The French Government offers a prize of 300,000 francs for the discovery of an efficacious and economical means of destroying the phylloxera or of preventing its ravages. A commission, nominated by the Minister of Agriculture and Commerce, will determine the condition of compensation and the award of the prize.
Prof. Marsh is on his way back from his extraordinary expedition to the Mauvaises Terres of Colorado. A Tribune telegram, dated Fort Laramie, November 29th, says that the fossil-beds explored by the expedition are of the Miocene age, and rich beyond expectation. Nearly two tons of fossil-bones were collected, all belonging to tropical animals, some as large as elephants, others allied to the camel, rhinoceros, and horse.
Prof. Karl Koch has shown conclusively that China, and not Babylonia, is the home of the weeping-willow (Salix Babylonica). He describes, under the name Salix elegantissima, a new species of willow from Japan whose branches are even more markedly pendulous than those of the Salix Babylonica. One great advantage of this willow is, that it is not injured by insects.
In Montgomery, Alabama, according to a Tribune correspondent, the negroes form 69 per cent, of the population, yet of the 63 deaths in September, 53 were from the black population—in other words, 69 per cent, of the population furnishes 84 per cent, of the deaths. In October, the blacks furnished 73 per cent.
Prof. Mayer, of Stevens Institute, has invented an instrument for measuring the minutest possible variations of atmospheric pressure. A hollow metallic vessel, with unyielding walls, containing air, has adapted to it an open glass tube. In this tube is a short liquid column. The glass tube is in an horizontal position. The vessel is surrounded with melting ice, which keeps the air inside at a constant temperature. In this condition the liquid in the tube remains stationary if the atmospheric pressure outside remains constant; but any increase of pressure in the atmosphere will cause the liquid in the horizontal glass tube to move toward the vessel. The contrary motion takes place when the atmospheric pressure diminishes. These motions are registered continuously by photography.
Experiments made by Prof. Mayer show that solid cylinders of iron elongate on being magnetized, but contract to a corresponding degree in their transverse dimension, so that their volume remains constant. In hollow cylinders, on the other hand, the interior capacity is increased when they are magnetized.
No European grape-vine will thrive anywhere in the United States east of the Rocky Mountains. Prof. Planchon has written the history of the many efforts that have been at different times made to introduce into this country European vines, but the result has been failure in every case. Immigrants from France and Switzerland have repeatedly made the experiment in Kentucky, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Texas, Alabama, and Ohio; but everywhere the phylloxera has proved a deadly enemy. West of the Rocky Mountains the phylloxera does not occur, and hence California is filled with European vines.
The barbarous cruelties and needless wastefulness attending the seal-fishery, as now carried on, have received a check from the Newfoundland Legislature, which has passed a law preventing sealing-vessels from leaving port before a certain date, so as to give the seals at least another month after the breeding-season, in which the young may increase in size and value. The present practice is to kill the old seals indiscriminately, leaving the helpless young to perish by thousands. It is hoped that the governments of other countries will follow the example of Newfoundland.
Prestel, a German meteorologist, has observed a marked periodicity in the presence of ozone in the atmosphere. It is at its minimum at the end of September, increasing steadily, and reaching its maximum at the vernal equinox, after which it again diminishes.
A well-authenticated case of death from the sting of a hornet recently occurred in England. A woman was standing in the road near her house, when a hornet flew out from a nest near by and stung her on the right side of the neck. She fainted almost immediately, and expired in a few minutes.
A correspondent of the Gardener's Chronicle records a curious instance of the power possessed by the mycelium of mushrooms of penetrating bodies. One side of a mushroom-bed was of brick, four and a half inches thick, firmly set in hard lime, so close in the texture that it was impossible to introduce the point of a nail without considerable force. Nevertheless the mycelium found admission, and produced mushrooms of a considerable size on the other side. The wall, in several places, contained porous bricks and these too the mycelium found its way through.
In former times it was the custom for men of science, on making a discovery, and previous to publishing it in full, to put it in the shape of an anagram, so that in case some other investigator should make the
