120 



SCIENCE 



[Vol. Y., No. 105. 



intercourse with the subjects of Louis XIV. This 

 means that we have the unique privilege, in this 

 age of steam and travel, of studying in them a form 

 of speech that has scarcely known change for the 

 past two centuries. But this idiom is not a dialect 

 of that remote period; and the greatest surprise to 

 a student of language arriving in Canada is to find, 

 that, contrary to the general impression of scholars, 

 the vernacular does not hear any specific dialectic 

 character, but is the middle (sixteenth century) 

 French, with those natural changes which would be 

 produced by the intimate fusion into a whole of all 

 the different species of language that were originally 

 brought from the mother-country. An influence 

 upon the language must be noted in the original 

 seigniorial tenure which prevailed throughout Lower 

 Canada. The seigneurs were the second sons of 

 noble families who chose the better class of peasants 

 to accompany them to their homes in the new world ; 

 and here each ruler laid out on the river his little 

 kingdom (generally fx 3 leagues in dimensions), 

 which he divided among his colonists in concessions 

 of 3 X 30 arpents. This arrangement produced a 

 series of centres of civilization in which the lord and 

 his educated friends were brought into more or less 

 intimate contact with the common people: in truth, 

 we have abundant evidence to show that the relation 

 of the seigneur to his people was much more intimate 

 in these early settlements of Canada than in the 

 mother-country. After the conquest (1760), nearly 

 all the nobles fled the country, and the different 

 classes of society were more thoroughly mixed than 

 they had ever been before. The influence of long 

 and constant contact with a Teutonic race has had 

 the effect to temper the rash impulses of the Gaul ; 

 and this is in no respect more marked than in his 

 speech, where a quiet monotony largely prevails, and 

 strikes the stranger immediately as one of its leading 

 characteristics. It has not the rhythm, the inex- 

 haustible variety, and rich cadence of the Gallic 

 tongue as it is spoken to-day in France." 



Mr. Elliott also records the apparent vigor of the 

 old French stock, and their wonderful absorbing- 

 power, as shown by the curious phenomenon of a 

 people in certain sections having the racial charac- 

 teristics of the English or Scotch, and bearing the 

 names of Warren, Frazer, and McDonald, and yet 

 unable to speak a word of the mother-tongue. The 

 English names of roads and villages show who the 

 occupants of such places were a few years ago. 



— A circular from the U. S. signal-office informs 

 us, that, in accordance with the general assent of co- 

 operating weather bureaus, the observations at our 

 signal-service stations, as well as those of the widely 

 extended international system, are now taken eight 

 minutes and twelve seconds earlier than formerly, 

 the change having been made on Jan. 1. The new 

 time of the morning observation, which corresponds 

 to the daily international observation, is therefore 

 seven a.m. of our eastern standard, corresponding 

 to Greenwich mean noon ; and this has the great ad- 

 vantage of being recorded with the same name for 

 the day of the week the world over. 



— It was stated last spring that quantities of float- 

 ing pumice, supposed to be derived from Krakatoa 

 during the recent eruption, reached the island of 

 Reunion, at the harbor of St. Paul, on the 22d of 

 March, 1884, having thus made a voyage of some two 

 hundred and six days at a rate of six-tenths of a mile 

 an hour. It now appears that an immense quantity 

 of pumice of similar appearance, and supposed to be 

 from the same source, reached Tamatave, Madagas- 

 car, in the first week of September, 1884. Specimens 

 have been sent to the Societe de geographie, and will 

 be reported upon by the director of the School of 

 mines. 



— Capt. Lundin of the bark Vega, at Philadelphia, 

 reports that at three a.m., Dec. 22, in latitude 40° 

 31' north, longitude 16° 10' west, he felt several slight 

 shocks of an earthquake. It was calm at the time. 



— The distribution of time on a commercial basis 

 is claiming the attention of inventors and capitalists. 

 Besides the Standard time company of New Haven 

 (which has been idle the past year, owing to an ar- 

 rangement with the Time telegraph company of New 

 York, which has now been terminated by the former 

 company), there are the Standard time company of 

 New York, now organizing, to distribute time on the 

 Mayerhofer system of compressed-air impulses, syn- 

 chronizing and winding secondary clocks; the Na- 

 tional time-regulating company of Boston, which 

 proposes to give audible signals over telephone-lines, 

 which can be heard after the manner of repeating 

 watches by placing the telephone to the ear ; a com- 

 pany with headquarters at Pittsburg, which is to use 

 the system devised by Mr. Gardner for long or short 

 distance telegraph time-signalling and clock-synchro- 

 nizing; the Time telegraph company of New York, 

 which has shown its best development in the electric 

 dial system in Providence; the Wenzel pneumatic 

 system of clocks, actuated by compressed air acting 

 through the medium of glass air-holders lifted out 

 of a glycerine bath at each impulse ; and we suppose 

 that we shall soon have companies organized on the 

 Popp-Resch-Mayerhofer system, now used in Paris, 

 and the Mautner system of Vienna. Apropos of the 

 subject, A. Merling has published an excellent little 

 book on electrical clocks, entitled ' Die electrische 

 uhren; Electrotechnische bibliothek, band ii. (Braun- 

 schweig, Friedrich Vieweg und sohn, 1884, 323 p., 

 12°) ; and M. A. Favarger continues his articles 

 through the current year of the Journal Suisse d'hor- 

 logerie (Geneva), on 'L'electricite et ses applications 

 a la chronometrie.' 



— Dr. Hugo Gylden, whose call to the professor- 

 ship of astronomy in the university of Gottingen, 

 made vacant by the death of Dr. Klinkerfues, we noted 

 some time ago, has, in consequence of a liberal offer 

 from the king of Sweden, decided to remain at his 

 present post as astronomer royal, and director of the 

 observatory at Stockholm. Dr. Gylden is one of 

 the editors of the new journal entitled Act amathe- 

 matica. 



— Dr. Th. Bredichin has resigned his position as 

 director of the observatory at Moscow, Russia. 



