30O 



NATURE 



[Jan. 30, 1879 



inclination to refer locally restricted events to large 

 general causes. 



Mr. Hyde Clarke, who was in the chair, drew attention 

 to the fact that it was by a paper of his thirty years ago 

 that public attention was first directed in what he might 

 term a scientific form to this periodicity. Prof. Stanley 

 Jevons, who was the great advocate for the application of 

 the sun-spot theory to commercial crises, had reproduced 

 the statements he made thirty years ago, and thus fresh 

 attention had been called to them. For his part, he was 

 no advocate for what was called the sun-spot theory, for 

 he believed the sun-spots had no direct bearing on the 

 periodicity of commercial crises, or upon the height of the 

 Nile ; but as what Dr. Mann had said might appear to 

 throw discredit on the periodicity of crises, he would 

 briefly revert to the facts to which he had formerly called 

 attention. He had then gone through the corn harvests, 

 as shown by the prices in England for the last 400 years, 

 for which data could be obtained, and his observations, 

 which had since been repeated by Prof. Jevons, gave a 

 series of facts over six centuries, showing that there was 

 a periodicity in the crops, and consequently in the com- 

 mercial phenomena dependent on them, of somewhere 

 about ten years. Prof. Jevons had fastened on to that 

 one fact, but had not referred to other observations he 

 had made, which gave the clue to the question Mr. Cobb 

 had raised, whether it was possible to predict these 

 periods. There was certainly, in a long period, a 

 periodicity of about ten years, and if you laid out a dia- 

 gram you would find this plainly shown, but yet in some 

 places the lines of dearth or plenty would seem to come 

 in the wrong place, and no one has yet been able to hit 

 on the true law. He had stated that, as far as he could 

 discover from the facts before him, there were, besides 

 the periods of ten years, other periods of about twenty- 

 six years, and likewise a period of about 104 years, and 

 the opinion he formed was that these longer periods inter- 

 fered with the shorter ones, and prevented any absolute 

 calculation as to the future. At the same time the ob- 

 servation of these phenomena was not by any means an 

 idle matter ; there was this practical lesson to be drawn 

 from it, that in periods of prosperity we must look forward 

 to a period of adversity and prepare for it. Therefore 

 the observation of Governments, and of the commercial 

 community and financial institutions should be directed 

 to these great phenomena of nature, which, after all, did 

 govern the individual operations of man. 



And this is all we contend for. That there is a con- 

 nection between certain well-known cosmical phenomena, 

 centring in the sun-spot period, is admitted by all whose 

 researches give them a right to pronounce an opinion on 

 the subject. What is the exact nature of this connection 

 has yet to be discovered, though that we are on the road 

 to it every careful reader of Nature must admit. The 

 immense social and economical results depending on the 

 definite ascertainment of this connection make it the 

 bounden duty and the interest of civilised Governments to 

 do all in their power to further research in this direction, 

 and we have no doubt that when the full truth is known 

 it will be found that even the apparently capricious Nile 

 is obedient to influences that may be regarded as ulti- 

 mately cosmical. 



NOTES 



We are pleased to see a suggestion in the Midland Countus 

 Herald that in considering the arrangements for the restoration 

 of the Reference Library, recently almost destroyed by fire, the 

 authorities will not miss the opportunity they now have of sup- 

 plying an omission in the public institutions of Birmingham, by 

 organising a Natural History Museum, of equal value with the 

 Reference Library which they are doing their best to restore. 

 We heartily endorse this suggestion, and indeed it seems strange 



that so energetic and intelligent a town as Birmingham, with one 

 of oiu: most enterprising Natural History Societies in its midst, 

 should not have had such an institution long ago. We are sure 

 the matter only needs to be properly brought before the authori- 

 ties and the citizens to have the blank speedily and properly 

 filled up. 



Mr. John Sadler, so long assistant to Prof. Balfour, has 

 been appointed to succeed the late Mr. McNab as curator of the 

 Royal Botanic Gardens, Edinburgh. 



It is expected that Russian Turkestan will be very well repre- 

 sented at the anthropological exhibition which will be opened 

 next summer at Moscow. We may already mention a very interest- 

 ing collection of some dozens of skulls, found at Samarkand and 

 belonging to a very remote epoch. A collection of dresses and 

 implements of the inhabitants of the Zarafshan valley will be 

 accompanied by a collection of ethnographic photographs ; and 

 among the inliabitants of this valley, the photographs and the 

 skulls from the Galchi tribe will probably draw the special atten- 

 tion of the scientific world. This tribe, which lives in the clefts 

 of the Hindu-Kush at the sources of Zarafshan river, differs from 

 all other Central Asian tribes, and is said to be the remnant of 

 the army of Alexander the Great ; indeed, its features are like 

 those of the Greeks ; but the tribe remains almost quite imex- 

 plored, because of their wildness and the insecurity of travel in 

 those regions. Altogether, the Zarafshan district sends to the 

 exhibition plenty of very valuable anthropological and ethnogra. 

 phical materials. 



The unveiling of the Humboldt monument in Tower Grave 

 Park, St. Louis, U.S., took place on December 24 la>t. The 

 monument, as our readers will remember, is cast in bronze and 

 executed after the design of the eminent German sculptor, Herr 

 Ferdinand von Miller. 



The Berlin Humboldt Academy, founded by the Scientific 

 Central Union of that city, was inaugurated on January 13 last. 



The competitive examination held at the Paris Conservatoire 

 des Arts et Meders for the appointment of a Professor of Physics 

 and Meteorology to the National School of Agriculture is said 

 to have been very brilliant. It has ended by the appointment of 

 M. Duclaux, Professor to the Faculty of Lyons, who was trained 

 by M. Pasteur. 



The Times Paris Correspondent telegraphs on January 24 that 

 the eruption of mud at the foot of Mount Etna was still going 

 on, but with varying intensity. For two days after the earth- 

 quake of the 24th ult. it was considerably stimulated, but it has 

 since slackened, and the mud is more watery. An area of 7,000 

 square metres is already covered. 



A CORRESPONDENT of the Colonies and India, writing from 

 Wellington, New Zealand, on December 7, says that a most 

 important discovery of graphite has just been made in the 

 back portion of the province. The Colonial laboratoiy has 

 received specimens from boulders found in a creek, and these 

 prove to be the purest and most compact samples yet discovered 

 in the Colonies. The value of the discovery is enhanced by the 

 fact that the existence of coal in immediate proximity is thus 

 indicated. In another spot, between Westport and Keefton, an 

 extensive limestone cave has been discovered, and it is stated 

 that it is traversed by a creek yielding good payable gold. The 

 Geological Survey is being steadily pushed on, and Dr. Hector 

 is now attempting to work his way to Waikato, in order to 

 gather information as to the geology of that hitherto unexplored 

 region. 



Messrs. Lechertier, Barbe, and Co., of Regent Street, have 

 sent us a wonderful shilling moist colour-box, which, in utility 

 and the quality of the colours, surpasses anything we have seen. 



