Ty La —_—— 
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SCIENCE. 
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boin, Ponka, Omaha, Osages, Kansas, Kwapas, 
Iowas, Otos, Missouris, Winnebagos, Mandans, Min- 
netarees, Crows, and Tulets. The general impres- 
sion seems to have been, that this stock moved 
from the north-west. Mr. Dorsey took an opposing 
view, and traced the tribes from the south-east, up 
the streams, and from the region of the lakes west- 
ward. —— President Gallaudet said that there were 
in existence in Europe several societies whose ob- 
ject is to discuss the subject of international rela- 
tions. The speaker took the ground that the proper 
basis of these relations should be ethical rather than 
legal. The law term for jus gentium was objected to, 
and the phrase, ‘international rights,’ or ‘ internation- 
al ethics,’ suggested. While nations would not listen 
to absolute commands of law, they have ever shown 
some willingness to listen to ethical arguments, on 
the justification of their foulest acts, by appealing to 
the verdict of humanity as to the justice of their 
cause. If publicists should insist that no acts of na- 
tions should be justified that are not right between 
individuals, the subject of international law would 
be settled on a firm basis, and Mirabeau’s words, ‘ Le 
Groit est le souverain du monde,’ would become a 
fact. The paper was discussed by Major Powell, who 
took issue with the speaker on some of his means, 
agreeing with him in the desirability of the end to be 
attained. 
Engineers’ club, Philadelphia. 
May 3.—Mr. S. N. Stewart exhibited a model of 
his river or current motor. Paddles are placed upon 
cranks, and maintained in a vertical position, by long, 
floating vanes or tails. The cranks are placed upon 
posts, rafts, or boats in the stream, and journalled at 
the water-line, thus keeping one-half of the paddle- 
surface in action, while the common floating-wheel, 
or current-wheel, only keeps one-tenth of its sur- 
face in action. In Mr. Stewart's motor, a ten-foot 
arm carries a paddle ten feet high. —— Mr. Thom- 
as M. Cleemann read a paper on an economical 
form of bridge-truss. In outline, it resembles 
Whipple’s arch-truss, inverted so as to bring the 
curved portion in tension, but differing from it in 
having the chord made to resist tension, and being 
anchored to the abutments. In this way, the only 
parts of the bridge in compression are the vertical 
posts, and the extra material required to stiffen 
the upper chord in an ordinary bridge is saved. To 
illustrate the correctness of his conclusions, Mr. 
Cleemann had a small model made of pink wrapping- 
twine, that broke with five and a half pounds, and 
with posts made of wooden knitting-needles. This 
model, by calculation, ought to have borne about 
eleven pounds. After loading it with a pound weight 
at each of the seven panel points, and letting it re- 
main-for a little time for the inspection of the mem- 
bers, he added, first, two more pounds at the centre, 
and afterwards two pounds more. With this eleven 
pounds, the model hesitated a moment, and then 
broke at each abutment, nicely illustrating the au- 
thor’s conclusions. He likewise gave the saving of 
material in such a bridge over a Pratt truss, of five 
[Vor. IIL., No. 6% 
hundred and sixteen feet span, and pointed out its 
advantages for military purposes, where facility of 
transportation is a prime object, and a bridge almost 
entirely of rope is especially valuable on this account. 
—— The secretary exhibited for Mr. J. H. Ilarden a 
neat topographical model of the Jones iron-ore mine 
in Berks county, Penn., and briefly explained the 
method by which such models are constructed. 
Numismatic and antiquarian society, Philadelphia, 
May. 1.—Mr. KE. F. im Thurn of Demerara pre- 
sented valuable works by himself, relative to the 
ethnology, geography, and fauna and flora, of British 
Guiana. A letter was read from Rev. Damaro 
Sota, mayor of San Sebastian, Concordia, state of 
Sinaloa, Mexico, in reference to his late discovery of 
the key to the Mexican hieratic writing, stating that 
he was preparing a work setting forth his views and 
the exact nature of his discovery..—— Dr. C. C. Ab- 
bott of Trenton read a paper on the existence of an 
early race in the valley of the Delaware, whose relics 
were found by him in the Trenton gravels, and ad- 
verted to a fragment of a human skull being found 
there by him on April 18, 1884, in connection with the 
palaecystic implements. At the conclusion of his 
address, he presented the society with a quantity of 
these hitherto debatable implements, which were 
plainly productions of the hand of man. 
Academy of natural sciences, Philadelphia, 
April 22. — Dr. Joseph Leidy directed attention to 
some fossils, part of a collection recently referred to 
him by the Smithsonian institution for examination. 
They consist, for the most part, of remains of large 
terrestrial mammals, especially related to forms which 
now livein the intertropical portions of the old world. 
Obtained in Florida, they are of additional interest 
as evidences of the existence, in this region, of a 
formation of tertiary age not previously known. An 
accompanying letter from Dr. J. C. Neal of Archer, 
Fla., states that the fossils were discovered in a bed 
of clay occupying a ridge in the pine-forest. They 
occurred over an irregular area of a hundred feet 
long by thirty feet wide, and were dug from variable 
depths of seven feet to the bed-rock, the character 
of which is not stated. The fossils, consisting of 
bones and a few teeth, are mostly in fragments, but 
exhibit no appearance of being water-worn, or 
abraded by friction among gravel. The collection 
embraces the remains of a young mastodon, consist- 
ing of bone fragments and detached epiphyses, with 
a vertebra of a teleost fish embedded in the clay ad- 
herent to the under surface of the head of a femur; 
the remains of several individuals of a species of 
rhinoceros rather smaller than, although quite as ro- 
bust as, the Indian form; small fragments of the 
maxillae of a tapir; the remains of a llama as large as 
the camel; a caleaneum of a ruminant, not quite so 
long as that of the Irish elk, but of more robust pro- 
portions; the vertebral centrum of a small crocodile; — 
and the remains of several other undetermined ani- 
mals. The fragments were not sufficiently charac- 
