Jan. II, 1877] 



NATURE 



245 



all Canada and the north of the United States, and which 

 was attended with considerable damage, the temperature fell at 

 Ottawa to -■30°o. What makes this temperature noteworthy 

 is that at the same time the wind continued to blow with 

 great violence, the low temperature being thus not confined to a 

 few feet of the surface, but that of the aerial current passing 

 over Ottawa at the time. On January 4 the temperature fell at 

 Hernosand, in Sweden, and also in Lapland to -3i°.*2. An 

 anticyclone of limited extent, with the characteristic calms 

 and light winds, overspread this region at the time, and it is to 

 be noted that the space of excessively low temperature embraced 

 an area virtually coincident with, and equally as limited as, that 

 of the anticyclone. Still lower temperatures are reported from 

 the interior of Russia. The Golos gives the following in- 

 formation as to the unusually low temperatures which pre- 

 vailed in Nerthem Russia before Christmas. The thermo- 

 meter of the Physical Observatory at St. Petersburg (in town) 

 showed on the 22nd, at 9 a.m., - 37° "8 Cels., and in the 

 Botanical Garden (in the suburbs), between 7 and 9 A.M., 

 the following temperatures were observed : — — 38°'i on the 

 20th, - 39°"4 on the 21st, and - 4i°'9 on the 22nd (- 43°'4 

 Fahr. ) On the last-named day the mercury was frozen, 

 and the readings were made from a spirit thermometer. So 

 low a temperature as on the 22nd was never observed before at 

 St. Petersburg in December, during the 123 years that regular 

 meteorological observations have been made ; and even during 

 the coldest month, January, such low temperatures were observed 

 before only four times, namely, — 38° on January 26, 1868 ; 

 — 41° in 1760; — 38° 7 in 1772; and — 39°o in 1814. The 

 region of low temperatures occupied a very large tract of land, 

 and the cold advanced from the north-east, as was also the case 

 during the unusual cold of 1868. On the 22nd there was ob- 

 served in the morning, - 40'"4 at Vologda, — 40°"5 at Kuo- 

 pio, in Finland, — 39" '9 at Bielozersk, — 39° in Moscow (— 40° 

 in the higher parts of the town), &c. Very low temperatures 

 might have been predicted for some days before, as already 

 on the 20th the cold reached — 44° Cels. ( — 47* P'ahr. ) in 

 Vologda, and the barometer continued to rise in the whole of 

 Northern Europe, whilst a minimum of pressure traversed the 

 middle parts of Europe and Southern Russia, with compara- 

 tively high temperatures and cyclonic winds, which in the north 

 and on the shores of the Baltic blew from the east and the 

 north. 



NOTES 



A WEALTHY Copenhagen brewer, J. C. Jacobsen, has given 

 the sum of a million of crowns for the promotion of mathe- 

 matics, natural science, the science of language, history, and 

 philosophy. 



As we intimated some time since, the Swedish University of 

 Upsala, founded September 21, 1477, will this year celebrate its 

 400th anniversary. Great preparations are being made for the 

 event. The University is not only the oldest but the richest in 

 Scandinavia ; besides many rich gifts from Gustavus Vasa, it 

 received, among other things, from Gustavus Adolphus, 360 

 farms, which now yield an annual rent of 200,000 crowns. The 

 funds for maintenance and salaries amounted, in 1870, to 

 I) 758, 587 crowns, and the yearly Government grant to 300,000 

 crowns. The teaching staff consists of thirty-five professors, 

 twenty-seven adjuncts, and fifty docents ; the number of matri- 

 culated students amounts to about 1,500. 



The Royal Cabinet of Natural History at Stuttgart has just 

 been enriched with an exceedingly rare and valuable palseonto- 

 logical specimen, which is probably without its like in the geo- 

 logical museums of the world. It consists of a group of twenty- 

 four fossil lizards from the sandstone strata of Stuben. The 



inclosing stone has been with great care entirely 'removed, 

 showing a strangely intertwined mass, possibly as met by sudden 

 death, but more probably a collection of dead bodies gathered 

 together by the action of the waves. They cover a space of 

 about two square yards, and the individual specimens possess an 

 average length of thirty-two inches. These fossils can be classed 

 with no existing species, but appear rather to possess a combina- 

 tion of diverse characteristics, which at a later stage of develop- 

 ment became distinctive features of quite different types. Pro- 

 minent among the peculiarities are the bones of the extremities, 

 resembling those of existing lizards ; the head, which can almost 

 be called a bird's head, and the massive scaly armour, consisting 

 of sixty to seventy successive rings. 



We notice with great pleasure that decided steps are about 

 to be taken to reform the curriculum in Exeter Grammar School. 

 It is intended, as soon as arrangements can be completed, that 

 the younger boys shall be taught divinity, English, including 

 history and geography, French, Latin, arithmetic, and the other 

 elements of mathematics, drawing, and some elementary natural 

 science. At a certain point in the school Greek will be added, 

 in accordance with the provisions of the Scheme and the resolu- 

 tion of the Governors ; or in lieu of the study of Greek more time 

 will be devoted to mathematics, English, modern languages, and 

 natural science, German will be taught to any boys sufficiently 

 advanced in other subjects to make it desirable. Thus, it is 

 hoped, boys will be adequately prepared for the Universities, for 

 the Public Service, for professional or commercial life. The 

 principle of this new scheme is excellent, and should it be faith- 

 fully carried out, Exeter Grammar School ought to become one 

 of the most efficient and complete schools in the country. We 

 hope that the school will receive every encouragement in 

 this laudable effort to provide a complete course of instruction. 



The Vilna Observatory is reported to have been totally 

 destroyed by a fire on December 28. The Vilensky Vestnik 

 says that the combined efforts of the town and railway fire 

 brigades, of the troops, and of the students of a college in the 

 neighbourhoood, did not succeed in overcoming the fire and 

 rescuing the great refractor and photo-heliograph. Only books 

 and instruments of smaller value were saved. This is a great 

 loss to science, as the Observatory had done, during the 

 iast \&^ years, very valuable work, and some of the beautiful 

 photographs of the sun was exhibited at the South Kensington 

 Loan Collection. 



Mr. F. B. Meek, the eminent palosontologist, and for several 

 years a member of the United States Geological and Geographi- 

 cal Survey of the Territories, under Prof. F. V. Hayden, died 

 at Washington, D.C., December 21, aged fifty-nine years. He 

 had just completed the great work of his life, the Cretaceous and 

 Tertiary Invertebrate Fossils of the Upper Missouri Country, in 

 one large quarto volume. 



In the last Session of the Berlin Anthropologische Gesellschaft^ 

 Prof. Virchow stated that the intrepid young traveller, Herr v. 

 Horn von der Horck, is at present in the camps of the war- 

 like Sioux Indians, busily engaged in obtaining plaster casts for 

 craniological studies. The printed record of v. d. Horck's 

 journey of last summer to the Polar Sea, has just appeared in 

 Germany, and contains much of value written in a very sprightly 

 style. During the first half of the journey zoological and geo- 

 graphical ends were kept in view. On the return trip through 

 Lapland to the Gulf of Bothnia, the expedition assumed an 

 almost exclusively anthropological character. Enormous collec- 

 tions of bones and more especially of skulls were made, and 

 a large number of masks were obtained from the present inhabi- 

 tants of Lapland. So extensive and complete are these results, 

 that Prof. Virchow regards them ar. more valuable for the study 

 of Scandinavian craniology than the combined collections o' 



