November 7, 1S84.] 



SCIENCE. 



449 



— Professor James Hall has been elected member 

 of the French academy in the place of the late Dr. J. 

 Lawrence Smith. 



— The experiments on the relative efficiency of 

 different illuminants for lighthouse purposes, which 

 are being carried out in England by the Trinity 

 brethren, have in some respects been completed; and 

 they support the conclusions previously arrived at, 

 in that there seems to be little difference between gas 

 and paraffine-oil for all practical purposes, except that 

 the gaslight is slightly superior in fine weather, but 

 then the electric light has proved vastly better than 

 either. The crucial test of the latter, however, is in 

 hazy weather; and it is stated, that, in some of the 

 observations made when the weather was rather 

 thick, this light did not hold its own against the other 

 illuminants. Important tests will be made this 

 autumn, when hazy weather, and a greater variety in 

 the conditions of the atmosphere, may be expected. 



— A well-equipped expedition to East Africa will 

 be undertaken by Dr. Dominik von Hardeggar in 

 the autumn. The first object of the expedition will 

 be to explore the stretch of country between Sela 

 and Harar, then that town itself and its neighbor- 

 hood. Lastly, if the circumstances are favorable, 

 it will penetrate the land of the Somali to Ogaden, 

 or go through to Schoa. The geographical and eth- 

 nographical studies of the expedition will be under- 

 taken by Professor Paulitschke; the geological and 

 zoological, by Dr. von Hardeggar himself. A physi- 

 cian and assistant naturalist will accompany the 

 party. 



— The university of Freiburg, in Saxony, is to have 

 an institute of zoology, Professor Weismann having 

 made it a condition of his remaining there. 



— The seventh general congress of German analyt- 

 ical chemists was held this year at Munich on the 9th 

 of August, and the work of the honorary committee 

 continued. The resolutions passed mostly referred 

 to the restrictions of the German laws. 



— At a recent meeting of the Physiological society 

 of Berlin, Professor Kronecker spoke of a series of 

 precautionary measures to be observed in cases of 

 saving life by an infusion of common salt solution. 

 He first described how animals, after severe loss of 

 blood, recovered in the best and most rapid manner 

 by introducing into their blood-channels a like quan- 

 tity of common salt solution. In the case of infu- 

 sions of albuminous solutions, of serum sanguinis, 

 and even of the blood of another individual of the 

 same species deprived of its fibrine, there was, accord- 

 ing to direct measurements, an invariable destruc- 

 tion of blood-corpuscles. With infusions of common 

 salt solution, on the other hand, blood- corpuscles 

 were seen to increase somewhat rapidly. Professor 

 Kronecker then proceeded more particularly to lay 

 down precautionary rules to be observed in applying 

 this agency to man. In the first place, the compo- 

 sition of the solution must be such as was most com- 

 patible with the human organism. It would appear 

 that a solution of 0.73 % exercised the least irrita- 

 tion on the human body, and was therefore the most 



appropriate for infusions designed to save life. The 

 addition of the carbonate of an alkali, recommended 

 by some, had an injurious effect. Of great importance 

 were the velocity and pressure with whic?i the infu- 

 sion was injected : both ought to correspond with the 

 velocity and pressure in the vein into which the solu- 

 tion entered. The common salt solution should, 

 further, be disinfected beforehand by boiling, and the 

 air which penetrated into the reservoir while it was 

 being emptied must be filtered by means of a wadding 

 stopper. The injurious effect of too strong pressure 

 was illustrated by a comparative experiment on two 

 rabbits. 



— The reduction in letter-postage from three to 

 two cents commenced on Oct. 1, 1883. It is interest- 

 ing to note the effects of this reduction on the postal 

 business of the country as deduced from the returns 

 for the year ending June 31, 1884. During the first 

 three months of the year the three-cent rate was in 

 effect, and the sale of stamps was much reduced in 

 anticipation of the reduced rate. The increase in the 

 sale of ordinary postage- stamps for the five years 

 ended June 31, 1883, was 10.1 %; for the year 1883 the 

 increase was 8.6%. It is probable, that, owing to the 

 general stagnation in business industries, the increase 

 would have been less than 8 % in 1884 but for the re- 

 duction of postage. There was, however, an actual 

 increase of 21 % in the number of ' ordinary postage- 

 stamps ' sold, or from 1,202,743,000 to 1,459,768,000, 

 — an increase of 12.4 % over the year 1883, and of 11 % 

 over the average increase for five years. The revenue 

 from the sale of these stamps was $30,307,000 in 

 1883, $29,077,444 in 1884, — a diminution of $1,230,- 

 000, or 4%. The issue of postal-cards has heretofore 

 increased more rapidly than that of letters, or at the 

 rate of 13.7% a year on the average for the five years 

 mentioned. During the last year the number dimin- 

 ished 4.4 %, or from 379,000,000 to 362,000,000. In the 

 natural growth of the business, the postal revenue 

 for the next year will probably be greater under the 

 low rate than it has ever been under the high rate. 



— Mr. Maxim, the electrician, has invented a 

 machine-gun by which the energy of the recoil from 

 one discharge is employed to load and fire the next 

 round. The rate of firing is controlled by a lever ; 

 and, when the gun is once adjusted to a certain desired 

 speed, it goes on firing at that rate until all the am- 

 munition in the magazine is exhausted, whether the 

 man in charge be killed or not. The maximum 

 rate of firing, when the bullets have an initial velocity 

 of twelve hundred feet per second, is six hundred 

 rounds per minute. 



— The U. S. signal-service is about to undertake 

 the publication of a general bibliography of meteor- 

 ology and allied topics (such as earthquakes, terres- 

 trial magnetism, and meteors), and requests from 

 the writers of all countries a complete list of their 

 contributions to the literature of these subjects, in- 

 cluding the titles of all separate works, papers, and 

 published observations. The number of titles already 

 on hand is about thirty-five thousand. Especial at- 

 tention is invited to the importance of full titles. 



