322 



SCIENCE 



[Vol. V., No. 115. 



making its cabinets, museums, and library collections 

 available to the students of the summer school, is 

 worthy of note. 



— In commenting on the automatic chemical 

 telegraph, the committee on telegraph apparatus at 

 the Philadelphia exhibition says that this system was 

 at one time in commercial use to a considerable ex- 

 tent in this country, but has been abandoned for 

 reasons probably due more to peculiarities in the com- 

 mercial requirements of American telegraphy than 

 to any inherent difficulties in the operation of the 

 mechanism itself. The automatic method of trans- 

 mission, although full of promise, has in almost every 

 instance failed to realize the expectations of its 

 advocates as a substitute for the ordinary process of 

 manual transmission. This difficulty, whatever it 

 may be, is inherent in the principle itself, and is not 

 properly chargeable to defects in the operation of the 

 apparatus. 



— The Auk for January contains the preliminary 

 report of the committee on bird-migration, of the 

 Ornithological union, from which it appears that 

 observing-stations are now established in every state 

 and territory in the Union, except Nevada. Returns 

 have been received from over one thousand observers, 

 who are usually, not ornithologists, but, as a rule, 

 intelligent farmers, who know only the very com- 

 monest birds. The most eastern station is at St. 

 John, Newfoundland; the most northern, at Belle 

 Isle, off Labrador; and the most southern, at Som- 

 brero Key, Fla. Reports have also come from many 

 points on the Pacific, and even from as far north as 

 Point Barrow, Alaska. The amount of information 

 so far received is so comparatively meagre, that it is 

 impossible to generalize as yet; but the various ob- 

 servers are working with great interest in the matter, 

 so that it cannot be long before many valuable gen- 

 eralizations can be drawn from the data which are 

 so rapidly coming in. 



— The third lecture before the San Diego society 

 of natural history was on the Sudan, delivered by 

 Stuart Stanly; and the visit of Dr. Farlow was im- 

 proved by engaging him to give the fourth. 



— According to the Journal of the Iron and steel 

 institute, large deposits of iron ore have been discov- 

 ered in Cuba, the extent of which will cause the 

 island to take rank with other countries as a source 

 of supply of the raw material for iron-making. An 

 American mining engineer states that he is familiar 

 with most of the rich fields in the United States and 

 in Europe, but that he has never seen any like those 

 of Cuba. He adds that he has seen veins of iron ore, 

 but that there are on the surface immense deposits, 

 varying in thickness from ten to fifty yards, mostly 

 in blocks of from two to twenty tons' weight. At one 

 place he found by actual measurement that there 

 must be present about 1,837,450,000 cubic yards of 

 ore. This deposit is situated only about half a mile 

 from the sea, where a good harbor can be opened to 

 ship the ore. Farther in the interior there is another 

 large deposit. 



— The Royal society of New South Wales offers its 



medal and twenty-five pounds for the best communi- 

 cation (provided it be of sufficient merit) containing 

 the result of original research or observation upon 

 each of the following subjects: — to be sent in not 

 later than May 1, 1886, on the chemistry of the Aus- 

 tralian gums and resins; on the tin deposits of New 

 South Wales ; on the iron-ore deposits of New South 

 Wales; list of the marine fauna of Port Jackson, with 

 descriptive notes as to habits, distribution, etc. : to 

 be sent in not later than May 1, 1887, on the silver- 

 ore deposits of New South Wales; origin and mode 

 of occurrence of gold-bearing veins and of the asso- 

 ciated minerals; influence of the Australian climate 

 in producing modifications of diseases; on the In- 

 fusoria peculiar to Australia. 



— The meteorological summary for February, 1885, 

 at San Diego, Cal., gives the mean daily temperature 

 at 55.9°; the highest temperature, 76°; the lowest 

 temperature, 37.6°. The mean daily relative humid- 

 ity was 77.7, with only .01 of an inch of precipitation, 

 against 9.05 inches of precipitation in February, 1884. 



— Rev. E. L. Greene, of the University of California 

 at Berkeley, intends making a botanical trip in April 

 to the Guadaloupe and the Cerros Islands, off Lower 

 California. 



— The applications for space in the Inventions 

 exhibition at South Kensington have been enormous. 

 If all the applications had been granted, it would 

 have required an area six times as large as Hyde Park 

 to contain the exhibits; yet the inventions are con- 

 fined to the last twenty-three years, and the music, 

 with the exception of the historical collection, re- 

 stricted to this century. Steam engines and boilers 

 have the largest share of space ; electricity, naval 

 architecture, and mining and metallurgy, having the 

 next. 



— The total distance run by the cars on the 

 Brighton (England) electric railway during the first 

 six months of its existence was fifteen thousand six 

 hundred miles. Two hundred thousand passengers 

 were carried, at an expense of five cents per mile. 



— It is reported that the experiment is to be tried 

 in Berlin of running the street-cars by electricity. 

 Storage-batteries of the form supplied by the Elec- 

 tric-power company of London will be employed. 



— The Messrs. Orcutt of San Diego, Cal., intend 

 penetrating the Lower Californian peninsula as far as 

 possible by wagon this spring, with the object of in- 

 vestigating its flora. 



— Mr. D. S. Smart, in a paper recently presented 

 to the British institution of civil engineers, describes 

 recent British practice in steam-boiler construction. 

 He states that 'low,' 'soft,' or 'mild' steel, which 

 has the valuable qualities of iron without its defects, 

 is now extensively used for this work. It is made 

 usually from thirty to thirty-six per cent stronger than 

 boiler-iron, and is superior, when well made, in duc- 

 tility. Some variation in this last respect has led 

 to considerable distrust of the metal ; but this distrust 

 has been quite often due to unfamiliarity, on the 

 part of users, with the nature of the material, and 



