The eminent physicist, Prof. J. C. Poggendorff, for many years professor in the Berlin university, and editor of "Poggendorff's Annalen," has died in Berlin, in his eighty-first year.
The magnitude of the prizes which may be drawn by exploring antiquarians in Europe is shown by the recent finding near Verona, Italy, of two large amphoræ containing 50,000 coins of the Emperor Gallienus and his immediate successors. The majority of them are of bronze, but there are some of silver. Nearly all of them are in the finest state of preservation, and are so fresh from the mint as to make it evident that they were never put into circulation.
Prof. Loomis says that in this country great rainfalls do not generally continue over eight hours, and very rarely do they continue for twenty-four hours, either at one place or a number of places considered successively.
According to the Washington "Gazette," the paint makers are grinding up Egyptian mummies for the fine brown color which they make when powdered. This color is due to the asphaltum with which the cloths wrapped around the mummies was impregnated.
The Washington monument is probably doomed. In its present condition it is a grievous eyesore in the Washington landscape, and a board of army engineers now say that its foundations are not strong enough to permit raising the shaft higher, and it is proposed to take it down.
Mr. H. Byasson has produced a kind of petroleum by the mutual action of steam, carbonic acid, and sulphuretted hydrogen in presence of iron at a white heat. All these substances are known to be contained in the rocks of the earth's crust, which also has at various times afforded the necessary heat.
Gold, though the principal standard of value, is not moved about the world much. The entire import of London, the greatest banking city in the world, was only $116,222,350 in 1876, and the export was $81,097,850. Nearly the whole of the difference went into the vaults of the Bank of England, the stock of which increased $34,992,020.
Prof. Hawes has proved the existence of metallic iron in the basalt dykes of New Hampshire. It exists as small specks in the centre of grains of magnetite. This contradicts the theory that the metallic iron of the dykes is the result of carbon acting upon the magnetite in them, and proves that the iron is the primary and the magnetite the secondary product.
Though agricultural professorships are not considered to have produced all the good that was once expected from them, there is one lately established by the French Government which might well be copied in other countries. It is a professorship of comparative agriculture at Vincennes, and its occupant will make a systematic comparison of home and foreign agriculture.
The character of the Yale lectures to mechanics is seen from the following titles to some of the lectures: "Forester and Forest Products," Prof. William H. Brewer; "Mosses," Prof. C. D. Eaton; "Our Red Sandstone," G. W. Hawes; "The Usury Laws," Prof. F. A. Walker; and "Sanitary Engineering," Prof. W. P. Trowbridge. The course contains thirteen lectures, and costs $1.