August i, 1885.] The Australasian Scientific Magazine. 
37 
TASMANIA. 
No reports to hand. 
NEW ZEALAND. 
No reports to hand. 
NOUMEA. 
No reports to hand. 
SCIENTIFIC NOTES. 
During a recent trip into the interior of Africa, made by Mr. Kerr, 
amongst other interesting specimens he found in the dry beds of the 
Zambezi gold dust and quartz, of which he has brought samples with him. 
The gold dust was obtained after much labour, and it was found that the 
shingle in which it was found went down an enormous depth. Gold has 
often been found in this region, but Mr. Kerr’s map will be the first 
published, showing the exact localities. To the north of the Zambezi Mr. 
Kerr found coal, seemingly of good quality. 
An American naturalist, Mr. E. M. Brigham, has announced the 
discovery of a four-footed bird on the Anabiju River, in the island of 
Marajo, at the mouth of the Amazon. Curiously enough, the bird is four- 
footed only in the early part of its life, and after a few days one pair deve- 
lop into wings. The bird resembles a pheasant. 
We learn from the Glasgow Medical Journal that scarlet fever broke out 
among the drinkers of milk from a dairy at Paisley. A child of the dairy- 
man, suffering from scarlet fever, had been kept at home, and subsequently 
two other children of the same family had become infected ; the dairyman 
and his wife at this period milking the cows and serving out the milk. A 
prosecution was instituted, and it was brought out in evidence that the 
dairyman and his wife visited the children— a servant stating that her 
mistress “attended” them; but, on behalf of the defendants, the children 
stated that their parents did not “ touch ” them. The prosecution failed 
on the point that contact was necessary for the purpose of conviction. The 
order has evidently been drawn by someone who is ignorant of the nature 
of the infection ; and its early amendment in this and other respects is 
urgently needed in the interests of the public health. 
For constructive purposes in dock-yards, piers, bridges, house carpentry, 
coachmakers’ and wheelwrights’ work, railway building, fencing, and piles, 
nearly the whole ol the Myrtacece , of which New South Wales possesses 
something like fifty varieties, are extremely valuable, and certain of them 
incomparably so. For the uses of the cabinet maker and the house 
decorator, the timber familiarly known as the black-apple, the Moreton Bay 
pine, the red cedar, coach-wood, Clarence light-yellow-wood, turnip-wood, 
