An International Conference on Celestial Photography held its meetings in Paris from April 16th to the 25th. A large number of countries were represented by eminent astronomers. Of the nearly sixty persons of whom the congress was composed, three were accredited to America. The conference was opened by M. Flourens, who said that a new era was opening for physical astronomy as well as for mathematical astronomy, and that the photographers were writing the first authentic page of the transformations and modifications of cosmic matter, or of the history of the universe. Admiral Mouchez was elected honorary president, and Mr. Struve, of Pulkowa, effective president of the body. The secretaries were M. Tisserand, of the Collége de France, and Mynheer Vande Sande Bakhuyzen, of Leyden.
The latest census of horses gives the whole number in Europe and the two Americas as 54,850,000. Of these the United States has 9,500,000, and Canada 2,624,000.
The one hundredth anniversary of the death of Père Boscovitch, a celebrated physicist of the last century, was celebrated at Ragusa, his native city, on the 13th of February. He was the author of seventy-six volumes, one for each year of his life. He is said to have been the originator of the doctrine of the centers of forces; he wrote a Latin poem on eclipses; he superintended the repairs of St. Peter's Church under Pope Benedict XIV, by which that cathedral was saved from ruin. He was appointed naval optician by King Louis XVI of France, and was intrusted by Napoleon with the measurement of the degree in Lombardy.
Dr. J. Uffelmann asserts, in the "Archiv. für Hygiene," that the proportion of nutritive material in the edible mushrooms has been overestimated, and that those plants are comparatively difficult of digestion.
An international cremation conference is to be held in Milan in September of this year. Among the questions to which its attention will be brought will be those of legislation concerning the transportation of bodies from one country to another; cremation and the preservation of ashes, with especial reference to hygiene and legal medicine; the technical, moral, hygienic, and economical aspects of different systems of cremation; and projects for international legislation with reference to liberty at funerals.
Dr. R. W. Shufeldt has recorded an interesting study of a case of the repair of the bill of a raven after it had been shot off. The ball had carried away the upper bill just forward of the nostrils. The bone had grown again so as to cover the injury, and the horny covering, following suit, had incased the stump formed by the bone. The result of Nature's surgery in the case was, that the injured part was left in such a condition that the danger of subsequent inflammation was avoided, while the form of the resulting stump was as useful a one as could possibly be expected to follow after a wound of such a character.
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M. Bernard Studer, formerly professor in the University of Berne, Switzerland, died in that city May 2d, aged ninety-three years. He was called the dean of the geologists of Europe.
M. Gosselin, President of the French Academy of Sciences, died April 30th. He was born on the eve of the battle of Waterloo, and was consequently in his seventy-second year. He was distinguished as a surgeon.
Dr. E. Félix A. Vulpian, a famous French physician and Dean of the Faculty of the Academy of Medicine, died May 18th, in the sixty-first year of his age. He became Professor of Pathological Anatomy in 1867, and was the author of important works on the nervous system and its diseases.
Mr. William Cameron, explorer and geologist to the Government of the Straits Settlements (Malacca), died in the latter part of last year, aged fifty-three years. He had been engaged lately in mapping and exploring the unknown parts of the native states. He was well known through-out those states, especially among the Malays and Sakies, of whose language and customs he had an accurate knowledge, and over whom he had great influence.
On the 13th of April occurred the death of Herr J. B. Obernetter, who was well known for his researches in photographic chemistry, at the age of forty-seven years; and on the 14th was announced the death of Dr. Nathaniel Lieberkühn, Professor of Anatomy at the University of Marburg, in the sixty-sixth year of his age.
M. J. B. J. D. Boussingault, chemist and investigator in scientific agriculture, died in Paris, May 12th, aged eighty-five years. He spent several years of the earlier part of his adult life in scientific investigations in South America. Having returned to France, he was appointed Professor of Chemistry at Lyons, and afterward to the chair of Agriculture at the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers. He was the author of a book and of numerous papers on agricultural chemistry and physiology.
