394 
336. July 4 is mentioned to show how few persons 
are often at the museum on holidays now, as com- 
pared with the attendance on such days in former 
years, especially in. summer, when ‘ attractions’ are 
offered at the ‘ Willows,’ ‘ Point of Pines,’ and other 
popular resorts in the neighborhood. 
The above figures are undoubtedly under the actual 
numbers. ‘There is a steady increase, each year of 
late, in the regular daily attendance, and a corre- 
_ sponding decrease on popular holidays. 
SCIENCE. 
[Vou IIL, No. 60. — 
The specimens which seem to be of most. interest 
to the general public are the life-size figures from 
China, Japan, India, and other countries ; the gen- 
eral collection of mammals and birds; the Essex 
county animals and woods; and, perhaps more than 
‘any thing else, the human skeletons and crania. 
The carving ‘Heaven and the day of judgment’ of 
course holds the first place for the seeker after the 
curious and wonderful. ; 
RECHNT PROCEEDINGS OF SCIENTIFIC SO CLETIES. 
Ottawa field-naturalists’ club, Canada. 
March 13.— Mr. W. P. Lett read a paper on the 
deer of the Ottawa valley. Of these, the most im- 
portant as regards size is the moose, or American 
elk (Alce americanus), which unfortunately, owing 
to indiscriminate slaughter and illegal hunting, is 
rapidly becoming very rare, except in remote districts 
along the northern tributaries of the Ottawa. The 
woodland caribou, or reindeer (Rangifer caribou), 
formerly frequented the whole country on the north 
side of the river, but was only an occasional straggler 
on the opposite shore. Like the moose, it has been 
driven northward, and much diminished in numbers, 
although sometimes still found on the Des Licores 
River, fifty or sixty miles from its mouth, on the 
upper Gatineau, and to the north of Lake Nippissing. 
It is the swiftest and wildest of all deer; and the only 
successful method of capturing it is by still-hunting. 
The magnificent wapiti, or great stag (Cervus cana- 
densis), falsely called the American elk, was, within 
the memory of persons still living, an inhabitant of 
the great hardwood forests along the Ottawa, and was 
seen within four miles of the spot where the city now 
is. Fragments of its enormous antlers are still turned 
up by the plough in various localities, but the stately 
monarch of the forest has retired to the far north- 
west territories. The common red or Virginian deer 
(Coriacus virginianus) is still found within afew miles 
of Ottawa, but owing to pot-hunting and slaughter- 
ing during the winter, when the snow is deep, is be- 
coming annually less plentiful. Not many years ago 
immense yards, containing hundreds of deer, existed 
along the various tributaries; but, except in remote 
districts, the yards are now scattered and small, and 
the deer confined chiefly to the large swamps. Ref- 
erence was made by the lecturer to the variety of 
this species known as the ‘spikehorn,’ and to inter- 
esting piebald and white specimens which had been 
observed by him. A fine collection of heads and 
antlers of the several species was shown, including 
some abnormal antlers from old red bucks. 
Society of arts, Boston. 
March 13. — Mr. P. B. Delany of New York gave 
the first public exhibition and description of his new 
system of synchronous, multiplex telegraphy, — the 
result of inventions by Mr. P. La Cour (1878), Mr. 
EK. A. Callahan of New York, and himself (1883). 
By this system any number, up to twelve, of fast 
Morse circuits can be simultaneously worked over a 
single wire, the messages going in either direction on 
any circuit; also a greater number of slow Morse 
circuits, and as many as seventy-two printing-circuits. 
At each end of the main line a drum, called a dis- 
tributer, is maintained in uniform rotation about a 
vertical axis by the intermittent attraction of an 
electro-magnet on the toothed circumference of a 
horizontal circular plate carried by the drum. A 
tuning-fork, vibrated electrically (about eighty-five 
vibrations), opens the motor circuit at each vibration, 
and thus produces the intermittence in the motor 
magnet driving the distributer. -If the forks at either 
end of the line were in absolute unison, and the 
toothed circumference had the same number of teeth 
each, the drums would rotate synchronously. The 
impossibility of absolute and continued unison is met 
by automatic regulation of the rate of the forks, the 
principle involved being an automatic shunting of a 
resistance-coil which is normally in the circuit driv- 
ing the fork; thus increasing the current in that 
circuit, and hence amplifying the excursion of the 
prongs, intensifying the field of magnetic force in 
which this vibration occurs, and thus diminishing 
(by even five per cent) the rate of the fork. This 
slowing-down of the fork would immediately result 
in a corresponding lessening of the speed of rotation 
of the distributer at that end of the line. 
The main principle of the multiplex use of the 
single line consists in giving the line synchronously, 
and in sufficiently rapid succession, to the correspond- 
ing instruments or circuits at the opposite ends of the 
line. In the apparatus shown, the rotating drum 
or distributer carried a brush which trailed over a 
circular series of eighty-four narrow, insulated, radial 
plates or segments of metal. Of these, twelve were 
utilized for the synchronizing arrangement, and the 
remaining seventy-two were divided among six Cir- 
cuits; the terminus of the same circuit being thus 
connected to twelve equi-distant segments, each cir- 
cuit containing merely the ordinary polarized relay, 
reversing key and ground; the relay serving to close 
the local circuit through a sounder, as usual. Thus, 
when the brushes at both ends of the line make con- 
tact at the same instant with any one of the twelve 
segments of the same circuit, that circuit, and no 
