FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



S7S 



ing or crag which they choose for a resting 

 place. The Rev. A. Morres writes to The 

 Field giving some observations on the fal- 

 cons that for many years have made Salis- 

 bury spire their haunt. The first year that 

 he saw them one of four peregrines settled 

 on the weathercock, four hundred feet high. 

 On crags and cliffs along the coast seafowl 

 always occupy the highest points. One even- 

 ing in the autumn of 1893 a cormorant, 

 probably driven inland by a storm, alighted 

 on the arrow of the weathercock on the 

 summit of the parish church spire in New- 

 ark-on-Trent, where it remained until morn- 

 ing. For nearly eight weeks it returned 

 each night to its perch upon the arrow, final- 

 ly disappearing in a November gale. In 

 India the adjutant storks always prefer to 

 stand on the topmost pinnacles of high 

 buildings. Once, when a brick had been 

 left on the highest part of the roof of a 

 house during some repairs, an adjutant was 

 seen to take his stand upon the brick, thus 

 gaining an extra two inches of altitude. 



NOTES. 



The second session of the Monsalvat 

 School of Comparative Religion (Lewis G. 

 Janes, Director) is to be held at Greenacre, 

 Eliot, Maine, August 3d to September 2d. 

 The purpose of this school is entirely unsec- 

 tarian, and is described to be to afford op- 

 portunity for the scientific study of various 

 forms of philosophical and religious thought 

 under competent teachers. The lectures in- 

 clude courses on the History and Philosophy 

 of Religion and on Christian Origins, by the 

 director ; the Vedantic Philosophy and the 

 Religions of India, by the Swa,nii Sarada- 

 nanda, of India ; Buddhism, by the Anagarika 

 H. Dharmapala, of Ceylon ; The Philosophy 

 and Religion of the Jains, by Mr. Virchaud 

 R. Gandhi, of Bombay ; Zoroaster and the 

 Religion of the Parsis, by Mr. Jehanghier D. 

 Cola, of Bombay; and The Religions of 

 China, by the Rev. F. H. James, missionary. 

 A conference for the comparative study of 

 religions will be held during the last week of 

 the school, at which Rabbi Hirsch, of Chi- 

 cago, Mr. Gandhi, Edward B. Rawson, of 

 New York, and Mrs. Annie Besant will 

 speak on special subjects. 



The Newcastle Daily Chronicle of De- 

 cember 17, 1896, speaking of the trial trip 

 of the torpedo boat Turbinia, built by the 

 Marine Steam Turbine Company, Limited, 

 for the purpose of testing the steam turbine 

 engine of Hon. Charles Parsons, says : " Sev- 

 eral most successful runs were made, and 

 the very high speed of 29 6 knots was 



attained over the measured mile. It is be- 

 lieved that this is a speed greatly in excess 

 of anything tliat has ever been previously ac- 

 complished by a vessel of the small dimen- 

 sions of the Turbinia, which is only one hun- 

 dred feet in length, nine feet in beam, and 

 has but forty-two tons displacement when 

 fully loaded." As this was only a trial trip, 

 a still higher speed is anticipated after re- 

 peated experiments. 



It is stated in Nature that M. Camille 

 Flammarion has I'ecently compiled some 

 meteorological statistics regarding the 

 amount of rainfall in Paris, which disclose 

 the remarkable fact that there has been a 

 gradual increase in the fall for the last two 

 hundred years. The following brief table 

 speaks for itself : 



Mm. 



1689 to 1719 4S5-7 



1720 to 1754 409-4 



1778 to 1797 492-5 



1804 to 1824 503-7 



1825 to 1844 507-5 



1845 to 1872 522-4 



1873 to 1896 557-4 



Whether this increase is actually due to 

 more rain or to some such causes as better 

 positions for rain gauges, or more improved 

 gauges themselves, one can not with cer- 

 tainty say, but the amount of increase seems 

 rather to negative this. It would be inter- 

 esting to have similar data from other Con- 

 tinental cities. 



The account of the Proceedings of the 

 National Science Club, at its second annual 

 meeting in January, 1896, is late in reaching 

 us, but it loses none of its interest for all 

 that. The purpose of the club is to promote 

 the cooperation of the scientifically inclined 

 women of the country in research and inves- 

 tigation. Twenty papers were read at the 

 annual meeting by members of the club ; 

 meetings were held at the reading rooms, 

 1425 New York Avenue, Washington, sev- 

 eral days each week till May ; and an experi- 

 mental course of lectures was given with 

 much success. All parts of the country are 

 represented in the list of nearly a hundred 

 and fifty members, and Norway and Spain 

 furnish corresponding members. The club 

 has twenty-two sections, five of which are in 

 botany. 



In a paper read in the British Associa- 

 tion, Mr. W. H. Preece mentioned electrical 

 disturbances in submarine cables which pro- 

 duce mutilation of signals and loss of speed 

 in telegraph working, indistinctness of speech 

 and the presence of extraneous and disturb- 

 ing sounds in telephones, with reduction of 

 the distance through which speech is prac- 

 ticable, which, he said, were due to electro- 

 static and electro-magnetic induction and to 

 leakage. The paper explained how these 

 disturbances were detected, measured, and 

 mitigated, defined the conditions that deter- 

 mine the distance through which telephony 



