512 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. V., No. 124. 



until Dr. Huggins obtained his first measure of the 

 displacement of the Inline in the spectrum of Sirius, 

 and thus proved that it was possible to ascertain the 

 speed with which the star was moving in the direc- 

 tion of the visual ray, — an observation which deserves 

 to rank in importance with the first detection of the 

 proper motions of stars, or the first determination of 

 their annual parallax, or even somewhat higher as 

 being more entirely a novel enterprise. 



— E. Eevillout, the French Egyptologist, has nearly 

 completed an exhaustive report on the demotic docu- 

 ments in the British museum which have been dis- 

 covered in the course of the destruction of some 

 Coptic houses in Lower Egypt. These demotic 

 ostraka include a great number of receipts for taxes, 

 some being of the Eoman period. Revillout points 

 out that one of the demotic ostraka preserved in the 

 Louvre is composed in exactly the same formula as 

 those written in Greek during the second year of the 

 reign of Caligula, and the thirteenth year of Nero. 

 Other analogous examples are among those in the 

 British museum. The most interesting of the ostraka 

 submitted to Revillout are of the Ptolemaic period, 

 amongst which occur several bilingual texts of con- 

 siderable importance. One of these decides a great 

 question about money; and another example is a re- 

 ceipt, payable in corn, of a kind up to the present time 

 only known from the Greek texts, and demonstrating 

 the validity of theories with regard to measures 

 hitherto held as provisional only. Other ostraka in 

 the collection record oaths taken about crops, the 

 succession of property, and accusations of thefts from 

 the catacombs, as well as a demand for the liberation 

 of a slave, and an instrument for the delivery of cer- 

 tain property, the manner being recorded in which a 

 house was left by its owner. 



— The students of the Kansas State agricultural 

 college at Manhattan are planning a natural-history 

 expedition during the summer in the west. The 

 field of their operations will lie between the 100th 

 and 150th meridians. 



— The report of the proceedings of the Reale aca- 

 demia dei lincei, Rome, as contained in Nature, cites 

 Professor Tacchini's communication on the hydro- 

 genic protuberances of the sun, observed at the 

 Royal observatory of the college of Rome during 1884. 

 In continuation of his previous note to the effect 

 that 1884 must be considered as a year in which the 

 phenomena of the chromosphere had attained their 

 maximum development, he presented the results of 

 observations on two hundred and forty- two days, from 

 which it appeared that the number of the protuber- 

 ances increased from March to October. In order to 

 get rid of the anomalies which are met with in various 

 observations, and to obtain a curve representing the 

 course of the phenomena in the period 1880-84, Pro- 

 fessor Tacchini has taken as monthly means the means 

 of three months. The corresponding curve shows 

 three culminating points, or periods of maximum 

 activity: viz., July, 1880; September-October, 1881; 

 and March, 1884, — which last is the highest in the 

 whole series. The maximum of the protuberances 

 follows that of the sun-spots ; and recent observations 



make it probable that the present year will be one of 

 greater activity in the chromosphere and solar atmos- 

 phere. 



— Prof. F. Jeffrey Bell will in future edit the Zoolo- 

 gical record. 



— Prof. H. L. Cohn, in his pamphlet ' ITeber den 

 beleuchtungswerth der lampenglocken ' (Wiesbaden, 

 1885) describes a long series of determinations of 

 the relative values of various forms of lamp-shades. 

 The method pursued was to measure the brightness 

 of white paper lying on a table over which the source 

 of artificial light was suspended at a given distance, 

 by means of a Weber photometer. As one would an- 

 ticipate, the general effect of a shade is to increase 

 very greatly the illumination immediately under the 

 light, and not modify it notably at an angular dis- 

 tance greater than forty-five degrees from this region. 

 The last section of the pamphlet, which deals with 

 the illumination requisite for easiest use of the eyes, 

 is of the most general interest. Taking as a measure 

 of the value of the illumination in this sense the 

 number of lines which can be read from a newspaper 

 in a minute, and as the unit of illumination that of a 

 normal candle at a perpendicular distance of a metre 

 from the paper, he finds that the best illumination is 

 not less than fifty such units. Since even a fifth of 

 this illumination is very rarely secured, except im- 

 mediately under a lamp provided with a good shade, 

 the author emphasizes the conclusion that few school- 

 children work in a satisfactory light. 



— The Swiss geologist and alpinist, Horace Bene- 

 dict de Saussure, the first to make the ascent of Mont 

 Blanc (Aug. 3, 1787), is to have erected in his honor 

 a statue in the village of Chamounix, from which 

 point the ascent was made. It will be inaugurated 

 on the centenary of his ascent. During the conven- 

 tion of the Alpine clubs at Chamounix year before 

 last, the president of the section of the Jura, Yezien, 

 called the attention of the alpinists to the fact that 

 no statue in honor of the first of their number had 

 yet been erected, and suggested that Chamounix was 

 a suitable place for such a monument. This propo- 

 sition was received with great applause ; and, by a 

 happy coincidence, at almost the same hour the pres- 

 ident of the Swiss republic issued a decree authoriz- 

 ing the commune of Chamounix to accept a legacy 

 of four thousand francs which had been made by a 

 Mr. Chenal of Sallenches, according to a will drawn 

 up as long ago as 1834. Mr. Chenal died in 1881 ; and 

 the execution of his will has only now been accom- 

 plished. A committee has been formed to carry out 

 the wishes of the legacy, which simply requires the 

 erection of a monument in granite by some approved 

 architect, with the inscription, ' X Monsieur Benedict 

 de Saussure, Chamounix reconnaissant.' This com- 

 mittee, which among others consists of Messrs. 

 Daubree of Paris, Alphonse Favre of Geneva, and 

 the presidents of the Turin section and the Florence 

 section of the Italian Alpine club, and the first presi- 

 dent of the Austrian Alpine club, will endeavor to 

 increase the sum, in order to erect a worthy monu- 

 ment. A subscription has been opened by the Journal 



