March 3, 192 1] 



NATURE 



15 



The early memoirs of the Manchester Philo- 

 sophical Society contain several papers by Wall, 

 brief notes of whose lectures are preserved in MS. 

 in the Radcliffe library and in private letters of the 

 time ; some of the latter are printed by Mr. 

 Gunther. Wall is described as a "learned, ingeni- 

 ous, and pleasing- gentleman," who once had the 

 honour of drinking- tea with Dr. Samuel Johnson. 



A contemporary of Wall's, James Higg-in- 

 botham, of Mag^dalen Hall, afterwards James 

 Price, of Guildford, was the last of the English 

 alchemists, and killed himself after the exposure, 

 by a committee of the Royal Society, of his preten- 

 sions to transmute mercury into gold. 



From the closing years of the eighteenth cen- 

 tury to the time of the foundation of the Ald- 

 richian professorship, Oxford readerships in chem- 

 istry were held in succession by Dr. Thomas Bed- 

 does (1788-93). best known as the founder of the 

 "Pneumatic Institution" at Clifton, and the dis- 

 coverer of Humphry Davy; and Dr. Robert 

 Bourne, a fellow of Worcester, and an eminent 

 medical man of his time. Indeed, practically 

 all the readerships were held by medical men, and 

 their teaching was largely directed to the needs 

 of medicine. 



In 1803 Dr. G. Aldrich endowed a professor- 

 ship of chemistry. The first occupant of the chair 

 was John Kidd, who held it from 1803 to 1822. 

 He is the author of two papers in the Phil. Trans., 

 one on "Naphthaline, a peculiar substance . . . 

 produced during the decomposition of coal-tar " ; 

 the other on "The natural production of Salt- 

 petre in the walls of subterraneous buildings." 

 the saltpetre having been scraped from "the 

 hoary walls " of the basement of the Ashmolean 

 Museum in which Dr. Kidd and his family resided. 



Dr. Kidd was succeeded by Dr. Charles G. B. 

 Daubeny, a professor of botany to chemists, and 

 a professor of chemistry to botanists, who held 

 the chair for thirty-two years, when his "increas- 

 ing duties at the Botanic Garden compelled him to 

 resign his Chemical Professorship." The cellar at 

 the Ashmolean, although, as Daubeny said, 

 "notoriously unworthy of a great University, 

 being dark, inconvenient, and confined," was after- 

 wards occupied by the late Prof. Story-Maskelyne, 

 who gave instruction there in chemical analysis. 

 An incident connected with his tenancy of this 

 basement is related by Mr. Gunther in a foot- 

 note with which this notice of a most I'nteresting 

 account of Oxford's relations to chemistry must 

 conclude : — 



Some workmen were employed to make some 

 alterations to a wall when one of them drove his 

 pick through into a small room that had evidently not 

 seen the irght of day for generations. They enlarged 

 the aperture, and, on entering, found soine bottles 

 that appeared to them of extreme antiquity. Very 

 naturally they tasted the contents and speculated on 

 the possible origin of the long forgotten hoard. 

 When eventually the discovery was reported to Maske- 

 lyne, then at the mineralogical department at the 

 British Museum, he exclaimed, "They have broken 

 into my cellar, the stupid idiots. If thev had only 

 looked at the other side they would have seen mv 

 new oak door." But what probably rankled in his 

 mind was the thought that his own gin had impaired 

 their clear vision. 



Mr. Gunther's surmise cannot, however, be well 

 founded, as the gin was reached only ajter the 

 wall had been broken through. It was presumably 

 the same wine cellar that Dr. Daubeny had vainly 

 petitioned Convocation to improve for him. 



Pons-Winnecke's Comet and its Meteor Shower. 

 Bv W. F. Denning. 



A NEW comet was discovered by Jean Louis 

 ^*- Pons at Marseilles in June, 1819, and it 

 was observed during five weeks. From the ob- 

 servations obtained, Encke computed that the 

 comet was revolving in an elliptical orbit, with 

 a period of 2052 days, or 5-618 years. Nothing 

 more was, however, seen of the object until nearly 

 forty years afterwards, when Winnecke re-dis- 

 covered it, and also re-determined its period of 

 revolution. It has since been observed in 1869, 

 1875, 1886, 1892, 1898, 1909, and 1915. During 

 the last fifty years the planet Jupiter has some- 

 what disturbed the orbit of the comet, for the 

 two objects made several near approaches. Two 

 periods of the comet are nearly equivalent to one 

 period of Jupiter, hence at alternate visits of the 

 former to aphelion, as in about 1872, 1883, 1895, 

 and 1907, the perturbations were considerable. 

 These had the effect of lengthening the comet's 

 period and bringing that section of its course 

 which is nearest to the sun almost into conjunc- 

 tion with the earth's path at the end of June. 

 On June 28, 1916, a meteoric shower of strik- 

 NO. 2679, VOL. 107] 



ing and abundant character was observed by the 

 present writer at Bristol. It was first seen there 

 at 10.25 P-m-) and half an hour later it was also 

 observed from Bournemouth and Birmingham. 

 The sky was not very favourable, but at Bristol 

 sixty-nine meteors were observed in about two 

 hours, including twenty of the first magnitude, 

 and the radiant point appeared to be diffused over 

 the region of rj Ursae Majoris, Q Bootis, and 

 a little east. This position corresponded 

 approximately with the radiant point computed 

 for Pons-Winnecke's comet, and the date was 

 also correct, so that an intimate association (or 

 identity) of the two phenomena was suggested 

 (see Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical 

 Society for 1916, vol. Ixxvi., p. 742). The 

 meteoric shower named is likely to be repeated, 

 and on a more brilliant and abundant scale, on 

 about June 27 next, for the comet will be very, 

 much nearer to the earth than it was in June, 

 1916. On that occasion the meteors were seen 

 about ten months after the comet's nucleus had 

 passed through perihelion, so that the stream of 



