APRIL 11, 1884.] 
only absorb the excess of ink from a blot, but will re- 
move the blot altogether; provided, always, the ink be 
of the old-fashioned kind, unmixed with indigo or ani- 
line color. Such blotting-paper may, however, deal 
with signatures as well as blots: this is one reason for 
using the inks that are not entirely dependent upon the 
iron salt. Oxalicacid, however, is not very dangerous 
as a means of fraud, seeing that a trace of the writing, 
or the blot, remains; and this may be brought out 
again into full legibility by adding ferrocyanide of po- 
tassium or gallic acid. 
—In his lecture given in London on house-drain- 
age, Capt. Galton drew attention to the formation of 
nitre in the organic remains in the subsoil of old 
cities and villages. The wells of Delhi were at one 
time completely contaminated thereby; and there are 
many factories of saltpetre in India whose supplies 
are derived from this source. During the English 
blockade of European ports, Napoleon I. procured 
his nitre for gunpowder from the subsoil of Paris. 
The Engineer remarks that the conversion of ances- 
tors into explosive material is more objectionable 
than Shakspeare’s ultimate fate of Caesar, —to ‘stop 
a hole to keep the wind away.’ 
— The Worshipful company of grocers, one of the 
old London guilds, has endowed a prize of a thou- 
sand pounds, to be offered once in every four years, 
and to be awarded for the discovery of any proof with 
regard to a subject in connection with sanitary ser- 
vice named by the company. The first essays for this 
discovery prize which is to be open to universal com- 
petition, British and foreign, are to be sent in by Dec. 
31, 1886, the following problem being the test: ‘‘the 
discovery of a method by which the vaccinum conta- 
gium may be cultivated apart from the animal body, 
in some medium or media not otherwise zymotic; the 
method to be such that the contagium may be, by 
means of it, multiplied to an indefinite extent in 
successive generations, and the product after any 
number of such generations shall (so far as can with- 
in the time be tested) prove itself of identical potency 
with standard vaccine lymph.’’ 
— The memorial tablet to Elihu Root, lately pro- 
fessor of mathematics and physics in Amherst col- 
lege, and which was destroyed in the burning of the 
Walker Hall two years ago, has recently been restored 
to its former location in the philosophical lecture- 
room of that building. The inscription reads as 
follows: — 
“IN MEMORY OF 
i ere Ur O08, 
PROFESSOR IN THIS COLLEGE FOR FOUR YEARS. 
Born Died 
Sept. 14, 1845. Dec. 3, 1880. 
‘ SPEREMUS.’ 
A.D. 1883, restored from the fire of March, 1882.” 
This memorial was originally erected in June, 1881, 
by the graduating class of that year. 
— The Seconde société de Teyler, of Harlem, has 
offered again its gold-medal for a satisfactory essay 
“to furnish a critical study of all that has been said 
for and against spontaneous. generation, especially 
SCIENCE. 
467 
during the last twenty-five years.’”’ The competing 
essays should be sent to the society before the Ist of 
April, 1886. 
— By a happy accident, just as a plan for a topo- 
graphical survey of Massachusetts is being considered, 
the discovery has been made of some original un- 
published documents, relating to the former geodetic 
survey, by Borden. One is a letter of forty pages, 
addressed to the Hon. Theophilus Parsons, then chair- 
man of the joint committee of the legislature, in which 
Mr. Borden reviews the whole matter of the state 
survey, describing in a very simple manner the 
methods used and the results obtained, aud conclud- 
ing with a detailed statement of the expense of the 
work from 1830 to 1841: the other is a paper addressed 
to the American academy of arts and sciences, dated 
August, 1850, in which is described in great detail, 
accompanied by carefully-drawn plates, the base- 
measuring apparatus, devised, constructed, and used 
by Borden in measuring the base-line in the Con- 
necticut valley. The work done with this apparatus 
was of the most accurate character, the difference 
between two measurements of a line over seven 
miles long being less than a quarter of aninch. This 
paper was never sent to the academy; but, after 
various wanderings, both have reached the hands of 
Professor Vose of the Massachusetts institute of tech- 
nology, who has presented them to the academy. 
It is to be hoped that the academy will print them in 
full at an early day. 
— Messrs. Henry Edwards and S. Lowell Elliot 
announce that they will publish from time to time 
independent monographs of North-American Lepi- 
doptera, with colored illustrations, prepared by 
different American entomologists. Ten are already 
announced by Dr. A. S. Packard, Messrs. Roland 
Thaxter, Eugene M. Aaron, R. M. Stretch, W. H. 
Edwards, B. Neumogen, and the futherers of the 
enterprise. They are to be published at only a slight 
advance upon the actual cost. 
—In view of the communication by Dr. Bradner 
to the Academy of natural sciences at Philadelphia, 
reported on p. 334 of Science, a correspondent from 
Newark, O., warns us that any inscribed stones said 
to originate from that locality may be looked upon 
as certainly spurious. Years ago certain parties in 
that place made a business of manufacturing and 
burying inscribed stones and other objects in the 
autumn, and exhuming them the following spring in 
the presence of innocent witnesses. Some of the 
parties to these frauds afterwards confessed to them ; 
and no such objects, excepting such as were spurious, 
have ever been known from that region. 
— Mr. Winfred A. Stearns proposes, if a sufficient 
number of subscriptions can be procured, to publish 
at Amherst, Mass., under the auspices of the Massa- 
chusetts agricultural college, a scientific journal, to be 
devoted exclusively to the interests of natural history 
in the state of Massachusetts, and to be called the 
Bulletin of the natural history of the state of Mas- 
sachusetts. 
