important technical publication on the Continent. As an investigator he is also well known by his elaborate researches on

WE greatly regret to announce the death of Sir Benjamin C. Brodie, Bart., F.R.S., the eminent chemist and late Professor of Chemistry in the University of Oxford. He died on Wednesday, last week, at Torquay, in the sixty-fourth year of his age. We hope to be able to give a detailed notice of Sir Benjamin's life and work in a future number.

THE death, on Sunday, is announced of Mr. Mark Firth, at Sheffield, in the sixty-second year of his age. Mr. Firth was eminent for his discriminating liberality, and will be specially known to our readers as the founder of the well-known Firth College, Sheffield, opened by Prince Leopold last year.

PROF. J. CHARLES D'ALMEIDA, whose sudden death at Paris we mentioned a fortnight since, was one of the prominent leaders in the scientific circles of the French capital. Formerly a Professor of Physics in the Lyceum of Henry IV., he had occupied for some years past the important and responsible position of Inspector-General of Public Instruction. A strong Liberal in matters of education, he exercised a marked influence in the late reorganisation of the French educational system. It was almost entirely owing to his efforts that the Société Française de Physique owes its creation, and since its origin he has occupied

the post of secretary. As an investigator D'Almeida is best known by his valuable researches on the phenomena of electrolysis, on galvanic batteries, on capillary phenomena, &c. One of the most remarkable services he has rendered was the invention of the photographic despatches by means of which, during the siege of Paris, the inhabitants of the city were enabled to avail themselves so extensively of the otherwise limited services of the "pigeon post."

A SHORT time ago we alluded to the severe loss to chemical and technical literature by the death of Prof. von Wagner, who for twenty-five years past has conducted so ably his admirable Jahresbericht für die chemische Technologie. The difficult question of finding a successor in the editorship of this important annual has been happily solved by the choice of Dr. Ferd. Fisher, Professor of Technology at the Polytechnic of Hanover. For a long time past Prof. Fisher has rendered valuable literary services in editing Dingler's Polytechnisches Journal, the most

and on

numerous other chemical and technical questions. Under the new auspices the Jahresbericht has every reason to look forward to a continuance of its successful career.

M. CHARCOT reopened last week his course of botany at Salpetrière, where he exhibited last year the curious phenomena of female patients suffering from neuro-mental affections. New instances will be produced of cures analogous to the troubles regarded in medieval times as produced by demoniacal agency or cured by witchcraft.

IN a lecture on earthquakes delivered in Vienna on the 22nd inst., Prof. v. Hochstetter designated the Agram earthquake (affecting elliptically a region of 60 to 80 German miles diameter, and having its larger axis directed south-south-west to northnorth-east) as a tectonic or dislocation-earthquake-a name which originated with the Austrian geologist Prof. Hörnes. Prof. Süss expressed a similar opinion in a lecture on November 24, "On Earthquakes in the Alps."

ON Sunday evening, about six o'clock, slight shocks of earthquake were felt at two different places in Scotland—ɔne being Callander, in Perthshire, and the other Inverary, in Argyllshire. The two districts affected are about forty miles apart, in a line

due east and west. The shock was also felt at Rothesay and

Stornoway.

In the north of Ireland during Sunday evening and also the earlier hours of yesterday morning several decided its vicinity. The disturbance was more particularly felt at shocks of earthquake were felt, especially in Londonderry and Innishowen, and it seemed to travel across the bed of the River Foyle to the County Derry side, where the effects were felt strongly.

AT DORTMUND there was a slight shock of earthquake on November 25, and a smart one on the 27th.

MR. MUNDELLA has been speaking on education again, repeating essentially the old story, that our country must lose in the race unless, as in other countries, education in science is made an imperative part of elementary education. We have many natural and traditional advantages over other countries, but all these must in the long run succumb to scientific training.

A MAGNIFICENT lacustrine find has been made in the marshes of Corcelletes, near Consise, in Canton Vaud. It consists of a

fine canoe in a perfect state of preservation, II metres 16 centimetres long, and slightly more than a metre broad. It was dug out and drawn from the marsh by sixty men and eight oxen, under the superintendence of the director of the Museum of Lausanne, and has been placed in the court of the Lausanne Academy, where it is destined to remain.

WE have before us the reports for last year of the two clubs which have for their object the furtherance of the special study of British plants and their distribution over the surface of the islands. The Botanical Exchange Club has been in existence about twenty-five years, and was a continuation of the London Botanical Society. The Secretary sends out each spring a list of the plants that are wanted, and the members, who are about thirty in number, at Christmas send in their parcels and lists of desiderata. All doubtful specimens are submitted to competent referees, and after the distribution is made a report is published on critical forms and extensions of distribution. The most interesting find noticed this year is the discovery of Herniaria hirsuta, a plant spread widely through the southern half of Europe, by Mr. Fred. Townsend at Christchurch, in Hampshire. Dr. Boswell identifies the prickly comfrey, which has been so much talked about lately as a forage plant, with the Symphytum uplandicum of Nyman. Probably it is really a hybrid between S. officinale and S. asperrimum, as was suggested lately when it was figured by Sir Joseph Hooker in the Botanical Magazine. Some curious observations have been made lately tending to show that our wild docks hybridise naturally not unfrequently, like verbascums, geums, primulas, thistles, and epilobia. There is a curious form of Ophioglossum (O. vulgatum, var. ambiguum of Cosson and Germain), which till now has been known in Britain only in the Orkney and Scilly Islands. This year Mr. Chas. Bailey has found it on the Welsh coast between Harlech and Barmouth. The Botanical Record Club has for its object the filling up of the blanks left by Mr. Watson when he traced out in detail the home-distribution of British plants in his "Cybele Britannica." In the report for this year detailed lists are given for Cardiganshire and Peeblesshire, and the only counties for which lists of flowering plants now remain to be drawn up are Flintshire, Wigtonshire, and West Ross. Fourteen pages of the present report are occupied by fresh records for counties already worked up, and the Club is now turning its attention to the distribution of the lower cryptogamia, especially mosses. The registration of flowering plants is in the hands of Dr. F. A. Lees of Wetherby, and of mosses in that of Mr. H. Boswell of Oxford; and the Secretary of both the Clubs is Mr. Chas. Bailey, F.L.S., of Manchester.

MR. BRIAN HOUGHTON HODGSON, F.R.S., has just presented to the Anthropological Institute a valuable portfolio of drawings illustrative of the Eastern Himalayas and Tibet. The drawings have been made by the same Nepalese draughtsman as delineated the zoological drawings which have been presented to the Zoological Society, and this ethnological series comprises and contains in all 521 subjects, including duplicates. A series of crania have been drawn by aid of the camera, Mr. Hodgson remarking "native patience, hand and eye being peculiarly fitted to work that instrument."

ETIENNE MULSANT, one of the most prominent of French entomologists, and librarian to the city of Lyons, died on November 4 at the great age of eighty-four. His earliest publication was the "Lettres à Julie sur l'Entomologie (en prose et en verse)," published in 1830, but for the most part consisting of real love-letters to the lady he afterwards married, and written before he was out of his teens. His writings are most voluminous; but he was best known as the author of a work extending over nearly forty years, on the Coleoptera of France, and published (chiefly) in the Annales of the Linnean Society of

Lyons. He was also the author of a magnificently illustrated work on Humming Birds, in connection with which he visited London about five years ago.

WE learn that Messrs. Williams and Norgate are about to issue an important work on the Fishes of Great Britain and Ireland by Dr. Francis Day, late Inspector-General of the Fisheries of India. This work deals with their economic uses, modes of capture, diseases, breeding, life-history, &c., with an introduction on the structure of fishes generally, their functions and geographical distribution. The first part appears this month, and is illustrated by twenty-seven plates. The whole will form a work of 700 pages royal octavo, with over 200 plates.

THE exploration of the remains of prehistoric man is being actively carried out in Russia. We have already briefly noticed a contribution to this subject by M. Mereshkovsky, published in the Izvestia of the Russian Geographical Society (vol. xvi. No. 2), being a report upon the exploration of caverns and rock-shelters in the Crimea, in the neighbourhood of the Tchatyrdagh Mountain. A great cavern, 145 feet wide and 58 feet deep, was explored close by the Suren town, and M. Mereshkovsky found there the remains of a prehistoric workshop for the manufacture of stone implements, the whole belonging to two distinct periods. The paper by M. Mereshkovsky, published in the Izvestia, is accompanied with four tables of drawings of stone implements.

WE notice the following interesting communications which were made at the last meeting of the St. Petersburg Geological Society: On the motion of downs near Sestroretsk, by M. Sokoloff. The velocity of these downs is about one foot per month. On the excavations made by water in rivers and springs of Northern Esthonia, especially by the waterfalls near Reval, Yagowal, and Fal; and on the Devonian clays discovered by Prof. Inostrantseff in the cuttings of the new Ladoga canal. The upper parts of the beds of these clays are bent by the action of the ice of the ice period, as has been observed at many places in Great Britain; the peats which cover the glacial formations are full of remains of prehistoric man.

WE can state that the Observatory of Algiers will not remain longer without an astronomical observer. M. Tripier, who has been appointed director, as has been announced in the French papers, will leave in time for installation at the meeting of the French Association for the Progress of Science in April, 1881.

THE purchaser of the French Siemens patent is preparing to send a tender for establishing an electric railway from the Exhibition to the central parts of Paris.

ABNORMAL VARIATIONS OF BAROMETRIC PRESSURE IN THE TROPICS, AND THEIR RELATION TO SUN-SPOTS, RAINFALL, AND FAMINES1

II.

Comparison of the Abnormal Barometric Variations with the Sun-Spots

A GLANCE at the barometric and sun-spot curves is sufficient to show that the irregular and frequent fluctuations of pressure are relatively much larger than those of the sun-spots. In order therefore to compare the general course of the barometric curves with that of the sun-spot curve the numbers of Table I. have been further smoothed by taking the means of every nine consecutive quarterly values of the nine-monthly means. The results of this operation are given in the following table, and graphically represented by the dotted curves which are drawn through the continuous ones. All these dotted barometer curves closely resemble each other, except that portion of the Mauritius curve after the year 1865 which shows a tendency to assume an opposite character. They are also very similar to the sun-spot curve, but all of them lag very persistently behind the latter, as will be seen by comparing the points marked with the same capital letters :—

1 Continued from p. 91.

the decrease was followed by the wave of high pressure which preceded the Orissa famine.

Hence it appears that widespread and severe famines are generally accompanied or immediately preceded by waves of high barometric pressure.

Means whereby future famines may possibly be foreseen.-If the conclusions arrived at from the above comparisons of abnormal barometric variations, sun-spots, and past famines be admitted, it is clear that they at once present the means whereby future famines may possibly be foreseen. The conclusions are briefly :

1. That variations of the solar spotted area are succeeded many months afterwards by corresponding abnormal barometric variations.

2. That abnormal barometric variations in the tropics travel at a very slow rate round the earth from west to east, arriving at westerly stations several months before they reach more easterly

ones.

3. That famines follow in the wake of waves of high barometric pressure.

Hence it follows that there are two methods by which early intimation of the approach of those meteorological disturbances which are attended by famines may possibly be obtained

1. By regular observation of the solar spotted area, and early reduction of the observations, so as to obtain early information of current changes going on in the sun.

2. By barometric observations at stations differing widely in longitude, and the early communication of the results to stations situated to the westward.

With regard to the first of these methods it is sufficient to state that the whole subject of solar observations is now being investigated by a committee of scientific gentlemen in London, and we may therefore hope that the all-important information which solar observations are capable of affording will ere long be at our disposal; but with regard to the second method, viz., that of barometric observations at stations differing widely in longitude, it is to be regretted that no observatories of long standing situated in suitable localities to the westward of Bombay at present exist, except possibly at the very distant station of Havanna in Cuba. The observatory at St. Helena appears to have been closed in the year 1847, after working continuously for about seven years.

The most suitable localities for barometric observations for the purpose in view are insular stations far removed from the disturbing influences of the large continents and near the equator, such as the Seychelles, St. Helena, and Ascension, but these appear to be at present unoccupied by permanent observatories, while the wide expanse of the Pacific, which is probably the most suitable portion of the earth's surface for investigations of this kind, appears to be entirely unrepresented by any fixed observatory on any of its numerous islands, such as the Galapagos, Sandwich, and Fiji Islands. An observatory has however lately been established at Zanzibar on the East Coast of Africa, from which very valuable observations may be expected if it should continue at work for any great length of time; and another has, I believe, been started at Aden: but as these stations are both situated on the borders of extensive continents, they are not so suitably located as the stations previously mentioned.

It would therefore be necessary, in order to utilise to the fullest extent the second method of foreseeing the approach of a meteorological disturbance of the kind which would probably be attended by famine, that special arrangements should be made for the registration of the needful observations at some, if not all, of the stations that have been referred to; and that the information thus afforded should be rapidly communicated from the more westerly to the more easterly stations.

POSTSCRIPT.-In order to determine numerically the intervals of time at which the barometric variations of one station have lagged behind those of another, and behind corresponding minor variations of the sun spots, the times at which the continuous curves cross the dotted ones have been marked off by the graphic method for corresponding crossing points of the different curves, giving the first set of times and intervals in each of the following tables. The same thing has been done with regard to the times at which the continuous curves cross the respective zero lines,

giving the second set of times and intervals in each of the tables. As the average pressures for Batavia and Bombay have not been calculated from the observations of the same years, and as the zero line of the Batavia curve is on this account relatively displaced by 004 of an inch in the upward direction, a new zero line has been drawn so as to make the times at which the continuous curve crosses the zero line comparable with those for Bombay. The approximate longitudes of the stations and their differences are also given in the tables.

1858

1859

1861

7'5

1861

+ 28

First

1863

Set.

1865

1866