THE WEST AMEEICAN SCIENTIST. 59 



NOTES AND NEWS. 



Rev. E. L. Greene is botanizing on the Santa Barbara Islands. 



The June number of this journal was issued rather late, — on July 1st. 



The f (11 of a meteor on ice was lately witnessed on the coast of Norway, a hole 

 a foot and a half in diameter being made through eight inches of ice. 



A gradual increase in the average size of the skull among the natives is be- 

 lieved by a Bombay physician to be taking place as an effect of civilization in 

 India. 



A French botanist, M. Buysman, has enumerated 378 species of plants growing 

 in Greenland, and he finds that they resemble those of Lapland more than those of 

 the American continent. 



The schools of Austria have been forbidden using paper ruled in square or diag- 

 onal lines, as such paper has been found to injure the eyesight of pupils. In future 

 paper only plain or ruled straight across is to be used. 



A novel gas-light, devised by Dr. Auer, has been in operation in a cheimical 

 laboratory in Vienna. A cotton wick, saturated with an incombustible metal solu- 

 tion, is introduced into the flame of an ordinary Bunsen lamp, the result being a 

 light similar to the incandescent electric light. 



Attention has been called to the fact that the strea.ns in certain cultivated por- 

 tions of northern Texas now run during the part of the of the year when they were 

 formerly dry. This is not attributed to any change in the rainfall, but to a more 

 «ven absorption of water over the cultivated aieas. 



In Japan, according to a government report, 553 earthquakes occurred during 

 the nine and a half yeari preceding December, 1884. The record is evidently in- 

 complete, however, as Prof. Melne has been able to trace an average of an earth- 

 quake a day in Nagasaki, in the extreme south of Japan. 



Dr. C. 0. Parry characterizes a new genus of Eriogonae, in Proc. Davenport 

 Acad. Nat. Sci., V. 26-28. The type is the Low^r California Pterostegia macrop- 

 tera, of Bentham, and the genus is given the name of Harfordia in honor of Mr. W. 

 O. W. Harford, the efi&cient curator of the California Acad. Sci. 



An ingenious astronomical theory is that of Mr. Monck, of Dublin, who sug- 

 gests that as shooting stars are known to be dark bodies rendered luminous for a 

 short time by rushing thiough our atmosphere, new stars are dark or faintly lumi- 

 nous bodies which acquire a short-lived brilliancy by rushing through some of the 

 gaseous masse — visible, perhaps, as nebulae — which exist in space. 



A member of the London Microscopical Society has described a case illustrating 

 the value of the microsc®pe as a detective agent. Fraudulent additions were macie 

 to a bond, and the ink being darker than the original the forger traced over the 

 whole writing to give it a uniform shade. Under the microscope the difference be- 

 tween the original and the added portion was clearly discovered and the forgery 

 established. 



