half per cent from the density of nitrogen obtained from other sources. It was found that if air is subjected to electric sparks, the resulting nitrous fumes absorbed by potash and the excess of oxygen by alkaline pyrogallate, there remains a residue which is neither oxygen nor nitrogen, as can be seen from its spectrum. The same gas may be isolated by exposing nitrogen obtained from the air to the action of magnesium. As the magnesium gradually absorbs the nitrogen, the density of the residue rises to nearly twenty. The newly discovered substance constitutes one per cent of the atmosphere, and gives a spectrum with a single blue line much more intense than a corresponding line in the nitrogen spectrum. Prof. Dewar is of the opinion that this "new element" is an allotropic form of nitrogen. LIVERPOOL was designated as the place for the meeting of the British Association in 1896. Sir Douglas Galton will be president of the meeting at Ipswich next year. The meeting for 1897 will probably be held in Toronto. PROF. T. JOHNSON exhibited in the British Association a large collection of algae from the west coast of Ireland which have the power of strongly incrusting their tissues with chalk and forming hard masses of calcareous matter. He considered that by this means the algae obtained protection from the ravages of nibbling animals. He also described a number of algae which possess an entirely opposite property, and by their power of dissolving calcareous matter bore minute boles in the shells of various molluscs and thus completely destroyed them. PROF. L. H. PAMMEL, in a paper on the Effects of Cross-Fertilization in Plants, cites experiments by Prof. Bailey, of Missouri, who obtained more than a thousand types of pumpkins and squashes by as many careful hand pollinations without having ever seen any influence on the season's crop by mixing, except such as was due to imperfect development. The effects of the pollen were seen only in the offspring of the fruits. The author himself had made similar experiments without obtaining any results favorable to the theory of immediate influence. Prof. Bailey has made a like report of experiments with cucumbers and muskmelons. Is a paper read in the Association of Economic Entomologists on The Rise and Present Status of Official Economic Entomology, President L. O. Howard reviewed the entire history of official economic entomology in all parts of the world from the time when in the early part of the century Dr. T. W. Harris, of Harvard College, wrote his report on insects injurious to vegetation in Massachusetts, for which he received one hundred and seventyfive dollars, down to the present year, when the United States Government spends one | hundred thousand dollars annually in employing some sixty official entomologists in different parts of the country, and when some twenty different countries in all parts of the world have reached the conclusion that it pays to employ trained investigators to study the subject of insects injurious to crops. The speaker asserted that America leads the rest of the world in this branch of applied science. THE University of Chicago desires to secure for its museum collections illustrating the various religions of mankind, and invites workers in foreign lands, and especially missionaries and teachers, to assist it and co-operate with it. A beginning has already been made in a collection which the university now holds as a loan of objects illustrating Shinto worship and Japanese Buddhism, gathered by Mr. Edmund Buckley in Japan. A catalogue of the Shinto specimens is published in illustration of the kind of objects sought, and for the guidance of persons who may wish to co-operate in the work of collecting. A COURSE of lectures on prehistoric archæology, outlined by Prof. Frederick Starr for the University Extension Course of the University of Chicago, is to embrace twelve lectures. A syllabus has been published of the first six lectures, the subjects of which are Man and the River Gravels, The Man of the Caverns, The Stone Age in Denmark, Lake Dwellings of Switzerland, Megalithic Monuments, and The Bronze Age in Scandinavia. The subjects of the other six lectures, of which a second syllabus is to be published, are Hallstadt, La Téne, Spain and Portugal, The Copper Age in Hungary, The Hill of Hissarlik, and The Question of Tertiary Man. Topics for exercises are to be given at the end of each lecture, to which answers in writing, to not more than two questions each week, are invited from all persons attending the lecture. IN a paper on The Relation of Biology to Geological Investigation, Dr. Charles A. White, of the United States National Museum, pertinently observes that a special cause of the perpetuation of extreme views respecting the degree of prominence to be assigned to biology "evidently exists in the form of personal domination by such of those who entertain them as happen to possess unusual opportunities for their enforcement. It is well known that such influence has at various times and in various ways retarded the progress of geological science, and that there is danger of its being exercised in all cases when the personal judgment of an observer is liable to be modified or controlled by official or other temporary authority." OIL of beechnuts and oil of linden seeds have for some time been manufactured in Germany for use instead of olive oil. The oil of beechnuts has been in active demand for several years, but the crop is uncertain, and a steady trade has therefore not been built up. Experiments were made with linden seeds, of which there never fails to be a good crop, with most satisfactory success. They furnish much more oil than beechnuts; an oil that has a peculiarly fine flavor, does not evaporate or become rancid, has no tendency to oxidation, and does not solidify at a temperature of three degrees below zero of Fahrenheit. OBITUARY NOTES. THE eminent physicist Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von Helmholtz died, after a second stroke of paralysis, at Charlottenburg, Prussia, September 9th, in the seventy-fourth year of his age. The outlines of his early life and labors, including his principal researches into the nature of the phenomena of light and sound, the enunciation of the principle of the conservation of force, and the invention of the ophthalmoscope, were given in the fifth volume of the Monthly (June, 1874). His labors since were on like lines, and various, in the fields of mathematics, physics, physiology, psychology, etc. They involved questions of vortex motion, the discontinuity of motion in liquids, the vibrations of sound at the open ends of organ pipes, thermodynamics, electrodynamics, stereoscopic vision, galvanic polarization, the theory of anomalous dispersion, the origin and meaning of geometrical axioms, the mechanical conditions governing the motions of the atmosphere, metaphysics, and mental science. On all these subjects he shed a clearer light than the world had enjoyed before, and in some he made order out of chaos. The event of his seventieth birth pointed Erving Professor in the same institu- GEORGE HUNTINGTON WILLIAMS, Professor of Inorganic Geology in Johns Hopkins University, died of typhoid fever July 12th. He was born in Utica, N. Y., and was graduated from Amherst College in 1878. He resided for a short time in Berlin, and afterward studied under Rosenbush in the University of Heidelberg, where he obtained the degree of Ph. D. in 1882. He was associate professor at Johns Hopkins University from 1885 till 1892, and after that full professor. He was author of a book on the Geology of Maryland, a text-book on crystallography, and several memoirs on petrography, and was preparing at the time of his death a work on the microscopic structure of American crystalline rocks. PROF. H. K. BRUGSCH, a distinguished philologist, and one of the most eminent of Egyptologists, died September 9th, aged sixty seven years. He was for many years an officer in the Egyptian service, where he held the rank of bey, and devoted much time the Egyptian records. to archæological exploration and the study of His History of Egypt is one of the best of the works at first hand on that subject. day, in 1891, was made the occasion of an international celebration, when the principal rulers of Europe and the scientific institutions of the world vied in conferring their honors upon him. "Science," says Nature, "has THE British naval commander, Sir Edward had few investigators who have furthered her Augustus Inglefield, a distinguished arctic interests more than Helmholtz. He was con- navigator and explorer, died early in Septemstantly exploring new fields of research, or ber, at the age of seventy-four years. During bringing his keen intellect to bear upon old a voyage in the Isabel, on private account, in ones. With his contributions he helped to search of Sir John Franklin, he discovered an raise science to a higher level." Like other open polar sea and traced a coast line eight real masters of science, he believed in mak- hundred miles long. From another expediing it intelligible to the whole intellectual tion sent for the relief of Sir Edward Belcher world, and did so. He was ready to recogin 1853, an officer returned with him bearing nize the merits and acknowledge the achieve the news of the discovery of the northwest ments of other workers in the fields he cul- passage. With a third expedition he brought tivated; and while he did not always keep home the officers and crews of five ships which out of controversies, he so bore himself when had been abandoned in the ice. For these serv. engaged in them as to show that his sole de-ices he received the arctic medal, and was sire was to establish the truth. knighted at the fiftieth anniversary celebration of her Majesty's reign. He devised a hydraulic steering apparatus, a screw-turning engine, and an anchor, which were used on various vessels. He was author of the books A Summer Search for Sir John Franklin, Maritime Warfare, Naval Tactics, and Ter PROF. JOSIAH PARSONS COOKE, of Harvard University, died at his summer home in Newport, R. 1., September 3d, after an illness of about one month. He was graduated from Harvard College in 1848, and, having served for two years as an instructor, he was ap-restrial Magnetism. THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. DECEMBER, 1894. IF ATHLETICS FOR CITY GIRLS. BY MARY TAYLOR BISSELL, M. D. F any of my readers should chance to belong to a hardy boat crew or to a college ball team, or if in days past they have ever been numbered in such a muscular community, they will doubtless feel that the title of my paper is its own executioner. For so long as baseball and football and the boat race stand for the national expression of athletics, the experiences of girls in any similar department will seem like comparing moonlight unto sunlight, and water unto wine. In speaking of athletics for city girls, however, we shall use the phrase in a liberal sense, including not only out-of-door sports but also the general feats and training of the gymnasium. The spirit for physical recreation has invaded the atmosphere of the girl's life as well as that of the boy, and demands consideration from her standpoint. Before we consider the influence of athletics, we may well. inquire into the physical status of the girl. What is the type of the city girl, and is there any reason to believe that she is in need of any new influence to further her development? In age she is presumably under twenty; at all events, she has not yet reached that period of stable womanly development which physiology places at about the age of twenty-five. She is presumably well housed, well fed, and more or less well clothed, according to the intelligence of her guardians. She spends at least half of her young life in the schoolroom, most of that time at a desk in more or less cramped and unfavorable positions. The average city schoolgirl spends from two to four hours daily in study, according to her ambition, takes a music, drawing, or dancing lesson in VOL. XLVI.-11 |