Australia. But the growers seem to have become careless as to the treatment of their vineyards and the quality of the wine they produce, and the exportation has fallen off. A few samples of wines were exhibited in the Canadian court. In late years much attention has been bestowed in Canada upon grape-growing and wine-making; and, in 1881, four million pounds of grapes were raised in the Dominion, of which nine tenths were grown in the province of Ontario. The wines exhibited were found sound and pleasant, and enjoy a local reputation; but they were hardly known outside of the Dominion before the Exhibition.
Qualities of Sewage-Farm Milk.—Dr. Carpenter, of Croydon, denied, during a recent discussion in the Society of Arts, that the milk produced on a farm irrigated by sewage was contaminated or less wholesome than other milk. When he became acquainted with the Croydon sewage-farm, they had difficulty in getting rid of the milk, because of the prejudice against it. But by judicious management the prejudice was worn out. The speaker knew, from personal experience, that the children who took the milk were never troubled with any of those illnesses which were said to be due to bad milk, and there were never any complaints of the milk, which was delivered once a day, becoming sour. That was a proof of its power of being assimilated by the body, and that it was of a perfectly desirable character in point of health, he knew from examination of the families who took it. They had now no difficulty in Croydon with regard to the disposal of their milk from the sewage-farm.
A discussion and analysis published by Professor F. G. Novy, of Ann Arbor, Michigan, in the "Pharmaceutische Rundschau," go to show that the new anæsthetic, stenocarpine, or gleditschine, which has attracted considerable attention, is nothing but a mixture of cocaine and atropine. More exactly, Professor Novy determines it to consist, essentially, of six per cent of cocaine hydrochloride; fifty per cent of atropine sulphate, and about a third of one per cent of salicylic acid, the latter being used as a preservative.
A correspondent in Whitby, Ontario, calls our attention to an omission—of considerable importance in countries liable to extreme cold—which he has observed in Dr. von Nussbaum's article on "Freezing," in the September number of the "Monthly." In the direction for rubbing with snow for the restoration of frozen parts, the author has omitted to state that the snow used should be of a temperature but little, if any, below the freezing-point. It has happened, through ignorance of this particular, that snow has been applied in cases of frost-bite of a temperature some degrees below zero with the result, of course, of freezing the injured part still more.
In a public lecture on "Electric Lighting," delivered during the meeting of the British Association, Mr. George Forbes, after remarking that there were probably more than 300,000 arc-lamps in use in the United States, said that the Americans were also getting the start of the English in electric railways and tramways, and generally in the application of electricity to motive-power.
Dr. C. H. F. Peters, Astronomer of Hamilton College, has had conferred upon him, by the President of the French Republic, the cross of an officer of the Legion of Honor, in recognition of the services which he has rendered to science.
Mr. C. E. Monroe presented, in the American Association, the results of some experiments, in which blocks of gun-cotton, after having been stamped with certain letters, were exploded, lettered side down, on flat pieces of wrought-iron. When the letters on the blocks were stamped in relief, they appeared in relief on the iron after the explosion; but when they were sunken in the blocks, they also appeared sunken in the iron.
Mr. William L. Wakeler tells, in the "Scientific American," how he once, in Georgia, saw a snake climb a tree in a very curious manner. The snake was a "coach-whip," and, frightened by the demonstrations of his observer, made a rush for a water-oak, the long branches of which came down to within four or five feet of the ground; "then rising, until he seemed almost to stand on the end of his tail, he shot up like an arrow through the branches, getting his grip entirely by lateral pressure and not by coiling around the branches."
Professor Louis Soret, President of the Swiss Society of Natural Sciences, has remarked on the æsthetic influence of reiterated impressions as illustrated by the repetition of the same design, both in symmetrical forms, and in lined patterns, such as we see in tapestry, furniture, or buildings, whether of the same dimensions or of
