Scientific News. 1143 
Bobretzky, Hertwig, Reichenbach, and others who have employed 
the method of heating, have subjected the eggs to a heat of 80°C.,, 
or more, and for a considerable length of time. Platner is unques- 
tionably right in attributing previous failures in the use of this 
method to the unnecessarily high temperature employed. Max 
Schultze has shown that protoplasm is killed and stiffened at 50°C., 
and the use of a nearly boiling heat is therefore quite as unnecessary 
as it is harmful. 
PARAFFINE PREPARED FOR RIBBON-CUTTING.—Dr, Spee? finds 
that paraffine prepared in the following manner is best adapted to 
ribbon-cutting :— 
Take paraffine, which melts at about 50°C., and melt it over a 
spirit lamp. Keep hot for from one to six hours, until assumes 
a brownish yellow color, like that of yellow wax or honey. When 
cold the mass is perfectly homogeneous, and without sit ANR 
Sections, if not over ;}, mm. thick, stick firmly together in the 
form of a ribbon. 
* Q. F. Spee. Leichtes Verfahren zur Erhaltung linear geordneter, 
Koea Schnittserien mit > lfe von Schnittbändern. Zeitschr. 
wiss. Mikroskopie, ii., 1, p. 7, 1 
SCIENTIFIC NEWS. 
—The well-known traveler and Siberian ey Nikolai Mich- 
alowitsch Prjewalsky, died November 1st, in Karakul 
—Mr. T. H. Potts, an ornithologist, who has done much for the 
exploration of the New Zealand Fauna, has recently di 
—Professor Joseph F. James, M.S., formerly of Miami Univer- 
sity, Oxford, Ohio, should be addressed after September 10, 1888, 
Agricultural College, Prince George’s County, Maryland. i 
- —The Lowell Institute free courses of lectures to the teachers of 
Boston begin January 5th, with a course by Prof. W. O. Crosby, 
of the Boston Society of Natural History, upon the geology of 
Boston and its vicinity. The course consists of (1) a general study 
of the physical features of the Boston Basin, and of the geological 
now in progress; (2) a systematic study of the various 
and rocks found in the Boston Basin , together with the 
more characteristic kinds of. ae. which ‘they exibit (3) a 
