Scientific Serials

Abstract

American Journal of Science, June.—Electro-chemical effects due to magnetisation, by George Owen Squier.—Nikitin on the quaternary deposits of Russia and their relations to prehistoric man, by A. A. Wright. A summary of the views laid before the International Congress of Archæology in Moscow, 1892, by the Russian geologist, Mr. S. Nikitin, regarding the palæolithic and neolithic epochs in European Russia, and their coincidence with the geological divisions of pleistocene and modern.—Rigidity not to be relied upon in estimating the earth's age, by Osmond Fisher. A criticism of Mr. Clarence King's estimate of the probable age of the earth on the ground of its assumed rigidity not being an established fact. The argument derived from tidal action is fully discussed. Had the solid part of the earth so little rigidity as to allow it to yield in its own figure very nearly as much as if it were fluid, there would be very nearly nothing of what we call tides–that is to say, rise and fall of the sea relatively to the land—but sea and land together would rise or fall a few feet every twelve lunar hours. This would be the case if the geological hypothesis of a thin crust were true. This is the argument for tidal rigidity as enunciated by Kelvin. But this does not take into account the horizontal motion of the water. It rests upon the equilibrium theory of tides as against the canal theory. The latter has been symbolically worked out by Prof. G. H. Darwin. If the earth's interior be assumed to be a liquid of small viscosity, the bodily tide at its equilibrium value will have a height of if feet. This will diminish the hydrodynamical tide by not more than a fifth of its value, and it is quite possible that the tides we actually experience may be tides thus diminished by the fluidity of the earth's interior.—On the treatment of barium sulphate in analysis, by J. I. Phinney. The author shows that alkaline chlorides contaminate barium sulphate thrown down in the presence of an excess of sulphuric acid, and that the process of purifying by hydrochloric acid is inefficient. The only good method for purification is either to fuse, according to Fresenius, with sodium carbonate, extracting and reprecipitating as sulphate, or to evaporate from solution in concentrated sulphuric acid according to Mar.—On the nature of certain solutions and on a new means of investigating them, by M. Carey Lea. The solutions in question are those of sulphates which were tested for free sulphuric acid by a solution of iodoquinia, a very delicate and trustworthy test. Solutions of heavy metallic sulphates, with the exception of ferrous sulphate, contain no free acid. All sesquisulphates examined were dissociated in solution. So were acid salts and alums, with the exception of chrome alum.—Also papers by Messrs. Fairbanks, Moses, Penfield, Johnson, and Pupin.