Feb. 28, 1878] 



NATURE 



343 



eight persons, and no doubt would be with a larger number. 

 The hands should be moistened. 



These experiments show in a simple and striking way that in 

 the telephone we have an instrument which is sensitive to very 

 minute electric impulses. W. Carpmael 



24, Southampton Buildings, W.C, 



ELIAS MAGNUS FRIES 



BY the death of Fries, Sweden has lost one more of the 

 line of eminent botanists whose labours have thrown 

 a lustre so great upon Scandinavian science. Well 

 versed in all domains of phanerogamic botany, and espe- 

 cially skilled in his native plants, it was amongst the 

 cryptogams he spent the more active years of his long 

 life. While lichenology owes to him valuable illustra- 

 tions, fungology received at his hands a large element of 

 its construction. In the acquisition, description, and 

 systematic arrangement of the larger fungi he exhibited a 

 zeal, a tact, and a perspicuity which seem to have left 

 comparatively little to be done in later times, either by 

 way of addition or improvement. 



Elias Magnus Fries was born in Smaland on August 15, 

 1794. His father, pastor of the church at Femsjo, was 

 an ardent and accomplished botanist. As there were no 

 boys of his own age whom the young Fries could make 

 companions, he constantly accompanied his father in his 

 walks, and was in his earliest years made intimate with 

 all the flowering plants of a district diversified by forest, 

 mountain, marsh, and river. About the age of twelve he 

 lighted upon an especially brilliant Hydnum, and was 

 then first incited to the study of the Agarics and their 

 allies, that abound in his native land more than in any 

 other region of Europe. Before he left his school at 

 Wexio he knew, and had given temporary names to, 

 nearly 400 species. In 181 1 he entered the University of 

 Lund, where he had Schwartz, Agardh, and Rezius as his 

 teachers; and in 1814 was chosen Docent of Botany. In this 

 year he published his " Novitiae Florai Suecicse," first part, 

 the second part following in 1823. In 1815 appeared his 

 " Observationes Mycologicas," the first important result 

 of his fungological researches. In the following year, 

 dissatisfied with the method of Persoon, he began to con- 

 struct an entirely new system. As a first fruit he wrote his 

 " Specimen Systematis Mycologicae," a tract of a few 

 pages, and, in outline, his great work the "Systema 

 Mycologicum," the first volume of which appeared in 

 1821 and the last in 1829. In 1825 he sent forth the 

 " Systema Orbis Vegetabilis," first part, a work not further 

 completed, and in 1828 the " Elenchus Fungorum," a 

 commentary on the Systema, In 1831 was published 

 " Lichenographia Europaea Reformata," and in 1838 his 

 second great work, the " Epricisis Systematis Myco- 

 logici." About this time he completed the manuscript 

 of a " Synopsis Ascomycetum," in which he had in- 

 cluded upwards of 600 new species. Owing to his 

 impatience of the critiques of Corda, Kunze, and the 

 German fungologists who had begun to avail them- 

 selves of the new aid of the perfected microscope, 

 an assistance which Fries denied himself, he refrained 

 from publishing it, but one may hope this valuable MS. 

 may still exist. In 1834 he was made Professor of Prac- 

 tical Economy at Upsala, from which place he gave out 

 the " Flora Scanica." He -vas sent to the Rigsdag in 

 1844 and 1848 as representative of his university, and was 

 made a member of the Swedish Royal Academy in 1847 

 In 1 85 1 he succeeded to the chair of Botany at Upsal, 

 vacated by Wahlenberg, which he resigned only a few 

 years before his death to his son. In 1846 he published 

 the " Summa Vegetabilium Scandinavias," and in i860, 

 " Sveriges atliga och giftiga Svampar," with fine coloured 

 plates. A project of the Royal Society of Holm to publish 

 at its expense drawings of all species of Hymenomycetes 

 under Fries's direction, induced him to write a third and 



fuller description of the Agarics, of which he printed only 

 100 copies, under the title 'of " Monographia Hymeno- 

 mycetum Suecicae," in 1863. The first fasciculus, however, 

 of the corresponding "Icones," appeared only in 1867; 

 a second volume was commenced towards the end of last 

 year. Fries lived at Upsal all the latter years of his life, 

 in good health, and in constant correspondence with the 

 botanists of this and other countries, taking, so far as his 

 age permitted, all his early interest in his favourite 

 Agaric?. Thus he published, in 1874, a second edition of 

 his " Epicrisis," including in it all the later found Euro- 

 pean species. 



He died, after a short illness, on the 8th inst. 



THE TELEPHONE, AN INSTRUMENT OF 

 PRECISION 



THE applications to which the telephone may in future 

 be put cannot yet be all foreseen. I have to-day 

 had its value shown to me in a remarkable way. i. I 

 used a thermo-electric intermittent current by drawing a 

 hot end of copper wire along a rasp completing the 

 circuit. A telephone was put into the circuit, in another 

 room, and every time that the wire was drawn along the 

 rasp a hoarse croaking was heard in the telephone. 2. I 

 used a thermopile with a Bunsen burner shining on it 

 from a distance of six feet. The current was rendered 

 intermittent by the file, and the sound was most distinctly 

 heard. A Thomson's reflecting galvanometer was intro- 

 duced into the circuit which showed that the currents 

 were extremely small. 3. The feeblest attainable currents 

 were now tried. The thermopile was removed, and with- 

 out any artificial application of heat it was shown by the 

 galvanometer that the natural differences in the tempera- 

 tures of the different junctions in the circuit were sufficient 

 to generate feeble electric currents only just perceptible 

 with the mirror galvanometer. These were easily detected 

 by aid of the rasp and the telephone. Even when 

 contact was simply made and broken with the hand, a 

 click was heard in the telephone. 4. Lastly, these feeble 

 currents were rendered still more insignificant by passing 

 them through the body of a friend who held one end of 

 the wire in each hand, and still the effects were faintly 

 audible. Here the galvanometer, which was still in 

 circuit, hardly gave any indication. 



I have now added the telephone to the list of apparatus 

 in the laboratory, considering it to be perhaps the most 

 delicate test of an electric current which we possess. 



In these experiments only one telephone is used, viz., 

 at the receiving end. Employed in this way with a power- 

 ful current sent from the other end of the line, we may 

 hope to have messages sent through submarine cables 

 much more rapidly than at present. Probably it will be 

 best to have the intermittent nature of the current main- 

 tained by an induction-coil, or by a spring rubbing against 

 a continuously rotating cog-wheel, when the current is 

 allowed to pass only when required by the depression of a 

 key which communicates to the hstener at the receiving 

 end the long and short dashes of the Morse alphabet. 



I ought to mention that I believe the person who first 

 used a thermo-electric current with a telephone was Prof. 

 Tait. George Forbes 



Andersonian College, Glasgow, February 13 



OUR ASTRONOMICAL COLUMN 



Lohrmann's Lunar Charts. — At last astronomers 

 are put in possession of the charts of the moon's surface, 

 commenced by W. G. Lohrmann, of Dresden, in 1821. 

 They are now completed in twenty- five sections ; but 

 previously only one part, containing four topographical 

 sections, had been published. This was issued at Leipsic 

 in 1824; a small general chart was lithographed at 

 Dresden at a later period. It is through the active 



