SCIENCE.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3092, 26 May 1881, Page 3

SCIENCE.

A startling illustration of the performance of disease germs is reported from France. Seven sheep were turned into a lot in which the bodies of twelve sheep that died of antbracoid disease had lain buried for twelve years. Although there was no grass immediately over the place of burial, and the living sheep could only walk about there and sniff: the ground, two out of the seven contracted the same diseaso and died of it. Mons. Pasteur also finds evidence that persons have been made ill by eating vegetables grown on the spot. These facts show that as yet very little is known in regard to the duration of vitality in the germs by •which disease is developed. The papers have recently recorded a death of hydrophobia in the case of a man who was bitten by a rabid dog eight years previously. The house and street-refuse of many towns in the northern part of England is disposed of by burning it, and steps have been taken towards the introduction of the same system by some parishes in London. There, however, it would seem to be objectionable in view of its tendency to increase the cloud of smoke which almost always overhangs the great city, and which men of science are just now trying to devise some means to dispel. If the method of disposing of street sweepings by fire has preyed successful in Great Britain, it would seem wise to test it here in New York. With our climate and atmosphere, we could run the risk of a little increase of smoke.

Classification in ethnology has always been a difficult problem, bub the tendency of modern investigators is toward greater simplicity than has hitherto prevailed. According to Topinard all races of men now existing may be referred to the European, the Mongolian, or the negro type. Mr 0. Staniland "Wake, in a recently published monograph on the subject, affirms this classification of the French ethnologist as substantially correct, but doubts whether the last mentioned type is not derivative from the others. The writer thinks, however, that it is impossible to classify tho various races of mankind satisfactorily without large additions to our knowledge.

Nine successive attempts to grow American wheat and barley at Cawnpore, in India, have failed in consequence, it is supposed, of the unduly rapid development of the plants in that hot climate. ~No greater success was obtained with English varieties of the small grains. An effort to introduce Australian plants into another part of India has been equally unfortunate. Acacias, figs and eucalypti from tropical Australia, which flourished at first during the dry winds of Eangoon, in British Burma, on the eastern shore of the Bay of Bengal. A decided increase in the annual number of accidents by lightning in Germany, Austria and Switzerland has been noted by Herr Holtz in the last quarter of a century. Thunder-storms have not become any more frequent than formerly, but the percentage of buildings struck by lightning is much larger. This is attributed to forest denudation and tho attractive influence exerted by the network of railways overspreading Western Europe. On tho other hand, in this country it has been supposed that numerous lines of rail tend to decrease the danger from lightning to country districts through which thoy run.

Tho relation oi fossil insects of the Devonian age of geology to later and existing types of insects is discussed by Mr Samuel H. Scudder in a paper printed in the February number of the American Journal of Science and Arts. lie declares that there is nothing in the structure of the earliest known insects to interfere with a former conclusion that tho general typo of wing structure lias remained unaltered from the earliest times.

Mr John G-ould, 1\8,.5., an ornithologist of much ability, but who was not widely known except to specialists in his own branch of zoological science, died recently in England at the ago of seventy-seven. lie was the author of large and magnificent works,

many of them gorgeously illustrated in colors, upon the birds of Europe, Asia, the Himalayas, Australia, and Great Britain, and did for the birds of those countries what Audubon did for the birds of America.

Navigation was recently defined by Sir William Thomson, of Glasgow, the eminent physicist, as a scries of hair-breadth escapes. Tin's was in a lecture on lighthouse characteristics, in which ho illustrated the dangers of existing systems, and advocated his own plan, which lias much to recommend it, of distinguishing different lighthouses by eclipsing the light of each in accordaucc with an established code of signals which should bo known to all mariners.

The Earl of Crawford, a well-known English astronomer, has declared himself opposed to the project of endowing scientific research by grants of money from the government. He says there will always be plenty of amateurs ready and willing to assist in researches for the advancement of science, and in England, almost without exception, the great advances in science have been mide by such amateurs. In resigning the presidency of the Eoyal Microscopical Society a few weeks ago. Dr Lionel Beale, F. R. S., took occasion to criticise the evolution theory with much severity and sarcasm. The Society omitted the customary request for a copy of the retiring president's address to be printed in its Transactions.

In his account of hi 3 ascent of Chimborazo last year, Mf Edward Whympor says it is not impossible, judging from tho observations then made as compared with those recorded by Humboldt, that the whole mountain may have sunk since the time of that great traveller. Speaking of Mr Darwins new work on tho powor of movemont in plants, tho liov. G-. Honslow, an accomplished botanist, says ifc is of tho profonndest interest and importance, but intensely hard reading. In the lattor respect; it differs from most of tho authors writings. Tho effect of thunder-storms on subterranean telegraph lines has boon studied in Germany under the auspices of the Berlin Electrical Society. Such lines are subject to considerable perturbations under their influence, but seldom to such an extent as to stop working. Cooking by electricity will be carried, on at the French International Electrical Exhibition.