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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Works have been erected in London by 

 Mr. William Webster for experiment upon 

 an electrical treatment of sewage that has 

 been devised by him. Electricity is to be 

 applied directly, to resolve the matter into 

 its chemical elements and secure a precipi- 

 tation in the form of sludge. 



A large exhibition of prehistoric objects, 

 representing public and private collections 

 in Austria, is to be given in connection with 

 the next Congress of German Anthropologi- 

 cal Societies, which is to meet this year in 

 Vienna. 



The oldest man in Great Britain is Hugh 

 McLeod, crofter, of Ross-shire, Scotland, who 

 was born in 1783, and is consequently in 

 his one hundred and seventh year. He is 

 still straight and good for a full day of wake- 

 fulness, and cuts his own peat and carries 

 home his daily load of eighty-four pounds. 

 He eats porridge and milk, potatoes, fish, 

 and mutton when he can get it, has culti- 

 vated a fondness for tea, and is " very heavy " 

 in chewing " thin twist." His father was a 

 weaver, and he has been a carpenter and 

 joiner. There are three other centenarians 

 in the same parish. 



Mr. Goschen has traced a connection be- 

 tween the use of the cigarette after dinner 

 and a decline in the consumption of wine at 

 table. The friends of the cigarette claim 

 that it is convenient, is adapted to various 

 kinds of employments, is cheap as compared 

 with good cigars, and makes less demand 

 than a pipe upon the manly powers. Its 

 opponents hold that it is adulterated with 

 deleterious ingredients which provoke the 

 head and throat, and stimulate the desire to 

 drink ; that it blunts the delicacy of the 

 taste and encourages promiscuous drinking ; 

 and that it leads to the spending of much 

 money — all in addition to the harm there 

 may be in smoking at all. 



The Kina Balu, or " Chinese Widow," the 

 great mountain of Borneo, rises thirteen 

 thousand seven hundred feet from a low un- 

 dulating country, at about twenty-five miles 

 from the west coast of the island, and is re- 

 garded with a kind of religious awe by the 

 natives. Its slopes abound with pitcher- 

 plants and Nepenthes generally. It has been 

 partially ascended by the travelers Lobb, 

 Low, and St. John ; and its real summit was 

 reached, according to Mr. R. T. Pritchett, 

 last year by Mr. Whitehead. This traveler 

 has spent several years of hard work in ex- 

 ploring, and has brought back many before 

 unknown varieties of birds. 



Five cases of ruptured tympanum, de- 

 scribed by Dr. W. R. H. Stewart, admonish 

 us to be careful how we treat the ear. One 

 was of a boy whose ear had been boxed by his 

 teacher ; another, of a woman who had re- 

 ceived a blow in a scuffle with her husband ; 

 a third, of a man sixty years old, who had 



suffered from deafness and an offensive dis- 

 charge ever since having been struck when 

 a boy. In the fourth case, a laborer had 

 been made deaf and partly lost the sense of 

 taste in consequence of a blow on the side 

 of the head. The last case was that of a 

 woman who had accidentally perforated her 

 tympanum while picking her ear with a hair- 

 pin. Pains and deafness were common to 

 all these cases. All were improved, and 

 most of them were cured, by treatment. 



Symptoms of poisoning were recently de- 

 veloped in the case of some persons in Berne, 

 Switzerland, who had eaten of the mushroom 

 Morchella esculenta. On investigation a high- 

 ly poisonous substance was found in the sam- 

 ple — identical with that which had been eat- 

 en — resembling the ptomaines, and like them, 

 probably, a result of partial decomposition. 

 The warning is against stale fungi. 



Arsenic has been detected in a sample 

 of matches obtained in Jena, Germany, which 

 are characterized by the heads having a black 

 covering with a metallic luster, and contain- 

 ing much lead, partly present as red lead. 

 The quantity of arsenic was so small as to 

 be detected only by the most delicate tests. 



OBITUARY NOTES. 



Dr. C. Jessen, naturalist, formerly pro- 

 fessor at Greifswald, and more recently at 

 Berlin, has lately died, in his sixty-ninth 

 year. 



Prof. Elias Loomis, LL. D., of the Mun- 

 son chair of Natural Philosophy and Astron- 

 omy in Yale University, died August 15 th, 

 in his seventy-ninth year. He was gradu- 

 ated from Yale College in 1830, and three 

 years later became a tutor there. He and 

 Prof. A. C. Twining, of West Point, together 

 began the first observations made in this 

 country to determine the altitude of shoot- 

 ing-stars. In 1835 he discovered Hallcy's 

 comet on its return by means of his own 

 computations of the elements of its orbit. 

 He was the author of text-books covering 

 the whole range of mathematical subjects ; of 

 popular treatises on natural philosophy, as- 

 tronomy, and meteorology; and of many 

 contributions to scientific journals. 



Dr. John Percy, a distinguished English 

 metallurgist, died June 20th, aged about sev- 

 enty-two years. He was appointed Professor 

 of Metallurgy in the School of Mines in 1851, 

 and held the office till 1879. He began his 

 great work on metallurgy in 1861, and con- 

 tinued it in 1864, 18*70, and 1880. He re- 

 ceived the Bessemer medal of the Iron and 

 Steel Institute for his researches in metal- 

 lurgy, particularly in iron and steel, in 1877. 

 He was elected a Fellow of the Royal So- 

 ciety in 1847, and President of the Iron and 

 Steel Institute in 1886. He was also distin- 

 guished for labors in practical ventilation. 



