36 
SCIENCE. 
— i 
LITERARY INTELLIGENCE. 
We have received The Microscopisf s Annual for 1879, 
published quite recently and dated 1880. It contains use- 
ful tables, rules, formulae and memoranda, a list of micro- 
scopical societies, with officers, etc.; Directory of prom- 
inent microscope makers, dealers and importers in 
America and Europe. We trust that microscopists will 
patronize this thoroughly practical little work, and as it 
is issued by the Industrial Publishing Company, of Dey 
street, New York, at the nominal price of twenty-five 
cents, its expense can hardly be a bar to its purchase. 
We understand future numbers will be considerably en- 
larged. 
The announcement is made of a new bi-monthly maga- 
zine called The Educational Review , which will be de- 
voted to the science and philosophy of education, in all 
its departments of thought and discussion. It will be 
conducted by Mr. Thomas W. Bicknell, whose great ex- 
perience in educational literature cannot fail to make it 
a success, and worthy of the great subject it takes in 
hand. 
GENERAL NOTES. 
The French journal, La Lumiere Electiique, is to receive 
the addition of a supplement (having separate pagination) 
in which will be given a rdsum / of recent discoveries and 
inventions. For the present, these supplements will be 
confined to the subject of electric lighting. 
In a new form of telephone-receiver brought before the 
French Academy by M. Ader, two plates are used, arranged 
in such a manner that the air can pass through a central 
hole in one to the other. The result is, much louder tones, 
the second plate acting as a sort of soundboard. 
The Corporation of Yale College have established a hor- 
ological laboratory in connection with the Winchester Ob- 
servatory, with the view of encouraging the manufacture of 
more refined apparatus for the measurement of time. 
It is reported that Mr. Swan, of Newcastle-on-Tyne, 
has succeeded in rendering his little electric lamp a suc- 
cess. He uses a carbon thread in a vacuum tube, which 
supplies a soft and steady light, well adapted for household 
purposes. 
M. Du Moncei, has just published a third edition of his 
work, entitled “ Le Telephone, le Microphone, et le Phon- 
ographe,” the two previous editions (containing 5,500 copies 
each) having been exhausted in fifteen months. The nu- 
merous recent developments of the telephone and micro- 
phone are described, and 48 new engravings are added. 
The phonograph seems to have made but little progress 
since its appearance ; M. Du Moncei, however, specifies a 
few improvements of it. 
The House of Lords’ Committee have passed the pre- 
amble of the Bill for the construction of a subway available 
for all kinds of traffic, vehicular and passenger, under the 
Mersey, so as to connect the towns of Liverpool and Birk- 
enhead. The total length will be 1 mile 6 furlongs 6 
chains, and the estimated capital required ^500,000, the tak- 
ing up of which is guaranteed by the Corporations of Liver- 
pool and Birkenhead, the Mersey Dock Board, and the 
Great-Western Railway, each of whom are prepared to give 
security for one quarter the cost of construction. The en- 
gineers are Mr. John Fowler, of London, and Messrs. Law 
and Thomas, of Wrexham, 
In a recent note to the Paris Academy, Professor Marangoni 
gives the results he has arrived at in a study of the swimming- 
bladder of fishes. He states, first, that it is the organ 
which regulates the migration of fishes, those fishes that are 
without it not migrating from bottoms of little depth, where 
they find tepid water ; while fishes which have a bladder are 
such as live in deep, cold water, and migrate to deposit 
their ova in warmer water near the surface. Next, fishes do 
not rise like the Cartesian diver (in the well-known experi- 
ment). and they have to counteract the influence of their 
swimming-bladders with their fins. If some small dead and 
living fishes be put in a vessel three-quarters full of water 
and the air be compressed or rarefied, one finds in the for- 
mer case the dead fish descend, while the living ones rise, 
head in advance, to the surface. Rarefying has the opposite 
effect. Fishes have reason to fear the passive influences 
due to hydrostatic pressure ; when fished from a great 
depth, their bladders are often found to be ruptured. Thirdly, 
the swimming-bladder produces in fishes twofold instability 
— one of level, the other of position. A fish, having once 
adapted its bladder to live at a certain depth, may, through 
(he slightest variation of pressure, be either forced down- 
wards or upwards, and thus they are in unstable equilib- 
rium as to level. As to position, the bladder being in the 
ventral region, the centre of gravity is above the centre of 
pressure, so that fishes are always threatened with inver- 
sion ; and, indeed, they take the inverted position when 
dead or dying. This double instability forces fishes to a 
continual gymnastic movement, and doubtless helps to 
render them strong and agile. The most agile of terrestrial 
animals are also those which have least stability. 
A new process of extracting sugar from molasses has 
been proposed by M. Gayon. It is based on the destruction 
of the glucose of molasses by fermentation ; the sugar re- 
mains unaltered, and is obtained by ulterior crystallization. 
The ferment employed is a pretty common mould, Mucor 
circinelloides. M. Van Tieghem found it in horsedung, and 
was the first to describe it. The ferment cells must 
not be confounded with those of beer-yeast, or 
saccharomyces. They differ in form, and, unlike 
beer-yeast, this mucor is powerless to produce glucosic and 
alcoholic fermentations of cane-sugar, whereas it acts like 
all alcoholic yeast on glucose and similar compounds. If, 
then, the cells of mucor be sown in a nutritive solution of 
cane-sugar and glucose, the latter alone ferments, the sugar 
remaining unaltered, whereas with beer-yeast all ferments. 
This conclusion was confirmed indirectly by experiments 
made with a view to ascertain the constitution of the in- 
active glucose of molasses by saccharimetric observation. 
M. Gayon has succeeded in fermenting 200 or 300 c.c. of 
molasses solution, and he remarks that by combining the 
process with osmosis one might, no doubt, extract, in the 
dry crystalline state, all the sugar which the glucose and 
the salts retain in molasses. (The Editor of the Journal 
de Pharmacie observes that it is only exceptionally that 
glucose exists in molasses in sensible proportion, and it is 
the salts that prevent crystallisation of the sugar ; neverthe- 
less, M. Gayon’s researches are of much interest scientific- 
ally.) 
The blood of most slaughter-houses is usually dealt with 
in a primitive manner in open air, and without previous 
disinfection. This is obviously opposed to hygienic and 
economic laws. M. Vautelet has lately brought forward a 
process of treating all organic detritus from slaughter-houses 
for agricultural purposes. He uses sulphate of alumina, 
sulphuric acid, and nitric acid in fixed proportions. By 
addition of sulphuric acid to sulphate of alumina a bisul- 
phate is formed, which, less soluble than the sulphate, 
quickly causes a complete coagulation of the blood. The 
rSle of the nitric acid is coagulation of the albumin of the 
blood and formation of nitrate. The matters are thus dis- 
infected, and their fertilising power fully preserved. 
The geological changes which the English Channel has 
undergone are discussed in a recent communication to the 
French Academy by M. Hebert (June 7). 
