158 



NATURE 



[Dec. 2 1, 1876 



of communicating to the Royal Society of London six years 

 ago. 



2. I am also very glad that Prof. Langley has proved by his 

 most refined and crucial observations on the direct radiating 

 powers of spot, penumbra and photosphere surface, combined 

 with the continuous register of the amount each day of the 

 spotted portion of the sun, that sun-spots have no sensible power 

 in themselves for producing any notable change on terrestrial 

 climate ; because, Sir, in that paper of six years ago, and still 

 in the hands of the Royal Society, I deduced that sun-spots were 

 consequences, rather than causes, of the great periodical waves 

 of heat which come upon the earth from without ; and I proved 

 that conclusion three times over, or for three successive cycles of 

 the eleven-year sun-spot period. 



3. As we are now on the commencement of another of those 

 cycle?, I must regret that the chief speakers seemed to intimate 

 that almost all their idea of further investigation into the origin 

 of those mysterious heat-waves received by the earth from with- 

 out and apparently from the sun, centred in causing to be made 

 more sun-spot observations ; for, Sir, not only did it sound very 

 much like proposing to lock the stable-door as soon as it should 

 be announced that the horse is no longer therein, but there are 

 further features accompanying those occasional great heat-waves, 

 showing that they must originate in something much more in- 

 tense, violent, and complicated than those comparatively harm- 

 less little phenomena, the dark spots. PiAZZi Smyth, 



Edinburgh, December 5 Astronomer Royal for Scotland 



Radiant Points of Shooting Stars 



IjETWEEN October 13 and November 28, watching for forty- 

 nine hours, I observed 367 shooting stars, 306 of which were 

 well seen and their paths registered. On going carefully over 

 them some thirty-five radiant points are shown, about twenty-five 

 of which are good positions, while the remainder are open to 

 more or less doubt. The following are the twelve principal 



Several of these positions are the mean of two showers, one seen 

 in October the other in November, and evidently identical. 

 No. 7 in the list is possibly new, and was a very active shower 

 from near Leo ; the meteors were rapid and white, leaving 

 phosphorescent streaks. No. 8 is quite new, and three other 

 radiants found on the mornings between November 19 and 28 

 are new. They are : — 



Position. R.A. Decl. 



1. Near T Leonis ... 170+ 4 ... 6 meteors, very swift. 



2. In Sextans 153 S i ... 6 meteors. 



3. o Boiitis 212 + 18 ... 7 meteors. 



The positions given are in most cases very accurate, and each of 

 them represents a well-marked shower. The new radiants are 

 visible preceding sunrise, and this may account for their having 

 previously escaped detection. 



Generally the meteors of October-November were very small. 

 The magnitudes of the 306 registered were : — 



ist mag! '"'^ ™*^' 3''<1 "lag. 4th mag. 5th mag. 6th mag. Total. 

 19 ... 49 ... 61 ... 107 ... 65 ... 5 = 306. 



I have lately found meteors very much more frequent after 

 midnight than before it. In November, 13I hours watching, p.m., 

 gave 79, while 12 hours watching, a.m., gave 133. Thus I have 

 noted about double the number in the mornings than in the 

 evenings. I found a similar difference in October, though have 

 made no special comparisons to find if it has also been shown in 

 the other months of the year. I usually find meteors show a 

 progressive increase in numbers as the night advances, being at 

 a minimum early in the evening hours and at a maximum just 

 before the morning twilight. 



Ashleydown, Bristol William F. Dknning 



The Atlantic Kidge and Distribution of Fossil Plants 



It has occurred to me that the discovery of the narrow belt of 

 suboceanic highlands extending in a sinuous course down the 

 length of the Atlantic, as shown in the C/iallen^er chart, removes 

 a difficulty that has been present to students of fossil botany. 

 When the area was land these hills would probably form a ridge 

 sufficiently high to have a temperature cool enough to explain 

 the migration across the tropics of plants living in a temperate or 

 even cooler climate. M. 



Antedon Rosaceus (Comatula Rosacea) 



The letters of your correspondents with reference to the above, 

 seem to me to fail to prove that there is any public recorded 

 instance of its capture in the stalked (brachial) form at Tortjuay 

 before the instance noted by the Birmingham Natural History 

 and Microscopical Society in 1873. Of course if Prof. Aliman 

 took a specimen in the pre-brachial stage there in 1863, and Mr. 

 Gosse the adult animal in 1864, the stalked form (brachial) must 

 have been there as well, but was probably overlooked. 



As to the change of name to which Mr. Thomas R. R. 

 Stebbing objects, I certainly think that Dr. Carpenter, in 

 his monograph before referred to, has deduced ample 

 reasons for the substitution of Antedon for Comatula, "on the 

 grounds of priority, in accordance with the rules of zoological 

 nomenclature, and in concurrence with the views of Dr. J. E. 

 Gray, Sir Wyville Thomson, and the Rev. A. Merle Norman." 



Birmingham, December 10 W. R. Hughes 



"Towering" of Birds 



My experience goes to show that the towering action, although 

 most frequent in the gallinaceous birds, is by no means confin&i 

 to them. In the first case which came under my notice the bird 

 was the common god wit. It was feeding on the border of a 

 marsh, and I being very young at the time, committed the un- 

 sportsmanlike act of firing at it on the ground. Immediately on 

 being hit the bird rose perpendicularly to a height of about 30 

 feet, then turned over on its back and fell dead almost on the 

 spot from which it started. 



Since then I have seen the same movement in the dunlin and 

 some other species of Tringa, in the sanderling, the whimbrel, 

 and, if I recollect rightly, in the lapwing plover, but in no other 

 birds, excepting of course those mentioned by Mr. Romanes. 



I have never seen a towering shore bird, after being struck, fly 

 any considerable distance before towering, and those which have 

 towered directly on being hit have always received a slight wound 

 at the base of the brain, but there is little doubt that pulmonary 

 lucmorrhage is the principal cause of this curious action. 



December 12 F. W. Millett 



THE SPECTRUM OF THE NEW STAR^ 



NOTWITHSTANDING the bad weather and the 

 feeble light (4th to 5th mag.), I have been able 

 to investigate pretty completely the spectrum of the light 



' Sur le spectre do I'etoile nouvelle de la constellation du Cygne. Note 

 by M. A. Cornu, read at the Paris Academy of Sciences, December n. 



