﻿164 Scientific Intelligence. 



Assuming the loss to be water, the formula Cu 5 S 2 O ai -t-6H 2 is 

 deduced. On the basis of some new analyses of herrengrundite, 

 the author concludes that its true formula is Cu 4 CaS 2 O n + 6H a O, 

 or like that deduced for arminite with an atom of copper replaced 

 by calcium. — Jahrb. JBerg-Muttenwesen, 1886. 



4. The Zoetrope applied to crystallographic transformations; 

 prepared by Professor R. H. Richards. (Milton Bradley & Co., 

 Springfield, Mass.) — This is an ingenious and effective applica- 

 tion of the zoetrope to the illustration of the relation between 

 certain isometric crystalline forms, exhibiting the gradual pas- 

 sage of a cube into the octahedron, the dodecahedron, etc. ; also 

 similarly in the case of hemihedral forms. The beginner in the 

 subject will be much interested and instructed by this new use 

 of the "wheel of life." 



5. Sketch of the Flora of South Africa ; by Harry Bolus, 

 F.L.S. Separate issue from the Official Handbook of the Cape of 

 Good Hope. 8vo, pp. 32. — A very interesting outline sketch of 

 the prominent features of the Botany of the Cape of Good Hope, 

 by one to whom they are most familiar, — a district from which 

 Linnaeus was ever receiving " something new," from which the 

 first novelties were received in Holland nearly 250 years ago, and 

 where new species still reward the search of the diligent collector. 

 For South Africa — that is, the portion of the continent south of 

 the Tropic of Capricorn — is perhaps richer in number of species 

 and of genera than any other part of the world of the same area. 

 According to Mr. Bolus, proximate causes of this great richness 

 " appear to be: 1, the meeting and partial union of two (perhaps 

 three) distinct floras of widely different age and origin ; 2, a 

 highly diversified surface of the land and of the soil ; 3, a climate 

 with much sunlight (or little cloud), a condition which seems 

 everywhere favorable to the multiplication of forms." Of the 

 200 phaenogamous orders of the latest Genera Plantarum, South 

 Africa reckons 142 ; of the 7,569 admitted genera, it has 1,255. 

 The southwestern district, the home of the " Cape flora " proper, 

 which has longest been known, ' l an angular littoral strip," of 

 which "the greatest width does not exceed eighty miles, and 

 probably averages not more than fifty miles," in which " the rivers 

 are few and badly supplied with water except in winter," a coun- 

 try of low-growing shrubs, with hardly a tree over 25 or 30 feet 

 high, and these only in the ravines or the mountain-sides ; yet this 

 restricted district is thought to contain 4,500 species of flowering 

 plants. This is the home of the "cape bulbs," of 350 species of 

 true Heaths, of a great number of " immortelles," as well as of 

 other less notable Oompositae, of the Pelargoniums which we cul- 

 tivate as " Geraniums," of Proteas and the Silver-tree, and of the 

 so-called Calla Lily, there as abundant in all moist-lying ground 

 as the common dock in English ditches. How unlike this flora is 

 from any northern one, may be seen in the names and sequence 

 of its ten largest orders, which rank as follows : Compositse, 

 Leguminosae, Ericaceae, Proteaceae, Iridaceae, Geraniaceae, Gram- 

 ineae, Cyperaceae, Restiaceae, Liliaceae. 



