56 
Notes. 
_ A technological contemporary indulges in the following spe- 
cimen of popular science : — 44 Sir Isaac Newton, the celebrated 
author of 4 Kosmos,’ was once asked how he came to make his 
great discoveries ? ” 
Prof. Holton, of Copenhagen, refutes the alleged claim of 
Romagnosi to have anticipated Oersted in the discovery of 
eledtro-magnetism. He shows that, according to the description 
given by Tommasi, Romagnosi’s advocate, the phenomenon 
produced and recorded by the latter was not elecftro-magnetism. 
Major-General J. F. Tennant, F.R.S. (“ Monthly Notices 
Royal Astronomical Society ”), from observations on a chrono- 
meter, is led to infer that the periodic changes in its rate are due 
not to variations in temperature, but in humidity. 
According to the French medical papers there is now living at 
Auberine-en-Royans, a village between Valence and Grenoble, a 
woman who has reached the age of 123 years, and she has no 
infirmity except deafness. Her marriage certificate bears the 
date 1783. 
Prince Louis Ferdinand, of Bavaria, is about to bring out an 
anatomical monograph on the tongue in man and in the lower 
animals. 
The “ Popular Science News ” declares that 44 English lecturers 
as a class are prosy and dull.” 
Canon Liddon, in a Ledture on Positivism, — a dodtrine, to say 
the least, not more welcome to the scientific than it is to the 
religious world, — asks how could we 44 face the weird mystery 
of pain unless we felt that suffering had a purpose, and that each 
stone in the great temple of souls needed to be chiselled, and 
that each blow was dealt by the unerring hand of the Great 
Sculptor ?” Are we to infer that the speaker eschews every at- 
tempt to escape from or to do away with pain ? 
Miss F. P. Cobbe has had the effrontery to speak of Professor 
Owen as an 44 old impostor.” 
An abnormal number of toes is, according to Mr. E. P. Poulton, 
not uncommon in cats. This peculiarity is hereditary. 
A medical contemporary, hand inepte, speaks of water-closets 
as, “ except when perfectly managed, mere typhoid fever traps.” 
(cl 1 
