CHRONICLES OF SCIENCE.

1. AGRICULTURE.

THE Cattle Plague has at length dwindled to altogether insignificant proportions. The number of cases reported weekly is rarely more than 10; and an occasional aggravation of the disease, or its reappearance now and then in old localities, raising the weekly total to 20 or 30, while it no doubt shows what a malignant disorder we still retain among us, may, we hope, be taken to be merely the occasional flare of an expiring flame. How much we owe to the policy of extermination, rather than attempted cure, may be seen by the results of the opposite system, as witnessed both in Holland and among ourselves. In the annual address, recently given by the President of the Royal Agricultural Society, it was pointed out that the number of cases reported in two weeks-the one in September, 1865, and the other in September, 1866, was exactly the same. Unrestricted cattle traffic during the two months following the former period, had swelled the tale of cases up to thousands. Destruction of affected stock and absolute isolation of infected places during the two months following the corresponding week of 1866, had reduced the disease almost to extinction. In Holland again, during the past summer, when here the disease was yielding to restrictive measures, it grew to lamentable proportions-rising from two or three hundred cases weekly during June, to nearly eight times as many in September. There is certainly sufficient guidance for us here as to the policy to be followed if the disease should reappear among us in anything like its original severity. Up to the present time about 54 per cent. of the whole cattle stock of Great Britain have been attacked, while of the whole stock upon infected farms, nearly 60 per cent. took the disease. Of the total number of attacks whose results were known, 35 per cent. were killed; 51 per cent. died; and 133 per cent. recovered.

The utilization of Town Sewage was the subject of a conference at Leamington during October, which was attended by a number of gentlemen interested in the solution of the difficulties surrounding the subject. These difficulties are almost entirely the result of an extension of the water-closet system, by which the waste of houses, no longer received into cesspools and carted away to market-gardens, is washed into culverts, and thence pollutes our rivers. The remedy offered by one party to this discussion is the irrigation of grass

lands with the drainage water, which thus becomes clarified before reaching the river, and yields a valuable produce during the process. The other plan consists in the substitution of earth-closets for water-closets in our houses. It only needs that a storage of dry earth be provided for use in this way, and occasionally replenished; that the prejudices of servants be removed or overruled; and that frequent removals of the boxes be provided for. A well-arranged system of scavenging would then be easily carried out with perfect inoffensiveness, both in the house and out; and we should have a most valuable manure, which might be carried, load by load, to farms all round our towns, where loads of top soil for similar use would be readily obtained in exchange for it, the difference in value being paid. The difficulty of displacing the existing system would, however, be very great; and, committed as we are by an enormous expenditure to the plan of keeping our towns clean by washing into drains, it is not at all likely that the earth-closet system will be adopted, except in detached houses or small villages. Meanwhile, at Croydon, at Barking, Rugby, and elsewhere, evidence is accumulating that the irrigation of grass lands with filthy sewage water, is both a perfectly inoffensive and a profitable process.

A meeting of gentlemen interested in the Utilization of Sewage was held in Liverpool in December, and owing probably to the presence of Lord Robert Montagu, who delivered an admirable address on the subject, the attendance was very numerous, and included the élite of the town and neighbourhood. There the advocates of the Earth-Closet were in a decided minority, for the reasons stated-viz. that the system is not suitable for large towns, where the quantity of earth to be carted would be enormous, and because arrangements have already been entered into between the Liverpool Corporation and the Sewage Company, which promoted the meeting, for the utilization of all the sewage of the town.

Most of the statements made by Lord Robert Montagu were repetitions of what is already known to agriculturists, and has been announced from time to time in these pages, but it may be of interest to our readers to know that in Liverpool it is intended to intercept the sewage at the outfall of the sewers, and at first to experiment with it upon the sandy soil skirting the Lancashire and Yorkshire line from Liverpool to Southport. There is a large tract of country all about the north side of Liverpool, which is at present a mere sandy waste, but no doubt the application of sewage water will render it fertile and suitable for the growth of rye-grass, and if the promoters of this sewage scheme can at the same time fertilize waste land, and render the most unhealthy town in England more healthy, they will confer a double favour upon society. They have our very best wishes for their success.

Professor Voelcker has lately given a lecture on the application

of manures before the London Farmers' Club, which is a remarkable illustration of the progress made towards a satisfactory relationship between scientific teaching and farm practice. Instead of treating vegetable growth as a purely chemical phenomenon; or supposing, as lecturers on agricultural chemistry seemed formerly to do, that it only needs the supply of elements in manure to ensure a corresponding assimilation of them by the growing plant, we now learn from the chemist what we already knew by experience, that luxuriance of growth and abundance of produce depend as much upon the mere question of even and uniform distribution of food for plants-as much in fact upon its accessibility-as upon the increase of its supply. We are told, for example, that an inferior guano well powdered and mingled with a sufficient quantity of diluent material so as to ensure its even distribution through the land, may be a greater help to the fertility of the soil and a greater fertilizer of the current crop than a better guano imperfectly applied. It is a truth of the same kind, which Dr. Voelcker also told us, that no manure at all upon a stiff clay land well tilled will tend to its fertility rather than a heavy dressing of farm dung applied when the land is soft and liable to be poached by the horses and carts employed in putting it on.

The application of farm manure as a top dressing in dry weather is now confidently advocated-even though a scorching sun and driving winds should cause the separation of all evaporable matter from it. There is no loss of ammonia during the putrefaction of farm dung. The loss which it suffers during that process is due to the washing of soluble salts out of it by rain. And if the dung be spread at once upon the land, all its valuable constituents will find their way into the soil.

Among the other topics which have occupied the agricultural world during the past quarter, is the growing organization of tenant farmers in Chambers of Agriculture, through which their voice may be heard in public discussions, and through which their views may be influentially urged on Government. We must also refer to the attempt of the Royal Agricultural Society to promote agricultural education by the addition of their prizes to the list of distinctions offered for competition before the University examiners of middleclass schools. And lastly, we may mention that, moved by the disasters of the past harvest season, the Society of Arts is about to offer a prize for any contrivance or machine which shall artificially accomplish or facilitate the drying process on which our hay and corn harvests depend for the quality of their produce.

2. ARCHEOLOGY AND ETHNOLOGY.

THIS Chronicle bears a heading new to the 'Quarterly Journal of Science,' and it may therefore be as well to define at the outset the subjects which we shall attempt to represent in it. Of late years Archæology has dived deeply into the records of our race, bringing to the surface many facts and inferences, which throw light on the most recent portions of Geological History. Ethnology also has made rapid progress, and, from having been a mere catalogue of the characters of the several varieties of one Natural History species, has come to possess a wider scope and a higher aim. Archeology and Ethnology thus shade off, on the one hand, into Geology and Zoology, and on the other, into Modern History and Politics. It is in their former relation only that we shall in this Chronicle discuss their progress, as in this respect only do they concern the student of Natural Science.

We cannot do better than begin our new Chronicle with an account of the great work, entitled 'Reliquiæ Aquitanicæ,'* commenced by the late Mr. Henry Christy, F.R.S., and M. E. Lartêt, and continued by the latter with the assistance of some of the best antiquaries, including Mr. John Evans, Mr. A. W, Franks, and Mr. W. Tipping; it is published at the expense of Mr. Christy's executors, and is edited by Professor T. Rupert Jones. Three parts have now appeared, illustrated by numerous plates and woodcuts; but there does not seem to be any systematic arrangement, the different objects appearing to have been figured and described as convenience, rather than a system, required. The results, however, are sufficiently interesting now, and will probably be made much more so by the inferences which will hereafter be drawn from their consideration by the experienced savans concerned in the publication of the work.

In the Dordogne district the sides of the valley of the Vézère, and of the gorges of its tributary streams, rise in great escarpments, crowned with projecting cornices, below which are seen horizontal niches or hollow flutings; in these cliffs occur also numerous caves and rock-shelters either at the level of the floods of the present day, or higher up, thus showing that no alteration in the level of the district has taken place since their formation. These cavities are for the most part mere shelters, so we must suppose that when they were inhabited by man, as they no doubt were at a remote period, a protection was erected outside them, or that the people using them were extremely uncivilized. Indeed it is evident that they

Reliquiæ Aquitanica. Being Contributions to the Archæology and Paleontology of Perigord and the Adjoining Provinces of Southern France. By Edward Lartêt and Henry Christy. London: Baillière.

were used chiefly as fireplaces, for hearth-stuff is abundantly found in most of them; and it is curious to observe that at the present day the cottages of the district are built in precisely similar positions, the fireplaces being situated in the face of the rock. The hearth-stuff has yielded a mine of organic wealth in the shape of remains of animals, which had been killed for food, consisting chiefly of the reindeer, the horse, and the ox, with the ibex and the chamois. The "wild boar was scarce or but little eaten," and with the ехсерtion of the horse the fauna tends to a northern grouping. The rock-dwellers were not unaccustomed to more delicate food, as is proved by "the many bones of birds and of salmon which are mixed with the refuse;" they also seem to have been very fond of marrow, as the marrow-bones have invariably been split for the purpose of extracting it. The question whether the rock-dwellers cooked their food is at present unsettled. The bones do not show traces of the action of fire, so that the meat could not have been roasted; and there is not sufficient depth of earth below the hearths to encourage the supposition that it was cooked by being buried in the earth, and having a fire lighted over it. Thus there remains but one method possible-boiling that these people boiled water is certain because the "boiling-stones" have been found, and they have evidently been heated for the purpose; but no pottery is forthcoming, so the water was probably boiled in hollows in the rock. The climate of the country at the time when the rock-dwellers peopled it, was, as already indicated by the fauna, very much colder than it is now; but another argument has been very ingeniously used by the authors, namely, that in the South of France at the present day such masses of animal remains as we find in the caves, would speedily become a fearfully decomposing mass; besides which the rockdwellers have "almost invariably chosen a southern exposure, and the warmest and sunniest nooks for their residences." The causes of this colder climate have not yet been entered upon; but as there has been little or no change of level, and there are no high mountains in the vicinity, it will certainly be a puzzle. The implements and the fauna point to a much later period than that usually denominated 'Glacial," so it is unlikely that the cause was cosmical; and it is difficult to conceive what local changes in the character of the surface would have so great an effect.

The implements found in the caves and rock-shelters are wonderfully interesting, and, fortunately for antiquaries, are illustrated with the most prodigal liberality. A comparison of them with recent implements in use amongst uncivilized peoples points in the same direction as the fauna, namely, northwards. The implements are either of flint, bone, or deerhorn, and comprise almost every conceivable variety; in flint "from lance-heads long enough and stout enough to have been used against the largest animals, down