For this purpose four tubes of hard Bohemian glass were prepared, and about half-filled with a liquid consisting of Carbonate of ammonia,- Distilled water, 15 grains. 1 oz. No care was taken to exclude living germs from these ingredients, reliance being placed, for the destruction of their vitality, upon the high temperature to which they were afterwards subjected. These tubes were carefully exhausted by means of the Sprengel pump, and hermetically sealed; they were then, on July 18, 1870, exposed for four hours to a temperature varying from 155° to 160° C. in a Papin's digester. After being allowed to cool, the digester was opened, and the tubes immediately plunged, two of them into colorless concentrated oil of vitriol, and the remaining two into a nearly colorless saturated solution of carbolic acid in water. These precautions were taken in order to avoid the possible admission of atmospheric germs through invisible cracks in the glass; such cracks, entirely invisible to the eye, are known sometimes to exist, and to be in some cases so excessively minute as to require several days for the admission of enough air to perceptibly impair a torricellian vacuum within. By keeping the tubes entirely immersed in liquids which are immediately fatal to vitality, I hoped to meet any objections that might be raised, in the event of living organisms being subsequently found in the tubes, that the germs of such organisms had gained access to the enclosed liquids through invisible fissures in the glass. On examining them when they came out of the digester, it was evident that the interior walls of the glass tubes had been corroded by the enclosed liquid, and as the tubes had stood upright in the digester, it was easy to see, by the sharp limits of the erosion, the extent to which the liquid had expanded under the influence of the high temperature to which it had been exposed. The cylinders containing the immersed tubes were now maintained at a temperature from 60° to 75°F., and were exposed to bright diffused daylight, and sometimes to sunlight, for a period of more than five months. The liquid in all the tubes became more or less turbid, and in some cases a small quantity of a light flocculent precipitate subsided to the bottom. On the 24th of December last two of the tubes, which exhibited the greatest turbidity, were selected for examination (one of them having been immersed in concentrated sulphuric acid, the other in the solution of carbolic acid). The vacuum was unimpaired, and the liquid in the interior formed a good water hammer. These tubes were opened in the presence of Prof. Huxley and Mr. Busk, and we submitted their contents to a searching microscopical examination with powers varying from th to th. Especially was the flocculent sediment in the tubes subjected to careful inspection. So far as the optical appearances presented by the sediment go, they may be appropriately described in the terms which Dr. Bastian applied to the matter found by him in a solution of like composition and similarly treated (see Nature, July 7, 1870, p. 200). "A number of little figure-of-eight particles, each of which was goooo" in diameter, were seen in active movement, even in situations where they could not have been influenced by currents. The portions of the pellicle were made up of large, irregular, and highly refractive protein-looking particles imbedded in a transparent jelly-like material. The particles were most varied in size and shape, being often variously branched and knobbed. There were also seen several very delicate, perfectly hyaline vesicles, about godoo" in diameter, these being altogether free from solid contents." But the movement of the particles which were observed was obviously mere Brownian motion; and many of the particles were evidently minute splinters of glass. There was not the slightest evidence of life in any of the particles. The water on the slide containing these solid matters was evaporated off, and they were treated with hot concentrated sulphuric acid, the temperature of the slide being raised to about 100° C. There was no blackening, and the rounded and dendritic bodies remained as entirely unaltered as the glass splinters. Indeed, some of the larger spheroidal bodies were evidently rounded particles of glass which had become detached from the inner walls of the tube by the corrosive action of the enclosed liquid at the high temperature to which it had been exposed in the digester.Nature, Jan. 19, 1871. 2. Statistics of Mines and Mining in the States and Territories west of the Rocky Mountains; by ROSSITER W. RAYMOND, U. S. Commissioner in Mining Statistics. Exec. Document No. 207, 41st Congress. 806 pp 8vo. Washington, 1870. (Government Printing Office).This Report treats with great fulness of the conditions of Mining Industry in all-the various mining regions through the States and Territories of the far west, and is evidently the result of a vast amount of judicious labor on the part of the Commissioner, Mr. Raymond. Besides its two chapters of details on the mines, their history, conditions, methods of working, expenses, etc., and general reviews of the mining regions, it has chapters on the U. S. Mining Law; Mineral Deposits; and Metallurgical Processes; and 225 pages are devoted to a very valuable and well illustrated memoir on the Mechanical Apparatus of Mining, by Wm. P. Blake. The volume is one of great public importance, and should have a wide distribution through the land. 3. Fall of rain at Hilo, Hawaii (Sandwich Islands), lat. 19° 42' N., long. 155° 5' W.-The following statement of the fall of rain at a station on the Sandwich Islands, is put on record in this Journal, because the amount of rain is very remarkable, and because the number of stations within the tropics for which we have a record of the rain-fall, is quite limited. The observations were made by Rev. Titus Coan, missionary of the American Board, with a rain-gauge made by Prof. Chester S. Lyman of Yale College. The amount of rain for each day is recorded in inches and thousandths of an inch. The total amount which fell during the year was over 182 inches; and of this 90.7 inches fell in the night. The greatest amount which fell in any one month was 38 156 inches, in March. The greatest amount which fell in one day was 10-466 inches, on March 21st. 10-685 4.963 12·643|25·442 13·937 21-515 9.946 38 156 18.865 10.680 5.256 9.919 • Gauge leaked. Total, 182,007 inches. +Record of these days lost. New 4. A short course in Astronomy and the use of Globes; by HENRY KIDDLE, A. M., Superintendent of Schools, New York, Author of a "New Manual of the Elements of Astronomy.' York, 1871. (Ivison, Blakeman, Taylor & Co.)-This little book, of 190 pages, beautifully printed and illustrated, contains, in concise language, an outline of the elements of Astronomy, so presented as to make it a good text book for schools, especially in the hands of teachers capable of supplementing its condensed statements and explanations with suitable oral instruction. It appears to be accurate as to facts, clear in expression as its brevity permits, and conformed, in the main, to the latest and best authorities on the matters of which it treats. OBITUARY. WILLIAM CHAUVENET, LL.D., Ex-Chancellor of Washington University, St. Louis, died in St. Paul, Minnesota, 13 Dec., 1870, at a little more than fifty years of age. He had long been in poor health, and on this account resigned his connection with the University in 1869. After traveling in the South without the restora tion hoped for, he returned to St. Louis in June, and in the autumn went to St. Paul to try that climate; but his disease terminated at last in paralysis of the cerebellum. He was buried in St. Louis. Chancellor Chauvenet was born in Milford, in northeastern Pennsylvania, and removed at an early age with his parents to Philadelphia. His father, William M. Chauvenet, was a grocer, and wished his son to succeed him in his business; he was with difficulty persuaded by his son's teacher to develop the boy's decided mathematical taste by a College course. In 1836 he entered Yale College, and graduated with distinction in 1840. Immediately afterward he was employed under Professor Bache in taking meteorological observations at the Girard College Observatory, but resigned in 1841 to accept the position of instructor in mathematics at the U. S. Naval Asylum in Philadelphia. Shortly after, when it was proposed to found a Naval Academy at Annapolis, the measure found a warm advocate in the young Professor, and when the institution was established in 1845, he was made one of the Board of Directors, Professor of Astronomy and Mathematics, and Director of the Observatory. For the next fourteen years he was acknowledged as the chief agent in building up the Academy. In 1859 he was elected Professor of Astronomy and Mathematics in Washington University, St. Louis, and at the same time was offered the professorship of Natural Philosophy and Astronomy in Yale College, where the chair of Mathematics had also been at his disposal a few years before. He accepted the professorship in St. Louis, and began his work there in the autumn of 1859. Three years later, on the death of his classmate, Chancellor Hoyt, the office of Chancellor of the University was also given him. In addition to his professional labors, Chancellor Chauvenet was the author of several scientific works of recognized merit. The first was a text-book, entitled "Binomial Theorem and Logarithms." (Philad., 1843. 92 pp. 8vo). The standard character of his second work-" A Treatise on Plane and Spherical Trigonometry," (Philad., 256 pp. 8vo),-is attested by the fact that its sales were greater in 1869, nineteen years after its first issue, than in any previous year. In 1863 he published a "Manual of Spherical and Practical Astronomy," (2 vols. 8vo, pp. 708, 632, Philad.), the original and exhaustive character of which has been noticed by the late Professor Bond in this Journal, 2d series, vol. xxxvi, pp. 159, 378. His last work, on Elementary Geometry, written during his decline in health, was noticed in the last volume of this Journal. Professor Chauvenet also furnished valuable contributions to this Journal, to Gould's Astronomical Journal, to the Proceedings of the American Association, etc. He was a collaborator in the preparation of the American Ephemeris and Nautical Almanac, for which he furnished tables for correcting lunar distances, a method of finding the error and rate of a chronometer by equal altitudes, etc. He married, 30 Dec., 1841, Miss Catharine Hemple, of Philadel phia, who survives him with five of their six children. THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SCIENCE AND ARTS. [THIRD SERIES.] ART. XXXIII-Notice of the discovery of a Cave in Eastern Pennsylvania, containing remains of Post-Pliocene Fossils, including those of Mastodon, Tapir, Megalonyx, Mylodon, etc.; by CHARLES M. WHEATLEY. THE remains herein described were recently discovered in what was at one time a cave, in the limestone quarries at Port Kennedy, Upper Merion township, Montgomery county, Pa., owned by John Kennedy, Esq., to whom I am indebted for the possession of the remains, and who has afforded me every facility for exploration and investigation. The cave is in the Auroral Limestone of Rogers, regarded as the equivalent of the Black River and Chazy Limestones and Calciferous Sand Rock of New York, at its junction with the Mesozoic Red Sandstone and near a belt of the Primal series of Rogers, (fig. 1.) Caves of more or less extent have often been met with in these quarries; but most of them have been entirely worked away in getting out the stone for lime, and, as far as ascertained, none of them communicated with the surface, or contained any organic remains. Recently, however, in cutting through the floor of a small cave, nearly the whole of the walls of which cave had been removed for lime, the workmen found a tooth. This tooth was brought to me by Dr. Quick of Phoenixville, as a tooth of the Mastodon. In company with him I immediately visited the locality, and found one end of the cave remaining, and having the form in a transverse section exhibited in figure 2. The width at the top is about twenty feet; below, it gradually expands to thirty feet; and then there is a rapid contraction AM. JOUR. SCI.-THIRD SERIES, VOL. I, No. 4.—APRIL, 1871, |