I02 



NA TURE 



[December 2. 1897 



A BUST of Pasteur was unveiled at Melun on Monday as a 

 memorial of his investigations on anti-anthrax serum. 



The death is announced of Dr. Harrison Allen, Emeritus 

 Professor of Comparative Anatomy in the University of 

 Pennsylvania. 



The Allahabad Pioneer Mail states that the Rontgen rays 

 are proving of the greatest assistance in dealing with the gun- 

 shot wounds among the troops engaged on the frontier. 



The Bradshaw lecture, in connection with the Royal College 

 of Surgeons. England, will be delivered on Wednesday, 

 December 8, by Mr. Alfred Willett, who will take as his 

 subject the "Correction of certain deformities by operative 

 measures upon bones.'' 



The New York Zoological Society is making headway in its 

 undertaking to convert a portion of South Bronx Park into the 

 largest zoological garden in the world. It has the right to use 

 the ground ; it has the plans for the chief structures to be 

 erected ; it has part of the money ; and it believes that the 

 public-spirited citizens of New York will contribute the re- 

 mainder of the funds necessary. In the second number of the 

 new bulletin issued by the Society, we read : " The Society does 

 not propose that any feature of its work shall be performed on a 

 small or cheap scale. The Greater New York should not plan 

 a mere menagerie on the matchless site set aside as a Zoological 

 Park. The Society is carefully studying in this country and 

 abroad what constitutes an ideal vivarium, and it proposes to 

 build one worthy of a great city, or none ! " As already an- 

 nounced, the City of New York will provide 125,000 dollars to 

 meet the cost of preparing South Bronx Park for the reception of 

 the Society's costly buildings and collections, and making them 

 accessible to the public, as soon as the Society's improvement 

 fund reaches 100,000 dollars. 



At the Royal Geographical Society on December 6, 

 Lieutenant Peary will give an account of his Arctic work. On 

 December 13, Colonel H. W. Feilden will read a paper on recent 

 visits by Mr. Pearson and himself to the Barents and Kara Seas 

 and Novaya Zemlya. Mr. F. G. Jackson and Mr. Arnold Pike 

 will also speak of their observations on the open Polar Sea of 

 the past summer. On Friday, January 7, and Monday, January 

 10, at 4 p.m., two Lectures to Young People will be given by 

 Dr. H. R. Mill ; the subject being : " A Geographical Holiday 

 through Forest, Prairie and Mountain." The lectures will be 

 illustrated by many photographic lantern slides. 



It is proposed to erect a monument of grey granite, twenty- 

 three feet high, over the grave of Baron von Mueller in St. 

 Kilda Cemetery, and donations are invited for that purpose by 

 the late investigator's executors. Botanists will be pleased to 

 know that the Baron's supplemental volume of the " Flora 

 Australiensis," upon which he had worked for years and was 

 preparing for the press at the time of his death, together with 

 two volumes on his administration as Director of the Botanical 

 Gardens, embracing a biography and complete bibliography of 

 his writings, are to be published. His executors will feel 

 favoured by the loan of any of his letters, or the communication 

 of incidents in the Baron's life which his friends deem to be 

 worthy of notice in his biography. Subscriptions for the monu- 

 ment, or material for the biography, should be sent to the Rev. 

 W.Potter, " Vonmueller," Arnold Street, South Yarra, Vic- 

 toria. 



The annual dinner of the Institution of Electrical Engineers 

 was held on Wednesday in last week, and was attended by 

 more than two hundred members and friends. In proposing 

 NO. 1456, VOL. 57] 



the toast of "The Scientific Societies," Prof. Ayrton compared 

 the conditions of physical research thirty years ago with the 

 laboratories of to-day. Lord Kelvin responded on behalf of 

 the Royal Society, and pointed out the assistance given by that 

 scientific Society to the advancement of natural knowledge. 

 Sir J. Wolfe Barry replied for the Institution of Civil Engineers, 

 and Sir James Crichton Browne on behalf of the Royal Insti- 

 tution. Prof. S. P. Thompson proposed the toast of " Our 

 Guests," and the Marquis of Tweeddale and Dr. Collins (Chair- 

 man of the London County Council) replied to it. Sir Courtenay 

 Boyle, in proposing the toast of "The Institution of Electrical 

 Engineers," mentioned that the Board of Trade had already 

 made 256 provisional orders for electric lighting : he hoped that 

 electric traction would soon develop in this country. The Presi- 

 dent, Sir Henry Mance, replied to the toast, and gave a brief 

 survey of the work of the Institution. 



The autumn meeting of the U.S. National Academy of Science 

 was recently held at Boston. Miss Alice Bates Gould, daughter 

 of the late Prof. B. A. Gould, who was one of the founders of 

 the Academy, presented the sum of twenty thousand dollars, to 

 be known as the Gould Memorial Fund, the income to be used 

 for astronomical and mathematical purposes.— The Academy 

 visited the Jeffersonian Laboratory at Harvard, by invitation of 

 Prof. John Trowbridge of the Scientific School. Prof. Trowbridge 

 exhibited his new X-ray machine. It has a voltage of 1,200,000, 

 and with it are used 10,000 cells and 60 condensers. The 

 condensers are charged in parallel and discharged in series by a 

 movable framework. The spark is 48 inches long.— On the last 

 day of the meeting, Prof. O. C. Marsh made a further contribu- 

 tion to the subject of the Jurassic formation of the Atlantic 

 coast, which he has been investigating for several years. Prof. 

 A. E. Merrill described the effects of tropical seas upon certain 

 animals. Prof. Charles R. Cross explained experiments made 

 by him on the wave siren for determining the pitch of musical 

 sounds Prof. Seth C. Chandler made a further contribution 

 on the motion of the earth's pole. His experiments, con- 

 tinued for many years, warrant the statement that the area 

 traversed by the pole does not exceed twenty feet in radius. He 

 exhibited charts showing the varying position of the pole for 

 seven years. Major J. W. Powell presented an hypothesis to 

 account for movements in the crust of the earth. — After the 

 adjournment of the meeting, members of the Academy visited 

 the Harvard Observatory under the charge of Prof. Edward C. 

 Pickering, and examined the apparatus and the collection of 

 nearly 200,000 photographs of the heavens which have been 

 made during a period of several years. —The spring meeting of 

 the Academy will be held at Washington on April 19, 1898. 



The reports issued by the Meteorological Office on Saturday 

 last showed that an abrupt change of the conditions of high 

 barometric pressure, which had prevailed more or less per- 

 sistently for some time past, was taking place ; the wind had 

 become more generally south-westerly, and a rise of more than 

 20° had taken place in the temperature, in parts of England, 

 :ince the previous day. The fall of the barometer was very 

 rapid, and by Sunday the whole type of weather had thoroughly 

 changed ; a large and important cyclonic disturbance had 

 arrived from the Atlantic, and the centre of the storm on Sunday 

 morning lay over the north of Scotland. South-westerly and 

 westerly gales were blowing in most parts of our islands during 

 Sunday, and the barometer near the centre of the storm was 

 becoming still lower as the disturbance advanced. By 8h. a.m. 

 on Monday the centre had travelled in a south-easterly direction 

 across the North Sea to Denmark, causing terrific seas and 

 northerly gales on our eastern and south-eastern coasts. The 

 unusual track followed by the storm was probably owing to the 

 barrier offered by the relatively higher barometric area extend- 



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