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SCIENCE. 



[Vol. X. No. 256 



— An interesting geographic sketch Ues before us, which refers 

 to a country but seldom described. It is Charles Bell's ' The Sel- 

 kirk Settlement and the Settlers ' (Winnipeg, 1887, 44 pp.), its con- 

 tents being a concise history of the Red River Country of Canada 

 from its discovery. It is also made to include local information 

 from original documents lately discovered, and many biographical 

 notes from old Selkirk colonists. A considerable portion of the 

 pamphlet is taken up by the narration of the Selkirk colony's founda- 

 tion under the leadership of Miles MacDonell, born in Inverness, 

 Scotland, in 1769, and selected by Lord Selkirk in 18 10 for the pur- 

 pose above mentioned. The colonists started from Stornoway to 

 the number of one hundred and twenty-five, and consisted of Lon- 

 doners, Scotchmen, Irishmen, and inhabitants of the Orkney Is- 

 lands. The party did not arrive at Red River, Manitoba, before 

 August, 1812, and then set themselves to erect buildings on the 

 west bank of Assiniboine River. The colony already exceeded the 

 number of two hundred colonists, when in 1814 trouble arose with 

 the employees of the North-west Company. Several bloody con- 

 flicts took place before tranquillity was restored, four years after. 

 Numerous woodcuts contribute largely in enlivening our interest in 

 the narrative presented by Mr. Bell. 



— The explosion of a water-reservoir or boiler in the kitchen of 

 the Kirby House, Milwaukee, recently was perfectly recorded in the 

 vibrations given by the shock to a ruling-machine in the bindery of 

 77^1? Sentinel. The machine is directly opposite one of the win- 

 dows of the bindery, and was in full motion when the explosion took 

 place, drawing straight lines. The first impulse of the shock car- 

 ried the pen nearly half an inch from the true line ; then for some 

 distance it approached the true line again without wavering, when 

 it suddenly drew waving lines for the final reactionary vibrations. 

 The lines are just such as are made by the seismometer in an earth- 

 quake shock. 



— Recent soundings in Lake Leman and the Lake of Constance 

 have shown that the beds of the Rhone and of the Rhine may be 

 traced for a considerable distance on the bottom of the lakes. It 

 is well known that the deposits of these rivers form a flat cone ex- 

 tending far into the lakes. On these cones embankments are found 

 which enclose the bed of the river. That of the Rhine is cut into 

 the deposits, while that of the Rhone is not deeper than the surface 

 of the cone. F. A. Forel has studied these phenomena thoroughly. 

 He determined the density of the water of the Rhone and of Lake 

 Leman, and found that the former is almost throughout the year 

 -denser than the latter. A series of experiments on the influence of 

 suspended matter upon the density of water shows, that, if the 

 matter is moving vertically downward, the density of the mixture 

 may be found by adding the weight of the suspended matter to 

 that of the liquid, and dividing the total by the volume of the mix- 

 ture. As the Rhone carries a great amount of suspended matter, 

 the latter must be taken into consideration ; and Forel's researches 

 show that the density of the water of the Rhone, as dependent on 

 its temperature and the amount of dissolved and suspended matter, 

 is greater than that of the lake except during a brief period in 

 spring. On the sides of the current, where it adjoins the stagnant 

 water of the lake, the suspended matter is precipitated, and thus 

 the dikes are formed. It is possible, that, in addition to this, the 

 water of the rivers has a slight eroding action. 



— On Dec. i, Sir John Lubbock, we learn from Nature, read a 

 paper before the Linnean Society, in continuation of his previous 

 memoirs, on the habits of ants, bees, and wasps. He said it was 

 generally stated that the English slave-making ant {Formica san- 

 gtiinea). far from being entirely dependent on slaves, as was the 

 case with Pofyergus rufescens, the slave-making ant par excellence, 

 was really able to live alone, and that the slaves were only, so to 

 say, a luxury. Some of his observations appeared to throw doubt 

 on this. In one of his nests the ants were prevented from making 

 any fresh capture of slaves. Under these circumstances, the num- 

 ber of slaves gradually diminished, and at length the last died. At 

 that time there were some fifty of the mistresses still remaining. 

 These, however, rapidly died off, until at the end of June, 1886, 

 there were only six remaining. He then placed near the door of 

 the nest some pupae of Formica fusca, the slave ant. These were 

 at once carried in, and soon came to maturity. The mortality 



among the mistresses at once ceased, and from that day to this 

 only two more have died. This seems to show that the slaves per- 

 form some indispensable function in the nest, though what that is 

 still remains to be discovered. As regards the longevity of ants, 

 he said that the old queen ant, which had more than once been 

 mentioned to the society, was still alive. She must now be four- 

 teen years old, and still laid fertile eggs, to the important physio- 

 logical bearing of which fact he called special attention. He dis- 

 cussed the observations and remarksof Graber as regards the senses 

 of ants, with special reference to their sensibility towards the ultra- 

 violet rays, and referred to the observations of Forel, which con- 

 firmed those he had previously laid before the society. Professor 

 Graber had also questioned some experiments with reference to 

 smell. He, however, maintained the accuracy of his observations, 

 and pointed out that Graber had overlooked some of the precautions 

 which he had taken : his experiments seemed to leave no doubt as 

 to the existence of a delicate sense of smell among ants. As re- 

 gards the recognition of friends, he repeated some previous experi- 

 ments, with the same results. He took some pupa: from one of his 

 nests (A), and placed these under charge of some ants from an- 

 other nest (B) of the same species. After they had come to ma- 

 turity, he placed some in nest A, and some in nest B. Those 

 placed in their own nest were received amicably ; those in the nests 

 of their nurses were attacked and driven out. This showed that 

 the recognition is not by the means of a sign or password, for in 

 that case they would have been recognized in nest B, and not in 

 nest A. Dr. Warsmann had confirmed his observations in opposi- 

 tion to the statement of Lespis, that white ants are enemies to those 

 of another nest, even belonging' to the same species : the domestic 

 animals, on the other hand, can be transferred from one nest to 

 another, and will be amicably received. In conclusion, he discussed 

 the respective functions of the eyes and ocelli, and referred to 

 several other observations on various interesting points in the 

 economy of the social Hymenoptera. 



— The reports of the German factory inspectors for 1886 con- 

 tain some interesting statistics respecting the hours of labor, acci- 

 dents, etc., in various districts and in different employments. On 

 the whole, the number of work-people increased, in the fifteen dis- 

 tricts for which reports are published, from 596,561 in 1884, to 

 642,386, being an increase of 33,496, or 7.7 per cent, of males, and 

 12,329, or 7.6 per cent, of females. The industries in which the 

 chief increase took place were textiles, food, wood, and carving. 

 There was a great decrease in the number employed in mimng. 

 In some districts there was a great lack of employment, while 

 farmers were complaining that they could not find laborers to do 

 their work. In Bavaria, in 29.4 per cent of all industries the hours 

 of labor were from \\\ to 16 hours daily ; in 59.6 per cent from la 

 to 1 1 hours ; and in the remainder from 1 1 down to 5 hours. The 

 last-named time applied only to the work of putting the quicksilver 

 on the backs of looking-glasses. Excessively long hours prevail in 

 breweries, where they are never less than 16 hours a day. In the 

 Diisseldorf district nearly 40 manufacturers of textiles have entered 

 into a convention not to make the working-day longer than 12 hours. 

 According to a regulation made in 1885, all accidents in factories 

 must be brought to the knowledge of the inspectors. This ac- 

 counts for the apparently enormous increase in the number of acci- 

 dents : 2,394 were brought to the inspectors' notice during the year. 

 These are arranged under two heads : (i) The causes ; (2) The 

 consequences to the victim. More than one-half are put down to 

 inevitable accident, and more than one-third to carelessness and 

 want of skill. More than four-fifths were attended only with tem- 

 porary incapacity for work. The work-people appear to under- 

 stand and enter into the spirit of the recent insurance laws ; but it 

 seems from the reports that the increase of children's labor, the 

 night-work of women, and the prolonged hours of labor of women 

 and children in certain places, are the next subjects connected with 

 German labor that call for legislative regulation and interference. 



— The attempt is being made to organize a debating club in the 

 American Geographical Society for the purpose of discussing geo- 

 graphical questions and results of new investigations. It is hoped 

 that all cultivators of geophysics, geography, commercial geography, 

 and allied sciences, as well as teachers of geography and those in- 

 terested in its study, will join the club. All intending to become 



