HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



279 



from the 5ea-water, so as to leave pure potable water 

 behind. Then the reader will no longer be able to 

 quote from the " Ancient Mariner " — " Water, water 

 everywhere, but not a drop to drink." 



■What is the difference between an annual and a 

 perennial plant ? A thoughtless person will at once 

 tell us that one never lives more than a single 

 season and the other many. But this is not an 

 explanation, it is only a statement of facts. Annuals 

 are remarkable as being free- flowering plants. We 

 grow many species of them in our gardens, on 

 account of the abundance and beauty of their flowers. 

 Flowering is an act of vegetable expenditure, 

 whereas leafing is one of vegetable accumulation. 

 Annuals are, in reality, plants which expend their 

 substance in riotous floral living and seeding. They 

 wear themselves out in a single season thereby. 

 They have spent all they had, and there is no 

 vegetable surplus left over, to carry them through 

 the winter, and enable them to start business again 

 when spring reappears. On the other hand, 

 perennial plants of all kinds bear more leaves than 

 flowers. They save something out of every summer's 

 existence, and put it into their vegetable savings- 

 bank — as in the increasing size of a tree's trunk, for 

 example. If we could only induce annual plants 

 to be a little more thrifty, a little less lavish, in their 

 floral expenditure, perhaps we could alter their 

 habits of life, and convert them to the perennial 

 condition. 



This is what Professor Meehan, a distinguished 

 American botanist, claims to have done, and he has 

 just read a paper on his method before the 

 Philadelphia Academy of Sciences. It is a very 

 simple plan, and consists in cutting down the flower 

 stems as soon as they appear. Thus no expenditure 

 can take place, only vegetable accumulation. An 

 annual plant thereby gets transformed into a peren- 

 nial, and by continuing to cut down the flower-stem 

 the perennial condition can not only be secured, but 

 possibly may be inherited. 



We have to acknowledge an important pamphlet 

 " On the association of shipping disasters with 

 colour-blind and defective far-sighted sailors," by 

 T. H. Bickerton, ophthalmic surgeon at the Royal 

 Infirmary, Liverpool. This is one of those subjects 

 which people in general pass over, and so long as a 

 sailor is able-bodied and active they seem to think him 

 perfection, forgetting that were his sight bad, and a 

 hole lelt unmended, or a rope not quite as it should 

 be, a puff of wind might come and heel the vessel on 

 her beam-ends, to say nothing of collisions. 



We are sorry to announce the death, at the ripe 

 old age of seventy-eight, of Professor Robert Grant, 

 the astronomer — a man dear to everybody who knew 

 him, apart from his vast repertoire of scientific know- 

 ledge. 



One of our liveliest and most successful of scientific 

 societies is the Norwich Science-Gossip Club, which 

 has just issued its twenty-second Annual Report, 

 containing capital summaries of a great variety of 

 papers, read at its fortnightly meeting during the 

 winter months, in addition to the President's 

 Address. 



A remarkable achievement in telephony has 

 just been effected in America. This consists in the 

 opening of a telephone line between New York 

 and Chicago — a distance of 950 miles, or nearly twice 

 the length of any previously in regular operation. 



The Astronomical Society has received from the 

 Cape of Good Hope a specimen of celestial photo- 

 graphy in which there can be counted, by the aid of 

 a microscope, 50,000 stars of various magnitudes. 

 The plate was exposed three hours, and the apparatus 

 regulated by clockwork. 



The waste of a great city might easily feed its 

 desperate poverty. We waste our coal and our 

 smoke, our gas and our water, our food and our 

 refuse. What we want is more forethought in times 

 of comparative prosperity, so that the army of hungry 

 children may be smaller, when a season of adversity 

 arrives, and the drink bill may continually lessen 

 and the Balances of the Post Office Savings-Bank 

 continually increase. The chemists turn scrap-iron 

 into ink, old bones into lucifer matches, the shavings 

 of the blacksmith's shop into Prussian blue, fusel 

 oil into oil of apples and pears, the drainings of cow- 

 houses into fashionable perfumery, beggars' rags into 

 new pilot coats, cesspool filth into ammonia, and tar 

 waste into aniline dyes and saccharine. In Paris 

 they first utilise rats to clear the flesh from the bones 

 of carcases, then kill the rats, use up the fur for 

 trimmings, their skins for gloves, their thigh bones 

 for toothpicks, and their tendons and bones for 

 gelatine wrappers. 



MICROSCOPY. 



Substitute for Canada Balsam. — Your notice 

 in the October number, of a new substitute for Canada 

 balsam would prove not only interesting to your 

 numerous readers, but particularly useful, if you 

 could tell us in a short paragraph in a future issue 

 where we can obtain the gum therein mentioned, in 

 a convenient condition for ready use. We can get 

 supplies from London, if we know where to apply. 

 An older subscriber than myself (I think for fifteen 

 years) is tired of Canada balsam, and asks me to 

 write for the above information. There are several 

 here interested practically in microscopy, and I make 

 it a point to lend my copy of Science-Gossip to one 

 of them. I need not add that we much appreciate 

 your paper. — Micro., Oporto. 



