40 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. V., No. 101. 



— The dean of Clonfert lias in the press a work on 

 ' The general principles of the structure of language.' 

 Triibner is the publisher. The work contains gram- 

 matical sketches, drawn up with great minuteness, 

 of about a hundred and twenty languages, African, 

 American, Oceanic, Asiatic, and European. 



— The latest part (tomo vi. 2, 3) of the bulletin of 

 the National academy of sciences in Cordoba, Ar- 

 gentine Kepublic, has been received. It contains 

 two geological papers, — the first by Florentino Am- 

 eghino, on a series of geological and paleontological 

 excursions made in the province of Buenos Aires; 

 and the second by Adolfo Doering, on certain arte- 

 sian borings in the Argentine Republic. 



— Under the title of ' La rage et les experiences de 

 M. Pasteur,' Gaston Percheron has published an 

 excellent little treatise on hydrophobia (Paris, Firmin- 

 Didot). The work gives briefly a clear account of all 

 that is known of the malady, with the latest discov- 

 eries of Pasteur respecting the protective vacci- 

 nation of dogs against rabies, and the confirmatory 

 report of the commission appointed by the French 

 government to control the test experiments. The 

 description of the primary symptoms of the malady 

 in dogs is interesting, and may be useful. The treatise 

 is written in a popular style. 



— The Illustrirte zeitung gives an account of the 

 exploring of the mysterious little riyer, Reka, which 

 rises in the Carinthian Alps, disappears, and emerges 

 again in Istria as the Timavo, finally flowing into 

 the Bay of Monfalcone. An exploring party from 

 the village of St. Canzian last March entered the 

 grotto into which the river disappears. For sixty 

 yards the boats went along a narrow channel bor- 

 dered by walls a hundred metres high; then a cavern 

 was reached, where the party -was obliged to land, as 

 the current was too strong for the boat. They fol- 

 lowed the left bank of the stream along the rocks 

 until it was only four metres broad, when they 

 crossed it on a plank, then followed the right bank 

 until they came to the sixth subterranean waterfall. 

 The magnesium light showed calm water below this. 

 Four explorers started again on the 9th of November, 

 and reached a seventh waterfall. 



— ' Danger-lines and river-floods of 1882 ' is the title 

 of Signal-service note xv\, by H. A. Hazen, junior 

 professor in the ofhce of the chief signal-officer. The 

 height at which floods become dangerous is given 

 for forty-seven cities, arranged alphabetically. This is 

 supplemented by special notes descriptive of the con- 

 ditions of danger at these stations. In accordance 

 with these measures, warnings can be issued as the 

 rivers rise. The excessive floods of 1882 in the Mis- 

 sissippi basin are referred to an unusually early spring, 

 causing a rapid melting of snow, combined with ex- 

 cessive rainfall, which caused simultaneous high water 

 in both the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. The progress 

 of the flood-wave crest down stream is found to oc- 

 cupy from three to eight days (mean, five and seven- 

 tenths) between Cincinnati and Cairo, and from eleven 

 to twenty-four (mean, sixteen and eight-tenths) from 

 Cincinnati to Vicksburg. In general, the higher the 



water, the longer is the time of movement. The 

 statement has been made in the flooded district, that, 

 " if the river-banks were now as heavily wooded as in 

 the great flood of 1824, the water would have risen 

 ten feet higher in 1882 than it did." To this Professor 

 Hazen answers, that the same heavily wooded con- 

 dition of the banks farther up stream would have 

 held back the water, retarded the supply, and thus 

 reduced the height by distributing the flood over 

 a longer period. The value of property lost in the 

 floods of 1882 in Tennessee, Mississippi, Arkansas, 

 and Louisiana, is roughly estimated at nine and a 

 half millions: the loss of life was a hundred and 

 forty-eight. 



— The city of Providence, being embarrassed about 

 the disposal of its sewage at the head of a tidal bay, 

 sent two of its engineers to Europe last summer to 

 investigate the various processes practically employed 

 there to accomplish the desired end. The resulting 

 report has been recently issued in an octavo volume 

 of a hundred and fifty pages, with many plates and 

 maps. It contains recommendations to the effect 

 that ' intercepting sewers ' should be built so as to 

 catch the sewage just before it flows into the nat- 

 ural channels of drainage, and that it should be thus 

 carried to Field's Point, on the west bank of Provi- 

 dence River, near the southern limit of the city ; that 

 it should there be treated by chemicals in such a man- 

 ner as to clarify it by precipitation of suspended mat- 

 ter; and that the clarified effluent should be emptied 

 into deep water off the point. The estimated cost of 

 this arrangement is over three and a half million dol- 

 lars. The report contains much material of interest; 

 and Appendix A, on ' sewerage systems and sewage 

 disposal,' which makes the greatest part of the vol- 

 ume, is a valuable historical and practical statement 

 of the question. 



— According to a telegram from Calcutta, Mr. 

 Griesbach, the geologist with the Afghan boundary 

 commission, describes the route between Guetta and 

 the Helmund as presenting features very similar to 

 those in the Pishin valley and Candahar; namely, 

 a system of precipitous, deeply eroded ridges, ex- 

 tending from north and south to north-east and 

 south-west. Extensive post-tertiary deposits fill the 

 intervening valleys. The south-west extremity of the 

 Ghazarband range is composed of sandstone shales 

 and grits of the Flysch facies of eocene rocks. A 

 series of low hills and valleys stretches between Canj- 

 pai and Nushki, which, from their composition, ap- 

 pear to be merely continuations of the Kojah Am ran 

 range, but near Galiahah the formation is distinctly 

 younger, the epoch being mostly trap rock, which in 

 places bursts through the cretaceous limestone over- 

 lying it, and locally converts it into white marble. 



— The steamship British Prince reports that on 

 Dec. 23, in latitude 40° 45' north, longitude 66° west 

 (about four hundred miles east of New York), from 

 two a.m. to half-past five a.m., she had steady St. 

 Elmo lights at yard-arms and mast-heads. The 

 weather was overcast, dark, and gloomy, with tor- 

 rents of rain, vivid lightning, and peals of thunder. 



