Experiments made by Professor Dewar and Sir W. Thisleton Dyer, and reported to the British Association, upon the effect of the temperature of liquid hydrogen upon the germinative power of seeds, go to show that life goes on at a temperature so low that ordinary chemical action is practically stopped. Seeds of barley, vegetable marrow, mustard, and the pea were immersed in liquid hydrogen for six hours, cooled to a temperature of 453° F. below the temperature of melting ice, and came out unchanged to the eye, and, when planted, all germinated.
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Sir John Lubbock, having been raised to the peerage, has adopted Lord Avebury as his title, and will be henceforth so known.
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In our obituary list of men known to science are the names of N. E. Green, F. R. A. S., who was distinguished for the excellence of his planetary observations, particularly of Mars, made at Madeira in 1877, and was the second President of the British Astronomical Association, died November 10th, in his seventy-sixth year; Prof. E. E. Hughes, inventor of the Hughes printing telegraph machine, the microphone, and the induction balance, Fellow of the Royal Society, gold medalist, and Chevalier of the Legion of Honor, who was born in London in 1831 and was brought to the United States at an early age; Mr. J. R. Gregory, mineralogist; M. Marion, professor in the Scientific Faculty in the University of Marseilles and Keeper of the Natural History Museum there, who took part in the dredging trips of the Travailleur and the Talisman, and contributed to the Annales of the museum at Marseilles; Dr. Hans Bruno Geinitz, geologist and paleontologist, at Dresden, Saxony, in his eighty-sixth year; Walter Götze, botanist, while on an expedition to German East Africa, December 9th; and Mr. W. T. Suffolk, treasurer of the Royal Microscopical Society of Great Britain.
PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.
Agricultural Experiment Stations. Bulletins and Reports. Connecticut: Twenty-third Annual Report. Part I. Fertilizers. Pp. 92; Bulletin No. 130. Commercial Feeding Stuffs in the Connecticut Market.—North Dakota Weather and Crop Service, November, 1899, and January, 1900. Pp. 8 each.—United States Department of Agriculture: Agrostology Circular No. 54. Smooth Brome-Grass. Pp. 10; No. 57. Experiments with Forage Plants in Ontario. Pp. 3; Meteorological Chart of the Great Lakes. Summary for the Season of 1899. Vol. II, No. 9. By Alfred J. H. Henry and Norman B. Conger. Pp. 28, with maps.—West Virginia: Bulletin No. 61. Sheep-Feeding Experiments. By J. H. Stewart and Horace Atwood. Pp. 10; No. 62. A Study of the Effect of Incandescent Gaslight on Plant Growth. By L. C. Corbett. Pp. 38, with plates.
American Grocer Publishing Company. Scientific Testimony against the use of Alum in Food. (Evidence before the United States Senate Investigating Committee.) Pp. 12.
Andrews, William. The Diuturnal Theory of the Earth, or Nature’s System of constructing a Stratified Physical World. New York: Myra Andrews and Ernest G. Stevens, 18 West Forty-fifth Street.