258 
KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 
Prof. F. W. Putnam, Curator of the Pea- 
body Museum, Cambridge, Mass., writes, 
July 5th: " I have compared the fragment 
of soapstone pot you sent me from New Mex- 
ico with the soapstone from which the Colo- 
rado and New England specimens are made, 
and it is not like either. I do not know the 
region from which the New Mexicans obtain- 
ed their soapstone, and this is the only spec- 
imen I have seen from New Mexico, so far as 
I now remember." 
The American eclipse expedition return- 
ing from the central Pacific reached San 
Francisco June nth. Prof. Holden reports 
no discovery of Vulcan. Prof. Hastings' ob- 
servations prove the Sun's corona to be pro- 
bably a phenomena of diffraction, the real 
corona being only a narrow ring around the 
Sun widened out by diffraction (not refrac- 
tion) in the extensive halo actually observed. 
Mr. E. R. Know^les, the author of the 
articles in this number of the Review entitled 
respectively ''Pere Hyacinthe and Catholi- 
cism" and ''The Nature of the Existence of 
Matter," is a striking illustration of the pe- 
culiar adaptiveness of genius. An actor by 
profession and one who has already achieved 
quite a reputation in the east by his careful 
and artistic renditions of difficult characters, 
he has also found time to manifest his schol- 
arship and his talent for polemical and meta- 
physical studies, as these articles sufficiently 
prove. Although quite young, he is a grad- 
uate of Princeton College, and already a suc- 
cessful business man and a promising artist 
and literateur. 
Mr. Fletcher, in the Mechanical World, 
says that the light given by an ordinary gas- 
burner can be increased at least one-sixth 
simply by using in place of the ordinary up- 
right burners those that throw the flame out 
horizontally. He has tested them in his 
works and offices until he is satisfied that a 
burner consuming five cubic feet of gas per 
hour with a horizontal flame gives a better 
light, and is better for work, than an upright 
flame consuming six cubic feet per hour. 
Experiments recently m-^de in Egypt show 
that the stars are about one-fifth of a magni- 
tude brighter there than in England. This 
differences which is due to the greater clear- 
ness of the atmosphere, brings into view an 
immense number of faint stars, which are just 
too faint to be visible in the more murky cli- 
mate. To secure the same advantage it is 
now proposed to place observatories on 
mountain tops above the lower and denser 
strata of the atmosphere. Hence we have 
the Lick Observatory on Mt. Hamilton, in 
California, and an observatory just erected 
on the slope of Mt. ^tna. 
The Arctic expedition ship Proteus was at 
St. Johns, N. F., actively preparing for Lady 
Franklin Bay on the 28th of June. 
Bound volumes of the Review for the past 
year can now be had at this office upon the 
return of the back numbers of Volume VI., 
and the payment of one dollar. 
Clubs of four or more are allowed a dis- 
count of twenty-five per cent upon the regu- 
lar subscription price of the Review, and 
all subscribers to it can purchase other mag- 
azines and books at from fifteen to twenty- 
five per cent below the regular prices. 
The Missouri State Board of Agriculture, 
in pursuance of the purpose for which it was 
organized, the promotion of the agricultural 
interests of the State, will hold several 
Farmers' Institute meetings during the pres- 
ent year. Able specialists will deliver prac- 
tical addresses on topics of constant interest 
to the working farmer. The Board desires 
to hold several meetings, one or more after 
harvest, during the month of August, and 
several during the early part of winter. All 
expenses of these Institute meetings, except- 
ing hall hire, will be met by the Board. 
Meetings will be held where the interest 
manifested promises a good attendance. The 
Secretary is desirous of an early response, at 
Columbia, from those communities wishing 
an Institute meeting, that speakers may be 
engaged in season for an ample notice of the 
meeting to be given. 
