456 



SCIENCE, 



[Vol. VII., No. 172 



municipalities. The author expresses some sur- 

 prise that boroughs, which are so common in 

 England, should be so rare in the United States ; 

 but, if they differ so little from cities, there would 

 seem to be no particular need of them. Mr. 

 Holcomb's work will doubtless be useful to 

 Pennsylvanians and to students of municipal 

 government generally. 



— The U. S. coast survey has issued a new edi- 

 tion of the chart of Humboldt Bay, made from 

 the most recent surveys ; the third edition of ap- 

 pendices 12 and 13 of the report of 1882, on mag- 

 netic declination, by assistant Schott ; the latest 

 chart showing the entrance to New York harbor ; 

 and the tenth sheet of the District of Columbia 

 map, made under the direction of the Corps of 

 engineers by Assistant Doun. A new chart of 

 St. John's River, Florida, from its mouth to Jack- 

 sonville, is in course of preparation. The New 

 York bay entrance sheet, 8 A, is now ready for 

 distribution to dealers. 



— The Boston medical-school circles are at pres- 

 ent agitated over the question whether the female 

 medical students shall be allowed to attend the 

 general surgical clinics in the city hospital, they 

 having insisted upon that privilege by attending, 

 and refusing to withdraw. 



— The German secretary of state has published 

 statistics on the periodicals of the world, from 

 which it appears that there are 34,000, with a dis- 

 tribution of 592,000,000 copies ; 19,000 are pub- 

 lished in Europe, 12,000 in North America, 775 in 

 Asia, 809 in South America ; 16,500 are in English, 

 7,800 in German, 3,850 in French, and 1,000 in 

 Spanish. 



— MM. H. Fal and E. Sarasin, in a recent com- 

 munication to the French academy of sciences, 

 have supplemented their researches on the pene- 

 trability of light in deep water by the results of a 

 series of observations in the Gulf of Nice, showing 

 the relation that exists between the vertical and 

 oblique rays of the sun in their power to reach to 

 great depths. They found the limit of luminosity 

 to be four hundred metres in mid-day of April, 

 and that only for a short time. At eight o'clock 

 in the morning its penetrability was limited by 

 three hundred and fifty fathoms ; at six o'clock in 

 the afternoon the light reached less than three 

 hundred metres. 



— For a number of years past the city of Liver- 

 pool has been engaged, at much cost and trouble, 

 in the perfection of her sewerage and house-drain- 

 age systems. Tin- works are only just completed, 

 but already very distinct results are evident in 

 their influence upon the city's mortality. For the 



ten years prior to 1870 the death-rate per thousand 

 of the inhabitants was no less than 32.5 ; between 

 1870 and 1880 the mortality had fallen to 28.4; 

 and since then a steady and uninterrupted fall 

 has been maintained, until, during 1885, it only 

 reached 23.5. 



— It is stated in the daily papers that Prof. J. 

 Emerick of William and Mary college has dis- 

 covered the aerolite which fell in Washington 

 county, Penn., on Sept. 14, 1885. It was found 

 embedded deep in the soil near Claysville, and is 

 said to weigh fully two hundred tons, — a state- 

 ment that needs confirmation. 



— The members of the Chesapeake zoological 

 laboratory of Johns Hopkins university left Balti- 

 more on Thursday, the 20th of May, for Abaco, one 

 of the islands of the Bahama group, where the 

 summer session of the laboratory will be held. 

 The party consists of Prof. W. C. Brooks (the 

 director), Professor Mill, Dr. H. Orr, Messrs. E. A. 

 Andrews, F. H. Herrick, H. V. Wilson, and two 

 or three other students of Johns Hopkins. 



— A favorable report has been made by the 

 house committee on agriculture on the bill to 

 amend the act creating a bureau of animal in- 

 dustry. The most important change is in section 

 1 of the present law, which is to be entirely re- 

 pealed. The substitute offered proposes that the 

 chief of this bureau shall be a competent veteri- 

 nary surgeon, who is to investigate the condition 

 of the domestic animals in this country, and in- 

 quire into the causes of contagious, infectious, and 

 communicable diseases among them, and the means 

 for the prevention and cure of the same. The 

 bureau is further instructed to make special in- 

 vestigations of pleuro-pneumonia, foot and mouth 

 diseases, and rinderpest in cattle. Two hundred 

 and fifty thousand dollars are to be appropriated 

 to carry into effect the provisions of the act. 



— The first shipment of shad to the Pacific 

 coast by the U. S. fish commission has resulted 

 most successfully. Car No. 1. which left Wash- 

 ington last week in charge of Mr. J. F. Ellis, with 

 a million young shad, arrived at Portland, Ore., 

 with seven hundred thousand. This experiment of 

 transporting shad so great a distance proves the 

 practicability of shipping them in this way. Of 

 greater interest to science, however, was the suc- 

 cessful experiment of hatching the shad en route. 

 Six hundred thousand eggs formed a portion of 

 this western shipment, which were placed in four 

 MacDonald jars. A pump was kept continually 

 at work, moving the water, and fully ninety-five 

 per cent of the eggs were hatched. Of the five 

 per cent lost, most of them were due to premature 



