SCIENTIFIC NE^A^S. 



[Feb. 3, 1888. 



August last, and there has since oeen no compensatory 

 quantity of rain or snow. The annual rainfall on the 

 moors around Woodhead has rarely been less than forty 

 inches since rain-gauges have been in use. During the 

 entire of 1887 it has not exceeded thirty inches. The 

 amount of evaporation must also have been abnormally 

 great, in consequence of the unusual prevalence of dry, 

 easterly winds. The daily consumption of water in 

 Manchester is now, we learn, greater by two million 

 gallons than it was eight or nine years ago. A scarcity 

 of water is particularly to be dreaded in view of the 

 epidemic diseases raging in various parts of the country. 



The Senses of the Lower Animals. — As will 

 be seett in our Natural History notes, Sir John 

 Lubbock has lately delivered a lecture to the Catford 

 Hill Literary Society on this interesting and difficult 

 subject. He remarked that both the physicist and the 

 physiologist feel compelled to admit the narrow range of 

 our senses. If the vibrations of the air which impress 

 us as sound exceed 40,000 per second, we do not hear 

 them. It has been asserted that the Death's-head Moth 

 (Acherontia afropos) is the only lepidopterous insect 

 which can utter a cry. It seems more probable that 

 the voices of other moths are too acute to affect our ears. 

 Again, of the luminous vibrations whose existence is de- 

 monstrated only one octave — about one-eighth part of the 

 total — affects our eyes. Yet various experiments have 

 rendered it probable that ants can recognise light which 

 has for us no existence. They must thus see things which 

 to us are invisible. The lecturer asked why should we 

 refuse to believe that senses other than ours may exist ? 

 He considers that the antennae of insects must be the 

 organ of one such sense, which increases in delicacy with 

 the complexity of their structure. Sir John Lubbock 

 throws out the suggestion that inquiries into the ways of 

 living beings will reveal to us stranger facts than we can 

 gather from their structure. 



The Telephone at the Belgian Exhibition. — The 

 Executive of the Company who are getting up this 

 Exhibition, or as they more magniloquently call it, 

 " Grand International Competition of Science and In- 

 dustry," aim at making a special feature of the general 

 applications of telephony. To this end they contem- 

 plate establishing in the buildings and grounds a com- 

 plete representation of the arrangements adopted for the 

 telephonic service of a city. It is to enable visitors to 

 communicate with persons in the theatres, restaurants, 

 etc., in the Exhibition grounds. All the, branch offices 

 Vifill be connected with a central station. The communica- 

 tions in the interior of the Exhibition are to be capable 

 of extension to the central system of Brussels and the 

 suburban and local services. 



Patent Office Statistics. — The Times argues from 

 the immense number of applications for patents during 

 the year 1887 — 18,029, an amount never reached before 

 — that we have " no reason for apprehending that the 

 inventive faculty is decreasing in the country." How- 

 ever, a very large proportion of the most important of 

 these patents are taken out not by natives, but by aliens 

 residing abroad. Further, in a majority of instances 

 where the manufacture of colouring-matters is concerned, 

 the applicants never work their processes in this country 

 and refuse to grant to others licences for so doing. Thus 

 our patent-system, instead of fulfilling its original purpose 

 of introducing new arts and manufactures into these 

 realms is made, in such cases, the means of keeping 

 them out. It appears that nearly one half of the applica- 

 tions for patents are abandoned even before completion. 

 We may notice the " disproportionate growth of patents 

 for trivial matters, toys, games, buttons, tobacco-pipes, 

 etc." During the first nine months of the past year no 

 fewer than 121 applications were made for improvements 

 in automatic sale-boxes. It may now be taken as 

 proven that no new stratum of inventive genius has been 

 tapped by the new law. There is no reason to believe 

 that the number of important inventions has been in- 

 creased, or that many processes of value, which might 

 otherwise have remained unknown, have been brought 

 into effective action. 



A New Hqman "Station" of the Stone Age. — M. E. 

 Riviere has communicated to the French Academy ot 

 Sciences an account of traces of pre-historic human 

 activity belonging to the neolithic period. He has made 

 this discovery in the forest of Fausses-Reposes, in the 

 parish of Ville d'Avray, and the Department Seine et 

 Oise. The rem.ains found consist of 300 flint instru- 

 ments, entire or in fragments. Some of them were 

 buried in the soil to a depth exceeding three inches. 

 All these flints, save, perhaps, four or five, seem to have 

 been obtained from the chalk-beds of Meudon. No 

 human bones or animal remains of any kind have been 

 found. 



Eclipse of the Moon. — The observations of the 

 eclipse of the moon on Saturday evening were not very 

 successful, owing to the prevalence of clouds of more or 

 less density over the greater part of Europe. At the 

 Greenwich Observatory nine telescopes were prepared 

 for observing the occultation of stars by the moon, but 

 with five no observations were secured. The observers 

 at the other instruments were more fortunate, eight 

 disappearances and fourteen re-appearances being 

 recorded. At mid-eclipse the moon was of a very dark 

 red colour, due to the refraction of light by our atmo- 

 sphere, but the disc was much more plainly visible than 

 in the eclipse of 1884. 



