the other by Miss H. E. 

 Hersey, on " Browning in America," the latter accompanied by a 

 portrait from a recent London photograph. There is an " Old 

 South Lecture " on " Thomas Jefferson and the Louisiana Pur- 

 chase,'' by one of the young Old South essayists, Robert Morss 

 Lovett, now a student in Harvard College. 



LETTERS TO THE EDITOR. 



*^*Correspondenis are requestedtobe as briej' as possible. The writer's name i 

 in all cases required as proof of good faith. 



The editor Tvili be glad to publish any queries consonant with the character of 

 the journal. 



On regtlest^ twenty copies of the number containing his cojnmunicaiion will be 

 furnished free to any correspondent. 



A New Telephone Invention. 



We see by a late number of the New York Electrical World 

 that two Canadian gentlemen have made the important discovery 

 that telephone trunk lines m^y be duplexed the same as telegraph 

 wires. This has hith'erto been considered impossible on account 

 of the great dissimilarity between telegraph and telephone currents. 

 It is on this account chiefly that long-distance telephony is more 

 expensive than telegraphy, as only two persons can use the same 

 wires at the same time. By means of the new invention it is 

 claimed that four persons can use the same wires simultaneously 

 and without the least interference. Advantage is taken of the 

 double wire system now in general use on inter-urban trunk lines. 

 Transmitters and receivers are used with double coils, and the ap- 

 paratus is connected with both branches of the double-wire trunk 

 line. One set of transmitters generates electrical impulses in the 

 two wires in opposite directions, while the other set generates im- 

 pulses in the two wires in the same direction. By means of these 

 reversing coils one set of apparatus will actuate and be actuated by 

 a set similarly connected, while, on the other hand, it will not affect 

 nor be affected hfy apparatus with coils dissimilarly connected. In 

 the one case the electrical impulses move only in the metallic cir- 

 cuit formed by the two wires of the trunk line. In the other case 

 the circuit is completed through the subscriber's ground wires. If 

 this invention is found to work as satisfactorily in actual practice as 

 it is claimed to work experimentally, it will necessarily very ma- 

 terially reduce the working expense of long-distance telephone 

 lines. R. 



Toronto, Ont,, Jan. 9. 



