April i8, 1890.] 



SCIENCE. 



24- 



ievel,— and in drawing plats, plans, and profiles. Besides the 

 instruction given by the professors of Case School^ practising 

 ■engineers of wide experience will give lectures on special 

 topics connected with road-making. The only preparation nee led 

 for the course of instruction is a common English education, such 

 as is given in the district schools of Ohio. The lectures will be- 

 ^in the first Monday in February, 1891, and will continue four 

 weeks. There will bo no charge of any kind made by Case 

 School. 



— There is an ample demand for the increased use of sonp in 

 India: for at present, after allowing for local manufacture, it may 

 be said of the people of India that soap is to them an unknown 

 luxury, the consumption being at the rate of less than a shilling's 

 worth for every hundred inhabitants a year. The imports of 

 -soap have, it is true, more than doubled during the last six years, 

 and the trade is steadily increasing from year to year. It is not 

 any thing like a large trade even now : for the largest quantity 

 vet imported, that of the year ending April, 1889, reached only 

 74,000 hundredweight, the value of which was $511,445. The 

 bulk of this was from England, (he other European states supply- 

 ing only a little over 3,000 hundredweight. The soap-factories 

 at Bo.iibay, Jeypore, and Meerut are doing well, and increasing 

 their out-turn, and the local demand will most probably now go 

 on increasing from year to year. The soap manufactured by 

 these companies is much liked by the natives, and particularly 

 that variety called " vegetable " soap is in much request. Hin- 

 doos of the orthodox type would not touch a soap made of tallow 

 or animal fat, as it is against thp principles of their religion to do 

 «o. Such men and women in general, therefore, did not use soap 

 at all. and contented themselves by cleaning their hands with 

 ■simple earth, or the soap-nuts of species of Sapindus and the 

 legume; of Acacia concinna. Since the production of the vegeta- 

 ble soap, the objection to the introduction of that article in the 

 native Hindoo household is overcome, and soap is beginning to 

 replace the primitive clay and vegetatile substances used. About 

 •8,000 hundredweight of native-made soap is now exported 

 annually. The imports of soap of all kinds into British India 

 have been as follows in the last six years : 1883-84, 34 447 hun- 

 -dredweight; 1884-^5, 38.075: 1885-86, 49,804; 1886-87, 59 016; 

 1887-88, 6', 139 ; 1888-89,74,073. The imports since this have, 

 however, been declining Of 500,000 hundredweight of soap 

 ■exported from England in 1888, 75,275 hundredweight went to 

 India. 



— The problem whether kangaroos can be acclimatized in 

 England appears to have been solved at Tring Park by a very 

 simple process. Hitherto it seems to have been assumed that 

 the only chance of keeping kangaroos in that climate is to rear 

 them on the principle which, to use a vulgar colloquialism, is 

 known as '"coddling.'' They have accordingly been kept 

 and tended in pens or small enclosures, as we see them in 

 Regent's Park. At Tring Park, however, according to the 

 interesting account of Mr. "Walter Rothschild, they have simply 

 been turned loose in the park and woods, and the experiment 

 has proved remarkably successful. Fifteen years since, the 

 late Baron de Rothschild endeavored to breed kangaroos; but 

 the male and young one were unfortunately poisoned by eating- 

 laurel, — a danger which English kangaroo-breeders will do 

 well to note. Of late, however, the experiment has been 

 renewed with success. They are found, we are told, to breed 

 freely, and there are now to be seen in Tring Park twenty- 

 eight or thirty native kangaroos, including the red and black, 

 species, Bennett's wallaby, the black wallaby, and the larger 

 macropius. generally known as "the giant kangaroo.'" 



— In respect to a statement alleging that the Australian Gov- 

 ernment had refused to allow M. Pasteur tbe reward of £30.000 

 ■offered to the person who should suggest the best plan for the 

 destruction of the rabbits that infest that colony, M. Pasteur is 

 reported to have said that this was not so, for the simple rea- 

 son that he had never sought it, and that, owing to circum- 

 stances over which he had no control, he could not claim such 

 ■a reward. He had sent M. Loir, bis nephew, and another of 

 liis assistants, to Australia in order to try the experiments 



which he had made in his laboratory on a more extended scale. 

 The assistants returned to France after a few months, discour- 

 aged. According to M. Pasteur, says the British Medical 

 Journal, they were not allowed by the commission appointed 

 by the Australian Government to make any important experi- 

 ments. This commission permitted the assistants to inoculate 

 a few rabbits, and the experiments were successful enough to 

 warrant a further extension of the authorization ; but all sorts, 

 of delays and adjournments were caused, until the assistants 

 abandoned all hope of being able to carry out the purpose for 

 which they had undertaken the voyage to Australia. 



— Ten million young whitefish from the government fish- 

 batchery on Lester River, Minnesota, have been placed in Lake 

 Superior this spring, and it is intended to place fifteen million 

 more there at once. About one-fourth of these will probably 

 survive, maturing in four years, if the illegal work of the net- 

 fisherman can be prevented. 



— At the meeting of the Royal Society of Edinburgh on Feb. 

 38. Dr. John Berry Haycraft communicated the results of some 

 recent investigations on voluntary muscular contraction. Dr. 

 Haycraft' s observations are interesting both to physiologists 

 and to physicists. Where a muscle is stimulated by an elec- 

 trical shock, all the fibres of the nerve receive the same stimu- 

 lus, and all the fibres of the muscle to which the nerve passes 

 contract together, and in the same way. This is not the case 

 when a muscle contracts on receiving a natural nerve stimula- 

 tion, starting either as a result of volition or of reflex action. 

 Tlie central nervous system seems unable to affect all the fibres 

 of a muscle, through the numerous neive-fibres passing to it, 

 in such a manner that they all shall contract exactly in the 

 same way. The reason for supposing this to be the case is the 

 fact, observed by the author, that fascicular movements are 

 always present within a muscle during a voluntary or a reflex 

 contraction, so that tracings taken from diffe^'ent parts of the 

 same muscle invariably differ from each other. The experi- 

 ments were conducted. Nature states, both upon the human 

 masseter and the gastrocnemius muscle of the frog. These fas- 

 cicular movements occurring within it, will prevent any muscle 

 from pulling with perfect steadiness on any lever or other 

 registering apparatus; and the tracings taken by means of such 

 apparatus will show oscillatory waves, often very rhythmical 

 in their appearance. Many observers have concluded from an 

 examination of these tracings that they indicate that the central 

 nervous system discharges impulses into the muscle at a rate 

 corresponding with that of the oscillations observed. Thus 

 some observers find twenty, others ten, oscillations per second 

 in the muscle curve, and they consider that the nervous system 

 discharges into the muscle at these rates. The author finds 

 that the fascicular movements just described as occurring with- 

 in the muscle itself account fully for the oscillations seen, the 

 irregular aperiodic movements of the muscle compounding 

 themselves with the period of oscillation proper to the register- 

 ing apparatus itself; for, by varying the instruments used, the 

 resultant curves may be varied at will, slow oscillations ap- 

 pearing when using instruments of slow period, quick oscilla- 

 tions when using instruments of quick period. The author 

 suggests that these fascicular movements probably account for 

 the production of the muscle sound, which Helmholtz long ago 

 pointed out was chiefly an ear-resonance sound. This, of 

 course, could readily be evoked by any slow aperiodic movement, 

 and the fascicular movements within the muscle must, at any 

 rate, assist in producing it. These fascicular movements may, 

 perhaps, account for the results obtained by Loven with the 

 capillary electrometer, for it is more probable that he wa 

 registering the period of his own instrument than that th 

 muscles were twitching at the slow rate of eight times p 

 second. If these conclusions are correct, there remains litt 

 to be said in support of the theory generally accepted, that th 

 nervous system norccally discharges nerve impulses into th 

 muscles like shots quickly fired from a revolver. It may b 

 that this is the case, but the subject requires more extended 

 investigation before any definite conclusions can be arrived at. 



