Science And Industry

An International Sanitary Congress will be held at Washington in January, 1881, under the authority of the Government. Prof. Silvestri finds that the summit of Mount Etna has been lowered about forty feet as a result of recent volcanie activity. The boring of the Arlberg Tunnel is in active progress on the Austrian side of the mountain, and ground will shortly be broken on the Swiss side. The attraction of the earth upon a magnetic needie at its surface has been found to be about the same as that of a strongly magnetized hard steel bar forty inches long at a distance of one foot. An appropriation bill passed by the United States House of Representatives provides for a survey of the Gulf Stream froni its origin to the Saragossa Sea. The plan embraces soundings, deep-sea temperatures, and observations of the currents. It has been proposed to utilize the swift current of rivers by systems of anchored floats carrying current wheels eonnected with dynamo-electric apparatus. The electricity thus generated might be used for almost any purpose for which power is required, as well as for lighting towns. Another lako village, assi-ned by experts to the age of bronze, has been discovered at Auvenier.nearNeuchatel. Several millstones quite new, others half made, have been brought to light, from which it is inferred that the place may have been the seat of a manufactory of these articles. The size attained by icebergs is sometimes prodigious. From measurements made upon one, Dr. Hayes estimated it to contain about 27,000,000,000 feet, while its weight must have been not less than 1,000,000,000 tons. It was grounded in water nearly half a mile in depth. What, then, must have been the thickness and size of the glacier from which this mass had become detached. A veky curious proof of the identity of animal and vegetable protoplasm has been supplied by Claude Bernard, who has shown that both are alike sensitive to the influence of anassthetics. Exposed to ether, a sensitive plant no longer closed its leaflets when touched. Assimilation and grovrth, as well as germination, are arrested by chloroform. Schuztenberger has proved that the fresh cells of the yeast plant breathe like an aquatic animal.