Feb. 24, 1888.] 



SCIENTIFIC NE\VS. 



175 



©General Mott0. 



Micro-Organisms in Hailstones. — H. Odo Bujwid, a 

 biologist residing at Warsaw, writes to the Annales de 

 rinstitut Pasteur to say that he has lately detected 

 several species of bacilli in hailstones. In a cubic centi- 

 metre ( = 5^'V of a cubic inch) of water from melted hail- 

 stones he calculates the number to be 21,000. 



Suffocation by Carbonic Acid. — -Near Merthyr a 

 whole family are said to have been stupefied whilst 

 asleep in their cottage, by the carbonic acid given off from 

 a lime-kiln close at hand. The wife and children were 

 found in an unconscious state in their beds upstairs, but 

 the father who had gone down into the stratum of poison- 

 ous gas lay dead on the stairs. 



A Hill on its Travels. — A hill between Aegium and 

 Patras, in Greece, on the slopes of which a railway 

 passes, is said to have been moving towards the sea for 

 three days, on the last of which it had advanced for about 

 sixteen inches. The passengers of trains on the line 

 have to alight and walk for about eighty yards, whilst 

 the train passes slowly over this doubtful part. 



Shameful Forgeries. — According to the Popular 

 Science Monthly, a gang of forgers of antiquities from the 

 Swiss "lake-dwellings" have been detected and brought 

 to justice. They seem to have been doing a very exten- 

 sive business. One of their frauds was the production 

 of evidences of a fictitious " horn-age," which they 

 effected by rudely carving objects of horn and planting 

 them where they would afterwards be excavated. 



Teaching Elementary Botany in Schools. — Says 

 the Rev. Prof. G. Henslow, " The value of botany as an 

 educational weapon has long been advocated, but the 

 teacher must never lose sight of the fact, that it rests 

 with him whether it be taught as such or merely as a 

 matter of instruction. If the pupils only acquire an accu- 

 mulation of disjointed facts, without having been en- 

 couraged to trace their causal relationships, it resolves 

 itself into little more than cramming." 



Exploration in New Guinea. — Captain Strachey has 

 effected some interesting explorations in New Guinea. 

 He finds that, when the bush along the rivers is pene- 

 trated, there is a fine, open, undulating country, perfectly 

 healthy for Britons and Australians. He believes that 

 the north-east corner, called by the natives Berau, is a 

 distinct island, separated by a narrow strait connecting 

 Geelvink Bay to the Macclure Inlet. He thinks that the 

 native population is under a million. 



Sanitary Value of Vaccination. — In Germany, the 

 only country where not only vaccination in infancy, but 

 revaccination about the age of adolescence, are compul- 

 sory, the mortality from small-pox per 100,000 of the 

 population is o'4; in Austria, 32 '5 ; in Hungary, 242'8 ; 

 in Switzerland, 21 '8; in Belgium, i9"4; in England, the 

 only country except Germany where vaccination is com- 

 pulsory, but where revaccination is optional, 7-7. 



The Use of Salt in Food. — -Salt has been recently con- 

 demned as injurious by a Dr. Kellog, and that a vegetarian 

 objected to it as being a" mineral" body. We should like 

 to ask Dr. Kellogg how he accounts for the fact that all 



ruminants, wild and domesticated, though strict vege- 

 tarians, are greedy of salt, and will flock to salt springs, 

 or " salt licks," as they are called in America. We should 

 likewise beg to remind vegetarians that all plants contain 

 mineral matter, without which they could not live. About 

 fifty years ago a Liverpool physician contended that salt 

 was the " forbidden fruit." 



The New Chair of Evolutionism at Paris. — In an 

 able article La Justice comments on the importance of the 

 fact that the new chair of philosophical biology will be 

 established at the Sorbonne, the institution where every 

 progress in science was anathematised. We are 

 reminded that the Sorbonne, even in the middle of the 

 eighteenth century, compelled Buffon to an ignominious 

 recantation, and that at the present day the " mitigated 

 Jesuitism of the philosophy of Cousin" reigns there, 

 almost supreme. La Justice approves of the suggestion 

 made by Professor Ray Lancaster, that M. A. Giard 

 should be the first occupier of the new chair. 



Proposed Exploration of Greenland. — Dr. Fridtjof 

 Nansen proposes to cross Greenland, from east to west, 

 on snow-shoes. He proposes to strike the east coast about 

 N. lat. 66°. The distance to be traversed is about 400 

 miles, which it is calculated may be effected in a month ; 

 provisions for double the time will be conveyed on 

 sledges. His objects are to confirm or disprove Nordens- 

 kiold's theory of an interior region free from ice, to make 

 meteorological and magnetic observations, to obtain in- 

 formation on the mineral particles scattered over the ice 

 (Nordenskiold's kryokonite), and to study the flora and 

 fauna of the snow. 



The Sanitary Registration of Buildings. — A con- 

 ference was held on the 4th inst. at the Society of Arts, 

 under the presidency of Sir Joseph Fayrer, to consider 

 the above subject with special reference to the Bill 

 which is to be promoted in Parliament during the 

 coming season. Mr. IVIark H. Judge, in the course of a 

 paper on the proposed Bill, defined its objects as (i) to 

 seek to protect the community against unsanitary con- 

 ditions in public and semi-public buildings, and (2) to 

 encourage attention to the sanitary state of private 

 dwellings. Mr. Judge moved a resolution, which was 

 seconded by Sir V. Kennett-Barrington, declaring the 

 expediency of a compulsory inspection of all public 

 and semi-public buildings, with a view to their being 

 properly certified by a competent authority as fulfilling 

 the requisite sanitary conditions, and also advocating the 

 establishment of a public sanitary registration office. 



The Elevation of Continents.— Among other proofs 

 that the western portion of South America has 

 experienced a great elevation in comparatively recent 

 times, Ochsenius remarks that along the shores of 

 Lake Titicaca are to be seen the imposing ruins of 

 Tiohuanaco, the ancient capital of the Incas, which are 

 fully on a par with the monuments of India and Egypt. 

 It is impossible to believe that the highly civilized 

 Peruvians would have erected such vast and splendid 

 structures in regions which are now cold and in- 

 hospitable, and often ice-bound. Further, nitrate of soda 

 is met with at Meucunga, in Atacama, at an elevation of 

 nearly 13,000 feet, an altitude where the low tempera- 

 ture does not admit of nitrification. Hence, the author 

 infers that the Andes must have been raised nearly 



