in the night to steal it away, and, hardly had they touched the skeleton, when bones, dress, and arms all fell into dust.
M. Gaston Tissandier's "La Nature," of Paris, has just entered upon its fourteenth volume, and, in recording the fact, announces that its career has been one of growing success. It began with a circulation of 2,000 copies, and now prints 15,000. It is a beautifully printed and profusely illustrated journal, whose aim is to direct the studies of French youth, "now eminently industrious and thirsting for knowledge because it has profited by the lessons of a recent past," into the channels which will be most beneficial. Besides recording clearly and concisely what occurs in every other field of science, it gives especial attention to the exposition of new applications of electricity, and of new conceptions and experiments in aërial navigation.
Colonel B. R. Branfill, late of the Survey of India, remarks as a noticeable feature in the meteorology of the southeast coast of that country the frequent lightning storms, which occur daily, for weeks together, before the setting in of the southwest monsoon, unaccompanied by rain or by any sound of thunder. They are seen along the coast where the land and sea breezes alternate, and along the line of the Ghâts, where the surface-current is thrown up into the upper and opposite current of the atmosphere. In this region the rare phenomenon of interference fringes is very frequently to be seen.
The purpose of ventilating cellars is to make them cool and dry. They are often ventilated so as to be warm and damp. This is done when the air admitted to them from without is considerably warmer than the air within them. Coming into the cooler cellar, this air, while it raises the temperature of the cellar-air, itself is cooled, and deposits its moisture, which soon becomes evident as visible or palpable dampness. Therefore, all the ventilation of cellars in warm weather should be done at night; and the cellar should be kept closed between sunrise and sunset.
M. Truvelot, in a paper about the late "new star" in the nebula in Andromeda, discusses the question whether the star has any physical connection with the nebula. He believes that it has not, because, in proportion as the star diminished again in brightness, the nebula acquired its pristine form. Thus the impression was given that the change noticed in the appearance of the nebula during the conspicuous visibility of the new star was only apparent, and was due to the superior light of the star having overpowered for a time the surrounding portions of the nebula.
M. Ch. Tellier, in a recent experiment, raised twenty-five hundred quarts of water in an hour from a depth of twenty feet, with a power generated simply by the natural heat of the sun.
According to accounts in "Land and Water," the gradual extinction of the buffalo is being followed up by an alarming increase in the depredations of wolves upon the sheep and cattle ranches. Both the gray wolf and the coyote are fast becoming more numerous. The sheep have suffered for some time from their ravages, and now the cattle are attacked. One pack of gray wolves, within fifty miles of Fort McLeod, has been known to attack and pull down steers two years old. The coyotes follow the fiercer animals, and are satisfied with what they leave, or with the smaller calves.
M. Bouley, President of the French Academy of Sciences, died November 30th, of a disease from which he had suffered long and painfully. His special field of research was in veterinary science, from which he drew many lessons beneficial in their application to human pathology. He appreciated the value of M. Pasteur's labors from a very early stage, and gave them his earnest co-operation; and his own researches in hydrophobia, epizoötics, and their remedies and preventives, entitle him to a distinguished place in the annals of contemporary biology. He was the author of books on experimental disease and on contagion, and his lectures at the museum have been highly spoken of.
The death is reported of M. Rabuteau, author of valuable researches in experimental therapeutics and chemical physiology. He was particularly interested in the investigation of supposed relations between the chemical composition and the physiological action of various bodies. He was for twenty years one of the most active members of the French Biological Society.
Captain Mangin, the inventor of the system of optical telegraphy which has recently been introduced for use in the French army, has recently died of apoplexy, at the age of forty-five years.
Dr. Thomas Andrews, F. R. S., for many years, till 1879, Professor of Chemistry in Queen's College, Belfast, has recently died, in the seventy-first year of his age. He made early researches into the liquefaction of the gases, presided over the British Association at the Glasgow meeting in 1876, and in his address predicted the ultimate solution of the question of liquefaction, which was accomplished a year and a half afterward.
