A correspondent of "Nature" reports an illustration of the power of organization in the mouse. He was waked up one night by a distinct, continuous grinding under the floor of his room, which lasted till after daylight, when it suddenly ceased, and the room seemed in an instant filled with mice. One of the mice caught on a bell-pull, and climbed upon it to near the ceiling. Then he "turned himself round, and for a few minutes quietly surveyed the room; then deliberately descended, and in two or three minutes not a mouse was left in the room." The correspondent supposes that this scout-mouse was the chief-engineer of the company, and had directed the siege-operations; that he rose to an eminent point to survey the conquest, and that, finding it contained nothing of interest to mice, gave the word to his followers, after which they all retired.
According to an essay by Dr. D. J. Macgowan, China has no copyright law, but authors' rights are protected with certainty, upon the theory that their writings are as really property as their material goods, and are so obviously so that no particular designation is required. These rights are hereditary, and not limited. Authors do not make arrangements with publishers; that would be undignified. They have their books cut and printed on their own premises, and then sell them to the trade. Ephemeral books are, however, sold to publishers, and are then liable to be pirated. The book-trade has only the most limited facilities for advertising and circulating its issues; yet, the knowledge of new publications is very quickly spread through the country, and the books get to all interested in them in a remarkably short time.
M. Joseph Lecornu has suggested several ways in which balloons might be used in astronomical research. The appearance of heavenly bodies near the horizon is distorted by refraction. We can not make exact allowances for the distortion, because we have no rule by which to measure the rate of atmospheric refraction, and learn the laws under which it varies. "With balloons we might sound the air in all weathers, and in time get a rule. Balloons also could take us above the clouds and atmospheric hazes, and enable us to get direct views of eclipses, transits, comets, and meteoric showers when they might be obscured at the surface, and of such phenomena as the aurora borealis and the zodiacal light that are always observed at the surface under difficulties. M. de Fonvielle has already made satisfactory observations and measurements of a comet and observations of shooting-stars, from a balloon.
An Italian ship has been sheathed with glass instead of copper. The plates are cast like iron plates to fit the hull of the vessel, and are made water-tight by means of a silicate mastic. They are claimed to be exempt from the vices of oxidation and incrustation.
M. Wroblesky has succeeded in liquefying oxygen in considerable quantities, and then, by removing the pressure, allowing it to boil. By this means he has produced a cold of -186°C., or -302·8° Fahr., at which nitrogen has become solidified into a snow composed of crystals "of a remarkable dimension." M. Wroblesky announces that he has obtained the liquefaction of hydrogen, by exposing it to the cooling influence of liquid oxygen at the instant of evaporation.
A conflict of opinion having broken out between the Municipal Council of Paris and the gas company, as to what the price of gas should be, a scientific commission has been appointed to decide whether the gas industry has so advanced as to justify a diminution in the price.
M. F. Terby states, in the "Bulletin" of the Belgian Academy of Sciences, that he believes he has found a monthly period for the aurora borealis, corresponding with the returning presentation, every twenty-seven days, of the same sun-spots to the earth.
M. Cornu lately described to the French Academy of Sciences a white rainbow which he saw on the morning of the 28th of November. There had been a heavy hoar-frost, followed by a thick, low fog. This rainbow was wholly white, without even as much iridization as is noticeable in halos, and had a fleecy appearance like that of the fumes of phosphureted hydrogen, or the smoke from the mouth of a cannon.
The detonations of the recent earthquake in the Straits of Sunda were distinctly heard through all the Philippine Islands—so distinctly that some persons thought a battle was going on, or that some vessel was firing signals of distress.
The savages of the Maclay coast of New Guinea, according to Dr. Miclucho-Maclay, seldom bury their dead. As soon as a man dies, his body is placed in a sitting posture and covered with palm-leaves. It is then exposed to the fire for two or three weeks, till it becomes wasted away or dried up. The bodies of children are simply hung up to decay in a basket under the roof. Burial is rarely given, except when an old man has survived all his wives and children, and it is then accompanied by numerous ceremonies.
