HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



269 



confidence of success and the supposed magnitude of 

 their discoveries. I have received a curious newspaper, 

 " The Future," published at Richland, Shawnee Co., 

 Kansas, U.S., which promises magnificently and 

 gives much advice to agriculturists. 



I was a boy when London was thrown into a 

 spasm of temporary insanity by " Murphy's Weather 

 Almanac." It was all done by one lucky hit. Any- 

 body may make an almanac and predict the weather 

 for each day in the year, and be right more frequently 

 than wrong, by simply taking the averages from 

 meteorological observations and predicting accord- 

 ingly ; but Murphy was bolder than this. He pre. 

 dieted that a certain day early in the year would be 

 phenomenally cold, and it was so ; 28 degrees below 

 freezing in Hyde Park. Then followed a rush to 

 buy the almanac, and a ridiculous excitement. Songs 

 were sung in the streets, and wild stories were told 

 of the magnetical and electrical discoveries of the 

 great meteorological Murphy. 



In spite of all our meteorological observatories and 

 observations, we are still unable to make any far 

 forward predictions of weather beyond stating prob- 

 able averages. Storm warnings are fairly reliable, 

 but these and the rest of the daiiy forecasts of the 

 Meteorological Office are not exactly predictions. 

 They are statements of atmospheric movements that 

 are proceeding in certain directions, and which, if 

 they continue, will reach certain localities a few 

 hours later. They do commonly continue as antici- 

 pated, but not certainly. About eighty per cent, of 

 the forecasts are fulfilled, and the rest are failures. 



A really valuable contribution to weather-wisdom 

 was read at the last meeting of the British Association 

 by Dr. Courteney Fox, " On Some of the Laws 

 which Regulate the Sequence of Mean Temperature 

 and Rainfall in the Climate of London." These laws 

 are induced from observations extending over the 

 last seventy years. They are necessarily empirical, 

 i.e., all mere generalisations of average fact, not 

 deductions from necessary causation. Dr. Fox finds 

 that if a spring or a summer be very cold, the suc- 

 ceeding season will be cold, and that warm autumns 

 succeed very warm summers. It is very rarely that 

 a dry August is followed by a wet September. A 

 very wet and cold summer is usually succeeded by a 

 cold autumn. If January, April, June, July, August, 

 September or December are very cold, the succeeding 

 month will probably be dry. Very warm January, 

 expect a dry February. The next month following 

 a very warm June, July, or August will be warm. 

 Very wet January, March, or April, usually fol- 

 lowed by a warm month. Warm and wet November 

 and December, wet month to follow. Warm and 

 wet January, expect a warm February. A warm 

 month usually follows a warm and dry June or July, 

 and a wet September follows a warm and dry August. 

 Cold and wet July and August, expect cold month 

 to follow. Cold and dry December, expect cold 



January. Cold and dry November, expect dry 

 December. 



A difficulty is suggested on reading these indica- 

 tions, viz., that of finding when the changes come. 

 In nearly all the cases specified the order for the next 

 month or next season is, "As you were." I suppose 

 that we must read all these descriptions of the pre- 

 ceding period as intended for exceptional weather, 

 and that such weather usually shades off gradually, 

 while the more decided changes more commonly 

 follow average weather. 



I am glad to find among the papers read in Section 

 B (Chemistry), one by Professor Odling, which has 

 the merciful intent of relieving us from some of the 

 structural names which are daily poured upon the 

 unhappy student of organic chemistry. Every plant 

 that has an odour, or has a flavour, or contains any 

 thing that has any special property, may be tortured 

 until it yields some substance with real or imaginary 

 special composition and properties, and every such 

 substance may be physicked with strong acids or 

 strong bases, or chlorine, iodine, bromine, &c. &c, 

 and forced into some sort of combination with these ; 

 and the compounds thus formed may unite with other 

 compounds, and thus on, ad infinitum. Millions of 

 millions of such things may be concocted, then 

 analysed, then formulated, and then named according 

 to their imaginary molecular constitution. Now that 

 we have hundreds of young aspirants fox chemical 

 fame who devote themselves to such mixing, and 

 messing, and analysing, and naming, the torrents of 

 papers poured into the learned societies combine to 

 produce a flood that is simply maddening, and would 

 drive all our chemists into lunatic asylums, but for a 

 protecting providence which has ordained a beneficent 

 law that operates with stern rigidity ; viz., that 

 nobody but the author and the printer ever reads 

 these papers. I pick up at random the two last 

 numbers (October and November) of the "Journal of 

 the Chemical Society," and find among the abstracts 

 of papers on Organic Chemistry more than a hundred 

 of these new substances discovered during each 

 current month. This has been going on for years, 

 and may go on for ever, if the supply of ordinary 

 laboratory aspirants is maintained. As an example 

 of the sort of names which Professor Odling desires 

 to reform, I will quote two or three from one of the 

 numbers of the journal above named. " Orthochloro- 

 carbonylpheny forth ophosphoricdichforide, " obtained by 

 R. Anschiitz, and re-named as above, its original name 

 given to it by Couper, trichforophosphate of salicyle, 

 being too short (page 1062). " Tetrachloroquinone- 

 metanitr aniline" obtained in black crystals by M. 

 Niemeyer, together with a dozen of other chemical 

 cousins (page 1066). E. Bamberger and S. C. 

 Hooker present us with several of their new-born 

 chemical babies, among which is one that bears the 

 pretty name of " hydroxyisopropyldiphenyleneketone- 

 carboxylic acid," which is described as "a strong 



