NOTES

THE arrangements are now completed for the session of the British Association, to commence on Wednesday next; and we may fairly expect a success'ul meeting. The large number of foreign savants who have announced their intention of being present will add greatly to the interest of the meeting, and the inhabitants of the pleasant Scottish capital seem determined to display to the utmost their well-known hospitality, both in a public and private capacity. The President's Address, as we have already announced, will be delivered on Wednesday evening at 8 o'clock; and at the first meeting of the General Committee, at 2 P. M. on the same day, the Presidents, Vice-presidents, and Secretaries of each Section will be appointed. On Thursday morning at eleven, the different sections will assemble in the rooms appointed for them, for the reading and discussion of reports and other communications; and the sittings will be resumed at the same hour each day till Tuesday, August 8. All further information may be obtained by those wishing to be present from the local secretaries, 14, Young Street, Edinburgh.

THE Emperor of Brazil has signified his intention of being present at the approaching meeting of the British Association.

THE Indian Civil Engineering College at Cooper's Hill will be opened by the Secretary of State and members of the Council of India on Saturday, August 5th.

WE have great pleasure in recording the inauguration of an effort to raise a memorial to the memory of the late Prof. William Allen Miller, and desire to call thereto the attention of all our readers who appreciate the valuable contributions to science for which we are indebted to that eminent chemist. The committee consists of Dr. Miller's fellow-professors at King's College and fellow-labourers in science, with the Rev. Principal Barry as chairman, Profs. Bentley and Bloxam, and Messrs. Cunningham and Tomlinson as secretaries, and Prof. Guy as treasurer. The intention is to raise a fund to be devoted, first, to the preparation of a bust or portrait of the late Dr. Miller, and, secondly, to the institution of a prize or scholarship in connection with King's College, and bearing his name. The ordinary amount of subscription is to be one guinea, and the list of subscribers will be published without any statement of the amounts subscribed.

THE International Congress of Prehistoric Anthropology and Archæology, which was last year postponed on account of the war, will be held this year at Bologna under the presidency of Count Gozzadini, and with Prof. Capellini as organising secretary. The sittings will commence on the 1st of October, and will continue during the following week. Mr. John Evans, F. R.S., of 65, Old Bailey, has consented to receive the subscriptions of English members, the amount of which has been fixed at ten shillings, and the payment of which entitles the member to the volume of proceedings.

THE President and Council of the Royal Geographical Society have addressed letter to the Vice-Chancellors of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge on the subject of the teaching of Physical and Political Geography. They observe that in the scheme now under the consideration of the Universities for the examination of boys between the ages of sixteen and eighteen from all the first-grade schools of England, neither branch of geography is included in the list of subjects out of which the boys are at liberty to choose any five for examination. They point out that geography has always been regarded as an essential, though subordinate, element of liberal education, and that it has been more and more frequently selected as their subject by candidates who pass the examination of the Science and Art Department of South Kensington. They hope that the Universities may see reason to repair the omission in the scheme above

alluded to, and that they, by this and other means, will not only rescue geography from being badly taught in our schools, but will raise it to an even higher standard than it has yet attained.

THE examiners in the School of Law and Modern History at Oxford have given notice that at the next examination in December, Geography will form an important branch, and that papers will be set in the Honours Examination on this subject alone.

By the appointment of Mr. Alexander Herschel to the Professorship of Experimental Philosophy at the Newcastle College of Physical Science, a vacancy occurs in the chair of Natural Philosophy at Anderson's University, Glasgow. Applications must be sent to the secretary by the 26th of August.

IN a letter to the Athenæum, the widow of the late Prof. De Morgan invites those who possess letters or other mementoes of the illustrious mathematician to lend them for the purpose of preparing a biography.

PROF. MARSH, of Yale College, has just started out on a second expedition for scientific exploration and discovery in the far West, which we trust will be still more fruitful in interesting results than the first one which brought to light so many extraordinary forms of fossil animals, that have been briefly described by him in the American Journal of Science, and referred to from time to time in our pages. His party for the present season will consist of thirteen besides himself, embracing quite a number of his companions of last year, and it is his intention to spend five or six months in searching the cretaceous and tertiary strata of the Rocky Monntain region and the Pacific coast for vertebrate fossil remains. With the experience of the past year and ample facilities, he expects to make very extensive collections.

THE New York Commissioners of Fish and Fisheries seem unwearied in their efforts to stock the waters of the State with the best varieties of fish. Among other results obtained by them, has been the hatching out during the past season of 3,000,000 shad eggs, or three times the total catch of the Hudson River. They have also bred several millions of white-fish, a million of salmon-trout, while of such fish as the black bass, pike, perch, and other variet es, they have supplied large numbers to those who would take and protect them. The period of their appointment will expire in the course of a year; but by that time, even if the commission should not be renewed, they will have made a most important impression upon the subject of the production of the fresh-water food supply.

COLLECTORS of scarce works in Natural History, curiosities, stone implements, rare specimens, &c., should not neglect the opportunity of inspecting the collection of a well-known collec. tor, which will be sold at Thurgood and Giles's Auction Room, 7, Argyll Street, Regent Street, on July 31st and three following days; and will be on view two days before the first day's sale.

THE old adage al:out civilisation, or at least science, softening manners, is certainly being exemplified just now in France. M. Paul de Saint-Victor having given utterance to a violent tirade of undying hatred against Prussia, M. de Quesneville thus replies in the Moniteur Scientifique :-"L'humanité veut qu'on oublie ; l'interêt des peuples, qui sont tous frères, la raison, le bon sens, tout nous dit que dans cette guerre qui vient de finir, la France, qui a succombé, doit chercher sa revanche, non dans la puissance de la force brutale, mais dans sa régénération sociale, et qu'elle doit demander à son génie de prouver sa supériorité dans les sciences, dans les lettres, et dans les arts, et que ce doit être là sa seule vengeance. C'est par là que la France est vraiment invincible, c'est par là qu'elle doit rester la grande nation, la nation aimée et préférée, et non dans une lutte d'obus et de chassepots." Noble words these, and full of the most rare form of generosity,

that of the vanquished towards the victors; a fitting response to the note of reconciliation given forth by the venerable Baron Liebig, to which we referred some weeks since.

NORFOLK has always been noted for its devotion to ornithology. The "Transactions of the Norfolk and Norwich Naturalists' Society for 1870-71" contains several interesting and useful papers, among which we may especially mention "On the Ornithological Archaeology of Norfolk," by T. Southwell, "On a Method of Registering Natural History Observations," by Prof. Newton, "A Natural History Tour in Spain and Algeria," by J. H. Gurney, and "On Certain Coast Insects found existing inland at Brandon, Suffolk." The author of this last paper believes that these species must have survived for several thousand years, since the great valley of the fens was submerged. The insects found are peculiar to coast sand-hills, the nearest of which are at a distance of forty miles; and yet, "in spite of their isolation and alteration of condition, the species are as true and as clearly defined as those of our present coast."

MR. W. G. M'IVOR, Superintendent of the Cinchona Plantations of the Bengal Government in British Sikkim, has published a lengthy report, of which the following is an abstract :-"The plantations are situated in the Valley of Rungbee in the Himalayas, about thirteen miles frem Darjeeling, which seems admirably adapted for the growth of cinchona. The climate is very moist, being rarely free from rain. Nevertheless the state of the plantations is reported as very unsatisfactory; the plants have nothing like the luxuriant foliage which characterises those grown in Southern India on the Nilgheries. They seem to thrive for three or four years at the most, and then become diseased." Mr. M'Ivor says that trees of equal height do not produce so much bark as in the South of India, being of more slender growth, and the bark being thinner.

A GREAT demand for the English sparrow in various parts of the United States has induced their importation from England and Germany in large numbers; but in many instances where this has been done in large cages, most of the birds have died on the passage. In one instance, where four hundred were placed in two cages, only seven were safely landed in New York. Per sons who have given this subject their attention, advise that the importations be made in long low cages, known as store cages, which are two or three feet long, about nine inches high, and twelve from back to front, with perches within two inches of the bottom. In a cage of this kind three or four dozen can, it is said, be readily transported, provided they be supplied with proper food, as well as with sand and fine gravel and plenty of water.

M. WURTZ has announced to the French Academy of Sciences that a young chemist in his laboratory has succeeded in transforming lactose, or the uncrystallisable sugar of milk, into dulcose or dulcine, the sugar of mannite, which may easily be obtained in very beautiful crystals, by the successive reaction of hydrochloric acid and sodium-amalgam.

M. FELIX PLATEAU has recently undertaken a number of experiments to determine the question whether the cause of the death of fresh-water animals when removed to sea water, and of marine animals when removed to fresh water, is the dif ference in the density or in the chemical constitution of the water. His observations were made mostly on various species of Articulata; he found that those fresh-water species which possess an aërial respiration can survive the change to salt water, while those which possess only a branchial and cutaneous respiration die quickly. By experimenting on water made denser by the solution of sugar, M. Plateau came to the conclusion that the density of the water is not the destructive agent, but a portion of the salts held in solution. The chlorides of sodium, potassium, and magnesium, he found to be very quickly fatal to fresh-water species, while the sulphates of magnesium and calcium had no

prejudicial effect. In the same manner the death of marine animals in fresh water appeared due to the giving off of sea. salt from their bodies to the surrounding fluid. All these facts he believes explicable from the laws of endosmose and diffusion. "A KEY to the Natural Orders of British Wild Flowering Plants," by Thomas Baxter, is designed to provide an "easier, although perhaps less scientific, method of identifying the orders of British Wild Flowering Plants than is generally found in analytical keys." There is no royal road to botany, and we doubt whether it is any real advantage to the student to sacrifice scientific in favour of superficial characters.

A CORRESPONDING member of the Glasgow Natural History Society, having been lately in Panama, has contributed to a local journal in the latter city an interesting account of the ants of the country. He describes a curious covered way or tubular bridge. In tracing one of these covered ways he found it led over a pretty wide fracture in the rocks, and was carried across in the air in the form of a tubular bridge of half an inch in diameter. It was the scene of busy traffic. There was nearly a foot of unsupported tube from one edge of the cliff to the other.

MR. THWAITES, in his "Enumeration of Ceylon Plants," says that from the large extent of forest land which has been and is now being appropriated to coffee cultivation, there is little doubt that some of the indigenous plants will in time become exceed. ingly rare, if not altogether extirpated, or exist only in the Botanic Garden, into which as [many as possible are being introduced. The obtrusive character, too, of a plant brought to the island less than fifty years since is helping to alter the character of the vegetation up to an elevation of 3,000 feet. This is the Lantana mixla, a verbenaceous species introduced from the West Indies, which appears to have found in Ceylon a soil and climate exactly suited to its growth. It now covers thousands of acres with its dense masses of foliage, taking complete possession of land where cultivation has been neglected or abandoned, preventing the growth of any other plants, and even destroying small trees, the tops of which its subscandent stems are able to reach, The fruit of this plant is so acceptable to frugivorous birds of all kinds that, through their instrumentality, it is spreading rapidly, to the complete exclusion of the indigenous vegetation from spots where it becomes established.

METEOROLOGICAL OBSERVATORIES

IN Meteorological Office just issued, for January March,

N the part of the Quarterly Weather Report of the

1870, the following information is given with regard to the observatories from which the observations are recorded, accompanied by the illustrations which the courtesy of the committee enables us to reproduce. As correct an idea as possible is thus given of the value of the thermometrical and anemometrical observations published by them, and the local influences which may exert an effect in each case.

VALENCIA.-The observatory is situated close to the shore on the south side of the island, about three miles from the open sea.

The anemograph is on the roof of the house, which is two stories high. Its exposure is fairly good, for although it is situated in a valley, with hills of the height of about 1,000 feet to the south and south-east of it at a distance of three miles, and with a slight hill about 700 feet high distant three-quarters of a mile on the north-west of it, the country towards the other points of the compass is quite open, and the situation for wind is as favourable as can be obtained on that very rugged coast. The only point from which the wind is materially deflected or checked by local influence is the north-west. The house is an ordinary dwelling house of small size.

fortunately there are trees growing at a short distance from it, which would entirely check the free circulation of air about the instruments were the screen set up at the usual elevation of about 6 feet above the ground.

Accordingly the window on the second story of the building was selected. It affords a free exposure to the north, but is at a level of 41 ft. above the ground, and about 87 feet above the sea level.

This elevation will of course exert a considerable influence on the thermometrical observations recorded.

FALMOUTH.-The establishment of an observatory at this station was beset with considerable difficulties; the

building in which the Royal Cornwall Polytechnic Society holds its meetings was unsuited to the purposes of a meteorological station. Accordingly a tower was erected at the south-east corner of the bowling green, on the top of one of the hills on which the town is built.

The anemograph is on the summit of the tower, well exposed on all sides; but from the fact that the ground in the neighbourhood is uneven, the hill sloping rapidly down to the harbour, it seems probable that the force of the wind is not quite true, especially when it is easterly.

The position of the thermograph screen is far from being quite satisfactory; however, a better exposure could not be obtained. The screen is attached to the north wall of the tower, at an elevation of 11 feet above the ground, and about 200 feet above sea level.

It will be seen that there is the wall of a dwelling house at no great distance to the westward, which may possibly affect the instrument by radiation, and also interfere with the free circulation of the air,

STONYHURST.-The observatory stands in the centre of the college garden, which is on a gentle slope facing S.S.E., 381 feet above sea level. The anemograph stands on a cylindrical roof 12 feet in diameter and 4 feet 5 inches in height. The total height of the cups above the ground is 30 feet.

The country around, including the college grounds, is wooded, but not very thickly so, and the trees are in general small.

The nearest trees whose height could materially influence the anemograph are at a distance of about 200 yards, bearing from N. by W. to N. by E.

The main building of the college is placed at the N.W. of the observatory, at a distance of 193 yards, its angular height above the roof of the observatory being 1° 37′, and bearings from N. by W. to W.N.W.

The nearest hill is the Longridge Fell, whose nearest point is about two miles from the college. It extends from N. by W. to W. by N., and its highest point is 4° 1'. Pendle Hill is at five and a half miles distance E.N.E.; height 2° 5. Between these hills the country is very open. To the eastward there are hills at about four miles distance, height about 1°. To the S. and S. W. the land is low.

It will be seen from this that the anemograph is fairly well exposed to the different points of the compass.

The thermograph screen is attached to the north wall of the observatory, the bulbs are at an elevation of 7 ft. above the ground. The exposure is good.

KEW. The observatory is situated in the old Deer Park at Richmond. It is a small building, which is well exposed to the wind, excepting on the west side, where there is a row of trees distant about 150 yards, which must materially affect the velocity of the wind. The country about is also well wooded.

The anemograph is placed on the dome.

The thermograph screen is attached to the north wall of the observatory within ten feet of the west end of that wall, at a height of ten feet above the ground, and about fifty above sea level. Its exposure is good.

We hope to take another opportunity of reviewing the volume itself.

ON THE RECENT SOLAR ECLIPSE*
(Continued from page 233)

II. POLARISCOPIC OBSERVATIONS

WITH regard to the polarisation experiments, by the kindness of Mr. Spottiswoode I am enabled to show you, in a very clear way, the raison d'être of the polariscopic observations made during this and former eclipses; but the polariscopic ground is a wide one, and it is not my intention to cover it to-night.

I have had this arrangement of lamp, reflector and prisms made so that you may see how the polariscope can determine the percentage of reflected light at different angles, and the direction of reflection. Assume this lamp to represent the sun, let this reflector close to the lamp represent a particle near the sun, reflecting light to us, we shall naturally have the light reflected at a much larger angle than if the reflector were close to the screen representing a particle in our own air. Having this idea of the angle of reflection in your minds, and the fact that the larger the angle under these conditions the more the polarisation, if you take this lamp, as I have said, to represent the sun, and this mirror to represent any particle, of whatever kind you choose to imagine, it is clear that in order to get the maximum polariscopic effect from that particle, you must have it so situated that it will reflect light at a considerable angle to the beam coming from this lamp. Now it is clear that in order to polarise the beam most strongly, I must place the reflector close to our imaginary sun. If I so place it as to represent a particle in our own atmosphere, the angle will be so small that the polarisation of the light will hardly be perceptible.

Here is our sunlight, which we will polarise at as great an angle as we can, by placing the reflector close to the imaginary sun, and send it through this magnificent prism which Mr. Spottiswoode has been good enough to place at our disposal; and in the path of the beam I will place an object so that you determine whether there is polarised light. [Experiment.] You see there is considerable brilliancy in those colours; their brilliancy depending upon the amount of polarisation.

Now if, instead of having our reflector close to our imaginary sun to represent a particle in the sun's atmosphere, we place it near the screen to represent a particle in our own, in which case the angle is extremely small, the brilliancy of the colours will entirely disappear. You see it has disappeared. The colours, as colours, are distinguishable, but their brilliancy has gone.

That is the rationale of the polariscopic observations, which have been made on the occasion of the last eclipse with more elaboration than they ever were before. If we found the corona to be strongly polarised, this was held to be a great argument in favour of the corona being a real solar appendage, an argument strengthened if the polarisation was also found to be radial. At been made have not been received, and those that have been represent, however, a great many of the observations that have ceived are as discordant as those obtained in former eclipses, and therefore my account is an imperfect one, because I have not had an opportunity of discussing all these observations. Indeed, if I had, I should hesitate to give an opinion on the subject. When Mr. Carrington saw that small corona in 1851, and Mr. Gillis saw that small corona in 1858, neither of them traced any polarisation whatever; but when M. Liais saw that large corona in 1868, which was invisible to Mr. Gillis, he in his turn saw an immense amount of polarisation, which led him to believe included, and that we had an indication of a solar atmosphere that the corona was solar, the whole of it, rays and everything two or three times higher than the diameter of the sun; that is, an atmosphere two or three millions of miles in height. This observation is not in accordance with the general conclusions from the drawings I have shown you; and let me add that the assumption of reflection at the sun is not without its difficulties, and that we have not yet traced reflected sunlight, even when the strongest polariscopic effects have been observed. III.-AIRY'S AND MÄDLER'S CONCLUSIONS AS THE RESULTS OF THE PRE-SPECTROSCOPIC OBSERVATIONS Before passing to the spectroscopic observations, I will state the conclusions at which the Astronomer Royal and M. Mädler arrived after the observations of 1860 had been gathered together.

The Astronomer Royal, in a lecture delivered before the British Association at Manchester in 1861, stated that the assumption of an atmosphere extending to the moon explained the ob servation of Plantamour, which could, he thought, be explained * Lecture delivered at the Royal Institution, Friday, March 17, 1871.