102 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 
of gas ? for example. It is commonly regarded as the result of a kind of bom- 
bardment of petty projectiles against an enclosing envelope, and the rapidity of 
these projectiles is such as to confound the imagination. According to Jules,. 
Clausius, Maxwell, etc., each gaseous molecule has a velocity peculiar to itself of 
2,187 yards per second, and when turned aside by neighboring molecules, that 
velocity can be augmented seventeen milliard times. There are as many mole- 
cules in the compass of a pin's head, that if imagination could conceive counting 
them at the rate of one million per second, 250 millions of years would be neces- 
sary to complete the numeration; that is to say, had the calculation commenced 
when our solar system was in the nebulous stage, the addition would not be- 
terminated even now. 
Professor Crie has followed up his volumes on fossil botany, by a very inter- 
esting study on the ''Primordial Flora." He traces the first vestiges of life ini 
the strata anti-primordial of Canada, England and Sweden. But nothing is more 
difficult than an exact classification of the primordial vegetation, owing to the- 
rarity of the proofs or specimens, their imperfection, and the difficulty to fix the 
true geological position of those strata where fossil remains exist. As an instance 
how widely opinions differ, some scientists view the fossil impressions not as 
belonging to plants but due to worms, crustaceous organisms, and even to inor- 
ganic objects which, driven by the waves, left their mark at the bottom of the 
sea. M. Rouat even is of opinion that many of the so called plant impressions 
are simply produced by gaseous emanations in the sands. This fact is certain,, 
that however far back we go, we never find animal separated from vegetable life.. 
M. de Lesseps has no doubt as to the financial as well as the engineering 
success of the inland sea in Southern Tunisian and Algeria. The Mediterranean 
will be allowed to flow in through a canal to be excavated, some eighty miles- 
long, and when the depressions are flooded, the sea will be in places seventy-five- 
feet deep. As at the Straits of Gibraltar, the same current will be out-flowing 
as well as inflowing, and there is no fear of the depressions being silted up by 
the deposit of salt, as the sea water keeps such dissolved. 
M. Launette holds a theory, that the sardine fishery off the coast of France- 
is due to the direction of winter winds. According to him, the detritus from the 
cod fishing and curing stations of Newfoundland is carried to the west of France,, 
where the sardines come to feed: now the last winter the winds were S.SW. and 
hence the detritus was blown into the Gulf stream, where the fish must go and 
seek it. Conclusion — the sardine-fishing will be bad this season. 
M. Paul Bert has so far been able to mix oxygen with protoxyde of nitrogen 
or laughing-gas, as to make that anaesthetic now practically reliable ; he has thus 
been able to keep dogs in a complete state of insensibility during half an hour,, 
without any indications of asphyxia. 
