Mr. G. Thomann, of the United States Brewers' Association, has published a pamphlet to show that beer is a perfectly wholesome drink. In support of his assertion, he alleges that while brewers drink more beer, and drink it more constantly, than other people, the average death-rate among them is lower by forty per cent than that of corresponding urban populations; that their health is unusually good, with comparative freedom from diseases of the kidneys and liver; and that on the average they live longer and preserve their physical energies better than the average workmen of the United States. Mr. Thomann produces doctors' certificates showing a mean annual death-rate of 7·5 per 1,000 among 960 brewery-workmen, against 12·5 of urban population; and he talks of men drinking an average of ten pints of beer a day.
A new process in manufacturing iron has been tested at Pittsburg and at Southwick, Staffordshire, England, in which the metal undergoes a chemical change that is claimed to greatly improve the quality and test of the iron to whatever class it may belong. The new process is said to facilitate the running of the metal, and also increase its strength.
Mr. Ruskin, in a recent letter, has expressed his opinion of railways in a brief but most energetic manner. He says: "They are to me the loathsomest form of deviltry now extant, animated and deliberate earthquakes, destructive of all wise social habit, or possible natural beauty, carriages of damned souls on the ridges of their own graves!"
A limited edition of the first volume of a series of selected morphological monographs, by members of Johns Hopkins University, is about to be issued from the publication agency of that institution. The series will be under the editorial direction of Professor W. K. Brooks. The coming number will contain three papers by Professor Brooks, and one paper by E. B. Wilson. Only one hundred copies in all of the volume will be issued.
A bulletin of miscellaneous information has been started at the Royal Gardens, Kew, to be published occasionally, and contain notes on economic products and plants to which the attention of the staff of the gardens may have been drawn, or which may have been made the subject of particular study there.
Mr. John Murray, of the Challenger Expedition, recently said, in the Royal Society of Edinburgh, that he questioned whether any country in the world, taking its size into consideration, could show a better record of scientific work or a greater mass of scientific literature than Scotland during the past ten or twenty years.
Medals and prizes are to be given this year, by the Royal Society of New South Wales, for the best communications embodying fruits of original research on the silver-ore deposits of New South Wales; on the origin and mode of occurrence of gold-bearing veins and of the associated minerals; on the influence of the Australian climate in producing modifications of diseases; and on the infusoria peculiar to Australia.
According to a paper read by Mr. John Murray, before the Royal Society of Edinburgh, 2,243 cubic miles of rain fall annually on areas with inland drainage. Such areas extend to 11,486,350 square miles. The land draining directly to the ocean has an area of 44,211,000 square miles, of which 38,829,750 square miles have ten inches or more of rainfall. The mean discharge from this area into the ocean is 6,569 cubic miles annually. The total weight of substances carried by this means to the ocean is more than 5,000,000,000 tons each year.
Captain James B. Eads, the distinguished engineer, died of pneumonia at Nassau, New Providence, March 8th. He was widely known as the constructor of several works of great merit. Among them were the first eight ironclad gunboats owned and used by the United States, the bridge over the Mississippi River at St. Louis, and the system of jetties for deepening the channel of the mouth of the Mississippi. He had projected a plan for a marine railway across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec for carrying vessels from one ocean to the other, and was elaborating its details and seeking means for executing it at the time of his death. A sketch of his life and works, revised by himself, with a portrait, was published in "The Popular Science Monthly" for February, 1886.
Dr. Gustav Heinrich Kirchenpaucher, first Burgomaster of Hamburg, and an eminent naturalist, is dead.
Dr. Julius Lüttich, astronomer, and Professor Jean Louis Trasenster, both died on the 3d of January, 1887.
Mr. Alexander Borodin, Professor of Chemistry in the Medico-Surgical Academy at St. Petersburg, and an eminent musical composer, died February 27th.
