Some recent experiments were made by Armand Gautier on the amount
of the chlorides contained in sea air. They were conducted at the
lighthouse at Rochedouvres, situated about fifty-five kilometres from
the coast, during and after the long continuance of a good breeze
directly inshore from the Atlantic. The air was drawn through a long
tube containing glasswork, and this well then analyzed. He found that
in a litre of air there was only 0.022 of a gramme of chloride of
sodium. Small as this quantity is, it suffices, perhaps, with the aid
of the traces of sodium present, to give sea air its tonic qualities.
* * * * *
The second International Congress on Hypnotism is to be held in Paris,
August 12 to 16, 1900, Dr. Jules Voisin presiding. The programme of
discussions includes such topics as the terminology of hypnotism,
its relations to hysteria, its application to general therapeutics,
the indications of it and suggestions for the treatment of mental
disease and alcoholism, its application to general pedagogy and mental
orthopædics, its value as a means of pathological investigation, its
relation to the practice of medicine and to jurisprudence, and special
responsibilities arising from the practice of experimental hypnotism.
* * * * *
The following is from a recent letter to Science by Prof. James H.
Hyslop, of Columbia University: “So much has been published far and
wide this last summer about my intention ‘to scientifically demonstrate
the immortality of the soul within a year,’ that it is due to the facts
bearing upon the choice between materialism and spiritism to say that I
have never made any such professions as have been alleged. I wish the
scientific public that still has the bad habit of reading and believing
the newspapers to know that I was careful to deny that I made any such
pretensions as were so generally attributed to me. More than one half
the interviews alleged to have been held with me were the fabrications
of reporters who never saw me, and the other half omitted what I did
say and published what I did not say.”
* * * * *
Some novel results have been obtained by M. Baillaud, of the Toulouse
Observatory, France, from recent observations of the annular nebula in
Lyra and comparisons with photographs taken in 1890. Among them are
the discovery of small stars in the central space of the ring, the
existence of bright points on the ring itself, a more distinct figure
of the central star on the later photographs, giving it the aspect of
a true star, and greater brightness in the central space, and certain
changes in the shape of the edge of the ring, which shows at one
point, more distinctly than in 1890, an eminence indicating a jet of
matter escaping from the ring. Other nebulæ, especially that called
the Dumb-bell and the nebula in the Crown, are spoken of as exhibiting
similar phenomena.
* * * * *
The Chicago Manual-Training School, which is said to be the first
independent manual-training school in the United States, is now in its
sixteenth year, having been founded in 1883 by the Commercial Club of
Chicago. It has been, since 1897, an integral part of the University
of Chicago. While its peculiar feature is manual training, it also
furnishes instruction in the essential studies of a high-school course.
The shop work and drawing are eminently practical. The making of a
machine, such as a lathe or steam engine, is begun by the pupils in the
drawing room, and is followed by them through the pattern-making shop,
the foundry, and the forge room, and is perfected in the machine shop.
The forge tools and engine-lathe tools are made by pupils. The courses
of the school include a business course, a technological course, and a
college preparatory course.