May 2, 1878] 



NATURE 



Another mark of the recognition of science accorded 

 by our Government has been the increase of the sum 

 placed at the disposal of the meteorological Council, 

 while at the same time a reorganisation of the ad- 

 ministration of the Council has taken place. Perhaps 

 the most startling event which has taken place during 

 the last eight years touching the administration of scien- 

 tific work in England, has been the nomination of the 

 members of this Council by the Royal Society. Among 

 these we do not find one of our distinguished meteoro- 

 logists. We fear, therefore, that most of the meteoro- 

 logical work of the future will lie outside that body, a 

 result which all must intensely regret, for there is enough 

 loyalty to the Royal Society among British men of 

 science to make them wish that everything it touches 

 should succeed. 



Never before have the larger questions of meteoro- 

 logy attracted so many minds': the connection of solar 

 changes with terrestrial changes and everything which 

 depends upon them, is now beginning to loom out of 

 the mists of obscurity in a most gigantic shape. The 

 subject is one of such intense interest to humanity, that 

 here there must be no hasty work. The magnetician, the 

 meteorologist, and the physicist, must march together 

 with cautious tread, and when they do we shall doubtless 

 in the next few years find the basis surer and surer, and 

 the methods employed freer from that mutual criticism 

 which makes outsiders think that meteorological butter 

 depends more upon the churn than upon the milk. In 

 any case we may congratulate ourselves that the next 

 eight years will in all human probability give us a 

 more unbroken chain of solar facts than that secured 

 during the last similar period of time. 



It is not only in the larger problems of physical meteoro- 

 logy that progress is being made. Nine years ago found 

 us warning Deal from Valentia. We now, thanks to the 

 public spirit of Mr. Bennett, of the New York Herald, 

 warn Valentia from New York. The laws of the passage 

 of storms over the Atlantic will soon, doubtless, be more 

 within our grasp, and the next decade may enable us to 

 watch the travels of a cyclone over a distance equal to 

 half the circumference of the earth. 



The Government explorations carried on by the Chal- 

 lenger and other 'expeditions, to which we have already 

 referred, have not been the only ones which made the 

 last decade a very remarkable one. 



From the time of Marco Polo nothing more wonderful 

 in the way of foreign travel than the stupendous feats 

 accomplished by Cameron and Stanley in Central Africa 

 have been placed on record. In the near future, and 

 perhaps even in a more distant one, we are not likely to 

 have to chronicle anything coming up to the level of the 

 work accomplished by these men. Nor must we omit to 

 mention Warburton, Giles, and Forrest, whose ride 

 across the Australian desert was scarcely less remarkable. 

 Exploration will doubtless still go on, but by the nature of 

 the problem, it must be exploration of the less sensational 

 sort, but by no means the less useful on that account. 



Although these African and Australian adventures have 

 been the greatest achievements of their kind which we 

 have had to chronicle, there is scarcely any part of the 

 world on which the explorer's activity has not recently 

 left his mark. In fact, between Cameron, who makes 



a dash across a continent, and the much-to-be-pitied 

 members of our own geological survey, who, according to 

 a recent parliamentary paper, spend a year in mapping a 

 region of twelve square miles, there is an unbroken series 

 of workers, thanks to whose labours, per mare per terras, 

 a complete inventory of our planetary riches is being got 

 together. 



Coming from exploration to the sciences of observation 

 and experiment, when we have referred to the enormous 

 increase in telescopic power on the one hand, and to the 

 gradual consolidation and new grouping of facts on the 

 other, we have, perhaps, referred to the most salient 

 points. The increase of observing power since 1869, as is 

 best evidenced by the discovery of two satellites of Mars, is 

 simply stupendous ; in that year we chronicled the erec- 

 tion of the Femdene telescope ; since then this telescope 

 has not only been eclipsed actually, but in imagination 

 dwarfed into such dimensions that it may serve as a finder 

 to the telescope of the future. Henceforward the attempts 

 of those who experiment on lo-feet mirrors will be the 

 central point of interest. 



The development which I our knowledge of the motion 

 of the intimate particles of matter has received during the 

 last ten years from the work done on the kinetic theory 

 of gases and in the exploration of spectroscopic pheno- 

 mena, is greater than we have as yet any idea of. It 

 will not be a surprising thing if, before very long, 

 these two streams of work find their meeting-place as do 

 the Rhone and the Saone at Lyons, when the clear 

 formulae of the kinetic theory, commingling with the 

 already multitudinous but far from organised spectro- 

 scopic observations, shall form a noble river, the molecu- 

 lar science which in the coming time will embrace all 

 others. 



Another grouping, "of which we have recorded the 

 gradual consolidation, and which is destined to change 

 the points of view from which many Aspects of Nature 

 have been regarded, is that of physiography — a name 

 which conveniently defines the region where the physicist, 

 the chemist, the geologist, and the astronomer, find each 

 a common interest. Such a grouping as this would, of 

 course, be impossible in a planet where the chemistry of 

 extraneous matter, or the origin of its own, presented 

 problems beyond the range of investigation. But pre- 

 cisely because such points as these are continually re- 

 ceiving important developments here, this new grouping 

 is destined to form a centre of an ever-widening interest 

 — an interest from which all must gain, for so surely as 

 all Nature is one, so must the work of each explorer, to 

 be of its greatest value, form only a part of one combined 

 attack. 



The radiometer and the telephone are products of 

 recent investigations in physics which of themselves are 

 fit to mark an epoch, but first-rate work has been 

 done besides, by Avhich the continuity of the gaseous and 

 liquid states of matter has been demonstrated, and the 

 last gas reduced to a liquid form. The revival of the 

 contact theory affords a new standpoint for electricians, 

 while the ever-increasing analogies between light and 

 magnetism which are being brought forward indicate that 

 before long some vast generalisation may be expected 

 in this direction. On all sides the interest attaching to 

 physical problems is increasing, and it is well that this 



