The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1868-12-10
Foreign Gossip.

Intelligence has been received that Mr..
Cooper, who is at the head of the Expedition
for the Survey of the Yellow river, made his
way as far as Bathange, when the Chinese
authorities refused to allow him to cross over
into Thibet. Under these circumstances he
determined to fall back on the Bhama route,
in the direction of Calcutta.
-Schoolmasters and pupils who are pre-
pairing for the next Oxford local examination
will learn with vexatiOn-if they are not
already informed-that the French subject for
juniors has just been altered. Instead of
Haur6an's "Charlemagne," as announced in
the programme, dated May 9, it is to be
"Lazare Hoche," by Emile Bonnechose. No
explanation is given, but there must have
been culpable neglect somewhere. The ex-
pense, as we'll as loss OF time and labor, coca
stoned by this change might have been avoided
by due consideration before fixing upon the
subject for examination.
In view of the observations of the transit
of Venus that will doubtless be- made in 1874
and 1882, Mr.. 4. J. Stone, of Greenwich Osser-
vatory, has rediscussed the various observa-
tions made in 1869 by Father Kell, Wales and
Dylnond, Captain Cook, and others; and he
states that the investigation has led him to the
detection OF several grave and fundamental
errors which have previously been made in
the discussion of these results, and to a value
of the solar parallaX entitled to be received
which confirms the long accepted conclusion
that it was ''about s deg. 80 min.," and gets
rid of the serious discrepancies which have
long perpleXed astronomers.
While many are clamoriAg for the abau-
donment of Greek and Latin com position, the
University of London has recognized its value,
by making it one of the requirements for the
degree OF d. Lit, or Doctor of Literature,
which it has recently instituted and in one
nafo 10 10 att OH nah Ia hy
all graduates of en- English university or that
of Dublin, on passing two examinations with
not less than year between them. The first,
which entities the successful candidate to the
degree of M. A, includes the Greek and Latin
classics, with prose composition in Greek,
Latin, and English, and the history of the
world to the end of the eighteenth century.
The subjects of the second are the English
language, English literature and history,
French or German language and literature,
with either of the following languages -
Anglo-Saxon with Icelandic Sanskrit, Arabic,
Hebrew with Syriac.
DR.. Acland says, in his address to the
British Medical Association, "Chemistry,
which used to be chiefly analytical, has now
become enthusiastically synthetical." There
are virtually no limits to the substances which
can be made. Berthelot makes a calculation
of the number of combinations with acids Of
certain alcohols. He says, 'if you gave each
a name, allowing a line for the name, then
printed one hundred lines in a page, and made
volumes of a thousand pages, and placed a
million volumes in library, you would need
fourteen thousand libraries for your cata-
logue." He, therefore, properly calls such
bodies Infinite, instaneing the synthetical con-
struCtion of the alcohol and aldehyde series,
of the organic acids, of the amdes, of urea,
and the millions of possible bodies which loom
in the future-ceTtain to be made, waiting to
be made, the pOssessors OF qualities suspected,
| but unknown.
Mr.. David Forbes has made series of ex-
! periments and observations with view to
arrive at definite conclusions as regards the
contraction, on cooling, of the silicated rocks
which compose SO large portion of the earth 3
crust He found that large masses of artificial
stone, weighing half ton, were as large after
| cooling as the wooden models from which the
! mOulds had been made. The principal ingrs-
dient in the castings here referred to was Row
ley Rag, basaltic rock, which figures largely
in range of hills near Dudley. Experiments
with glass show the shrinksge to be not more
than 4 per cent. of the whole volume. From
these and other facts Mr.. Forbes draws the
conclusion that ''the amount of contraction
which silcated rocks undergo in passing from
the molten to the selid and cold state must
be very much less than usually taken for
granted, and that in consequence of this, the
effects due to such contraction, when con-
sidered in relation to certain geological phe
nomena, have been much overestimated."
"A 'Report on Meteorological Observation
in the Northwestern Provinces of India" has
been printed at Roorkee. II contains the
record of weather for the year 1867, from
twenty-three stations-three on the hills
twenty in the plsns-which include all the
physical features of the country. This is i'm
pOrtant, as observations made at different ele
vations afford means of comparison which
can be turned to good account by meteorolo-
gists. DIR. Murray Thomson, who has draw
up the report, states that native doctors ant
medical students have been trained Il
use the instruments, and from them, whel