122 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. V., No. 105. 



very important knowledge that the presence of mi- 

 crobes in foods is indispensable to digestion; that is 

 to say, of actions necessary to the elaboration of mat- 

 ters destined to serve for the nutrition of the animal 

 body. The total absence of microbes renders the 

 accomplishment of these actions impossible. We 

 can recognize the importance of an exact determina- 

 tion of the part played by microbes in digestion; for 

 this knowledge would lead to interesting views, and 

 perhaps to practical results, regarding the mechanism 

 and treatment of different forms of dyspepsia. 



— The enterprising scientific publisher, Doin, of 

 Paris, sends out with the first number of Revue sci- 

 entifique for this year the first number of a new jour- 

 nal, called Journal des societes scientifiques, which 

 is to appear weekly, and to contain a brief report of 

 the meetings of the principal scientific societies of 

 the great cities of Europe. The plan of the journal 

 is an excellent one, and one which should secure it an 

 ample subscription list. It costs only fifteen francs, 

 postage paid, to any part of the universal postal 

 union. The first number contains reports of the 

 French academy of sciences, the academy of medi- 

 cine, and the geographical, anthropological, and 

 biological societies of Paris, the societies of public 

 medicine and of surgery, as well as of the academy 

 of medicine of Belgium and Vienna, and the clinical 

 society of London. It forms a quarto of ten pages. 



— Among recent deaths we note the following: 

 Benjamin Silliman, at New Haven, Jan. 14, at the 

 age of sixty-nine; John Birmingham, astronomer, at 

 Millbrook, Tuam (Ireland), Sept. 7, at the age of 

 sixty-eight; Antoine Quet, physicist, at Paris, Nov. 29, 

 at the age of seventy-four; Dr. E. V. Ekstrand, botan- 

 ist, at Upsala, Nov. 10; A. Keferstein, lepidopterolo- 

 gist, at Erfurt, Nov. 28; Dr. Wilhelm Riippell, the 

 first scientific explorer of Nubia and Abyssinia, at 

 Frankfort-on-Main, Dec. 11, at the age of ninety; 

 Auguste Chevrolat, one of the founders of the French 

 entomological society, at Paris, Dec. 16, at the age of 

 eighty-five. 



— With the completion of volume x. (for 1882), Dr. 

 L. Just will resign trie editorship of the Botanisches 

 jahresbericht, which will then be privately conducted 



by Dr. E. Koehne of Berlin, and Dr. T. Geyler of 

 Frankfort-on-Main. 



— By the will of Mr. George Bentham, who died 

 in September last, the Linnean society of London, and 

 the Royal society scientific relief fund, will receive, 

 Nature states, a thousand pounds each. The residue 

 of his real and personal estate is to be held upon 

 trust, to apply the same in preparing and publishing 

 botanical works, or in the purchase of books or speci- 

 mens for the botanical establishment at Kew, or in 

 such other manner as his trustees, of whom Sir Joseph 

 Hooker is one, may consider best for the promotion 

 of botanical science. 



— A " Report on the Egyptian provinces of the 

 Sudan, Red Sea, and Equator, compiled in the intel- 

 ligence branch quartermaster-general's department, 



horse-guards," has just been published by the war- 

 office at London for three shillings and sixpence, 

 and will be found of great service to those following 

 the current events in upper Egypt, especially as it 

 contains a capital map, and descriptions of all the 

 routes of travel in the Egyptian Sudan known in 

 July last. 



— The capuchin, Father Massaga, who has spent 

 thirty-five years as missionary in the African desert, 

 has been commanded by the pope to write his mem- 

 oirs, that they may be published by the curia. The 

 memoirs will be in ten volumes, and will be illus- 

 trated by a Viennese artist. 



— We learn from Nature that the German govern- 

 ment has granted another sum of £7,500 for the sci- 

 entific investigation of Central Africa, and £1,900 for 

 the working-out of the materials collected by German 

 polar expeditions. 



— James Jackson, secretary of the French geo- 

 graphical society, has issued a new edition of his list 

 of velocities. The first velocity given is that of the 

 Merde Glace, — according to Tyndall, .0000099 of a 

 metre per second. The last, 463,500,000 metres per 

 second, is that of the electricity in a wire connecting 

 the inside and outside of a Leyden jar. What is 

 meant by the latter velocity is not quite clear, when 

 we consider that we can no more speak of the velo- 

 city of the conduction of electricity than we can of 

 the velocity of the conduction of heat. 



— Dr. Zulinski has published in a Warsaw medical 

 journal the results of a long series of experiments 

 made by him, both upon human beings and animals, 

 with a view of verifying the physiological effects of 

 tobacco-smoke. He found, in the first place, that it 

 is a distinct poison, even in small doses. Upon men 

 its action is very slight when not inhaled in large quan- 

 tities; but it would soon become powerful if the 

 smoker got into the habit of ' swallowing the smoke: ' 

 and Dr. Zulinski ascertained that this toxical prop- 

 erty is not due exclusively to the nicotine, but that 

 tobacco-smoke, even when disengaged of the nico- 

 tine, contains a second toxical principle called coli- 

 dine, and also oxide of carbon and hydrocyanic acid. 

 The effects produced by tobacco depend, he says, 

 to a great extent upon the nature of the tobacco and 

 the way in which it is smoked. The cigar-smoker 

 absorbs more poison than the cigarette-smoker, and 

 the latter, in turn, than those who smoke pipes; while 

 the smoker who takes the precaution of using a 

 nargile, or any other apparatus which conducts the 

 smoke through water, reduces the deleterious effects 

 of tobacco to a mininlum. Dr. Zulinski considers 

 the artificially lightened tobaccos to be more danger- 

 ous than the darker-colored ones. 



— The article on economy of fuel, on p. 74 of this 

 volume, contains an error to which a correspondent 

 calls attention. It should have stated that the Oregon 

 consumes 337 tons of coal per day, which gives com- 

 bustion at the rate of over 1,500 pounds of coal for 

 each mile traversed. 



