Febbuabt 11, 1887.] 



SGIEI^CE. 



133 



speech, which in his view, as in that of the 

 Greeks, is identical with thought. A contribution 

 of this sort to metapliysical science, from a writer 

 who is at once a profound philologist, an able 

 annotator of Kant, and the master of a moft 

 lucid and happy English style, will be expected 

 with general interest. 



— ' Harvard and its surroundings ' (Boston, 

 Rand Avery Co., 1886), of which the seventh 

 edition has just been issued, is designed to take 

 the place of an intelligent companion to the visi- 

 tor in his walk through Harvard and its vicinity, 

 giving brief yet sufficiently definite descriptions 

 of every place visited, with passing allusions to 

 its leading historical and biographical associa- 

 tions, and devoting the larger proportion of space 

 to the specially noteworthy objects. 



— The Athenaeum T^rmts the following: "The 

 bibliography of learned societies is being enriched 

 by a couple of useful publications now coming out 

 in sections, — ' Die Wissenschaftlichen Vereine und 

 Gesellschaften Deutschlands im 19 Jahrhundert,' 

 by Dr. Joannes Miiller ; and the ' Bibliographie 

 des Travaux Scientifiques et Archeologiques pub- 

 lies par les Societes Savantes de la France,' pub- 

 lished under the auspices of the minister of public 

 instruction. Now, Mr. A. P. C. Griffin, of the 

 Boston puMic library, proposes to issue by sub- 

 scription a * Bibliography of American historical 

 societies.'" 



— We learn from the Athenaeum that three 

 important libraries of deceased professors have 

 lately been sold in Berlin, —that of Professor 

 Scherer, which was bought for 28,000 marks by 

 an American university ; that of the historian 

 Waitz, which fetched 16,000 marks ; and that of 

 Professor Miillenhoff, which has been purchased 

 for the new Germanische Seminar of the Univer- 

 sity of Berlin. Scherer's library is reported to 

 have been one of the finest private collections in 

 Germany. 



— Kleiber of St. Petersburg has lately computed, 

 in the Meteorologisehe Zeitschrift, the half-yearly 

 variations of atmospheric pressure in the two 

 hemispheres, taking January and July for the 

 months of extreme conditions. He finds the 

 mean pressure for the whole earth 759.30 mm. 

 This result is necessarily the same for the extreme 

 months, and the agreement of the author's figures 

 serves as a check on his work. The mean press- 

 ure of the northern hemisphere is 760.31, vary- 

 ing from 761.80 in January to 758.82 in July : for 

 the southern hemisphere, the figures are 758.09, 

 756.60, and 759.58. The mean pressure in the 

 northern hemisphere thus exceeds that in the 

 southern by 2.22. In July, when the northern 



atmosphere is expanded and flows off to southern 

 latitudes, the average northern excess is reversed 

 to a slight deficiency of 0.76 ; but in January, 

 when the cold of the land hemisphere is extreme, 

 it accumulates njore air than usual, and its excess 

 rises to 5.20. It may therefore be said that a mass 

 of air, equivalent to that which would give a 

 pressure of 5.96 over a hemisphere, is periodically 

 transferred from one side of the equator to the 

 other. 



— The report of the U. S. geological survey on 

 the mineral resources of the United States for 

 1885 contains some interesting statistics. The 

 total mineral product is valued at $428,521,356, an 

 increase of $15,306,608 over 1884. Among seventy 

 mineral substances cited, coal is the most impor- 

 tant, showing a total value of $159,019,596. An 

 increase is shown in the production of coke, nat- 

 ural gas, gold, silver, copper, zinc, quicksilver, 

 nickel, aluminum, lime, salt, cement, phosphate 

 rock, manganese, and cobalt oxide, while the pro- 

 duction of coal, petroleum, pig-iron, lead, precious 

 stones, and mineral waters decreased. From the 

 present outlook, says the report, it is probable 

 that the total output of 1886 will prove much 

 greater than that of 1885, and even larger than 

 the prosperous year of 1883. 



— A very valuable contribution to the study of 

 cerebral localization is made by Dr. Henry Hun 

 in the American journal of the medical sciences 

 for January, 1887. The article records seven un- 

 usually interesting cases in which the symptoms 

 were observed during life, and the lesions of the 

 brain carefully examined after death. The results 

 corroborate many of the current views on locali- 

 zation, and in a few points carry the process 

 further than was possible before. 



— The year 1886 has added eleven new aster- 

 oids to the list, which now numbers 264. Seven of 

 the strangers were discovered by Dr. J. Palisa of 

 Vienna, who has found no less than fifty-seven 

 in all, while three were discovered by Dr. Peters 

 of Clinton, who is now credited with forty-six. 

 No. 258, Tyche, was found by Dr. R. Luther of 

 Dtisseldorf. No. 254 has been named Augusta ; 

 355, Oppavia ; 357, Silesia ; 359, 360, 361, Aletheia, 

 Huberta, and Prymno, respectively. The remain- 

 ing four are still unnamed. 



— The duplex principle has been successfully 

 adapted to the Phelps system of inductive teleg- 

 raphy, so that messages may be sent to and from 

 moving trains in the ordinary manner without 

 interfering with the transmission of messages by 

 induction. With this improvement, a single line 

 is all that is required for both train and ordinary 

 telegraphy. 



