April 17, 1885.] 



SCIENCE. 



323 



with the proper methods of manipulating it. Some 

 brands are found to weld like iron, while others will 

 not weld, and are brittle. No accident of serious 

 character has yet occurred, however, to any steel 

 boiler, so far as reported. It is not yet fully ascer- 

 tained to what extent deterioration may affect the 

 safety of steel boilers. It is anticipated, however, 

 that the metal is likely to prove more satisfactory in 

 this respect than iron. Steel rivets are used to some 

 extent, and their use is continually increasing. More 

 care is requisite in their working than is demanded 

 in the use of iron rivets. It is desirable that all parts 

 of the boiler, and, as far as possible, of its appurte- 

 nances, should be made of steel, in order that voltaic 

 action and consequent corrosion may be avoided. 

 Steel plates are usually drilled, instead of being 

 punched, as it is found that steel is more liable to 

 injury by punching than iron. 



— The seventh volume of the Bulletin of the Na- 

 tional academy of sciences, of Cordoba, is entirely 

 occupied with a monograph on Staphylinidae, or rove- 

 beetles, of Buenos Ayres, by Arribalzaga, which is 

 completed with the third number, just received, mak- 

 ing altogether nearly four hundred pages. 



— The Portuguese explorer, Serpa Pinto, has under- 

 taken a fresh expedition into central Africa. He in- 

 tends to start from Mozambique in the direction of 

 Lake Tanganyika, crossing the Muropue country, 

 where he hopes to meet with the Portuguese Kongo 

 expedition. 



— A French commission has left Marseilles to 

 further the Roubaire scheme of an inland sea in the 

 African desert. The destination of the commission is 

 Gabes, where a harbor is to be made as an outlet for 

 the connecting canal. 



— Town councillor Helm of Dantzig has given his 

 collection of three thousand specimens of amber in- 

 sects, and seven thousand beetles, to the West-Prus- 

 sian provincial museum, on condition that they are 

 left in his own house during his lifetime. 



— The British steamship Chicago, Capt. Jones, 

 reports that on March 25, in 41° 14' north, 62° 10' 

 west, at two p.m., a very heavy vapor was observed 

 on the surface of the sea; and distributed about in 

 this vapor were hundreds of miniature water-spouts, 

 rising about twenty feet high. Immediately over this 

 part of the water was a large, black, arched cloud. 

 The barometer at the time was 80.09, air 48°, water 

 61° ; winds moderate from the southward. 



— In the April number of the American journal of 

 mathematics, the contributors, seven in all, hail, two 

 from Baltimore, and one each from Paris, the Royal 

 academy at Woolwich, Toronto, Bremen, and Porto. 



— Among recent deaths we note the following: 

 Major F. J. Sidney Parry, one of the oldest mem- 

 bers of the Entomological society of London, in The 

 Warren, Bushey Heath, Feb. 1 ; J. A. Serret, mathe- 

 matician, at Paris, March 3; Nicolas Sewertzow, 

 zoologist, Feb. 9; Gen. G. von Helmersen, geologist, 

 member of the Royal academy of sciences since 1844, 

 at St. Petersburg, in his eighty-third year; Geoffrey 



Nevill, formerly assistant superintendent of the 

 Indian museum at Calcutta, at Davos, Feb. 10 ; Dr. 

 Ernst Erhard Schmid, professor of mineralogy in the 

 university of Jena, at Jena, Feb. 16, in his seventy- 

 first year; Carl Theodore Ernst von Siebold, professor 

 of zoology in the university of Munich, at the age of 

 eighty. 



— At a meeting of the Society of chemical industry, 

 held in Glasgow on March 3, Mr. James Murrie read 

 a paper on the processes employed in Italy for the 

 extraction of oils, etc., from bituminous rocks in that 

 country. At the outset he said that the Italian gov- 

 ernment had given great facilities for developing the 

 internal resources of the country, particularly with 

 regard to carbonaceous deposits. There was a gen- 

 eral belief that a. belt of oil passed through the Apen- 

 nines in the direction of Roumania, and curved out 

 near Bucharest. There was, however, really no such 

 thing as an oil-belt in Italy. The deposit of oil and 

 bituminous rocks, which had received the greatest 

 attention, was situated in a spur of the Apennines 

 known as the Abruzzo, in the province of Chieti, 

 twenty miles inland from the town of Pescara, on the 

 Adriatic. The indications of bitumen occurred in 

 the form of asphaltic rock, found in a superficial 

 deposit on the slope of the mountain. Going on to 

 speak of the extraction and manufacture of oil from 

 the rock, Mr. Murrie remarked that about twenty 

 companies had started operations for the purpose of 

 utilizing this mineral. These ventures had invariably 

 turned out failures ; the cost of refining it being too 

 high, and the density of the oil produced too great, to 

 allow of its being used for burning-purposes. So far 

 as his observation went, the only uses it could be put 

 to were in street-lighting, for mining-purposes, and 

 in the preparation of lubricating-oils. 



— In addition to the numerous uses to which the 

 wonderful network of Parisian sewers has already 

 been put, we learn from La lumiere electrique that 

 the lines of telephone-wires are now being placed 

 upon these underground walls. This is simply fol- 

 lowing the example of the telegraph companies, who 

 did the same in 1880. The sewers also contain two 

 large water-pipes, — one for household, the other for 

 sprinkling purposes; and, besides, a pneumatic tube 

 used for the transmission of messages, and a smaller 

 pipe which transmits the air-pressure for the system 

 of pneumatic clocks distributed throughout Paris. 



— Mr. E. E. H. Francis recently read a paper at the 

 London chemical society in which he showed that fil- 

 ter-paper, ordinarily so weak, can be rendered tough, 

 and at the same time pervious to liquids, by immersing 

 it in nitric acid of relative density 1.42, then washing 

 it in water. The product is different from parchment 

 paper made with sulphuric acid, and it can be washed 

 and rubbed like a piece of linen. It contracts in 

 size under the treatment, and undergoes a slight de- 

 crease of weight; the nitrogen being removed, and 

 the ash diminished. 



— The king of the Belgians has planned an Inter- 

 national geographical society, and has summoned 

 Milne-Edwards of Paris to be his helper therein. 



