order to determine their adaptability to cultivation and use in this country; to inform the people concerning them; and to introduce those which promise well—whether native or foreign—into cultivation. A small plot has been furnished on the grounds of the Department of Agriculture on which four hundred varieties of grasses and forage plants are growing for the testing of their qualities, and a larger garden has been established in one of the Southern States. The division has in preparation a popular book on the grass and forage plants of the country, also a larger illustrated handbook on the grasses of North America.
A curious system of water cure is practiced by Sebastian Kneipp at Woerishofen, Bavaria. Its most striking feature is the importance it attributes to the action of water on the lower extremities. Patients are caused to walk in running water or on the dewy turf, or on flagstones freshly watered; and baths are prescribed without after-use of the towel or rubbing, the bather being instructed to dress himself as quickly as he can, and let the reaction take place in his damp shirt. The system is mentioned by M. E. Bottey in his theoretical and practical treatise on the water cure (Paris, 1893) as possibly affording the hygiene and régime which some diseases require, but as dangerous in most cases.
Considerable attention has lately been given in London to the question of the spread of infectious diseases among horses through the public watering troughs. There seems good reason to believe that this is a common source of infection, especially for glanders. One parish has gone so far as to abolish the ordinary troughs and replace them by a stopcock and a pail.
In speaking of Prof. Ludwig, one of the most persistent of vivisectors, Dr. Mosso says: "Ludwig, the greatest of vivisectors, was president of the Leipsic Society for the Protection of Animals, and remained to the last one of its most active members. Germany owes to him that her horses and beasts of burden are now humanely treated. To him is due the awakening of the true humanitarian spirit toward the brute creation that culminated in the 'Union of German Societies for the Protection of Animals.'"
Prof. Charles S. Minot, of the Harvard Medical School, has arranged a course in embryology for students wishing to make a special study of this branch. The course is open to registered students of the graduate department of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and will be offered hereafter also as a special course to graduate students of the medical school. The course extends through a year of two terms, and will consist of lectures and laboratory work. Students taking the course will be expected to devote to it not less than eighteen hours a week. For persons having medical degrees the fee for one term is seventy-five dollars; for the whole year, one hundred and twenty-five dollars. Others must enter the university as graduate students under the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.
At a recent meeting of the Berlin Pharmaceutical Society, Dr. Seidler read a paper on the bacteria in mineral waters. He had made an elaborate series of experiments and found bacteria in all the bottled mineral waters, artificial as well as natural. The waters, as a general thing, were practically germ-free as they emerged from the earth, but bacteria developed rapidly, through carelessness in washing the bottles, corks, etc.
The mineral statistics of the United Kingdom of Great Britain for 1894 have been issued as a blue book. The total production of coal for the year was 23,125,983 tons; the approximate price at the pits about $1.75 per ton.
The seventh session of the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science will be held in Sydney, from the 3d to the 10th of January, 1897, under the presidency of A. Liversidge, Professor of Chemistry, University of Sydney. Communications and papers for the meeting, or inquiries, may be addressed to the permanent honorary secretary. The Chemical Laboratory, The University of Sydney, N. S. W.
Dr. Albert E. Foote, of Philadelphia, a distinguished mineralogist, died at Atlanta, Ga., where he had gone in charge of the Pennsylvania mineral exhibit, October 10th. He had been in feeble health for some time. He was born in Hamilton, N. Y., in 1846; was graduated in medicine from the University of Michigan in 1867; taught at Ann Arbor; and was for five years Professor of Chemistry and Mineralogy in Iowa State College. In 1876 he removed to Philadelphia and became a professional mineralogist and a dealer in minerals and scientific books.
Prof. H. Hellriegel, an active and efficient investigator in agricultural chemistry, died at Bernburg, Anhalt, Germany, September 24, 1895. He was best known for the researches into the fixation of nitrogen by leguminous plants, in which the joint agency of microbes and nodules on the roots of the plants was determined.
