Prof. E. C. Pickering, of the Harvard College Observatory, announces
the discovery by Mrs. Fleming of a new variable star in Sagittarius.
It was found on eight of the photographs in her large collection. On
March 8, 1898, it was of the fifth magnitude, and on April 29, 1898,
of the eighth magnitude. A plate taken on March 9, 1899, shows it
still visible and of the tenth magnitude. Its spectrum resembles that
of other new stars. The entire number of new stars discovered since
1885 is six, of which five have been found by Mrs. Fleming.
Because of the great loss by fire which occurs every year in the
Russian villages, the government is making efforts to induce the
peasantry, says the _Saturday Review_, to employ some less dangerous
material than straw thatch for the roofing of their _izbas_. There has
already been a large increase in the use of shingle, and this has led
to a considerable importation from Belgium and Germany, and also from
the United States, of simple and inexpensive shingle making machines,
for use in rural districts. German manufacturers, whose "commercial
intelligence department" is remarkably well informed, are now making
redoubled efforts to meet the immense demand anticipated. An improved
and inexpensive hand fire engine is also being provided. Roofing felt
or paper is very generally used under the shingle, and the demand for
this is also increasing.
A fourth specimen of the _Notornis Mantelli_, a bird of New Zealand
supposed to have become extinct, was captured in August last, and has
been prepared for the museum by Mr. W. B. Benham. The first specimen
was obtained, recently slain, by Mr. W. Mantell, in 1849, and is
preserved in the British Museum; the second was killed by Maoris in
1851, and is in the Colonial Collection; and the third, now in the
Dresden Museum, was taken in 1879. All these birds were found in a
single denuded region of the country. The present specimen was caught
by a dog in the bushes near Lake Te Anan, still in the same region,
and is a very fine young female.
A plant growing in the dense jungles of Langsuam, Siam, was described
by H. Warington Smyth, in an address to the Royal Geographical
Society, as having the property of setting up a great irritation in
the skin of any person coming in contact with it. "It has a large,
broad leaf, and the Siamese declare that, after being badly stung by
it, the only remedy is the heat of a fire; to bathe in a stream, which
is the natural impulse, is considered absolutely fatal. A spot on the
Kra-Champawn trail is known as _Burmatai_, from the fact that a party
of Burmese, coming across to harry their neighbors in the old fighting
days, are said to have got into a thick growth of this plant, and to
have bathed in the stream to allay the agony, with the result that
they all died there." The Siamese call the plant _kalang-ton chang_.
In the western part of Belgium the dog has been employed as a beast of
burden from time immemorial. The Belgian dog (known only by this name)
is a large, compactly built animal, measuring from twenty to thirty
inches in height; the hair is smooth and short, generally tan or dark
brown in color. It is the custom to crop both ears and tail. The dogs
are usually driven before carts weighing from one hundred to one
hundred and twenty pounds, in teams of from two to six abreast. A
harness very similar in arrangement to that of the horse is used. Six
of these animals will draw from six to eight hundred pounds. They are
put to work when about a year old. They vary in price from twenty-five
to sixty shillings. There are over two thousand dogs in Ghent licensed
as draught animals.
A plant described by M. Henri Chantrey as most probably answering to
the manna found by the Hebrews in the desert is the thallophyte
_Canona esculenta_, or edible lichen, which grows in the deserts of
Persia, Arabia, Mesopotamia, and Sahara. It is a grayish cryptogam of
about the size of a pea, bearing short bracteate appendages on its
top; when cut, it resembles a mass of dull white flour paste. It is an
ephemeral substance, and must be collected the morning it appears, as
it will soon dry up; but when properly prepared it can be kept in a
close vessel. It is highly appreciated by the wandering Arabs, who
have often been saved by it from starvation, and they lay up stores of
it when opportunity offers. It is easily collected, for it never
adheres to any foreign body, and, so far as appearance goes, seems as
if it might have been thrown on the ground. There is but little
suggestion of the mushroom in its taste, which is rather starchy, with
a slight flavor of sugar. Cattle are very fond of it. The Arabs boil
it into a gelatinous paste, which they serve in various ways. They
preserve it by drying it in the shade and pack it in bladders or
skins. It is not a complete first-class food, but is very good for a
few days till something better can be got.
The Jernkontoret of Sweden is an ironmasters' exchange at Stockholm,
which was founded in 1747 for the financial convenience of the
subscribers, and now possesses a reserve fund of about $1,500,000. The
functions of the society have been considerably enlarged since its
institution. It has organized a corps of mining engineers and
metallurgists, who receive salaries from it, and further from
manufacturers whom they may serve. They are often commissioned to go
abroad and obtain information and practical hints bearing upon their
profession. The institution is supported by a light assessment on the
production of its constituency. It has a fine building, and publishes
an annual volume in _Jernkontorets Annalen_, containing original
memoirs and reports from technical agents, which is sent gratuitously
to all the masters of forges in Sweden, and is sold abroad.
In a number of glass mirrors of the third and fourth centuries,
examined by M. Berthelot, the glass was coated with a metallic
substance and with a layer of whitish material. The metal proved to be
lead, with no trace of gold, silver, copper, tin, antimony, or
mercury, and no sign of organic substance was present. It was thus
shown that no extraneous material was used to cement the lead to the
glass. The mirrors appeared to have been cut from hollow blown glass
globes, and it is possible that before the globe was cut the molten
lead had been poured into the interior, and had adhered to the
previously warmed glass. The whitish layer consisted of lead carbonate
and lead oxide formed by the oxidation of the lead coating and calcium
carbonate, which had been deposited from the water of the district in
which the mirrors were found.
The list of recent deaths among men known in connection with science
and its applications includes the names of Prof. Karl Müller,
botanist, one of the founders of the German scientific weekly, _Die
Natur_, February 9th, aged eighty-one years; Sir John Struthers,
emeritus professor of anatomy in the University of Aberdeen, in his
sixty-seventh year; John Kreusi, mechanical engineer and inventor, at
Schenectady, N. Y., January 22d, aged fifty-six years; Thomas Cook,
teacher of anatomy and author of works on the subject, in London,
February 8th; Dr. A. Veitmeyer, civil engineer, in Berlin; Dr. Carl
Schoenlein, of the Zoölogical Station at Naples, aged forty years;
Major-General Joseph J. Reynolds, of the United States Army, formerly
professor of mechanics and engineering at Washington University, St.
Louis, February 26th, aged seventy-seven years; Dr. Alexandre
Laboulbène, professor of the history of medicine in the University of
Paris, and author of a treatise on pathological anatomy and a book on
French entomological fauna, aged seventy-three years; Dr. Philipp J.
J. Valentini, Americanist and student of ancient Mexican and Central
American monuments and codices, in New York, March 16th, in his
seventy-first year; Gustave Wiedmann, professor of physics and
chemistry in the University of Leipsic, and writer on electricity and
magnetism; and Major J. Evans, professor of pathology in the Calcutta
Medical College, March 13th.
Transcriber's Notes:
Words surrounded by _ are italicized.
Words surrounded by = are bold.
Obvious printer's errors have been repaired, other inconsistent
spellings have been kept, including inconsistent use of hyphen (e.g.
"air ship" and "air-ship"), diacritical marks (e.g. "êtat" and
"état"), and proper names (e.g. "Dostoievski" and "Dostoiewski").
Captions added to captionless illustrations.
Some illustrations were relocated to correspond to their references in
the text.