i 7 S 
SCIENCE. 
io6^° Fahrenheit. The disorder is not fatal, it hardly 
requires any treatment even ; only in debilitated or 
very old animals, or such as are overworked by inhu- 
man owners, may fatal complications arise. Few 
deaths have taken place ; a veterinarian in Yorkville 
who has visited stables containing an aggregate of a 
thousand affected horses, has had but a single death, 
that of an animal overdriven while convalescing, and 
in which pulmonary congestion resulted. 
There is as yet no proof that the affection is con- 
tageous ; it is rather endemic than epidemic. The 
rapidity with which it has successively appeared in 
Boston, New York and Chicago, speaks more in favor 
of an atmospheric cause than of transmission by con- 
tagion. A Boston microscopist asserts that bacteria 
or micrococci are active factors in its transmission, but 
he makes the statement, rather as an inference, than 
on the basis of observation. The same veterinarian, 
to whom we owe the communication of several facts 
here mentioned, tried to inoculate his own horse with 
the disease, by introducing the discharged matter 
from sick horses into its air passages, and failed in 
this and other experiments of the same kind. It is 
also observed that the endemic has appeared more 
frequently and affected more horses in large, well 
ventilated stables, in which the influence of outside 
changes in the temperature is quickly felt, than in 
close and confined quarters where the air is, if more 
impure, warmer, and the oscillations of the outside 
temperature less suddenly made manifest than in the 
former. 
As far as this city is concerned, the acme of the 
endemic is past, and owners of horses frightened by 
sensational reports in the daily papers are recovering 
their wonted composure. If it has done nothing else 
the distemper has taught the one lesson, that when a 
horse is ill, the policy of getting as much work out of 
him as possible is, not to speak of its barbarity, ex- 
ceedingly short-sighted, for no vigorous animals have 
perished in this endemic, except such as those in 
whose case this “ penny wise, pound foolish ” idea 
had been carried out. 
Professor Edward C. Pickering, of Cambridge, 
describes a novel celestial object observed by him on 
the 28th of August last, which presented a faint con- 
tinuous spectrum with a bright band near each end. 
Clouds interfered, and barely permitted an identifica- 
tion with Oeltzen 17681, or a position in 1880 of 
R. A., 18I1. im. 17s. ; Dec., 21 0 16'. 
The object might be mistaken for a temporary star, 
like that in Corona in 1863, and the bands assumed 
to correspond to the Hydrogen lines C and F. Pro- 
fessor Pickering appeared to be unable to determine ! 
whether it was a nebula, a mass of incandescent gas 
resembling a nebula in character but not in constitu- 
tion, or whether it was a star with a vast atmosphere 
of incandescent gas of a material not as yet known to 
us. The discovery of this object, in his opinion, 
greatly increases the difficulty of distinguishing be- 
tween a star and a planetary nebula. 
The observation was made on the 24th of August 
and described on the 2d of September, but in conse- 
quence of the fact that Professor Pickering sent his 
communication to a foreign journal, three thousand 
miles away, it was thus the second week in October 
when it came before the American public. 
SCIENCE IN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
Dr. C. K. Akin has written a series of letters from 
Pesth to Professor G. C. Stokes, Secretary to the Royal 
Society, wno was one ol the Royal Commission on 
Scientific Instruction. These letters are dated 1870, but 
are now published for the first time by The 'Journal of 
Science, London. 
In what may be called a supplemental communication 
Dr. Akin describes the condition of the most prominent 
scientific institutions in France and Germany. His 
remarks on the system of centralization, and abuse of 
the authority of those who profess an infallibility in 
respect to the human mind will be read with interest. 
He states that these scientific magnates, the recognized 
“ authority ” in Germany, instead of rendering encour- 
agement to students, positively check and impede all 
progress outside of their own circle, keep out new men 
with novel ideas as long as possible, so as to hold their 
own sway. 
But we will leave Dr. Akin to make his own state- 
ment : 
“ The French Academy is in some respects similar to 
the Royal Society, and the. points in which it differs 
from the latter are not, in my opinion, to its advantage. 
In the first place, the members of the Academy are 
salaried by the Government, but their emoluments are 
not sufficient to live upon, or to keep them, so to speak, 
in working order ; nor do they perform any specific 
service to Science or the State for the money. The 
Academy, next, is divided into a certain number of sec- 
tions, according to the several branches of science, and 
the number of members in each section is strictly 
limited. As that subdivision is invariable, while the 
relative importance of the sciences is fluctuating, the 
abuse has crept in of electing members into a wrong 
division. On the other hand, such a proceeding not 
being always practicable, highly distinguished men are 
excluded from the Academy for many years if their 
proper sections happen to be full ; while if, from the 
dearth of cultivators or accidents of mortality, the num- 
ber of vacancies happens to be great, the standard of 
admission is considerably lowered. The Academy pub- 
lishes weekly its proceedings or “ Comtes Rendus,” 
which, from the celerity and regularity of their publica- 
tion, are a valuable means of conveying rapid infor- 
mation ; on the contrary, its transactions or “ Memoires” 
are issued in a very irregular and dilatory manner. 
The practice of examining and reporting upon commu- 
nications submitted has fallen into almost complete 
disuse ; and the prizes, which are in a considerable 
number, are in a great part awarded upon the anti- 
quated principle oi putting forth questions. I have thus 
rapidly drawn the most distinctive features of the French 
