Scientific Notes

Flans for a tunnel through the Great St. Bernard have been prepared by M. Vautheleret. British architects appear to concede that plumbing and other sanitary nrrangements oí' American houses aro far botter than those of the English. Cleveland (O.) people are thinking about discontinuing the electric light on better light than beforc. but at four times the cost of the gas formerly emplo}-ed. Paper pulp sü'eugthened with cottou oi1 woolen fibre3 is now used to make a neat and siifficiently durable stocking costing much loss than the price of laundrying a pair of cotton or woolen stockings. A freight-wagon has been patented in Germany that can be drawn on rails or on ordinary roads to the water's edge, when, by unscrewing four HUts, the body of the wagoa is freed from the wheels, and can be tovved to any distance, being thais transformed into a stojit boat. Reeent experiments made in Paris haro been suceessful ia producing artificially in the laboratory specimens of almost all kinds of rocks of igneous formation, such as lava, basalt, etc, thus imitating Nature in her most secret processes, and completing on a small scalc in a few days what she requires years to aceomplish. Some curious facts wero latelv related regarding hydrophobia before the emy of Sciences, Par8, by M. Bert. It eeems that moculation wirh mncusfrom the respiratory passages of a mad dog caused rabies," but tbat with the salivary liquida did not. Keciprocal transfusión of blood between a healthy and a mad dog caused no rabies in the former. A ïnjtlignant tumor, Les Mondes states, was produced on the cheek of a man by the bite of a. large black fly, which was killed in the act. The pustule was cauterized, and the patiënt took internallf in twenty-four hours 500 grains of Spanish wine, 300 grains of rum, and uu grains of Chartreuse without experiencing the least symptoms of intoxicatiou. ! It has recently been discovered that the pericarp or seed vessel of oat3 eontains a certaiD substance which has a peculiarly stimulating effect upon the nervous system, the effect never lastiug more thaa hour, and varving in intensity according to the kind of oats, being more rapidand transitory in lts aetion if the oats have beeü ground. The ueiv substance is an alkaioid, and has received the name of avenine. lts discovery may suggest some valuable pointe to the owners and drivers of racehorses. .