i6 



NATURE 



[Ni 



ov. I, 



1877 



17 hours in January, fell a little in February, and 

 rose to 4^ days, the annual maximum in March, from 

 which it rapidly declined to the minimum in June, 

 On a mean of the past forty-one years the monthly 

 averages are in excess from May to August inclusive, 

 August and May being decidedly the months of maximum 

 rainfall, whilst January and February are the months of 

 least rainfall. From 1836 the annual amounts show with 

 some interruptions a decided increase in the rainfall up 

 to 1868, since which year there has been as decided a 

 decrease. This result is generally corroborated by the 

 rainfall at Washington, Philadelphia, and Providence, 

 which Mr. Draper adds to his Report. A valuable table 

 of the monthly amounts from 1836 to 1876 is printed at 

 p. 6. In accordance with the suggestion thrown out by 

 Mr. Hill (Nature, vol. xvi. p. 505) the amounts for the 

 winter months have been picked out, averaged for the 

 eleven-years sun-spot period, and bloxamed. The results, 

 thus worked out, are in inches these, beginning with the 

 first year of the cycle : — 22*57, 22'26, 22"92, 23"3i, 22*24, 

 2103, 21-98, 21*05, 21*14, 22*i8, and 23*56. 



Meteorology in Russia. — The St. Petersburg Agro- 

 nomical Society has appointed a special committee for 

 the purpose of elaboratmg, in accord with other Russian 

 scientific bodies, a scheme for establishing throughout 

 Russia an extensive net-vork of meteorological stations. 

 Owing to the interest manifested in the subject by a great 

 number of agriculturists, it is expected that the plan 

 will soon be put into execution. 



NOTES 



We much regret to have to announce the death, on Sunday 

 last, of Mr. Robert Swinhoe, F.R.S., a naturalist whose 

 numerous contributions to our knowledge of the mammalia and 

 birds of the Chinese Empire have proved invaluable to zoolo- 

 gical science. We hope, next week, to give an account of 

 Mr. Swinboe's woik. 



The International Committee for the erection of a monument 

 to Liebig at Munich, having now at their disposal a sum of 

 120,000 marks, invite sculptors of all nations to send in models 

 for their acceptance. A prize of 2,000 marks will b 2 given to 

 the model which takes, the first place, and 1,500 to the second. 

 The model of the statue should be forty centimetres, and of statue 

 and pedertal about one metre in height. Models should be 

 addressed to the "Castellan der koniglichen Akademie der 

 Kiinste, 38, Unter den Linden, Eerlin," where they will be 

 received from June 1 to 15, 1878, to be exhibited first at Berlin 

 and then at Munich. The Committee bear all the expenses of 

 transport. 



It has been noted in the French papers h propos of the recent 

 colliery explosion, that M. Leverrier, when presiding at the 

 meeting of the French learned societies at Easter, proposed to 

 extend the telegraphic warnings of the International Meteo- 

 rological System to the several French pits. The question of the 

 illumination of mines by electricity has been revived by these ter- 

 rible tragedies, and a number of interesting communications con- 

 nected with that important topic will be presented and fully 

 discussed at the next meeting of the French Academy of Sciences. 



It was stated by one of the speakers at the last quarterly 

 meeting of the French Academies that M. Th ers had written a 

 complete work on Spherical Trigonometry when quite a 

 young man. 



We regret to record the death of M. Cazin, Professor of 

 Physics at one of the Paris Lycees, and an active member of the 

 Paris Ph>sical Society. M. Cazin was sent to the Island of St. 

 Paul by the Academy of Sciences under the command of Capt. 

 Mouchez to make physical observations during the last transit of 



Venus ; he there contracted the germ of the illness which has 

 proved fatal at the early age of forty years. He had been 

 admitted to the Observatory by M. Leverrier to execute a series 

 ot delicate researches on magnetism, w^hich have been left 

 unfinished. 



The Harveian Oration at the Royal College of Physicians ot 

 London will be ^delivered in 1878 by Dr. J. Burdon Sanderson, 

 F.R.S. 



An anthropological exhibition will be opened at Moscow in 

 1879, in connection with the society of Friends of Natural 

 Science. Many objects of great scientific value, almost exclu- 

 sively of Russian origin, are already in the hands of theorganising 

 committee. 



Mr. Tuckwell, recently |,h6ad-master of Taunton College 

 School, has issued a circular addressed to head-masters, giving 

 an account of his connection with the school whose reputation he 

 did so much to raise, and which has treated him so ungratefully. 

 Our readers are already familiar with the details of this unhappy 

 matter, and we are sure will all wish with us that Mr. Tuckwell 

 may soon find a field for the exercise of his powers as a successful 

 teacher unfettered by the narrowness of uneducated and narrow- 

 minded directors. Mr. Tuckwell gave Taunton School a status 

 and a name ; the Council of the school have undone all his work, 

 and left the school nowhere. 



The winter session of the Chester Society of Natural Science 

 opened on October 25 with a lecture on "The Arctic Regions," 

 by Mr. de Ranee, of H.M. Geological Survey. The upper 

 Silurian, lower carboniferous sandstones, mountain limestone, and 

 lias of the Parry Archipelago, as well as the oolites, cretaceous 

 and miocene rocks of Greenland and Grinnel Land, were de- 

 scribed as occupying hollows in the old Laurentian Mountains, 

 and the existing cold climate was stated to have probably only 

 prevailed since the last glacial epoch. The range of the 

 northern mammals, and the discovery of remains of the Eskimo 

 by Capt. Feilden, R.N., naturalist of the Alert, near Cape 

 Beechey, far north of the present limit of human habitation, and 

 further north than any previous discovery of man or his works, 

 were commented on j and a large collection of Arctic fossils 

 were exhibited by Sir Phillip Egerton, collected in Grinnel Land 

 by his nephew, Lieut. Egerton, R.N., of the late British Arctic 

 Expedition. 



An unusually interesting scientific soiree was recently held at 

 the Bristol Museum and Library, which has been characterised 

 as "the headquarters of scientific research in the west of 

 England." Many of the most recent scientific experiments were 

 shown,fthe most attractive probably being Prof. Graham Bell's 

 exhibition of the wonders of the telephone. During the winter 

 a course of lectures has been arranged for at the museum, mostly 

 scientific, as follows : — November 19— A. R. Wallace, F.R.G.S., 

 F.L.S., the Distribution of Animals as indicating Geographical 

 Changes; November 29 — Prof. Ball, F.R.S., a Night at Lord 

 Rosse's Telescope, illustrated by the Oxy-hydrogen Lantern. 

 December 10 — Frederick Wedmore, Rembrandt ; his Life and 

 Work. January 14— Prof. Marshall, M.A., Principal of Uni- 

 versity College, Bristol, The Economic Condition of America. 

 January 28— Prof. W. C. Williamson, F.R.S., Coal and Coal 

 Plants. February II— C. T. Hudson, M.A., LL.D., The 

 Larger and Rarer Rotifers ; illustrated with Transparent Dia- 

 grams. February 26— Prof. Rowley, M.A., of University Col- 

 lege, Bristol, Francis Bacon : his Personal Character and 

 Political Career. March 11— Dr. J. H. Gladstone, F.R.S., 

 Fiery Meteors and Meteoric Stones. March 25— J. Norman 

 Lockyer, F.R.S., Sun Spots in Relation to Indian Famines, 

 with Spectroscopic Experiments and Oxy-hydrogen Lantern 

 Illustrations. 



