4O The West American Scientist. 
The product of crude petroleum in California during 1888 is 
estimated at 300,000 barrels of forty two gallons each. tae 
The famous Temescal tin mine, of Southern California, has 
been purchased by an English syndicate. There are fifty-three 
ledges of tin ore on the property secured by the syndicate, which 
can supply the entire coast with all the tin consumed, as the sup- 
ply of ore is said to be inexhaustible and the quality of the tin 
that can he produced is of the very best. : i 
There are as many Indians in the State of New York as in 
Minnesota—-about. 500. : 
Physicians of Paris havecondemned the use of saccharine as a 
food, and find that its antiseptic qualities render indigestive, 
whatever food it is mixed with. : : 
A Spring of natural cologne has broken out in the southern 
part of Algiers, it is said. . 
Ventriloquial powers which they sometimes use to their advan- 
tage, have been detected in some birds, especially sparrows, 
thrushes, and robins, by Ernest E. Thompson of Canada. 
~The greenish color of some of the sloths is attributed to the 
presence of an alga upon the hair. Two genera and three species 
of these parasitic plants have been recently described. The new 
genus, tricophilus, is green, the other, cyanoderma, with its 
two species is violet... From 150,000 to 200,000 individuals of 
these algze may occur upon a single hair. . | . 
The number of wolves killed in France in 1888 was 701, for 
which nearly $10,000 were paid in bounties by the government. 
The French wolf isshy, and does not scour the country in bands, 
like the Russian kind. The peasants say it quite understands 
that there isa price set on its head, and so keeps out of their way, 
and it is only in very hard winters that it leaves the forests to at- 
tack flocks. Only two, of the 7o1 killed, had attacked human 
beings. ei, | | 
Dr. Carl Zeiss, the world-famed optician, whose death at the 
age of seventy-three years has been recently announced, was es- 
pecially successful in the manufacture of microscopical lenses pos- 
sessing unusually long focal distances. His simple microscopes 
early became famous onaccount of their extraordinary wide aper- 
tures, and hence their resolving power was almost relatively un- 
equalled even by the compound instruments then in existence. 
Oxytropis lagapus, Nutt., is reported from Augusta, Montana, 
as a ‘loco’ or ‘ rattle weed,’ credited with being the cause of kil- 
ling horses. F. D. Kelsey (Bot. Gaz., XIV: 20) doubts that this 
is the plant that does the mischief. In Southern California sev- 
eral species of astragalas have the same unenviable names and 
reputation, while in Arizona, we have been informed, species of 
oxytropis and hosackia respectively share the blame. The: sub- 
ect is worthy of the attention of the Department of Agriculture. — 
