The Bureau of Nature Study of Cornell University is making a
praiseworthy effort to interest children in caring for birds, or, as
its circular has it, treating them as "summer boarders." It publishes
a leaflet entitled The Birds and I, which it sends free to teachers
who ask for it and who will give it to their pupils. It has pictures
of various styles of bird houses, which may serve as patterns for the
construction of homes for the summer guests. "The kind of birds," the
interesting circular of the bureau says, "that will set up
housekeeping in the homes that you provide will harm no one. They are
never cross, never throw stones or rob us, but are always happy and
have cheerful songs. We are always kind to people having such
dispositions, and why should we not be so to birds as well?" The
bureau invites correspondence from boys and girls disposed to
entertain birds.
The National Geographic Society offers prizes of one hundred and fifty
dollars and seventy-five dollars severally for the first and second
best essays relating to pre-Columbian discoveries and settlements of
the Norsemen on the mainland of North America, and the location of the
lands mentioned in the Icelandic Sagas, the competition to close
December 31, 1899. The essays sent in should be typewritten in the
English language, not exceeding six thousand words in length, and may
be accompanied by maps and illustrations for explanation of the text,
but not for embellishment. The committee of awards consists of Mr.
Henry Gannett, Prof. Albert Bushnell Hart, Mrs. Anita Newcomb McGee,
Prof. John Bach McMaster, and Coast Survey Superintendent Henry S.
Pritchet.
Experiments by a German naturalist, Herr Albrecht Bethe, summarized in
the _Revue Scientifique_, upon recognition of one another by ants,
confirm the opinions of Lubbock, McCook, Forel, and others that they
are guided by the sense of smell. Herr Bethe found that an ant
"whitewashed" with liquid of ants of its own nest was well received by
its fellows when it went among them; but when the liquid of ants of a
different nest was applied it was attacked at once. An ant washed with
alcohol, next with water, and then with the liquid of a strange
species was well received in a nest of that species, although it was
much smaller than any of the individuals composing it. Another ant
washed with alcohol and water, dried, and immediately returned to its
fellows of its own nest, was attacked by them; but when kept for
twenty-four hours after drying, or long enough to recruit itself, was
received by them.
The following tables are taken from a paper by Dr. J. Richardson
Armstrong in a recent Lancet, describing his experience with
diphtheria antitoxine in private practice in treating one hundred and
twenty-two cases of diphtheria:
------------------------+------+----------+--------
| |Recovered.| Died.
------------------------+------+----------+--------
1. | | |
Total number of cases | | |
treated from June | | |
21 to Dec. 17, 1897 | 42 | 36 | 6
Severe cases; antitoxine| | |
injected | 22 | 20 | 2
Mild cases; antitoxine | | |
not injected | 20 | 16 | 4
+======+==========+========
2. | | |
Total number of cases | | |
treated, January 1 | | |
to December 31, | | |
1898 | 80 | 77 | 3
Severe cases, injected | 55 | 54 | 1
Mild cases, non-injected| 25 | 23 | 2
------------------------+------+----------+--------
In answer to the question, Should every case of diphtheria be treated
with antitoxine, Dr. Armstrong says: "Some of the cases are
sufficiently mild not to need it, so I will not go so far as to say
that it is absolutely essential to inject in every case, although I
would call it an excellent practice to do so, and the patients would
make much more rapid recoveries. I think that injection ought to be
insisted upon as early as possible in every case that is at all severe
or likely to prove so, and I think that the medical man who does not
employ antitoxine and who loses a large proportion of his cases is
incurring a responsibility which is almost criminal. The earlier a
patient is injected the greater is the chance of recovery, and the
more rapid is the recovery."
Among the leading principles of forestry, as defined by the chief fire
warden of Minnesota, are that the best agricultural land should not be
devoted to forest while wood and timber can be profitably grown on
soil that is unfit for farming purposes; that the management should be
continuous, and no more timber should be taken out of the forest in
one year, or in a series of ten or twenty years, than grows in the
entire forest in the same period; that the cutting of timber should be
in blocks or strips, so as to facilitate reproduction on the clear
areas by seeds falling from the trees left standing; and that the
forest, when young, must have in numbers vastly more trees than when
it is mature. To make good timber, the forest, when young, must be
crowded so as to secure height growth. Mixed wood, managed on forestry
principles in the Black Forest of Germany, has per acre, at the age of
twenty years, 3,960 trees; at the age of one hundred years, 262 trees.
A new process for the production of a textile material is thus
described in Industries and Iron: "It consists of 'squirting,' in a
fashion similar to that of making electric incandescent carbons, pure
gelatin in threads of about one thousandth part of an inch in
diameter, the thread being taken away on revolving tapes. The threads
are wound upon reels and exposed to formalin vapor, which exercises a
most remarkable effect on the gelatin, rendering it insoluble in any
medium yet applied to it. The tensile qualities of the thread are also
increased, while, in opposition to that produced under the Lehner
process (which is simply forming nitrated cellulose into threads for
weaving), it is capable of taking up any dye desired; and it is, of
course, impervious to any hygroscopic influence."