76 



NA TURE 



\_May 1 6, 1878 



searches in meteorology have likewise made him known to a 

 wide circle. The most important of these were his comparative 

 statistics on the winter weather of Berlin, compiled from a long 

 series of careful and minute observations. Prof. Wolfers was 

 aged seventy-five at the time of his death. 



M. Ferdinand Hoeffer died at Sannois, a small country- 

 place in Seine-et-Oise, on May 8, at the age of sixty-eight 

 years. He was the editor of the Biographic ginerale, published 

 by Firmin Didot in sixty 8vo volumes. Most of the scien- 

 tific memoirs in that immense work were written by him, and he 

 was the author of a large number of historical works on astro- 

 nomy and chemistry. 



Mariette Bey, the Egyptologist, who has rendered such 

 valued services to archajology, has been elected a member of the 

 French Institute. 



The statue of the philosopher, Giordano Bruno, will be 

 dedicated at Rome on February 17, 1879. On the same day, in 

 the year 1600, he was burned at the stake, in Rome, by the 

 Inquisition. 



The festive celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the 

 foundation of the Royal Polytechnic Institution of Dresden took 

 place on May i, and was attended by many eminent men of 

 science and other persons of note. 



A PROMINENT feature at the late banquet of the Berlin Geo- 

 graphical Society was the speech of the representative from the 

 Paris Society. His concluding wish that the festival might serve 

 towards the scientific fraternisation of the two nations, was 

 greeted with loud applause, which was redoubled as the Crown 

 Prince of Germany rose to publicly shake hands with the French 

 Ambassador. 



Only last week we noticed Capt. Burton's narrative of his visit 

 in the spring of last year to the Land of Midian. The results of 

 this visit were so full of promise for the empty exchequer of the 

 Khediv (as Capt. Burton scolds us into spelling the title), that 

 the almost veteran explorer returned again with a more formid- 

 able expedition in December last, and spent four months exa- 

 mining the region, during which the expedition travelled and 

 voyaged upwards of 2,500 mile^. They brought home some 

 twenty-five tons of geological specimens to illustrate the general 

 geological formation of the land ; six cases of Colorado and 

 Negro ore ; five cases of ethnological and anthropological col- 

 lections — such as Midianite coins, inscriptions in Nabathean and 

 Cufic, remains of worked stones, fragments of smelted metals, 

 glass, and pottery ; upwards of 200 sketches in oil and water 

 colours, photographs of the chief ruins, including the catacombs, 

 and of a classical temple, apparently of Greek art ; and, finally, 

 maps and plans of the whole country, including thirty-two 

 ruined cities, some of whose names can be restored by consulting 

 Strabo and Ptolemy, besides sketches of many ateliers where 

 perambulating bands like the gipsies of ancient and modern 

 times seem to have carried on simple mining operations. Among 

 the specimens are argentiferous and cupriferous ores from 

 Northern Midian, and auriferous rocks from Southern, There 

 are collections from three turquoise mines, the northern, near 

 Aynuneh, already worked ; the southern, near Ziba, still 

 scratched by the Arabs ; and the central, until now unknown 

 save to the Bedouins. There are, moreover, three great sulphur 

 beds, the northern and the southern, belonging to the secondary 

 formation (now invaded by the trap granite), and the central, 

 near the port of Mowilah, of pyretic origin. Rock salt accom- 

 panies the brimstone, and there are two large natural salt lakes. 

 The whole of the secondary formation supplies fine gypsum, and 

 in parts of it are quarries of alabaster, which served to build the 

 ruins of Maghair, Sheeayb, Madiama (of Ptolemy), and el- 



Haura (Leuke Kome), the southernmost part of western 

 Nabathea. Specimens of the ores will be sent to Paris and 

 London; the rest will be analysed in Cairo by a local conmiis- 

 sion, while the curiosities of all kinds, after being exhibited in 

 Cairo, are to be sent to the Paris Exhibition, 



What may be called excursional education is finding very 

 great favour with the lively French, and threatens to be applied 

 in a variety of directions. The largest privtUe school in Paris, 

 that of Sainte-Barbe, near the Pantheon, which was established 

 in the fifteenth century, and is now the property of a com- 

 pany, has just inaugurated a system of tours for teaching foreign 

 languages. Forty of the pupils have been seat to Carlsruhe, in 

 Germany, where they will be boarded in a number of families 

 for several months, and receive their regular instruction from 

 a staff of German teachers. Next year there will be an EnglisH 

 tour, very likely to London. The pupils have been carefully 

 selected from amongst those who are most likely to benefit from 

 this practical system of international education. 



Some important improvements upon Prof. Bell's telephone 

 have recently been made and patented by Mr, E, Cox Walker, 

 electrician (of the firm of Messrs. T, Cooke and Sons) of York. 

 The improvements consist in doubling or quadrupling the 

 diaphragm and its accessories, and dividing the mouthpiece so 

 that to each diaphragm there is a corresponding sub-mouthpiece. 

 Instead of using two or four single magnets, Mr. Walker adopts 

 one or two magnets somewhat of a horse-shoe shape, the coils being 

 connected as for ordinary horse-shoe electro-magnets, and the con- 

 nections made with the transmitting wire in the ordinary way. 

 Taking the quadruplex mouthpiece as an example it might be 

 explained thus : the ordinary single telephone mouthpiece is 

 elongated, and instead of the orifice leading direct to the dia 

 phragm it is divided into four smaller channels, each of which 

 collects and directs the sound on to the diaphragms covering the 

 magnets. Mr Walker does not have a separate diaphragm for 

 each pole or coil, but has so constructed the under side of the 

 mouthpiece that it nips the diaphragms tightly across the middle 

 and around the opening containing the coils, and virtually 

 divides them, Mr, Walker has also recently made an octoplex 

 instrument, which, by adding to the number of coils, diaphragms, 

 and corresponding divisions in the mouthpiece gives eia;ht times 

 the intensity of a single one. Besides the mouthpieces, Mr. 

 Walker has patented improved earpieces. The instrument was 

 exhibited at the Royal Society's soirk on May i, and at the Royal 

 Institution on May 3. 



The Montsouris Observatory has established at the Champ 

 de Mars a pavilion where all the observations will be con- 

 ducted on the same principles as at the establishment, and the 

 principal registering apparatus in use will be put in operation 

 before the public. The Meteorological Society has also estab- 

 lished another pavilion where the telegraphic warnings of the 

 international service will be posted daily, A collection of all the 

 meteorological journals published by the several offices will be 

 exhibited every day for comparison. From May i the French 

 service publishes daily two maps giving the state of the weather 

 at 7 a.m. in summer time. The first of these maps gives 

 isobaric lines with the variations in the last twenty-four hours 

 expressed in tenths of millimetres. The second gives the iso- 

 thermal lines with thermometric variation in the past twenty-four 

 hours expressed in tenths of centigrade degree=. The isobaric 

 map shows, by conventional £iga«, the state of the sky, force 

 and direction of winds, and state of the sea. The isothermal 

 map shows, by other signs, the extent of rains, their importance, 

 and the limits of congelations. The Pic du Midi and Puy de 

 Dome observatories ^^ill also send the results of their daily 

 observations, which will be posted in a conspicuous part of the 

 establi-hment. 



