43 2 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



are the lineal descendants of the seagoing 

 craft in which the early ancestors of the 

 Polynesians made their voyages generations 

 ago. He holds, therefore, that a comparative 

 study of the canoes can not fail to shed light 

 on the problems of Polynesian migrations and 

 relationships. 



The presidents of sections of the British 

 Association for its meeting at Nottingham in 

 September are : Section A, Prof. R. B. Clif- 

 ton; Section B, Prof. Emerson Reynolds; 

 Section C, Mr. J. H. Teal ; Section D, Canon 

 Tristram ; Section E, Mr. Henry Seebohm ; 

 Section F, Prof. J. S. Nicholson ; Section 't, 

 Mr. Jeremiah Head; Section H, Dr. Robert 

 Munro. 



The summer course in botany of the Tor- 

 rey Botanical Club and the College of Phar- 

 macy of the City of New York includes an 

 annual course of ten lectures delivered be- 

 tween the last of April and July 1st, with 

 ten conducted excursions — having the nature 

 of extended out-of-door lectures — into the 

 woods and fields. The course is provided as 

 a means of instruction for business and pro- 

 fessional men and women desiring to become 

 practically acquainted with the chief princi- 

 ples of the science and with the local flora, 

 but who have not the ordinary means of 

 study provided by the schools and colleges. 



A memorial volume is announced to be 

 published by Wilhelm Engelmann, Leipsic, 

 in honor of the seventieth birthday of Ru- 

 dolf Leuckhart. It will include numerous 

 contributions in the lines of their work by 

 grateful pupils of Leuckhart, and will be illus- 

 trated by a portrait in heliogravure, forty 

 plates, and forty-three figures in the text. In 

 the list of contributors we observe the Eng- 

 lish names of Charles W. Stiles, C. L. Her- 

 rick, G. Herbert Fowler, Edward Laurens 

 Mark, and C. 0. Whitman, editor of the 

 American Journal of Morphology. 



A discovert made by Mrs. Zelia Nuttall 

 and a reconstruction of the calendar system 

 of the ancient Mexicans are described in the 

 Report of the Peabody Museum of American 

 Archaeology and Ethnology as showing from 

 astronomical data that the Mexican calendar 

 has an antiquity of at least four thousand 

 years. 



An interesting testimonial was recently 

 presented by Italian men of science to Prof. 

 Maurice Schiff, of Geneva, on the occasion 

 of his seventieth birthday. Prof. Schiff was 

 from 1863 to 18*76 Professor of Comparative 

 Physiology in the Istituto dei Studi Superiori 

 in Florence, where he introduced valuable 

 improvements in teaching. He retired from 

 that chair in consequence of the agitation 

 excited against him by the anti-vivisection- 

 ists. He went to the school at Geneva, 

 where he has acquired great fame and popu- 

 larity. During his career he has enriched 

 medical literature with many valuable con- 



tributions. The testimonial to him is an illu- 

 minated text on parchment, conveying the 

 esteem and admiration in which his charac- 

 ter and career are held, composed in Latin 

 by Prof. Cavazza, and signed by an impos- 

 ing number of surgeons, physicians, and 

 medical teachers. 



Investigations of the fermentation of to- 

 bacco by Suchsland have resulted in the dis- 

 covery of different kinds of micro-organisms 

 as active agents in the operation in the sev- 

 eral varieties. Pure cultures of bacteria ob- 

 tained from one kind of tobacco and inocu- 

 lated upon another kind generated in the lat- 

 ter a taste and aroma resembling those of 

 the tobacco from which they were taken. The 

 discovery is greatly calculated to simplK he 

 imitation of the finer varieties of tobacco. 



An immunity against cholera is claimed 

 for habitual users of vinegar, which is at- 

 tributed by Mr. Hashimodo to the acetic 

 acid contained in the best vinegar — a sub- 

 stance deadly to the comma bacillus. These 

 bacilli were killed in fifteen minutes in an 

 experiment in which they were treated with 

 a vinegar containing only from three to four 

 per cent of acetic acid. 



The latest application of aluminum is to 

 visiting cards, which are described as being 

 thin, flexible, brilliant with a metallic luster, 

 light, and admitting an impression of the 

 names as distinct as it is made on paper. 

 They can be made at a cost of about a dollar 

 a hundred. 



The results of experiments by Prof. Mar- 

 shall Ward tend to prove that the action of 

 sunlight is a far more powerful agent in the 

 purification of the atmosphere than has hith- 

 erto been recognized. The author has dis- 

 covered, for instance, that the anthrax bacil- 

 lus, while it will withstand the greatest ex- 

 tremes of temperature, is killed by direct 

 sunlight. Water is also thus purified. 



OBITUARY NOTES. 



Ludwig Lindenschmit, a distinguished 

 German archaeologist, who died at Mainz, 

 February 14th, in his eighty-fourth year, 

 was director and one of the founders of the 

 Central Romano German Museum of Mainz ; 

 one of the editors of the Archiv f iir Anthro- 

 pologic; and author of works on German 

 archaeology. He began a general handbook 

 on the subject, but completed only the vol- 

 ume relating to the Merovingian period. He 

 was an advocate of the theory that the Aryan 

 race is of European origin. 



M. Alphonse Louis Pierre Pyramus de 

 Candolle, the famous botanist, died in Ge- 

 neva, Switzerland, April 9th. He was born 

 in Paris in 1806, but spent most of his life 

 in Geneva, where he became famous as an 

 author and authority in his special branch. 



