Disinfection by Heat and by Steam. Dr. II. F. Parsons has found, in experiments on the disinfection of packages by heat and by steam, that dry heat at the boiling point for an hour is sufficient to destroy active bacilli of all ordinary infectious diseases; but, if spores are to be attacked, a heat of 245° for an hour or of 220° for four hours will be required. The complete penetration of an object by steamheat for more than five minutes is sufficient for its full disinfection; and this method is applicable to such articles as pillows, which are very difficult of penetration to dry heat. Moistening the air of the heated chamber diminishes the time necessary for penetration, while it also makes the distribution of temperature through the chamber more agreeable, and tends to prevent the scorching of articles placed in it; but it was not found to increase the disinfecting power at the temperature employed. Damage may be done to articles in disinfecting them by heat or steam, by scorching or partial decomposition of organic substances; by fixing of stains; by melting of fusible substances; by changes in color, gloss, etc.; by shrinking and felting of woolen materials; or by wetting. The nature of the articles should, therefore, be regarded in adapting the process to them.

English Taxes.-The first recorded tax imposed upon Britain was laid by Julius Cæsar, who, after his victories, required for Rome an annual tribute of men and wild animals-the men to be kept as hostages, the animals to be fought with in the arena. When ecclesiastical domination came in, the Pope levied a "Peter's pence" for the sup port of his English University at Rome. When the English conquered Wales, they levied on the people an annual tax of three hundred wolves' heads, which proved a great blessing to the principality. After England became exposed to great danger from the incursions of the Northmen, a land-tax of twelve pence per "hide" was levied in order to raise a sum with which to buy off the invaders. The consequence of this silly policy was that more invaders came to be bought off. A poll-tax was imposed in the fifteenth century of one shilling a year upon every person, except he belonged to the

clergy, above the age of fifteen years. This was distasteful to the people, and led to rebellion. In another form of taxation, laborers and tradesmen were required to give their services to the king or to a noble. Many palaces, Windsor Castle among them, were built in this way. From 1695, for thirteen years, every person not a pauper was required to pay a tax for each child born to him, rising from two shillings in the case of a common person to thirty pounds in the case of a duke. A bachelor's tax of one shilling in the case of ordinary persons was imposed on unmarried men over twenty-five years old, and on widowers without children, but wealthy people and nobles had to pay more. By Queen Elizabeth's act of uniformity, persons who refused to become Episcopalians, or who absented themselves from church on Sundays, had to pay a tax of a shilling a year. Perhaps the most oppressive and impolitic taxes imposed by the British Government were those on windows and on funerals, with which even the history of this nineteenth century has been blotted.

NOTES.

THE second ten days of January were extraordinarily cold all through the Northwest, and temperatures were registered at some places much below what had ever before been observed in the United States. At Iowa City, according to Professor Hinrichs, the mercury was at or below zero every night from the 11th to the 20th. During the twenty-eight years that weather observations have been taken, there have

been only five decades having a mean temperature of zero or below; only one of these was during the first eighteen years, while the other four were during the last ten years. This shows that extreme cold has been seven times more frequent during the latter than dication of what the author has often held, during the former years, and is another inthat the later winters in Iowa have been colder than the former ones.

A "CABLE anchor" has been success

fully tried in the Seine for stopping boats. The apparatus is a cable, having on it a series of canvas cones, which open out by the action of the water, and close again when drawn the usual way. A steamer running thirteen knots was stopped each time by the apparatus in thirteen seconds, and in a space of from twenty to thirty feet.

PROFESSOR MUSHKETOFF describes the effects of the operations of the marmots in modifying the surface of the Siberian steppes as important. Their heaps of earth cover hundreds of square miles, and each one of them represents at least two cubic metres of earth removed, or about 30,000 cubic metres brought to the surface on each square kilometre.

THE survey and last census of India show that the area of the peninsula of Hindostan is 1,382,624 square miles, and the population 253,891,821. Although immense tracts of country are annually cultivated, ten million acres of land suitable for cultivation have not as yet been plowed; and one hundred and twenty million acres are returned as waste lands.

M. Jovis, Director of the Aeronautic Union of France, has found a satisfactory varnish for textile materials. It is described as being of great flexibility, as containing no oleaginous base, and, while adding little to the weight, as conferring great impermeability. It is well adapted for balloons, marine cordage, sails, tents, and similar structures; is suitable for paintings and wainscotings; is exempt from moldiness; can be exposed to very varied temperatures without alteration; and furnishes sub-products which can be utilized for coating walls, railway-sleepers, etc.

PROFESSOR W. MATTIEU WILLIAMS offers

as a better explanation than the old one of the zigzag course of lightning, that owing to variations of moisture the conducting power of different portions of air is variable, and the electric discharge follows the course of

least resistance.

EXPERIENCE at the Winter Palace of the Czar at St. Petersburg indicates that the electric light injures the exotic plants used for the decoration of the rooms by causing the leaves to turn yellow, dry up, and fall off. The experiments of Dr. Siemens led him to a different conclusion, but his greenhouse was heated by the waste steam from the engine driving his dynamo, and this perhaps was of beneficial effect sufficient to counteract the mischief done by the light.

M. BONNAL has observed, by experiment, that hot baths induce a loss of weight caused by the sweating, which lasts for about twenty-four hours. It is compensated for by increased drinking and diminished urinary secretion. Baths of dry hot air provoke a sweat that ceases on coming out of the bath, while the perspiration provoked by warm-water baths and warm moist-air baths lasts frequently for an hour after the bath is over. The nervous incidents of the bath, such as the acceleration of the pulse and of respiration, make their appearance before the central temperature exhibits any clevation.

J. CHALMERS ROBERTSON, M. B., relates in "The Lancet" the case of a family whom he had attended, who were poisoned from eating bread in which mold had developed itself. Every member who had partaken of the loaf in ordinary quantity had been made ill; one member who had merely caten a small piece, felt uncomfortable; those who did not eat any remained well. The symptoms were diarrhoea and pain in the epigastrium. The author suggests from this experience, that it is possible that we may have in undetected diseased bread an important factor in the causation of diarrhoea which we would not readily suspect.

PERSONS whose plants mysteriously sick. en and die out, may learn from the experience of Dr. J. W. L. Thudicum, as related by him to the London Society of Arts. He watered a frame of flourishing young wallflowers, the ordinary tap being dry, with water of at least suspicious purity from another tap. The plants were soon infected with a fungus, and in a short time the frame did not contain a healthy, hardly a living plant. For two summers the mignonettes in a conservatory were destroyed by a root-fungus which distorted the plants and way in which this parasite could be got rid made them sickly and short-lived. The only of was by destroying the earth and all woodin the conservatory for two years. en boxes by fire, and growing no mignonette

MR. MAIGNEN made last year a successful and satisfactory exhibition of his process for softening water by means of the material called "anti-calcaire." Steam-boilers which had already become slightly incrusted with lime, were worked for two years with water softened by anti-calcaire without attention. When opened, they were wholly free from incrustation, showing that the material had not only prevented the effect taking place, but had also destroyed what incrustations had already accrued.

Some are poisonous when eaten; others are merely venomous. Among the first are many spheroids, a tetrodon, and many Clupea, which are abundant near the Cape of Good Hope. In the Japan Sea is found a very peculiar tetrodon, which is sometimes used as a means of suicide. It brings on sensations like those produced by morphia, and then death.

THE nervous irritation produced by tinnitus, or noises in the ear, from which many persons suffer much, has been mentioned as a possible cause of mental disorder. The coarser diseases of the ear are subject to surgical treatment from without; but nervous affections provoked by obscure disorders are not so amenable, because their causes are more subtle, although none the less real. Sometimes an obstruction of the eustachian tube may be the chief cause of tinnitus.

OBITUARY NOTES.

DR. ASA GRAY, the eminent botanist, died at his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, January 30th, in the seventy-eighth year of his age, after an illness of about a month. He was born in Paris, Oneida County, New York, in 1810; studied medicine, and received the degree of M. D. in 1831, but never engaged in practice; became an assistant in the chemical laboratory of Dr. John Torrey in 1833; and a little later was appointed curator in the Lyceum of Natural History. His first botanical writings were descriptions of sedges and of certain plants of northern and western New York. In the "Elements of Botany," published in 1836, he showed that he had already views of his own, which

he was not afraid to utter, even though they might be different from those of the then recognized authorities in science. From that time till the end of his life he worked with unceasing activity and growing fame, and for many years he has been recognized as one of the leading botanists of the worid. His numerous works are well known to all readers and students, and can not be catalogued in a note. It is enough to say of them that whichever class of them we regard, they have never been excelled.

of various metals, and translated and edited Kobbe's "Inorganic Chemistry."

PROFESSOR BONAMY PRICE, Professor of Political Economy in the University of Oxford, died in London, January 8th. He was born in Guernsey in 1807; was one of the masters in Dr. Arnold's school at Rugby from 1830 to 1850; and was one of the recognized authorities in his special branch of research. His lectures, in their published form, have had an important economic influence. They include "The Principles of Currency" (1869), and "Chapters on Political Economy" (1878). In 1876 Professor Price published another work, "On Currency and Banking."

DR. CARL PASSAVANT, the African trav eler, died recently at Honolulu, in the thirtyfourth year of his age.

DR. FERDINAND VANDEVEER HAYDEN, a geologist whose name is inseparably associated with the Government explorations of the Rocky Mountain region, died in Philadelphia, December 22d, after an illness of Massachusetts, in 1829, and was graduated many months. He was born in Westfield, from Oberlin College in 1850, and from the Albany Medical College in 1853. He was eonnected for more than twenty years, a great part of the time as chief, with the explorations of the Western Territories, including Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, New Mexico, Dakota, Montana, Idaho, and Utah. Besides the official reports of his exploring work, he was the author of the books, "The Great West; its Attractions and Resources (1880), and “North America" (1883). He scientific societies, and an honorary and corresponding member of many foreign so

was a member of most of the American

cieties.

M. F. J. RAYNAUD, an eminent French electrician and director of the Higher School of Telegraphy, died early in January, from the results of a murderous attack. He was associated with the laying of several telegraphic cables, one of which, crossing the Seine, having been broken, he repaired in 1870, in the face of the enemy's fire. Ile was the first person to call the attention of French men of science to the labors of Englishmen in electric unities; and he translated Gordon's "Treatise on Physics" into French.

DR. MAX SCHUSTER, an eminent petrolo gist, of the University of Vienna, died last November.