30 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 
have been artificially prepared urea, formic acid, madder and the odoriferous 
principles of the tonka bean and vanilla. M. Fischer has just obtained two sub- 
stances which enter so largely into the composition of tea and coffee, theobromine 
and caffeine. And from what matter does he extract them ? ' From xanthine, a 
product derived from urine and guano. 
Professor Dubois, of the Sorbonne, makes known a new process for the preser- 
vation of meat and fruits. It entails neither injections, immersions, nor kindred 
preliminaries. The aliment is simply enclosed in vapors of ether, or chloroform, 
or wood alcohol. It is thus the professor has exhibited fruits, meats, and even 
entire animals conserved during months under bell glasses saturated with ether 
vapor. On the cessation of the experiment not the slightest trace of putrefaction 
was observable ; there was a notable loss of water, and the latter which escaped 
was colored red. Even blood, similarly preserved indicated no change, only the 
globules were contracted. Fruit diminished in weight and presented the color of 
faded leaves. 
M. Moser has discovered a simple and ingenious plan for strengthening and 
augmenting the tension of an electric telephonic current. He has applied it to 
the transmission, along a single wire, of music and speech. At the Electrical 
Exhibition one wire connected the building in the Champs Elysees with the Opera, 
and served eight receivers. M. Moser has, by means of a single wire laid be- 
tween the Hippodrome and the place Vendome, a distance of one and one-half 
miles, fed one hundred receivers with music from that circus. The energy of 
transmission has thus been extensively augmented This result opens up the 
question of transmission of electric force. To obtain in the transmission of 
sound a maximum of strength, currents of high tension must be employed, and 
the more the current will possess of electro-motive power the more the intensity 
of the sound will be increased. But in transmission this intensity diminishes 
through the leakage of the electricity, and each apparatus, each distance, each 
communicating wire has its characteristic tension and quantity. M. Moser's dis- 
covery enables currents of tension and intensity to be selected, and so renders 
the sounds received more distinct. It is thus that a very audible conversation has 
been held between Paris and Nancy, a distance of 220 miles. 
M. Gaudry reviews the present state of paleontology. Before the Cambrian 
epoch, we know nothing about the animal life on our planet; it is in the Silurian 
epoch that the earliest forms of animal life are accessible to our studies ; then the 
trilobites and similar "kings of the sea" seemed organized for defense and preser- 
vation rather than for attack. The Devonian epoch corresponds to the develop- 
ment of vertebrate animals ; in the carboniferous reptiles multiply, and they swarm 
also in the secondary strata; in the tertiary birds and mammiferae develop them 
selves, while in the quartenary man appears. Such are the general traits of the 
progress of animal life across the immensity of geologic ages. Respecting the 
details of this progress it must not be concluded that each cycle of life has been 
