April 23, 1886.] 



SCIEXCE. 



371 



— A new explosive has been invented by F. 

 Redtenbacher, a mining engineer in Austria. It 

 probably contains only the elements of ordinary 

 powder, but in proportions determined by twenty 

 odd years of research. This powder is brownish 

 black in color. The advantages of the explosive, 

 which is known as ' miline,' are its insensibility to 

 percussion or friction, and that it can only be 

 ignited by a spark. There exists, therefore, little 

 danger in its transportation and preparation. It 

 does not undergo any modification under the in- 

 fluence of temperature, and only ignites at 335° to 

 340° C. It burns with little smoke, and does not 

 produce any deleterious gas. It can be employed 

 exactly as powder, and, when well tamped, its 

 effects are comparable with those of dynamite. 



— Mr. A. Vogel has recently shown (Central- 

 Matt f. agric. chemie) that cinchona-trees, grow- 

 ing in hot-houses in Europe, develop no quinine 

 in their bark. 



— King Oscar of Sweden has ordained two 

 prize contests on oriental subjects, — one, the 

 history of the Semitic languages ; the other, a 

 description of the Arabic civilization before the 

 time of Mohammed. The prizes are a gold medal 

 worth 1,000 Swedish crowns, and a sum of money 

 equal to 1,250 Swedish crowns. The treatises 

 may be written in Latin or German, and may be 

 forwarded to Professor Fleischer of Leipzig, or 

 Professor Noldecke of Strassburg, before June 

 30, 1888. 



— The investigation before the Massachusetts 

 legislative committee on the subject of arsenic 

 in wall-paper indicates that the danger has been 

 exaggerated. Prof. C. F. Chandler testified, that, 

 from careful experiments, under no conditions 

 could arsenical poisoning occur through breathing 

 arsenurated hydrogen from wall-paper, and that 

 the only source of danger would be from friction 

 alone. 



— Prof. L. Geiger of Berlin is about to issue a 

 Zeitschrift fur die geschichte derJuden in Deutsch- 

 land. It will be scientific in character and treat- 

 ment, and, in addition to essays and reports of re- 

 search, it will contain summaries of historical ma- 

 terials that are difficult of access or hitherto un- 

 printed. It will also make its bibliographical notes 

 an especial feature. 



— The Smithsonian report for 1884, just issued, 

 contains, like the previous ones, the secretary's 

 annual report, and summaries of scientific prog- 

 ress in the natural sciences, by E. S. Holden, 

 C. G. Rockwood, F. M. Green, C. Abbe, G. F. 

 Barker, H. C. Bolton, E. S. Dana, J. B. Marcou, 

 T. Gill, and O. T. Mason, together with a number 

 of miscellaneous papers on anthropology. 



LETTERS TO THE EDITOR. 



*** Correspondents are requested to be as brief as possible. The 

 writer's name is in all cases required as proof of good faith. 



New York agricultural experiment-station. 



In your review of the fourth annual report of the 

 New York agricultural experiment-station (Science, 

 vii. No. 165) you deal very leniently with some of the 

 most glaring faults of that report. This is certainly 

 the pleasanter way ; but does it best subserve the 

 cause of truth and progress ? That station is un- 

 questionably doing valuable work for the cause of 

 progressive agriculture, and, because of the ability 

 thus manifested, the anxiety of the friends of that 

 cause is the greater that its splendid opportunities 

 should not be frittered away in a kind of work 

 which, if persisted in, will inevitably bring about its 

 ruin. 



The fundamental mistake in the management of 

 this station, as manifested by this report, is the en- 

 deavor to cover too much ground. The field of agri- 

 cultural experimentation is so vast, that he who 

 would accomplish any worthy result must confine his 

 labors to a limited portion of it ; but in this case so 

 many problems have been attacked, that few re- 

 ceive that close and careful attention which is the 

 first requisite of truly scientific work. The director 

 makes frequent reference to the necessary incom- 

 pleteness and unreliability of isolated tests, and does 

 good work in showing the variability of duplicates ; 

 but the infrequency with which he collates the results 

 of his present experiments with those previously 

 made by himself or other equally competent authori- 

 ties, and the frequency with which he disregards his 

 own testimony respecting the necessity for the dupli- 

 cation of tests, intensify the feeling that the value of 

 a large proportion of the work of this station is seri- 

 ously impaired by its desultory character. 



The impression, that, in much of this work, 

 quantity is attained at the expense of accuracy, is 

 strengthened by page after page of the report. 

 Typographical errors are difficult to wholly avoid ; 

 but it is putting the case very mildly to say that they 

 occur with unnecessary frequency here. This point, 

 however, might be passed without notice were these 

 the only evidences of hasty or careless work. In the 

 tabulated report of the experiment in feeding starch- 

 waste, for instance, we are left to conjecture which 

 columns of figures relate to hay, and which to starch- 

 meal, while no practical feeder would have been 

 guilty of the absurdity of feeding a rich meal ad 

 libitum, and following it by hay fed in the same 

 manner, where it was desired to make a scientific test 

 of the feeding- value of either food. Under the cir- 

 cumstances, the allusion to the capriciousness of 

 appetite in the cows under test is amusing. 



The fertilizer test recorded on p. 40 affords another 

 striking example, both of the crudity of the methods 

 employed at this station, and of the carelessness in 

 reporting results. What would the magnificent 

 Rothamsted experiments have amounted to, had the 

 plots in Broadbalk field received enormous dressings 

 of fertilizers one year, none the next, and varying 

 quantities in the succeeding years, or if their in- 

 terpreter had shown such carelessness in the sum- 

 marizing of results as has been shown in giving the 

 total quantities of fertilizers used in this case ? 



In conclusion, I must wholly dissent from the idea 

 conveyed in the closing paragraph of your review, 



