SCIENCE.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3058, 14 April 1881, Page 3

SCIENCE.

Mr Henery Seebohm, the ornithologist, whose journey to north-eagtern Russia in in search of birds' eggs was mentioned in these oolumns at tho time it was undertaken, has published an account of his explorations in that region. The six British birds whose eggs were unknown prior to his visit to tbe valley of the Petchora river, were Bewick's swan, the curlew sandpiper, the gray plover, tbe knot, the little sanderling, and the stint ; and he succeeded in there finding the eggs of three of these species. Migratory birds haunt the Petchora valley in immense numbers and variety, being attracted thither by the abundance of food which nature supplies— berries for the frugiverous and mosquitoes for the insectivorous species. Mr Seebohm gays that insect-eating birds have only to open their mouths to have them filled with mosquitoes.

At the annual dinner of the Quekett Microscopical Club in London, a great deal of amusement was occasioned by a speech of Mr Frank Crisp, one of the secretaries of the Royal Microscopical Society, and editor of its journal. He said there were two parties among his readers : one ■which regarded the microscope as more important than the objects to be studied with it, and one which looked upon the anatomical and botanical preparations to be studied as more important than the instrument itself. The former constituted the "'brass and glass" party j the latter the " bug and slug " party. This contrast, which had the advantage of being founded on faot, is said to have been received with roars of laughter.

The discovery of a remarkable grotto containing stalactites and what is described as "a gaping abyss" is reported from Mehadia in Hungary, the cavern being situated on or rather in Mount Domoglet, near that place. A member of the local Natural History Society ventured to descend into the abyss, which by the light of torches seemed unfathomable, and upon his return from the foot of the precipice he described the scene below as wondrously beautiful. All of which suggests a most interesting discovery, and awakens a desire for more definite information on the subject than is furnished by an foreign scientific journal that has fallen under our notice.

A noteworthy result of the recent experiments of Mons. Yung, of Geneva, upon the varying proportions of organic matter floating in the atmosphere is his discovery that snow-storms have a tendency to clear the air of germs. After a heavy fall of snow at Geneva, the atmosphere appeared to be absolutely free from organisms of any kind. Strange to say, the same observer found the air abnormally pure in an isolated ward of a hospital in the same city whore a patient was under treatment for diphtheria.

An English entomologist, Dr. D. Sharp, has drawn upon himself considerable ridicule by proprosing to name several new genera of water-beetles after distinguished men of science—as, for example, Darwinhydrus, Huxleyhydrus, and Tindallbydrus. He will do well to reconsider these designations and reject them. While it is true enough, in one sense, that there is nothing insignificant in nature, it is hardly the way to honor a man to bestow his name upon a new sort of water-beetle.

A system of weather observations resembling those carried on by our Signal Service and the British Meteorological Office has been established in China, and already embx*aces forty-four stations. Of these, no fewer than twelve are lighthouses on the coast of Japan. We learn from the Athensoum that a remarkable similarity has already been noticed ' between the general course of storms in the North Pacific and North Atlantic.

A paper in the Bulletin of the Anthropological Society of France, describes a collection of skulls of pre-historic Patagonians, dug up in ancient burying grounds on the Rio Negro, and supposed to represent a race which became extinct before the Spanish conquest of South America. The earliest inhabitants of the southern part of the continent probably dwelt in Patagonia during the glacial period. A peculiar faculty is attributed to the vegetation of Queensland by Mr C. A. Feilberg, a writer in the new Australian publication named the Victorian Review. That colony is subject to long droughts, followed by heavy rains. The vegetation remains dormant for months at a time during the droughts, to revive and spring into vigor when tho rains come, instead of dying from the dryness

In announcing the early publication of the first volume of the Zoological Memoirs of the Challenger expedition, Dr. William Spottiswoode says the greatest interest in the results there given attaches to the fact that notwithstanding the pressure and absence of light there is no depth-limit to animal life in the ocean.

The sanitary importance of keeping poisonous substances out of paints, wallpapers, and house decorations generally has come to be so widely appreciated that some of tho leading firms of decorators in England find it to their interest to have these articles carefully tested for poisons by skilled chemists.

A member of the Paris Academy of Sciences asserts that the glass of the hydrometers employed in sugar is so modified in its constitution by the action of the heat to which it is exposed as seriously to impair the accuracy of the instruments.

A German chemist announces that water

in which flax has been steeped exerts a toxic effect upon animal and vegetable life, killing fish and injuring plants exposed to its action.

The experiments of Gustay Hauscn upon the functions of the horn-like appendages upon the heads of inseots known as antennae, lead him to conclude that they are really organs of smell. At the anniversary meeting of the Royal Society of London, it was stated that the preparations are already being made for observing the transit of Venus in 1882.