For three centuries, Britain has been able to boast that her adventurous sons have penetrated farther towards the frozen north than the sailors of any other nation. She must now yield the palm to America. The interesting story of the rescue of the six survivors of the Greely Expedition—who at the moment of their discovery were listening to prayers for the dying read by one of their number—is only second in interest to the story of Sir John Franklin, whose fate was for so long hidden in mystery. It seems to be a general feeling that no more expeditions to the frozen regions should be attempted. The barren honour of having arrived at a place so inaccessible that nobody has been there before you, is hardly worth the risk of being slowly starved to death. The Greely Expedition originally numbered twenty-five persons, so that nineteen have perished. This is a heavy price to pay for geographical knowledge however valuable; but of the scientific value of the expedition few details are as yet published.
Lieutenant Brown of the United States’ navy has compiled a long official Report for his government on the progress of the Panama Canal, which is not quite so hopeful as the subscribers would desire. He considers that a great portion of the work accomplished is theoretical rather than practical, and that what has been done has been too costly. He thinks it evident that the scheme cannot be accomplished within the estimated cost nor within the stipulated time. Two leading problems are likely to baffle the engineers—one is, how to dispose of the sixty million cubic mètres of earth which must be cut from the hilly part of the isthmus; and the other is the difficulty of dealing with the river Chagres, which was to form part of the channel. In the dry season, this river is a sluggish stream; but after the rains, it is a foaming torrent carrying everything before it. There is also a probability of an epidemic of yellow fever, which is generally of a fatal type in the district.
In the course of two lectures lately delivered at the Health Exhibition by Dr Cobbold upon the subject of Parasites in Food, some very interesting facts came to light. With regard to parasites, he tells us that the dreaded trichinæ, about which so much alarm was created some years ago in connection with the consumption of foreign pork, cannot live after being subjected to a heat of one hundred and twenty-two degrees Fahrenheit, which temperature is of course far below that to which meat is subjected in ordinary cooking. Referring to the late mackerel scare, the lecturer said that the entozoa of this fish were perfectly innocuous to mankind whether they were swallowed alive or dead. There are altogether no fewer than fourteen different kinds of parasites which find their home in the mackerel. Speaking of vegetarianism, he said that it was a mistake to suppose that those who eschewed flesh-foods had any consequent immunity from diseases provoked by parasites; on the contrary, the most common parasite known in this country was a vegetable feeder which could easily be received into the system by carelessly washed salads, &c.
A Java correspondent of our contemporary, Nature, relates a curious instance of cannibalism among snakes which came under his notice. He had killed close to his house a snake of very deadly character. Upon examining it some time later he found, protruding from its mouth, the tail of another snake, which eventually turned out to be of the same species and only a few inches shorter than its host. The natives of the place gave it as their opinion that the two creatures had been fighting, and that the victor had swallowed the vanquished. Another correspondent of the same journal tells of a similar case which he saw in India.
It deserves to be placed on record that the University of London have for the first time conferred the high degree of D.Sc. upon a lady. Mrs Sophia Bryant, by whom this honour has been achieved, is the daughter of the Rev. Dr Willock, late rector of Cleenish, Enniskillen, and Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin. Mrs Bryant has for some time held the position of mathematical mistress at the North London Collegiate School for Girls.
An interesting article upon a very curious subject is contributed by M. C. E. Brown-Sequard to the French journal La Nature. This article takes for its title ‘Attitudes after Death,’ and deals with the numerous instances, on the field of battle and in other situations, where dead bodies have been found—sitting on horseback in one instance, raising a cup to the lips in another, transfixed in the position last assumed when sudden death came upon them. One case is very remarkable. A brakesman on an American railway was shot by a guerrilla, who lay in ambush in a forest through which the train passed. As he was shot, the unfortunate man was in the act of putting on the brake. His body remained fixed, his arms and hands stiff on the brake-wheel, whilst the pipe he was smoking remained between his teeth. It was extremely difficult to make the corpse let go its hold. The writer of the paper points out that this fixture of the body is quite different from the ordinary rigidity of death; and he believes that it depends upon the production of a persistent muscular action, like the fixed spasm often seen in hysterical or paralytic subjects. It is an act of life, but the last one.
For a long time, and more particularly since telephones have come into common use, it has been seen that our telegraphic methods are open to very great improvement. At present, each letter of every word transmitted requires one or more distinct signals, either by right or left deflections of a needle, or, as in the Morse method, by dots and dashes. In Signor Michela’s steno-telegraph, which bids fair to come into very extended use, this difficulty is obviated. It works on the phonetic system; that is to say, the various sounds which go to make up speech—be the language that common to any European country—are grouped into series and represented by certain signs, each word being, as it were, dissected into sound-values. The system is, in fact, that of a telegraphic shorthand. The transmitting instrument consists of two keyboards, each having ten keys, each key communicating with a style on the receiving instrument, which prints a sign representing a particular sound. With such an apparatus, a skilled operator can telegraph words as they fall from the lips of a speaker as readily as a shorthand reporter can write them down. The system has for some time been in use in the Italian Senate, and is now on an experimental trial in Paris. Whether it prove to be the telegraph of the future or not, it most certainly is constructed on a correct basis. We propose shortly to notice it more fully.
An invention which is said to be largely used in America has lately formed the subject of some interesting and successful experiments in London. Introduced by Messrs G. H. Gardner & Co., Southwark Bridge Road, London, it is known as the Harden Hand Grenade Fire-extinguisher, and consists of a glass flask containing a chemical liquid, which, when the flask is broken, emits a copious supply of that enemy to combustion, carbonic acid gas. The experiments were of the usual type—miniature conflagrations being put out readily when a grenade was thrown upon them. The extreme simplicity of the system is one of its chief recommendations; for the flasks, ornamental in appearance, can be disposed throughout a house, and are then ready for immediate use, in case an incipient fire should break out. They therefore take the place of the cumbrous fire-bucket, which is too often, when wanted, found to be empty.
So much has been published relative to smoke abatement in our large towns, and so little has been actually accomplished towards the solution of the problem, that many are beginning to despair, and to believe that the evil must be allowed to continue. Factories, which are the chief offenders, have been to some extent dealt with by law, and are now supposed to consume their own smoke; but the private householder, who contributes no small share of the carbon sent into the atmosphere, has, even if he had the will, been almost powerless in the matter. A stove has just been invented which, it may be hoped, will put a different complexion on the subject. At the back of the grate is a receptacle for the coals, which, by the action of a loose vertical iron plate, are forced forward to be consumed, so that the fuel is partly coked before it reaches the front of the fire. By an ingenious arrangement, the products of combustion are not carried direct to the chimney, but are delivered beneath the grate. This perfect combustion stove is the invention of Mr H. Thompson, of 29 Marquess Road, Canonbury, London.
Most people will be glad to hear that the guardians of our national picture-galleries have at last consented to allow their art treasures to be copied by photography. Why this permission has been delayed so long is strange, for nearly every continental gallery has long ago distributed fac-similes of its contents to willing purchasers. There is one advantage gained in the delay, for by modern processes every touch of the artist’s brush may be faithfully portrayed in the copy, and, moreover, that copy is of a permanent nature. In front of the National Gallery, London, a temporary structure has been erected into which the pictures can be carried to be operated upon in a good light. By this means, a far more satisfactory result can be obtained than by carrying the camera to the pictures as they hang upon the walls.