the making of lyddite. It is slightly explosive when heated, is injurious when it comes in contact with an abrasion of the skin, and has been shown by physiological experiments to be a highly improper substance to mix with food.
A goose market is held regularly in October at Warsaw, Poland, to which about three million geese are brought, most of them to be exported to Germany. Often coming from remote provinces, many of these geese have to travel over long distances, upon roads which would wear out their feet if they were not "shod." For this purpose they are driven first through tar poured upon the ground, and then through sand. After the operation has been repeated several times the feet of the geese become covered with a hard crust that effectively protects them.
The first summer session of Columbia University, 1900, will open July 2d, instruction beginning July 5th, and will continue till August 10th. The work will be under the general direction of Prof. Nicholas Murray Butler, and will be conducted by a large corps of instructors, in eleven courses, of thirty lectures or other exercises or their equivalent in laboratory or field work, each. The concluding examinations will be held August 9th and 10th. Credits will be given for courses pursued at the school in the requirements for a degree at the university, and for a Teachers' College diploma, and in the examinations for teachers' licenses in New York city.
An International Congress of Medical Electrology and Radiology has been connected with the International Congress system of the Paris Exposition, 1900, and will be held July 27th to August 1st. The commission is composed of representative men from various universities, institutions, and hospitals of France, with Prof. E. Doumer, 57 Rue Nicolas Leblanc, Lille, as secretary.
A curious fall of "black snow," which was observed at Molding, Austria, at the beginning of the year, was found to consist largely of the insects known as "glacier fleas," which were supposed to have come along with a violent snowstorm from some of the Alpine glaciers.
How to write 1900 in Roman numerals is a question of the day that will have to be settled. Three ways are suggested by Mr. J. Fletcher Little in the London Times, either of which is correct according to the Roman system. They are MDCCCC, MDCD, and MCM. But when we reach the year 1988, if we use the first of these methods we shall have to write the formidable-looking formula MDCCCCLXXXVIII, whereas if we use the third and shortest method, it will only be MCMLXXXVIII—and that is long enough. The third method, therefore, which may be interpreted as meaning one thousand plus another thousand lacking a hundred, seems to be the simplest.
Dr. St. George Mivart, Professor of Biology in University College, Kensington, died suddenly in London, April 1st, aged seventy-two years. He was author of numerous scientific works, of treatises critical of Darwinism and the theory of evolution, and of demonstrations of the harmony of Roman Catholic dogma with proved scientific facts. His name has been made prominent of late by his recantation of his previously expressed views of the consistency of dogma with science, and the correspondence with Cardinal Vaughan which grew out of it.
An International Congress of Ethnographical societies has been arranged for by the Ethnographic Society of Paris, to be held in Paris, August 26th to September 1st.
The Wollaston medal of the Royal Geological Society, London, for the most important geological discoveries, has this year been awarded to Mr. Grove K. Gilbert, of the United States Geological Survey. This is the third time the medal has been awarded to a citizen of this country.
Among the recently announced publications of John Wiley and Sons we notice a third edition, revised and enlarged, of Allen Hazen's Filtration of Public Water Supplies; a new and revised edition of Olof's Text-book of Physiological Chemistry; The Cost of Living as Modified by Sanitary Science,
