1 86 



NATURE 



[Dec. 2 2, 1887 



Now it is obvious that, other things being equal, the 

 spring wood, with its more numerous and larger vessels, 

 and its looser tissue generally, will yield more readily to 

 lateral pressure and strains than the denser autumn wood ; 

 and the like is true of the pines and firs — the closely- 

 packed, thick-walled tracheides of the autumn wood furnish 

 a firmer and more resistant material than the larger, 

 thinner-walled tracheides of the spring wood. To this 

 point we shall have to return presently. 



H. Marshall Ward. 



[To be continued^ 



NOTES. 

 We deeply I'egret to announce the death of Prof. Balfour 

 Stewart, one of our most eminent men of science. Last 

 Friday morning he left the Owens College, apparently in his 

 usual health and in good spirits, intending to spend the holidays 

 at his Irish home. He died on Sunday night. Next week we 

 shall have something to say about his character and work. 



The death of Carl Langer, the well-known Professor of 

 Anatomy at the University of Vienna, is announced. He was 

 in his sixty-eighth year. 



Dr. Arthur Farre, F.R. S., died on the 17th inst., in his 

 seventy-seventh year. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal 

 Society in 1839. 



The Royal Society has been admitted to the number of those 

 public bodies to which is conceded by prescription or otherwise 

 the privilege of presenting their addresses to the Sovereign on 

 the throne. 



The Curatorship of the Natural History Department of the 

 Science and Art Museum, Dublin, rendered vacant by the resigna- 

 tion of Mr. A. G. More, has just been filled by the promotion 

 of Dr. R. F. Scharff, who had been one of the assistants in the 

 Museum for some months. Dr. Scharff has already proved him- 

 self to be a diligent student of zoology in Edinburgh, where he 

 took the degree of Bachelor of Science. In London he studied 

 under Prof Ray Lankester, and worked in the British Museum 

 for some time under the Director, Prof. Flower, F. R.S. , and 

 he obtained the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Heidelberg 

 University. 



Mr. John M. Thomson has been appointed to the Chair of 

 Chemistry in King's College, vacant through the death of Prof 

 Bloxam. 



At the Central Institution, Exhibition Road, South Kensing- 

 ton, Dr. A. K. Miller, Demonstrator and Assistant in the 

 Chemical Research Laboratory, will deliver, during the spring 

 term, a course of ten lectures on the chemistry of oils and fats. 

 The course will be delivered on Mondays at 4 p.m., and will 

 begin on January 23, 1888. 



The third annual meeting of the American Association for 

 the Advancement of Piiysical Education was held at Brooklyn 

 on November 25. It was well attended. Papers were read by 

 Prof. Edward Hitchcock, of Amherst College, who presided ; 

 by Prof E. H. Fallows, of the Adelphi Academy ; and by 

 Prof. J. W. Seaver, of Yale College. 



Science (December 9, 1887) notes, as a fact which may be of 

 interest to Americans, that in England the point of view of those 

 who argue in favour of technical education is almost exclusively 

 the economic. " But little is heard," it says, " of the educa- 

 tional nature of manual training." Speaking of the 'state of 

 things in the United States, Science says : — " There is now, as 

 is well known, a very general movement throughout this country 

 in favour of what is known as manual training; in education. 



After much misapprehension and tedious explanation, the leaders 

 of this movement have finally managed to make the educational 

 public understand that they advocate manual training mainly for 

 its educational value, and only incidentally for the economic 

 benefits which will undoubtedly flow from it." 



The twentieth annual meeting of the Kansas Academy of 

 Science was held in the Capitol Building, Topeka, on October 26, 

 27, and 28. Science says that there was an excellent attendance 

 of members, but that the local attendance was not quite equal to 

 that of last year. The papers read, according to Science, were 

 unusually valuable. The annual meeting next year will be held 

 in Wichita, in October. 



The tenth general meeting of the German Society of Analy- 

 tical Chemists was held at Frankfurt, on November 30. Dr. 

 Schmitt, of Wiesbaden, was President. 



The tenth meeting of the German Geographical Society will 

 be held at Berlin next Easter. In future the meetings will be 

 held only once in two years. 



Fifty shocks of earthquake are reported to have occurred at 

 Silveric, in Dalmatia, on November 29. On the same day, at 

 7.30 a.m., severe shocks occurred at Oran, Mascara, and 

 Relizante, in Algeria. 



On the evening of November 21, from 8.30 p.m. to about 9, 

 a remarkable luminous phenomenon, viz. a broad band of light 

 right across the sky, was seen throughout the whole of central 

 and southern Sweden. It caused much speculation, chiefly on 

 account of its luminous immobility. Dr. N. Ekholm, of the 

 Upsala Meteorological Observatory, and well known for his 

 researches on the aurora borealis at Spitbergen, has now pro- 

 nounced the phenomenon to be a so-called auroral band. Dr. 

 Ekholm states that f-uch bands are very uncommon in Sweden, 

 but that they are often seen at Spitzbergen. He saw the 

 phenomenon during a journey from Stockholm to Upsala, at 

 8.45 p.m., and noted its position. The band ran then just 

 north of the northernmost stars in Orion, through Aldebaran, 

 then a little south of the Pleiades, further through the Ram, and 

 then a little north of ^the two southernmost stars in the square 

 of Pegasus. He calculates its height above the earth at about 80 

 miles, its zenith being perpendicular above the two provinces 

 of East and West Gothia. The bands moved from north 

 to south at the rate of about 50 metres per second. In Upsala 

 it seemed south of the zenith. Dr. V. C. Gyllenskiold made 

 similar observations at Upsala. Dr. Ekholm invites all who 

 may have observed the phenomenon' to communicate their 

 observations to him in the interests of science. 



On the afternoon of November 26, at 4. 30, a splendid meteor 

 was seen at Laurvik in the Christiania fjord, It went from east 

 to we^t, and apparently low in the horizon. In spite of the 

 moonlight its tail was visible for some seconds afterwards. 



One morning last week, the Teusfjord, a little to the north of 

 Bergen, on the west coast of Norway, was covered with ice 

 three-quarters of an inch thick, as far as the eye could reach. 

 Ice, in consequence of the influence of the warmth of the Gulf 

 Stream, has hitherto been unheard of on the west coast of 

 Norway. 



Symons's Monthly Meteorological Magazine for December 

 contains an investigation of what was reported in the newspapers 

 to have been an earthquake-shock in Central England on 

 November 20 last. At the more western stations the reporter*^ 

 spoke chiefly of noise, and at the eastern ones of earth tren 

 From evidence collected, it appears that the disturbance, as 

 H. G. Fordham pointed out in Nature last week (p. 151), 

 caused by the explosion of a large meteor. Further particul^ 



