June 28, 1888] 



NATURE 



205 



N., longitude 47 30' W., Capt. McKay, of the s.s. Pavonia, saw 

 a large waterspout travelling north-east at about 30 miles an 

 hour. The great column of water reached up to a dense black, 

 low-lying cloud, and was in shape like a huge hour-glass. It was 

 accompanied by a terrific roaring. The spout broke, with a 

 I thunder and hail storm. Many pieces of ice, 4 to 6 inches 



J in diameter, fell on board the ship. On the next day three 

 distinct spouts were seen by another ship,, about 250 miles north- 



»-*^ast of the above position. These spouts gradually mergei into 

 one, and travelled out of sight. 



Fishermen report that early on the morning of June 13 a 

 waterspout was seen rn the Grosses Haff, off Stettin. About 1 1.45 

 another one appeared near Dammausch. A steamer was, at the 

 time, only 100 yards distant, and had to reverse her engines in 

 order to escape it. Each lasted about a quarter of an hour. 



Sir Terence O'Brien, Governor of Heligoland, in his 

 report on the condition cf that colony during the past year, 

 states that at his instigation the Council of the Meteorological 

 Department agreed to start a station there, and the Secretary, 

 Mr. Scott, having gone over to superintend the putting up of the 

 instruments, the observatory was established in August last, and 

 will, he hopes, not only be of benefit to this branch of science, 

 but will enable more accurate data than were formerly obtain- 

 able from the old and imperfect instruments at their disposal to 

 be forthcoming in future Blue-book statistics. 



In a recording rain-gauge, recently devised by M. Brassard, 

 the water passes from the bottom of the receiver into a centrally- 

 pivoted trough, having each arm slightly depressed in the 

 middle. It fills the two divisions alternately : the filled arm 

 goes down, and empties itself into a lower trough, and the 

 rocking thus caused is registered by an ordinary counter. Each 

 rocking of the trough indicates one-tenth of a millimetre of 

 water having fallen into the receiver. The instrument is 

 designed to eliminate the error usually arising from evaporation. 



Advices from the fishing village of Kerschkaranza, in the 

 Kola Peninsula, en the White Sea, state that on January 5 a 

 curious and destructive phenomenon occurred there. At 4 a.m. 

 the inhabitants were awakened by a peculiar, dull, heavy detona- 

 tion like that of distant artillery. Piled up to a height of several 

 hundredfeet, the ice — in consequence, no doubt, of the enormous 

 pressure of the ocean ice without — was seen to begin moving 

 from the north-w est towards the shore. The gigantic ice wall 

 moved irresistibly forward, and soon reached the shore and the 

 village, which it completely buried, the ice extending a mile 

 inland. The forward movement of the ice lasted four hours. 

 No lives were lost. 



On April 29, when off the Westman Wands, Iceland, the 

 captain of the Danish mail-steamer Lailra threw overboard a 

 letter written in Danish. On May 6 the letter was found in 

 the stomach of a cod caught by a French fisherman off Reyk- 

 janaes, about 120 miles distant. The man showed it to the 

 French Consul at Reykjavik, who submitted it to the captain 

 of the Laura. It was much decomposed, but still readable. 



A lance, an axe, a sword — all of bronze — an urn, a couple 

 of whetstones, and some human remains have been found in 

 a mound at Ogue, on the south-west coast of Norway. 



At the last meeting of the Asiatic Society of Japan, Dr. Knott 

 read a biographical note on Ino Chukei, the great Japanese 

 surveyor and cartographer. The following summary is taken 

 from the report of the Japan Weekly Mail : — Ino was born 

 in 1744, but did not begin his scientific career till he was 

 fifty years of age. Up to that time he was a successful brewer. 

 Towards the close of the century he went to Yedo, and there 

 studied astronomy under the elder and younger Takahashi. The 

 latter is the man who was put on his trial in 1830 for having J 



exchanged maps of Yesso and Japan with Von Siebold for some 

 books ; the case, however, was never concluded, for he died in 

 the meantime. In the year 1800, Ino began his work of sur- 

 veying the coasts and islands of Japan, and for eighteen years 

 he continued to labour at it, making in that time innumerable 

 measurements of distance, and between 1100 and and 1 200 direct 

 measurements of latitude. The wonder is that he did so much 

 with such rude instruments as he had, which resembled those in 

 use in the West in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The 

 records of his survey were compiled in 1821, and were pub- 

 lished, under the authority of the Tokio University, in book 

 form in 1870. In fact, the charts he constructed have been the 

 basis of all maps that have since been made. About six or 

 seven years ago, Ino was raised by Imperial decree to the rank of 

 " Posthumous," or Senior Fourth Class, an honour seldom held 

 in his time by any but nobles, and, moreover, posthumous 

 honours are very rarely given. Ino might be named the 

 Japanese Picard, the French astronomer who made the first 

 good calculation of the size of the earth. The instruments — 

 an azimuth circle and a quadrant — used by Ino in his survey 

 were destroyed by fire, but exact copies of them, constructed in 

 1828, were exhibited at the meeting. 



According to the report of the Inspector of Schools in 

 Hong Kong for the past year, the total number of schools subject 

 to Government supervision was 94, as against 45 in 1877 and 

 13 in 1867 ; the numbers of scholars for the corresponding years 

 being respectively 5974, 3144, and 700. Of the 5974 pupils 

 who attended schools under Government supervision in 1887, 

 4160 attended missionary schools, and 1814 the Government 

 undenominational establishments. In the colony there are five 

 classes of schools : (1) Chinese, where a purely Chinese, 

 education is given ; (2) Romanized Chinese, in which a European 

 education is given in the Chinese language ; (3) Portuguese, 

 where a European education is given in the Portuguese language 

 only; (4) Anglo-Chinese schools, numbering eight, with 1 160 

 scholars ; (5) English schools, numbering six, with 688 scholars, 

 in which the children are taught in the English language only. 

 The Government Central School presented 384 boys for the 

 annual examination, and of these 375 passed — that is, the very 

 high percentage of 97 '65. At this latter school the subjects 

 taught are : reading, dictation, arithmetic, Chinese into 

 English, English into Chinese, grammar, geography, map- 

 drawing, composition, Euclid, algebra, mensuration, history, 

 and Latin. 



Messrs. Eyre and Spottiswoode, as the Government 

 publishers, have issued two new volumes of the " Report on the 

 Scientific Results of the Voyage of the Challenger' ': vol. xxiv. 

 Zoology (2 parts, text and plates), Report on the Crustacea 

 Macrura ; vol. xxv. Zoology, Report on the Tetractinellida. 



A paper on "Wasted Sunbeams," by Dr. G. M. Smith, of 

 New York, has just been reprinted from the Medical Record. 

 The author's aim is to show that great advantages to health 

 might be secured by a rearrangement of the upper stories of 

 private dwellings. "Cannot architectural ingenuity," he asks, 

 " coached by sanitary science, contrive some method of using 

 the thousands of acres of housetops, so that roofs, now so useful 

 in affording indoor protection from cold, sleet, and rain, can be 

 made additionally useful, at certain seasons, by affording out- 

 door recreation and protection from invalidism ? Cannot the 

 same skill contrive new designs for the upper and most salutary 

 stories of our dwellings ; playing-rooms and sunning-rooms, 

 especially adapted for the winter season, but so cleverly 

 fashioned that too intense torrid beams can be excluded in 

 summer ? " 



Mr. J. Ellard Gore has in the press a volume entitled 

 " Planetary and Stellar Studies : papers on the Planets, Stars, 



