456 



NA TURE 



{March 8, 1888 



law of Nature, established by experience, that every body when 

 in the neighbourhoodof another body is subject to an acceleration 

 which is proportional to its mass, and diminishes in the ratio of 

 the inverse square of the distance between them. Such a law of 

 Nature as this, established as it is on the basis of experience, is 

 on the whole not unsatisfactory. — The same speaker then briefly 

 communicated the results of two researches which he had brought 

 before the Academy of Sciences on the previous day. Of these 

 one is due to Prof Kundt, and has reference to the refractive 

 power of metals. He has succeeded in constructing transparent 

 prisms of metals, and thus determining their refractive index. The 

 other, due to Prof. Hertz, has for its subject the rate of propaga- 

 tion of electro-dynamic action. By an extremely ingenious 

 method, which the speaker explained, and which has been used 

 by Prof. Hertz, in many of his previous researches, for the 

 measurement of electrical vibrations, he has succeeded in proving 

 that electricity is propagated along a metallic wire at the rate of 

 200,000 kilometres per second, and that electro-dynamic action 

 passes through dielectrics with the velocity of light. These ex- 

 periments thus provide the experimental confirmation of the 

 Faraday-Maxwell theory of electro-dynamic action. 



Meteorological Society, February 7. — Dr. Vettin, President, 

 in the chair. — Lieut. Gross gave an account of a balloon voyage 

 which he made on January 21, and described, while presenting 

 the curves he had obtained, his meteorological observations made 

 during this voyage with wet and dry bulb thermometers. One 

 point of great interest which he described was that the balloon 

 remained constantly at the upper surface of the layer of clouds 

 which it was traversing, so that while the body of the balloon was 

 above the clouds the car was completely immersed in the latter, 

 notwithstanding that ballast was frequently thrown out. — Dr. 

 Hellmann produced the curves of temperature for Northern Italy 

 for the month of January, which showed that the cold in this region 

 had been much more intense than in Berlin : the minimum tem- 

 perature at Alessandria was- i6*5°C. — Prof. Schwalbe spoke on 

 the subject of earthquakes in their relationship to meteorological 

 and cosmic phenomena. He proved, on the basis of a study of 

 the literature of this subject extending over many years, that all 

 sorts of meteorological phenomena, such as temperature, atmo- 

 spheric pressure, wind, moisture, rain, dryness, atmospheric elec- 

 tricity, clouds, and even optical phenomena, have been referred 

 to earthquakes, either as accompaniments or the outc^jme or the 

 cause of the same. If the statistics of earthquakes are alone 

 considered, or more especially if microseismic observations are 

 taken into account, the above relationship admits of being readily 

 established ; but it breaks down completely if it is worked out 

 in a really scientific way throughout the whole of any one or a 

 series of years. The same remark holds good with respect of those 

 cosmic relationships which have been supposed to exist by various 

 writers, such as that the attraction of the moon and the sun is a 

 cause of earthquakes ; this view has recently been held by Falb, 

 and although it is in complete antagonism to the results of careful 

 scientific investigation it has nevertheless been largely accepted 

 by laymen. Just as the whole of Falb's views admit readily of 

 being disproved, so also do his prognostications of earthquakes. 

 According to Falb, each lunar quarter-day may be considered to be 

 essentially connected with the occurrence of an earthquake which 

 may take place either five days sooner or three days later than this 

 time ; but, notwithstanding the concession of these wide limits as 

 to time, it has not been found that these periods are always 

 accompanied by an earthquake. 



Stockholm. 



Royal Academy of Sciences, February 8. — Baron A. E. 

 Nordenskiold gave an account of a work he is now editing, 

 entitled "Atlas, containing maps (copies) printed during the 

 fifteenth and sixteenth centuries." — On the Aralo-Caspian Sea 

 and the glaciation of the North of Europe, by Dr. H. Sjogren. — 

 On the compression of the crust of the earth under the atmo- 

 spheric pressure, by the same. — On the method used in compu- 

 tations concerning a certain Life Assurance Company, by Prof. 

 Mittag-Leffler. — On the probability of divergence occurring in 

 employing the hitherto usual methods to represent planetary 

 pertubations analytically, by Prof. Gylden. — On the Bacteria of 

 the swine-plague, by Dr. E. Selander. — On the structure of 

 Champia and Lomentaria, by Prof. Agardh. — On a series, by Dr. 

 Lindman. — Contributions to the knowledge of the reactions of 

 the plato-oxalate, by Dr. Soderbaum. — On the action of chloron 

 on o- and ;3-naphthol, by Prof. Cleve. — On two )3-amido-naphtha- 



lin-sulphon acids, by G. Forsling.— On the action of the 

 metaphosphoric acid on di- and tri-oxides, by K. J. Johansson. 

 — Contributions to the knowledge of carbo-hydrates ; No. 2, 

 on graminine, by Drs. Ekstrand and Johansson. — Contribu- 

 tions to the theory of the undulatory movement in a gaseous 

 medium (continuation), by Prof. Backlund. — On the rhombic 

 porphyry from the valley of Brumun in Norway, by H. Back- 

 strom. — The form of the crystals, and the optical constants of 

 hydro-carbostyrile, by the same. 



BOOKS, PAMPHLETS, and SERIALS RECEIVED. 



Hand-bo k of Perspective : H. A. James (Chapman and Hall).- Ele- 

 mentary Hydrostatics: S. B. Mukerjee (Thacker). — Chambers's Encyclo- 

 pedia, New Edition, vol. i. (Chambers).— The Flora of West Yorkshire : F. 



A. Lees (Reeve). — The Fisheries and Fishery Industries of the United States ; 

 Section 2, Geographical Review : G. B. Goode (Washington). — The Re- 

 ligious Sentiments of the Human Mind : D. G. Thompson (Longmans). — 

 Incwadi Vami : J. W. IMatthews (Low). — History of Portugal ; E. McMurdo 

 (Low). — Geometry in Space: edited by R. C. J. Nixon (Clarendon Press). 

 —The World to Come : J. W. Reynolds (K. Paul).— Flora of the Hawaiian 

 Islands : W. Hildebrand (Williams and Norgate), — Facts about Ireland : A. 



B. MacDowall (Stanford). — Everybody's Pocket Cyclopaedia (Saxon). — On 

 Cold as a Cause of Disease : W. H. Ran.som (Williams and Norgate). — 

 Bulletin de I'Academie Royale des Sciences de Belgique, No. 12 (Bruxelles). 

 Geological Magazine, March (Triibner).— Catalog der Conchylien-Samra- 

 luna;, Sechste Lieferung (Paetel, Berlin). — Memoirs of the Boston Society 

 of Natural History, vol. iv. Nos. i to 4 (Boston). — La Premiere Comete 

 periodique de Tempel, 1867, ii. (Geneve). 



CONTENTS. PAGE 



Physical Science and the Woolwich Examinations . 433 



Professor Fleeming Jenkin 433 



Oil on Troubled Waters. By Capt. W. J. L. 

 Wharton, R.N., F.R.S., Hydrographer to the 



Admiralty 435 



Our Book Shelf :— 



De Bary : " Comparative Morphology and Biology of 

 the Fungi, Mycetozoa, and Bacteria." — Dr. E. 



Klein, F.R.S 436 



" Emin Pasha in Central Africa " 436 



Church : Colour " 437 



Oliver: " Astronomy for Amateurs " 437 



Letters to the Editor ; — 



The Micromillimetre.— Robt. B. Hayward, F.R.S; 



H.J. Chaney; Antoine d'Abbadie 437 



Coral Formations. — ^John Murray 438 



An Incorrect Footnote and its Consequences. — 



Dr. Thomas Muir 438 



Cause of September Typhoons in Hong Kong. — Dr. 



W. Doberck 439 



The Composition of Water by Volume. — Alexander 



Scott 439 



Water Supplies and Reservoirs. — W. G. Black . . 439 

 A Photographic Objective. — Sir Howard Grubb, 



F.R.S 439 



A Green Sun. — D. Pidgeon 440 



Rabies among Deer 440 



The Coming of Age of the Journal of Anatomy and 



Physiology 441 



Notes 442 



Our Astronomical Column : — 



Tempel's Comet, 1867 II 445 



Comet 1888 a (Sawerthal) 446 



The Total Eclipse of the Moon, January 28 446 



Variations of Lunar Heat during the Eclipse of the 



Moon 446 



Astronomical Phenomena for the Week 1888 



March 11-17 • 446 



Geographical Notes 447 



Our Electrical Column 447 



The President's Annual Address to the Royal Micro- 

 scopical Society. Rev. Dr. Dallinger, F.R.S. . . 448 



Scientific Serials 451 



Societies and Academies 452 



Books, Pamphlets, and Serials Received .... 456 



