February 27, 1885.] 



SCIENCE 



183 



— At a united meeting of the Victoria and New 

 South Wales geographical societies it was resolved 

 that they should in future call themselves ' The Aus- 

 tralian geographic conference,' for the purpose of 

 discussing (periodically) important matters affecting 

 the interest of geographic science of Australia. The 

 governments of Yictoria and New South Wales have 

 each placed a thousand pounds at the disposal of the 

 general society, and it is intended in the first place 

 to undertake a thorough exploration of New Guinea. 



— The emperor of Germany has conferred the 

 ' Ordre pour le merite ' for science and arts on Sir 

 Joseph Lister. Commenting on this recognition of 

 an English surgeon whose name has furnished a new 

 verb to the German language since the beneficent 

 results obtained by his antiseptic method during 

 the Franco-German war, the Lancet observes, " Not 

 only is Sir Joseph Lister to be congratulated on this 

 act of the venerable and most illustrious emperor, 

 but the profession of the United Kingdom will recog- 

 nize in the act a generous recognition of the claims 

 of British medical science, which, it is only fair to 

 say, is not new on the part of Germany. The dis- 

 coverer of vaccination has been more honored in 

 Germany than in his own country, in accordance 

 with the scripture that 'cannot be broken.' The 

 quiet evolution in surgery, involving the practical 

 abolition of pyaemia, hospital erysipelas, and gan- 

 grene, and an infinite diminution in the calamities 

 of surgery, which we owe to Sir Joseph Lister more 

 than to any other single man, is a service to mankind 

 not quite on the same scale as the discovery of 

 vaccination, but of very far-reaching consequence. 

 Through the slightly discordant notes of diplomacy 

 it is refreshing to notice the harmony of internation- 

 al grace in the higher regions of science and of hu- 

 manity." 



— Some interesting experiments, according to the 

 Journal of the Iron and steel institute, have recently 

 been made for the purpose of determining the respec- 

 tive values of wet and dry coal for the evaporation 

 of water. The results showed that small coal, con- 

 taining eighteen per cent of water, and nine and 

 nine-tenths per cent of coal-dust, evaporated five and 

 seven-tenths pounds of water per pound of fuel; 

 while the same amount of coal, containing three per 

 cent of water, evaporated from eight to eight and a 

 half pounds of water per pound of fuel. The figures 

 showed that the employment of wet coal gave rise to 

 a loss of from fifteen to twenty-five per cent. 



— The programme for the Sheffield scientific school 

 lectures to mechanics for 1885 is as follows: Feb. 12, 

 Norway and the midnight sun, Eev. Dr. C. C. Tiffany; 

 Feb. 17, Science and the supernatural, Professor Du- 

 Bois; Feb. 19, The present commercial crisis, Mr. 

 A. T. Hadley; Feb. 24, The Asiatic cholera, Professor 

 Brewer; Feb. 26, The sensation of color, Professor 

 Hastings; March 3, Cobwebs, Mr. J. H. Emerton; 

 March 5, Lafayette, Prof. A. M. Wheeler; March 10, 

 The patent law of the United States, Professor Kob- 

 inson; March 12, Commemoration of the birthday of 

 Bishop Berkeley, President Porter; March 17, The 



surface life of the Gulf Stream, Professor Yerrill ; 

 March 19, Map projection, Professor Phillips; March 

 24, An hour at the Louvre, Prof. D. Cady Eaton. 

 This course has now been in existence twenty years. 

 A fee of one dollar is charged, that the audiences may 

 be the better controlled. 



— Sir John Lawes suggests {Health) that it will be 

 more profitable to throw sewage into the sea than to 

 apply it to the land. His grounds for saying this are 

 that it will supply the enormous quantities of phos- 

 phate of lime, potash, and nitrogen which are neces- 

 sary to the existence of fishes, but which exist in the 

 sea only in small quantities. Tons of these com- 

 pounds are taken from the ocean each year in our 

 fisheries without due return. If, then, enough or 

 more than enough to make up for that annually taken 

 out could be returned to the sea in the form of sew- 

 age, there is little doubt that increased prosperity 

 may accrue to the fisheries. Even after defecation, 

 much of the nitrogen and mineral constituents would 

 remain; and, indeed, this defecation, or else greater 

 dilution, is absolutely necessary, in order to prevent 

 the destructive work which sewage naturally does in 

 absorbing the oxygen which is necessary to the ex- 

 istence of fishes. 



— From the Journal of the Iron and steel institute 

 we learn that Mr. Fayol concludes, from his experi- 

 ments reported in the Comptes rendus of the Societe 

 de l'industrie minerale, that the rise of temperature 

 accompanying the absorption of atmospheric oxygen 

 by finely powdered coal is the chief cause of its spon- 

 taneous combustion. He finds that only a low tem- 

 perature is needed to ignite powdered coal; lignite 

 igniting at 150° C, and anthracite at 300° C, and the 

 ordinary varieties of coal at intermediate tempera- 

 tures. The avidity with which the oxygen is ab- 

 sorbed increases with the rise of temperature, which 

 finally becomes sufficiently high for ignition. An 

 important part in spontaneous combustion has been 

 ascribed by many authorities to finely divided pyrites. 

 The author, however, on subjecting this mineral to 

 the same experimental conditions as the coal speci- 

 mens, found a less energetic action of the atmosphere. 

 When gradually heated up to 200° C, pyrites and coal 

 behaved exactly alike till a temperature of 135° C. 

 was reached : from this point the temperature of the 

 pyrites remained the same, while the coal-powder 

 rapidly became hotter till the igniting-point was 

 reached. 



— Dr. Harrison Allen has republished in a neat 

 pamphlet (Philadelphia, Blakiston) his essay on the 

 palategraph, a new and ingenious instrument of his 

 own design, by which the motions of the soft palate 

 may be recorded. The instrument is a straight rod 

 eight inches long, which is passed into the nose so 

 that one end rests upon the upper surface of the 

 palate; just in front of the nose a wire loop encloses 

 the rod, the wire being suspended from a band passed 

 around the head; the loop acts as a fulcrum, so that, 

 when the palate is raised, the free end of the rod 

 moves down, and these movements are recorded upon 

 a paper moved by clockwork (kymographion). The 



