266 



NATURE 



[Jan. 18, 1877 



con:Ltiiig of lv\ o siiiiiLr parti, cacli of which Is a tube na: rowing 

 upwards ; the terminal aperture of the lower tube {a) is situated 

 just where the contraction of the upper tube [b) terminates, leaving 

 a small annular aperture. Two lateral tubes proceed from the 

 wide portion of the upper tube, one to the vessel to be exhausted, 

 the other to a manometer. It will be seen that the steam 

 issuing from the boiler exerts suction on the air in the connected 

 vess els. 



At a meeting of the Edinburgh Botanical Society, held on 

 January ii, Mr. M'Nab made a second communication on 

 the scarcity of holly berries at Christmas. He has learned 

 from correspondents in various parts of the kingdom that the 

 scarcity of holly berries has been very general. The only places 

 where the supply of berries has been abundant are in the High- 

 lands, in such districts as the Trossachs, and in the vicinity of 

 Loch Katrine and Loch Ard. At Ranelagh, near Dublin, few 

 berries were to be obtained, but several of the trees were covered 

 with clusters of white and cream-coloured flowers, and it is of 

 interest to note that all the flowers, both open and past, of the 

 specimens received by Mr. M 'Nab from Ranelagh, were herma- 

 phrodite. 



At a meeting of the Glasgow Philosophical Society, held on 

 Wednesday, January 10, it was agreed, on the motion of Sir 

 William Thomson, to petition both houses of Parliament for the 

 amendment of the Patent Laws, the objects aimed at being the 

 reduction of the stamp duty on patents, an extension of the time 

 for which patents were granted, and the abolition in connection 

 with the notice to proceed. 



At the second meeting of the Edinburgh Naturalists' Field 

 Club, which was held on Friday last, a lecture on ' ' Foramini- 

 fera, " copiously illustrated by diagrams and microscopical pre- 

 parations, was delivered by Mr. D'Arcy W. Thompson, a pupil 

 of the present seventh class of the Edinburgh Academy. Science 

 lectures by schoolboys are a much rarer occurrence than science 

 lectures to them. 



In a note to the Roman Academy on the rate of oratorial 

 utterance, M. Mariotti recalls an observation made by Gibbon 

 that a facile English orator pronounced 7,200 words in an 

 hour, i.e., 120 in a minute, and two in a second. Though it 

 might seem possible to investigate the velocity of the Greek and 

 Roman orators, knowing that the judicial orations in Athens were 

 recited in a space of time determined by the clepsydra, yet their 

 methods render conjecture somewhat vague. Thus, e.g., it is 

 said that Caius Gracchus, when speaking in the forum, had a 

 servant concealed behind him, who, with an ivory instrument, 

 signalled to him at the proper moments to raise or to lower his 

 voice. Nowadays, when parliamentary discussions, as has been 

 said, are little more than animated conversations, accurate ob- 

 servations may be made by means of stenography on the rate 

 of speaking of various orators. M. Mariotti gives some such 

 data from the Sub-Alpine and Italian Parliaments. De Foresta 

 pronounced sixty words in a minute j Massimo d'Azaglio, 90; 

 Gioberti, 100 ; Ratazzi, 150; Mameli, 180; Cordova, the 

 quickest, was able to pronounce as many as 210. The very rapid 

 orators, M. Mariotti says, are rather admired than effective, 

 such as Macaulay in England, and Cordova in Italy. The mind 

 of the hearer is not allowed sufficient time to take in the mean- 

 ing. It is possible, speaking rapidly in the Italian tongue, 

 to pronounce 300 words in a minute. Comparative obser- 

 vations on the subject in parliaments of different countries, 

 would afford important data regarding various tongues, and 

 suggest interesting psychological considerations. From observa- 

 tions in the Parliament of Athens, it might be possible to con- 

 jecture the velocity of the ancient Greek orators. In this way 

 stenography might render valuable services to philology and 

 philosophy. 



We notice in the January number of the Geological Magazine 



a paper by Mr. James Durhxm cu " Th2 ' Kitncs ' in the Neigh 

 bourhood of Newport, Fife, N.B.," accompanied by a sketch- 

 map of the locality. Unhappily, the paper is written much in 

 the same style as too many papers on kames have already been 

 written, and we find in it, as is too often the case, more general- 

 isations than thorough descriptions of the interior structure of 

 these interesting formations, and not even a single detailed sec- 

 tion. It gives us an opportunity, however, of observing that 

 only thorough explorations of the structure of those kames the 

 interior of which is rendered accessible by adequate cuttings, 

 together with detailed studies of the directions, positions, and 

 forms of the kames, discussed in connection with the topography 

 of the locality and its neighbourhood, can help us to settle the 

 question as to the origin of kames, so much debated hitherto 

 without arriving at any definitive result. As to the conclusions of 

 the author, viz., that "the kames" owe their present forms to 

 the same denuding agencies as are at present in operation, we 

 must object that, even if the author had proved his statement 

 with reference to the Newport kames, he was by no means 

 entitled to generalise from it ; there are hundreds of kames and 

 thousands of totally identical gravelly mounds and ridges the 

 shapes of which have nothing to do with denuding agencies. 



The first number of the Vei-offcullichunqcn des kaiserlichen 

 deutschen Gesundheitsamtes, appeared last week. It gives the 

 mortality statistics of about 150 German cities and a large num- 

 ber of foreign cities, and supplies a most valuable picture of the 

 progress of epidemics as well as the general statistics of disease, 

 and the working of all sanitary regulations at home and abroad. 

 A graphic representation of the meteorology of the past week is 

 also added. 



Very high floods, second only to those of 1872, are 

 reported, by Russian newspapers, from the shores of the 

 Amoor. After unusually heavy rains, which fell almost without 

 interruption from the middle of July until the end of August, 

 the waters of the great river rose so as to menace even Blago- 

 vieshensk, built on a comparatively high bank, and overflowed the 

 villages and fields of the Upper and Middle Amoor. A very 

 heavy gale visited also the Lower Amoor on the night of 

 September 18 and 19. Some barges were destroyed, a steamer 

 was much damaged, and some houses on the shore at Kha- 

 barof ka were washed away. 



The rain which fell at St, Jaen, in the C6tes-du-Nord, on the 

 night of December 29-30, 1876, v/as observed to be tinged 

 red. A bottle filled with the water has been sent to Dinant to 

 be analysed microscopically and chemically. 



The French Government is selling by auction the last fovu: 

 balloons which were constructed during the siege for escaping 

 from Paris. These balloons are considered unfit for service, 

 and others will be constructed by the balloon committee, a credit 

 of 200,000 fiancs having been placed in the budget of 1877 for 

 military biUooning. 



News has been received from the Frl^orific, which has arrived 

 with its cargo of meat at La Plata, where experiments have beea 

 continued on the largest scale. The success is complete. 



The Paris-Lyons-Mediterranean Railway Company have 

 ordered sixty locomotives to be constructed, which are intended 

 to travel from Paris to Marseilles (1,820 kilometres) in twelve 

 hours. The Northern Railway has established comparative 

 experiments on the Westinghouse continuous brakes and electric 

 brakes. The old hand-brakes are to be superseded at any cost 

 by the Northern Railway. 



Prof. Mach, of the Vienna Academy, has recently made 

 some experiments on the velocity of propagation of sound-waves 

 from explosion. He finds that in course of the motion this velo- 

 city diminishes, and soon approximates to the ordinary velocity 



