14 



NA TURE 



\_Nov. 3, 1887 



we have not seen elsewhere, and this donation alone is 

 worth several thousands of pounds. With a series of 

 bird-skins now numbering nearly a quarter of a million, 

 and with the best ornithological hbrary in the world, it 

 will be strange if the work done at the British Museum in 

 future be not rendered an easy and an enjoyable task, 

 though it must be remembered that the very magnitude of 

 the collection contributes to the difficulty of its exact 

 study. The writer may be excused an expression of deep 

 gratitude to the ornithologists who have enriched the col- 

 lection under his charge, so that from a series of (at the 

 most) 40,000 skins, the number of bird-skins has been 

 raised in fifteen years to more than 200,000, and he 

 merely adds a hope that he may see the British Museum 

 become the repository of all the work of English 

 •ornithologists, not only from this country, but from all 

 parts of the Empire. 



This article has dealt merely with the three great dona- 

 tions which have been received during the last two years, 

 and has not recorded the many other collections, of almost 

 •equal importance, which have been acquired by the 

 Trustees of the British Museum since i''72, the results of 

 the hfe-work of such naturalists as Sclater, Wallace, 

 Gould, and others of whom the country is proud, the 

 acquisition of whose collections also is a source of the 

 greatest encouragement to the writer. 



R. BOWDLER SHARPE. 



THE STORM OF OCTOBER 30. 



THE gale which swept over the southern part of 

 England on the morning of Sunday the 30th was 

 both sudden and severe. On the previous day the weather 

 was exceptionally fine over the country generally, and in 

 many places it was a truly "pet" day. The Meteoro- 

 logical Office, in their morning report referring to the 

 barometric rise which was going on in the south and west, 

 remarked that " some improvement in the weather is 

 therefore likely in the south." In the afternoon of Satur- 

 day, however, there were signs of approaching bad weather, 

 and by six o'clock a disturbance was shown to ba situated 

 -off Scilly, the barometer reading 294 inches. The Meteoro- 

 logical Office considered the situation sufficiently menacing 

 for the issue of storm signals, and the south cone was 

 hoisted in the south and south-west districts. During the 

 night the storm passed in an east-north-east direction 

 ■over the southern counties of England, travelling at the 

 rate of about thirty miles an hour. The centre passed 

 almost directly over London at about five o'clock in the 

 morning, when the wind changed suddenly about 180", 

 the barometer at the time registering 28'86 inches, and in 

 the next two hours the mercury rose o'4 of an inch. At 

 Greenwich Observatory the anemometer recorded I7"2lbs 

 on the square foot at 7*5 a.m., which is equivalent to an 

 hourly velocity of about sixty miles. By 8 a.m. the centre 

 of the disturbance had passed to the eastward of our 

 islands and was situated a short distance off Yarmouth. 

 The storm afterwards travelled in a north-easterly direc- 

 tion, maintaining somewhat its former rate of movement, 

 and on Monday morning the central area was in the 

 neighbourhood of Stockholm. The gale was rather 

 severe on our southern coasts, but its principal violence 

 was felt in the English Channel and on the French and 

 Danish coasts. The Paris Bulletin shows that at many 

 of the stations the wind reached the full force of a hurri- 

 cane, and the sea was terrific. The amount of rain which 

 fell during the storm was unusually heavy, r59 inches 

 being registered at Scilly, and upwards of an inch at 

 other stations in the south of England and also in the 

 north of France. As is commonly the case with these 

 quick-travelling and rapidly-developing storms, the dis- 

 turbance was a " secondary " to a larger disturbance 

 which was passing from off the Atlantic to the. north ward 

 of our islands. 



ROBERT HUNT, F.R.S. 



MR. ROBERT HUNT, whose death we have already 

 briefly announced, was born at Devonport, then 

 called Plymouth Dock, on September 6, 1807. His father 

 was a naval officer who perished, with all the crew, in 

 H.M.S. Moncheron, in the Grecian Archipelago. Robert 

 Hunt, left to his mother's care, was destined for the 

 medical profession ; and, having been placed with a. 

 surgeon in London, he attended the anatomical lectures 

 of Joshua Brooks ; but his studies were interrupted by 

 failing health, and his medical training was never com- 

 pleted. In 1840, Mr. Hunt became secretary to the Royal 

 Cornwall Polytechnic Society at Falmouth. His earliest 

 contributions to science were in connection with photo- 

 graphy — a subject to which he applied himself with 

 assiduity immediately on the announcement of Daguerre's 

 discovery in 1839. Mr. Hunt's investigations led to the 

 discovery of several new processes, which were either 

 described in the Philosophical Magazine or announced to 

 the British Association. His experimental researches on 

 the chemical activity of the highly refrangible rays of the 

 solar spectrum, his work with the actinograph, and his 

 study of the influence of light upon the germination of 

 seeds and the growth of plants, formed the subject of 

 numerous papers between 1840 and 1854. Mr. Hunt's 

 '• Researches on Light" appeared in 1844. His " Manual 

 of Photography," which was the first general work on the 

 subject published in this country, passed through six 

 editions. 



While Mr. Hunt was in Cornwall he undertook some 

 interesting inquiries, conjointly with the late Mr. Robert 

 Were Fox, into the electrical phenomena of mineral 

 veins ; and he also entered upon an examination of the 

 air in some of the Cornish mines. In 1845 he came 10 

 London, at the invitation of Sir H. T. De la 

 Beche, to succeed Mr. Thomas Jordan, as Keeper of 

 Mining Records at the Museum of Economic Geology, 

 then recently established in Craig's Court. On the 

 establishment of the Government School of Mines in 

 1 85 1, he was appointed Lecturer on Mechanical Science, 

 and opened his course with an address on the import- 

 ance of cultivating habits of observation. After holding 

 this position for two sessions he resigned it to the late 

 Prof. Willis, and undertook for a short time the duties of 

 Lecturer on Physics. In 1854 Mr. Hunt was elected a 

 Fellow of the Royal Society. 



For the last thirty years Mr. Hunt's energies have been 

 mainly directed to the collection and collation of statistical 

 information relating to British mining and metallurgy. 

 Yxom. 1853 until the abolition of the Keepership of 

 Mining Records he published regularly the annual 

 volumes of " Mineral Statistics," containing a vast mass 

 of voluntary returns obtained by his personal influence. 

 As a member of the Royal Coal Commission of 1866, he 

 undertook the statistical part of the inquiry, and published 

 detailed information on the coal resources of the country. 



The technical education of the metal-mining population 

 of the West of England was a subject that Mr. Hunt 

 always had at heart. He was an earnest advocate for the 

 establishment of local mining schools, and should be 

 regarded practically as the founder of the Miners' 

 Association of Cornwall and Devon — a body now amal- 

 gamated with the Mining Institute. In 1883, Mr. Hunt 

 published a voluminous work on "British Mining." After 

 the death of Dr. Ure he consented to edit the " Dictionary 

 of Arts," and brought out successively the fifth (i860), 

 sixth (1867), and seventh (1875) editions of this work. 

 At the same time Mr. Hunt possessed great literary 

 taste, which found scope in several lighter works, such as 

 his " Poetry of Science," " Panthea, or the Spirit of 

 Nature," and the " Romances of the West of England." 

 Mr. Hunt's long, busy, and useful life was closed on 

 the 17th ult. His remains were interred in Brompton 

 Cemetery, 



