Some are poisonous when eaten; others are merely venomous. Among the first arc many spheroids, a tetrodon, and many Clupea, which are abundant near the Cape of Good Hope. In the Japan Sea is found a very peculiar tetrodon, which is sometimes used as a means of suicide. It brings on sensations like those produced by morphia, and then death.
The nervous irritation produced by tinnitus, or noises in the car, from which many persons suffer much, has been mentioned as a possible cause of mental disorder. The coarser diseases of the ear are subject to surgical treatment from without; but nervous affections provoked by obscure disorders are not so amenable, because their causes are more subtle, although none the less real. Sometimes an obstruction of the eustachian tube may be the chief cause of tinnitus.
Dr. Asa Gray, the eminent botanist, died at his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, January 30th, in the seventy-eighth year of his age, after an illness of about a month. He was born in Paris, Oneida County, New York, in 1810; studied medicine, and received the degree of M. D. in 1831, but never engaged in practice; became an assistant in the chemical laboratory of Dr. John Torrey in 1833; and a little later was appointed curator in the Lyceum of Natural History. His first botanical writings were descriptions of sedges and of certain plants of northern and western New York. In the "Elements of Botany," published in 1836, he showed that he had already views of his own, which he was not afraid to utter, even though they might be different from those of the then recognized authorities in science. From that time till the end of his life he worked with unceasing activity and growing fame, and for many years he has been recognized as one of the leading botanists of the world. His numerous works are well known to all readers and students, and can not be catalogued in a note. It is enough to say of them that whichever class of them we regard, they have never been excelled.
Professor T. S. Humpidge, chemist of the University College of Wales at Aberystwith, died November 30th, aged thirty-four years. He prosecuted his earlier scientific studies while serving as a clerk in a corn merchant's office, at the evening classes of the Science and Art Department, and afterward studied under Professors Frankland and Bunsen. His first publication was on "The Coal-Gas of the Metropolis." He investigated the atomic weight of beryllium, made redeterminations of the specific heats of various metals, and translated and edited Kobbe's "Inorganic Chemistry."
Professor Bonamy Price, Professor of Political Economy in the University of Oxford, died in London, January 8th. He was born in Guernsey in 1807; was one of the masters in Dr. Arnold's school at Rugby from 1830 to 1850; and was one of the recognized authorities in his special branch of research. His lectures, in their published form, have had an important economic Influence. They include "The Principles of Currency" (1809), and '"Chapters on Political Economy" (1878). In 1876 Professor Price published another work, "On Currency and Banking."
Dr. Carl Passavant, the African traveler, died recently at Honolulu, in the thirty-fourth year of his age.
Dr. Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden, a geologist whose name is inseparably associated with the Government explorations of the Rocky Mountain region, died in Philadelphia, December 22d, after an illness of many months. He was born in Westfield, Massachusetts, in 1829, and was graduated from Oberlin College in 1850, and from the Albany Medical College in 1850. He wa? connected for more than twenty years, a great part of the time as chief, with the explorations of the Western Territories, including Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, New Mexico, Dakota, Montana, Idaho, and Utah. Besides the official reports of his exploring work, he was the author of the books, "The Great West; its Attractions and Resources" (1880), and "North America" (1883). He was a member of most of the American scientific societies, and an honorary and corresponding member of many foreign societies.
M. F. J. Raynaud, an eminent French electrician and director of the Higher School of Telegraphy, died early in January, from the results of a murderous attack. He was associated with the laying of several telegraphic cables, one of which, crossing the Seine, having been broken, he repaired in 1870, in the face of the enemy's fire. He was the first person to call the attention of French men of science to the labors of Englishmen in electric unities; and he translated Gordon's "Treatise on Physics" into French.
The recent death is announced of Professor Arthur Christiani, of the Physiological Institute of Berlin, who was a great authority on the physiological action of electricity, and on the physiology of the nervous system and of the sense of hearing.
Dr. Max Schuster, an eminent petrologist, of the University of Vienna, died last November.
