Fortunately we meet in a district rich in incentives to appeals of this kind. Every crag and dell around seems to beckon us to its side that it may set problems before us for solution. Part of the work of the winter will lie in availing ourselves of these opportunities. We shall make visits to the hills and quarries of the neighbourhood, and test the lessons of the lecture-room by actual seeing and handling of the rocks.

Thus, while we gain larger conceptions of the structure and history of the planet on which we dwell, we shall at the same time perform no unimportant part in that long education which, though it stands out more prominently in our earlier years, is not less surely the business of our lives.

THE RECENT STAR SHOWER

A CONSIDERABLE number of exact determinations

of the place of the radiant-point of the shooting stars recorded during the recent meteoric shower have during the last few days continued to reach me, of which the accompanying general list and a rough outline map (Fig. 2) will, perhaps, best convey the general result at present arrived at regarding this important point in connection with the astronomical character of its appearance. That the stream of meteors, originating in the materials of Biela's comet, pursue, in a current of great length and thickness, nearly the same orbit as that of the comet round the sun, may be clearly concluded from the many observations of the meteor shower which have now been brought together. Among the most interesting of the descriptions relating to this subject is a report by Dr. Heis, of Münster, in Westphalia, of the observations made at that observatory between 8h. and 9h. P.M., and of others which he received from distant places, of the frequency of the meteors at that and at later periods of the night. The number seen by two observers at Munster, in fifty-three minutes, between Sh. and 9h. P.M., was 2,200 meteors, 400 of which appeared in the last interval but one of six minutes before 9 o'clock, or about forty-two per minute during the whole time. At the Göttingen Observatory 7,710 meteors were counted in three hours, giving nearly the same average of frequency during the greater portion of the shower. At Svanholmsminde, in the north of Jutland, Mr. S. Tromholdt recorded, with the assistance of two observers, 600 shooting stars in the first quarter of an hour after 9 o'clock, or about forty per minute, as observed at Munster. Allowing at the latter place thirty minutes, and in Jutland forty minutes, as their longitudes in time, east from Greenwich, the great abundance of the meteors here noted nearly coincides with the second principal maximum of the shower seen by Mr. Lowe and by Prof. Grant, at Glasgow, to have occurred at about, or shortly after, 8 o'clock. From the same time until 11h. 30m. P.M. (10h. 50m. Greenwich time), Mr. Tromholdt counted 1,660 meteors in two hours and a half, indicating a greatly decreased intensity of the shower; and, although clouds then prevented further observations, a perfectly clear sky enabled him to resume them at half past 4 o'clock A.M. (3h, 50m. Greenwich time) on the morning of the 28th, when he found the display to have entirely ceased, only four shooting stars making their appearance during the hour between half-past 4 and half-past 5 o'clock, or about 4 o'clock, Greenwich time.

In NATURE, vol. vil. p. 86, the observations of Mr. W. Swan, at St. Andrews, show that the termination of the shower had actually arrived at an earlier hour on the morning of the 28th, since, the sky being quite clear at half-past 1 o'clock A.M., no shooting stars could then be seen. A writer on the appearance of the shower at Dublin informs me that his observations fully corroborated this result, for, on looking out at about 1 o'clock

(Irish, or nearly half-past 1 o'clock Greenwich time), the number of meteors was found to have diminished to about one in two or three minutes, and during a quarter of an hour after about half-past 2 o'clock, Greenwich time, not a single shooting star appeared in sight, although there was then always sufficient clear sky to enable one observer to have an uninterrupted field of view of the constellations. Both the extent of the densest portion and the limits of the extreme boundary of the stream are excellently marked by these valuable observations. There appears without doubt to have been a period of nearly uniform maximum intensity, lasting from shortly after 6 to shortly before 8 o'clock P.M., in which one observer might, under the most favourable circumstances, count from fifty to a hundred meteors per minute, or on an average about one meteor per second. The duration of this period seems to have been about an hour and a half; its centre occurring at about, or very shortly after, 7 o'clock. For about two hours after it, the shower lessened so gradually as not to fall much below a quarter of its maximum intensity until nearly 10 o'clock, but from that time it continued to decline so rapidly that soon after midnight one observer scarcely counted so many as one meteor per minute, and by 2 o'clock A.M. it had entirely disappeared. Taking its gradual rise before 7 o'clock to have been similar to its rate of diminution afterwards, and the whole time of its visibility to have been divisible into periods of two hours each, of which the central one, of greatest intensity, occurred between 6 and 8 o'clock P.M., and three others, on either side of this, might be distinguished as copious, conspicuous, and hardly more than ordinary meteoric displays, it is easy to estimate, from the known inclination at which the earth's path crosses the axis of the stream, the thickness of the meteoric stratum which it traversed in each of these successive periods. The actual width or transverse thickness of each of these meteoric strata must have been about 50,000 miles, and that of their whole sum, consisting of seven such periods, was about 350,000 miles. The diameter of the visible nebulosity of Biela's comet, as it was observed in telescopes, was estimated at 40,000 miles, and the nearest approach of its orbit to that of the earth, in 1832, was computed to be about 17,000 miles, so that the thickness of the meteor stream which the earth passed through on Nov. 27 last, exceeds these calculated dimensions by very many times. That it was, however, not the tail, or envelope, of the comet through which the earth passed, but a stream of particles left behind the nucleus of the comet on its track, was pointed out by a Dutch observer, and writer on the astronomical features of the shower (Herr Van de Stadt), in the Arnhemsche Courant, referred to in NATURE, vol. vii. p. 86. He founds this on the consideration that if, as the most probable calculations by Mr. Hind of the comet's path at this return inform us, it passed its perihelion on or about Oct. 6 last, and therefore, through its node, and its nearest point of approach to the earth's orbit about Sept. 14 last, it must, at the time of the occurrence of the meteor shower, have advanced some 250,000,000 miles, or about a seventh part of the whole circumference of its orbit along its path, having already passed its perihelion, and proceeded nearly as far as the orbit of the planet Mars in its subsequent departure from the sun, and its distant approach towards the opposite part of its orbit from the earth.

Projecting all the meteor-tracks which were recorded from my point of view, at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, upon a plane perspective chart of the constellations, a very evident centre of divergence of the shower from a space round a spot in R.A. 20°, N. Decl. 40°, is very clearly shown by the backward prolongations of the tracks, about 60 per cent. of which pass within 4° or 5° of this place. Many of the tracks recorded were somewhat widely erratic, coming chiefly from a more northerly

from the same direction. It was remarked by Mr. Backhouse, and it must have been apparent to most attentive observers of the shower, that the meteors far from the radiant point did not always appear to move in parallel paths when in the same part of the sky; thus at once giving the idea that the radiant area was really of considerable extent. Although the contrary phenomenon of two or three bright meteors apparently running a race with each other in parallel courses side

by side, or pursuing each other upon the same path, was frequently observed, and occasionally, as noticed by Mr. S. H. Miller at Wisbeach, who, as well as Mr. Denning at Bristol, supplied the accompanying sketch of such meteors through closely adjacent courses of 20° or 30°, yet it was perhaps in the often occurring exceptions to this rule, and in the absence of the long-enduring light streaks, left parallel to each other on such occasions by the Leonids, that the recent meteor shower differed most

remarkably from its great precursors of the 13-14th November, 1866-7. In his suggestions to observers and conjectures on the probable early identification of this meteor-shower, published in the Transactions of the Vienna Academy of Sciences in 1868, it was remarked by Prof. Weiss, from the near approximation of the meteors in the direction of their motion to that of the earth in its passage through their stream, that the radiant region of this star-shower, even when witnessed at its greatest intensity, would probably prove to have a considerable area rather than to be concentrated, like the

radiant point of the 13th of November meteors, from Leo, about a point of very accurate divergence of their tracks. From the situation of the comet's paths, and from its small velocity relatively to the earth, small deviations from parallelism in the original courses of the meteors would appear as considerably exaggerated inclinations of the visible meteor-paths to each other, and as somewhat more exaggerated ones (the original velocities of all the meteors being supposed the same)-in the proportion of about 10 to 7-when the deviation is transverse to, than when it is in the same plane as the direction of

the earth's motion through the stream. In the former direction (which is 30° or 32° nearer to a meridian than the direction of the sun's apparent place) the exaggeration of the apparent meteor observations is about 2 times, and in the latter direction only about 1 times the original observations of the meteor-paths from perfect parallelism in their cometary orbits. Differences of velocity of the individual meteors from the average velocity of the stream, amounting to a tenth part of their mean speed, would on the other hand produce observations of 5° in the latter, without producing any sensible enlargement of the space included by the radiant region in the former direction. Owing to the powerful action of disturbing forces in changing both the direction and the velocities of motion of the meteors of this stream, a considerable extension of the radiant region in each direction from the mean radiant centre, might be certainly anticipated for this meteor shower. The combined causes affecting the form of the radiant area, its principal concentration along a straight or crooked line, or elongated space, and its motion with the time, are accordingly so considerable and various, that the problem of arriving at a true theory of their action must evidently be regarded as still continuing to invite further attention and research. Among the determinations of the position of the radiant point with which I have, however, become acquainted since the compilation of the present list, Prof. Newton's observations on the radiant region, which appeared in NATURE, vol. vii. p. 122, will perhaps appear, from the following considerations, to point to a somewhat more definite conclusion.

In the accompanying projection (Fig. 1) the apparent paths of the 94 meteors mapped at Newcastle-on-Tyne, York, and Birmingham are drawn on a plane-perspective chart of the heavens in their observed lengths and positions. Both their general divergence from a common centre and the irregularities of their divergence in many cases in distant parts of the sky are plainly seen, while the shortness of the paths near the radiant point clearly illustrates the effect of perspective in foreshortening the apparent courses of those meteors whose visible paths were represented, as they appeared to the observers, to be approaching them "end on." Some few of the foreshortened meteors appeared quite stationary, and two of these are represented in the drawing by a small star. Nearly round the places of these two stationary meteors are drawn small circles representing the positions of the radiant point observed at York and Birmingham; a third small circle shows the place of that observed at Newcastle-on-Tyne. They are numbered respectively 17, II, and 10 in the list, and in the map of radiant points (Fig. 2). A small circle below the equator and another near the east point of the plain sphere upon the ecliptic (Fig. 1) represent respectively the anti-apex (or point from which the earth was moving), and the anti-solar point, or point opposite to the sun's place at the time of the starshower. The latter point, it will be seen, is more nearly in the direction of a parallel of declination through the radiant-point than in the direction of a meridian, and it is in the direction of right ascension, or nearly in that of the sun's apparent place at the time of the shower, that a considerable elongation of the radiant region is described as having been most plainly perceived by Prof. Newton.

In the map of the radiant-places (Fig. 2), lines drawn from the star y Andromeda (which is replaced in the figure by the positions of several radiant-points described close to it), through ẞ and e Andromeda, downwards, and through the small star p Persei towards the left, point to wards the anti-apex, and to the anti-solar point; while a third line drawn from the same star nearly through v Persei and a Cassiopeia is in a direction transverse to that from the anti-apex. Those radiant-points of which the star places or co-ordinates are exactly given are represented in the map by a cross; where only described by their neighbourhood to certain stars the cross is sur

rounded by a circle, and when simply described by the constellations their positions are represented by a circle only.

A large number of radiant-points is contained in the space included between the stars y, T, v, w, and 51 Andromedæ (v Persei) clustering closely about a small star (not shown in the map) x Andromeda, near the centre of the space, of which the position is very nearly that deduced from calculation, as the probable radiant-point of the cometary shower. The direction of the outlying radiantplaces is chiefly towards Cassiopeia, and shows with some distinctness a general confirmation of the conclusion obtained from direct observations of the shower by Prof. Newton, that the area of the radiant region was perceptibly elongated in right ascension, or approximately in the direction of the sun's apparent place. That the effect of the sun's attraction on a cometary cloud would be to produce an elongation of the radiant area in that direction appears on astronomical grounds to be capable of demonstration; and in their sensible agreement with this condition the results of the present observations lend satisfactory support to the astronomical theory of the meteor stream. A more complete analysis of the features presented by the radiant area would probably require a careful investigation of the disturbances which the meteor cloud may have undergone during many previous revolutions of the comet; but from the present comparison of the observations with the astronomical theory of comets and of meteor showers, there appears at least to be abundant evidence in their generally accordant results to show that beyond the regular action of universal gravitation, no powerful force of repulsion from the sun, like that supposed to be concerned in the enormous development of the tails of comets, affects the meteor orbits or changes their courses more than the regularly recurring revolutions of the planets. In the projection (Fig. 3) the radiant-points only and the directions of the three lines drawn from y Andromeda towards the antisolar point S', the anti-apex of the earth's way E', and towards a point T, at right angles to the latter direction, are represented for greater clearness without the fixed stars or constellations.

In my last letter in NATURE, vol. vii. p. 103, on the time of the maximum and the duration of the star-shower, and on meteors connected with it seen on adjacent nights, the remarkably bright meteors from the same radiantpoint observed by Mr. Jackson on the evening of November 24, were noted by him near Hyde Park, and not near Regent's Park, as stated in my letter. A considerable shower of shooting stars from a radiant-point near y Andromeda was, it appears, distinctly observed on the same night in the United States, as described by Prof. Newton in NATURE, vol. vii. p. 122. The notes of the numbers of meteors seen after 10 o'clock, described in the last paragraph of my former letter were made by my assistants and myself at Newcastle-on-Tyne, and not at Rothbury, as would appear from their connection with the description immediately preceding them, by my correspondent on the very brilliant appearance of the shower near the latter place. A. S. HERSCHEL

NOTES

WE believe that a reply has been received from the Government on the subject of the Arctic Expedition, which goes far to justify all that was said in our leader last week on the subject; for although the Government does not refuse absolutely to comply with the wishes of the deputation, all action will, unless strenuous efforts are made, be postponed for a year. We repeat that the deputation did not represent Science so broadly as it ought to have been represented; and we add, that if the Government thought so, it was, in our opinion, perfectly justified

in refusing the demands made upon the national purse. To a certain extent, what happened in the case of the Eclipse Expedition of 1870 has been now repeated. Our readers will recollect that on that occasion the mere personal application of the Astronomer Royal was at once very properly refused, while a proper representation by the leading Societies was at once as promptly acceded to.

WE beg to draw our readers' attention to a new medical journal which commenced its career yesterday, the Medical Record, and which, judging from the prospectus and the contents of the first number, is likely to be of the very highest service to the important department with which it is connected, and to the sciences on which that department depends. The Medical Record is a weekly review of the progress of medicine, surgery, obstetrics, and the allied sciences, but does not seek to trench on the ground already occupied by other medical journals. The object of this weekly periodical will be to supply medical readers with a condensed, readable, and reliable analysis of the immense mass of information relating to the medical sciences now scattered over the surface of British and Foreign periodical medical literature. The number, the bulk, the cost, and the diffusion of the transactions and periodicals at home and abroad, in which this information is contained, are now so great as to place it beyond the reach of the most industrious. The annual transactions of the great societies of Europe and America alone occupy some scores of volumes, therefore the idea is a happy one of gathering the cream of these transactions and presenting it in an accessible and manageable form, before the transactions are out of date, to those who otherwise might never get a glimpse of them. Moreover, as the prospectus says with truth, the age of year-books has passed away, and to make the labours of scientific inquirers in the medical as well as in other departments intelligible and of practical use, they must be studied and appropriated when first announced. To enable this to be done for medicine is the object of the Medical Record, and we have every reason to believe it will be eminently successful in attaining its end. The new journal will be edited by Mr. Ernest Hart. The abstracts will be signed in all cases. The staff includes upwards of forty of the best known scientific members of the profession, most of them hospital teachers in London, Edinburgh, and Dublin.

SIR WILLIAM JENNER has been elected President of the Pathological Society, London.

THE Lectureship on Botany of the St. Thomas's Hospital Medical School is vacant through the resignation of the Rev. J. W. Hicks. Applications should be sent to the Medical Secretary on or before January 10.

A NEW Society has been organised in Sacramento, California, under the name of "The Agassiz Institute." It has been formed on the model of the Essex Institute, Salem, Massachusetts, and owes its birth in great part to the recent visit of Prof. Agassiz in California.

A NEW work on the Cetaceans and other Marine Animals of California, is announced by Captain Scammon. It will be published by subscription through the Naturalist's Agency, Salem, Massachusetts, U.S.A.

THE planet (128) which we noted last week as having been discovered by M. A. Barrelly on the night of December 4-5, is the same as that discovered by Prof. Watson, Ann Arbor Observatory, on the night of Nov. 25, noted in NATURE of December 19 last.

THE association proposed for the promotion of explorations in Africa by the Berlin Geographical Society has constituted itself under the title of the African Society, its principal members being Drs. Schweinfurth, Rohlfs, Bastian, Peschel, Bruhns, and Petermann.

THE Challenger left Lisbon yesterday.

THE United States Coast Survey party, in charge of W. H. Dall, arrived in San Francisco on the 20th of September, on the Humboldt, after an absence of thirteen months. This time had been chiefly spent in the region between Kadiah and Oonalaska, among the Aleutian Islands. Among the more important results of the work are the determination of ten islands and rocks, fourteen harbours and anchorages (and many minor details) not on any chart; the determination of a great oceanic current, a reflected branch of the great North Pacific easterly stream, which sweeps to the south and west, south of the peninsula of Alaska and the islands, having a breadth of about 350 miles; and the discovery of new fishing Lanks off the southern end of Kadiah. Geological and zoological researches were carried on by the members of the party during that portion of their time when hydrographic work was impracticable; and though these investigations were entirely subsidiary to the regular work, they were crowned with unexpected success, especially in the departments of botany and geology, and the various groups of marine vertebrates. These collections, although still but superficially examined, indicate a curious resemblance in some particulars between the fauna of the region visited and that of the Straits of Magellan, a number of forms found being common to both, and not yet discovered in the intervening regions.

THE American papers talk with just pride of the great engineering feat which is now nearly completed at the expense of the Massachusetts Treasury, and which will shorten the railway distance between Boston and Troy and Albany, by 40 miles. A tunnel 4.66 miles through the Hoosac mountains has been in progress since 1855, but was not seriously entered on till 1863. The cutting was made from both ends, and so nice were the calculations of the engineers, that when on December 12th last, the two boring parties met, the two cuttings were found to vary not more than a foot either in grade or in line.

SIR BARTLE FRERE and his suite left Aden on board the Enchantress for Zanzibar last Saturday.

IN reference to the Cambridge Natural Science Tripos a correspondent informs us that the new scheme of examination has been carried out for the first time in this Tripos. It is as follows:-The examination occupies eight days, six in one week and two in the next, the first three of which are devoted to six papers, intended to test a general elementary know. ledge of all the subjects. Two days are then occupied by practical examinations in chemistry, anatomy, and physiology; and in the last three, six papers are set, each containing several questions relating to the higher branches of each subject; and a candidate may not be placed in the first class unless he show a competent knowledge of botany, chemistry, geology, mineralogy, or physics, or of any two of the following,-Anatomy, Physiology, or Zoology; the intention being that a student should confine his high reading to one, or at most two subjects.

THE third series of meetings of the Cambridge Natural Science Club, established in March 1872, by some of the junior members of the University, was held during the last October Term; a paper was read at each meeting by the member in whose rooms the Club met, and the attendance of members and of visitors was usually good, though as the examination for the Natural Sciences Tripos approached, it fell off slightly. The following is a list of the papers, which were illustrated as far as possible with drawings, specimens, or experiments :-The Theory of Pangenesis, by Mr. F. M. Balfour (Trinity); Geological Faults, by Mr. R. D. Roberts, B.Sc. (Clare); Some Bone-caves in Here fordshire, by Mr. J. J. H. Teall (St. John's); The Rock-fragment of the Cambridge Upper Greensand, by Mr. A. J. Jukes-Browne (St. John's); The recent Deep-sea Dredging Expeditions, by Mr. P. H. Carpenter (Trinity); The derived Fossils of the