Nov. 16, 1876I 



NATURE 



69 



square miles. A severe cyclone has also been experienced at 

 Chittagong. 



TiiK Kolnische Zeitungoi November 11 reports on a disas- 

 trous gale and snowstorm which raged with terrific force in the 

 neighbourhood of Stockholm on the 5th inst. Over fifty vessels 

 stranded near Kalmar, and all railway lines to the south and to 

 Norway were completely snowed up, and traffic upon them 

 interrupted. The latter had not yet been resumed on the 8lh 

 inst. 



A MAGNIFICENT bolide was observed on Sunday night, 

 November 5, at nine ^o'clock, at Clerey (Aube), in France. 

 Numerous sparks were visible and an explosion was heard, 

 although very feeble, owing to the immense distance at which 

 it had taken place. 



The French Minister of the Interior has authorised the Mu- 

 nicipal Council of Lyons to dedicate a bust to Ampere, the 

 inventor of electro-magnets. This memorial will be placed in 

 the museum where are gathered the memorials of the illustrious 

 men who were born in the city. 



The transit-room in which the Bischofsheim instrument is to be 

 placed is being fitted up at the Paris Observatory. The work is 

 almost finished. M. Leverrier has asked the Minister of Public 

 Instruction to appoint an administrative commission in order to 

 better regulate the part which the Observatory is to take in the 

 1878 Exhibition. 



The new number of the Ibis, now in the press, will conclude 

 the third series and the eighteenth volume of this ornithological 

 periodical, which has been carried on by the British Ornitholo- 

 gists' Union with the greatest energy since its institution as the 

 organ of that body in 1859. A fourth series, under the joint 

 editorship of Messrs. Salvin and Sclater, will be commenced 

 next year. 



Count T. Sala'adori, of the Royal Zoological Museum of 

 Turin, is engaged on a general account of the birds of the 

 Papuan and Molluccan Islands, based principally on the large 

 collections recently formed by the Italian naturalists Beccari 

 and D'Albertis in those countriej. The work will be published, 

 when completed, in the Annals of the Museo Civico di Storia 

 Naturale of Genoa, to which institution the above-named collec- 

 tions have been transmitted. 



On Thursday and Friday last week the Haggerstone Ento- 

 mological Society held its annual exhibition at its place of 

 meeting. No. 10, Brownlow Street, Dalston. It was only in 

 1857 that a few working men interested in insect-collecting 

 liscussed, in West Wickham Wood, the desirability of an east- 

 nd club for mutual assistance. A club was formed and now 

 lumbers a hundred members. The subscription is but a penny 

 i-week, but with this a reference library has been accumulated. 

 The type cabinet for the collections consists of forty drawers, 

 n which there are now some 15,000 specimens, and the library 

 md collection together are insured for 200/. All through the year 

 the society meets every Thursday, and many points of practical 

 importance (some of them bearing on "the theory of evolution" 

 put to the test by breeding) have been discussed. Among the 

 vays in which members of the society have done valuable work 

 nay be mentioned the preservation of the avenue of elms in 

 Victoria Park from insect ravages by a knowledge of exactly how 

 o proceed in dealing with the foe. Although this and several 

 uch societies do not obtrude themselves on the scientific world, 

 hey still, besides exercising a good effect on the members, often 

 lo work of sterling value. 



Wk understand that it is proposed at University College to 

 ive a larger development than before to the practical work of 

 students in connection with the classes of mathematics, physics, 



and engineering in their workroom especially adapted to the 

 purpose, and placed under the direction of a special teacher, M. 

 Paul Robin. Various models to illustrate the theorems of modern 

 and higher geometry, of kinematics and mechanics, so difficult to 

 understand theoretically,— such modelsas are so largely represented 

 in the South Kensington ICxhibition collection— will be made in 

 a simple manner by the students themselves, side by side with 

 their theoretical studies. The best models, and such as require 

 more time and accuracy for their construction, will be preserved 

 in a small educational collection. It would hardly be possible 

 to insist too strongly on the usefulness, or rather on the 

 absolute necessity of such work for the successful study of 

 science. It is only when the student has not only seen and 

 handled various practical illustrations and applications of the 

 theorems of geometry and mechanics he is studying, but when he 

 has himself constructed them — however roughly approximate they 

 may be— that the mathematical truths will be permanently im- 

 pressed on his mind. Only thus can he become so familiar with 

 them, that they will be a basis for acquiring further notions, and a 

 source of further mental activity. We wish, therefore, complete 

 success to this new enterprise of University College. 



Shortly after the appearance of Prof. Tyndall's work on 

 Glaciers, the Bologna Professor, Bianconi, observed that, while 

 Tyndall's experiments certainly prove that rapid changes of 

 form in ice are due to crushing and to regelation, they do not 

 prove at all that ice is devoid of a small degree of plasticity, 

 which degree might be sufficient to explain the plasticity of 

 glaciers. He undertook, therefore, a series of experiments 

 (described and published in 1871 in the Mt7n. of the Acad, of 

 Bologna, 3rd sen vol. i. ) on planks and bars of ice submitted to 

 bending and torsion. The bending of ice-planks having been 

 afterwards the subject of researches of Messrs. Mathews, 

 Moseley, Tyndall, and Heim, it will suffice to say that Prof. 

 Bianconi, making his experiments at higher temperatures (from 

 -t- 1° to + 5° Gels.), observed a still greater plasticity of the ice 

 than that obtained by the experiments made in England and 

 Germany at lower temperatures. These experiments proved that 

 slow changes of form of the ice may go on without any crushing 

 and regelation, and that ice enjoys a certain degree of plasticity 

 notwithstanding its brittleness ; the ice-plank can, indeed, be 

 shattered to pieces, during its bending, by the slightest shock. 

 Now, Prof. Bianconi gives in the Journal de Physique iox October 

 the results of his further experiments on .ice, much like those of 

 Heim, or, yet more, those of M. Tresca on the puncheoning of 

 metals. Granite pebbles and iron plates are slowly pressed into ice 

 at the same temperatures, and not only do they penetrate into it 

 as they would penetrate into a fluid or semi-fluid, but also the 

 particles of ice are laterally repulsed from beneath the intruding 

 body, and form around it a rising fringe. Moreover, when a 

 flat piece of iron is pressed into the ice, the fringe rising around 

 it expands laterally upon the borders of the piece, and tends 

 thus, as in fluids, to fill up the cavity made by the body driven 

 in. These experiments tend thus greatly to illustrate the plas- 

 ticity of ice ; but it would be very desirable that M. Bianconi, 

 if he continues his researches, should accompany them by some 

 measurements (as has already been done by M. Heim) in 

 order to obtain numerical values of the plasticity of ice under 

 various circumstances. 



At the Warsaw meeting of Russian naturalists Prof. Mende* 

 leeff described the results of researches he has pursued during 

 1875 and 1876 for the verification of Mariotte's law. His former 

 researches had proved that the decrease of volume of the per- 

 manent gases proceeds at a slower rate than the increase of 

 pressure exerted on them, if the pressure is less or much greater 

 than the mean pressure of the atmosphere. The experiments of 

 Regnault, made with air, nitrogen, &c., at pressures higher than 



