In the Biological Section of the American Association, Dr. G. M. Sternberg described his experimental research relating to the etiology of tuberculosis. He had repeated the inoculation experiments of Koch, with similar results. The experiments of Formad to induce tuberculosis in rabbits, by introducing into the abdomen finely powdered inorganic material, had been repeated, with entirely negative results. Dr. Sternberg held that Koch's bacillus was an essential factor in the etiology of tuberculosis.
Sunlight or starlight in passing through our atmosphere loses by absorption an amount which is commonly rated at twenty per cent of the whole. By experiments made both near the sea-level and at altitudes of nearly 15,000 feet. Professor S. P. Langley has been brought to the conclusion that the previous determinations are largely in error. He believes it probable that the mean absorption of light (and of heat also) by the atmosphere is at least double that which is customarily estimated, and that fine dust-particles play a more important part in this absorption than has been heretofore supposed.
Professor Landolt recently exhibited before the Academy of Berlin a cylinder of solidified carbonic acid which had been kept for more than an hour in that condition. He had prepared it by passing liquid carbonic acid from a compressor into a conical sack of canvas, in which it assumed the form of melting snow, and then ramming the whole into a cylindrical vessel.
Signor Michela, of Italy, has devised a kind of telegraphic short-hand which he calls steno-telegrapby. It consists of a machine by which signs corresponding to various sounds can be telegraphed, and by means of which, it is claimed, 10,000 words can be sent in an hour. It has been used for some time in telegraphing the debates of the Italian Senate.
M. E. P. N. Fournier, a French botanist whose death was recently announced, edited in connection with M. Egger the work of Theophrastus on plants, and was preparing a flora of Mexico for the French Government and a flora of Brazil for the Emperor Dom Pedro.
Senhor Ladislao Netto, of Rio Janeiro, in a lecture on evolution at Buenos Ayres, gave some remarkable illustrations, from his own observations, of the power of plants to adapt themselves to diverse conditions. The same plants which became enormous vines in the dense Brazilian forests may be found growing as ordinary shrubs in the open. He and M. Lacerda have found the Strychnos triplinervia in isolated situations as a bush a little over six feet high, with no signs of a climbing tendency except a few atrophied tendrils; while in a wood only a few steps away another individual of the same species had a slender stem, with internodes, sixty feet in length; and the plant frequently grows to be seventy-five feet long. Other plants are mentioned by Senhor Netto, particularly the Thorinia scandens, which after having become quite respectable vines, began to increase irregularly in thickness immediately on having the sunlight let in upon them.
Observations made by Dr. L. Glaser, of Mannheim, in the river-valleys of Germany during the wet seasons of 1882-'83 and 1861-'62 have led him to the conclusion that heavy winter rains and floods are very destructive to insect-life, and have a marked effect in diminishing the "bug-crop" of the following season.
Recent observations of the British Meteorological Office on the temperature of the Gulf Stream between the latitudes of the north of Ireland and Bordeaux, and extending half-way across the Atlantic, go to show that the temperature of the water was abnormally high (1° to 3° above the mean) during June, July, and August.
Among the deaths of last summer was that of Count Constantin Branicki, an earnest promoter of natural science, who had made valuable contributions to the Museum of Warsaw, Poland.
Professor Bros Emil Hildebrand, one of the most distinguished of European antiquaries, died at Stockholm, on the 30th of August last. He was Royal Antiquary of Sweden, and under his care the Swedish archæological collections became among the richest and most curious in Europe.
Julius Cohnheim, a German pathologist, is dead, in his forty-fifth year. lie was a pupil of Virchow's, and filled professorships at Kiel, Breslau, and Leipsig.
Among the active students of botany who died last year are E. P. M. Fournier, at Paris, and Ludovieo Caldesi, at Faenza, Italy.
G. B. Delponte, formerly Professor of Botany in the University of Turin, died some months ago at Mombarrizzo, Piedmont. He was well known for his researches on the Desmidiæ.
Chemistry has lost by death, during the past year, Dr. Carstanjen, of Leipsic, who was fifty-nine years old, and Dr. Hans Hübner, director of the chemical laboratory at Göttingen, who was in his forty-seventh year.
