An^usi 28, 1879] 



NA TURE 



423 



(;•, d, Fi<j. 10) change to a luminous one(^,/), because the back- 

 ground is now only capable of faintly phosphorescing, whilst the 

 part which had the black shadow on it retains its fall phos- 

 phorescent power. The stencilled image of the luminous cross 

 unfortunately soon dies out. After a period of rest the glass 

 partly recovers its power of phosphorescing, but it is never so 

 good as it was at first. 



Here, therefore, is another important property of radiant 

 matter. It is projected with great velocity from the negative 

 pole, and not only strikes the glass in such a way as to cause it 

 to vibrate and become temporarily luminous while the discharge 

 is going on, but the molecules hammer away with suft'icieut 

 energy to produce a permanent impression upon the glass. 

 ( To be continued. ) 



NOTES 



In accordance'with the resolution come to at the recent In- 

 ternational Congress of Meteorology, the International Com- 

 mittee have issued circulars for a special Conference at the 

 Deutsche Seewarte at Hamburg, on October 1, to consider the 

 scheme of Count Wilczek and Lieut. Wcyprecht for the estab- 

 lishment of circumpolar observing stations. The Conference 

 will consider specially the following points : — i. The number of 

 observatories and the most convenient places at which to establish 

 them. The decision will depend on the number of co-operating 

 states and the sums which they are willing to devote to this purpose. 

 Count Wilczek and Lieut. Weyprecht have proposed the fol- 

 lowing places : — In the Northern Hemisphere : north coasts of 

 Spitzbergen and of Novaya Zemlya, the neighbourhood of the 

 North Cape, the mouth of the Lena, New Siberia, Point 

 Barrow, on the north-east of Behring Strait, west coast of Green- 

 land, east coast of Greenland, about 75° N. lat. In the Soulhern 

 Hemisphere : the neighbourhood of Cape Horn, Kerguelen or 

 Macdonald Islands, one of the groups south of the Auckland 

 Islands. 2. There will be considered th^ exact epoch of the 

 observations and their maximum duration. 3. Uniform instruc- 

 tion for observations, which will have to fix especially : [a) The 

 minimum of elements to be observed at each station, both for 

 meteorological phenomena and for those of terrestrial mag- 

 netism, as well as for other phenomena of terrestrial physics con- 

 nected with them. {!>) The minimum number of daily observa- 

 tions for the different elements, (r) The first meridian which 

 will serve as basis for simultaneous observations, (d) Methods 

 of observation for the different elements and methods of reduc- 

 tion. (^) Instruments of observation and their arrangement, as 

 far as they may influence the comparability of the results. 



At a recent meeting of the Committee of the Iron and Steel 

 Institute in Liverpool it was arranged that this year's meeting 

 should be held in Liverpool on September 24, 25, and 26. The 

 use of St. George's Hall has been granted by the Corporation, 

 and numerous places for inspection and excursion have been 

 partly arranged for, including Messrs. Blundell's collieries, near 

 Wigan, and the Tubular Bridge at Menai Straits. In addition 

 to papers on the manufacture and application of steel and iron, 

 pajiers on subjects of work more immediately connected with 

 Liverpool have been promised. 



. M. Janssen, we arc glad to see, has been appointed to represent 

 I the Paris Academy of Sciences, at the inauguration of the statue 

 ! to Arago, at Perpignan. 



The prizes instituted by Prof. Schafli (Lausanne) for scientific 



works on Switzerland will now be awarded not only to Swiss 



naturalists, as hitherto, but also to foreign, a resolution in this 



; sense having been accepted at the last meeting of Swiss 



. naturalists. 



We regret to hear of the death of Mr. Edward Edwards, late 

 of Menai Bridge, Anglesey, at the age of seventy-five. For 

 upwards of twenty years he had studied the habits and characters 



of marine animals in their native haunts, and his contrivance of 

 the " dark chamber tank " was the first by which these animal, 

 could be kept alive and healthy for an indefinite period in con- 

 finement, and the principle of which was afterwards carefully 

 recognised in the construction of the Crystal Palace and other 

 aquariums. 



The Times Geneva correspondent writes, under date August 

 22: — "On the evening of August 5, six persons who were 

 standing in the gallery of a ch&ld in the Jura, above St. Cergues, 

 witnessed an atmospheric phenomenon equally rare and curious. 

 The aspect of the sky was dark and stormy. The air was thick 

 with clouds, out of which darted at intervals bright flashes of 

 lightning. At length one of these clouds, seeming to break loose 

 from the mountains between Nyon and the Dole, advanced in 

 the direction of a storm which had, meanwhile, broken out over 

 Morges. The sun was hidden and the country covered with 

 thick darkness. At this moment the pine forest round St. 

 Cergues was suddenly illuminated and shone with a light bearing 

 a striking resemblance to the phosphorescence of the sea as seen 

 in the tropics. The light disappeared with every clap of thunder, 

 but only to re-appear with increased intensity until the subsidence 

 of the tempest. M. Raonl Pictet, the eminent chemist, who was 

 one of the witnesses of the phenomenon, thus explains it in the 

 last number of \hii Archives des Sciaues Physiques' et Naturelles : — 

 • Before the appearance of this fire of St. Elmo, which covered 

 the whole of the forest, it had rained several minutes during the 

 first part of the storm. The rain had converted the trees into 

 conductors of electricity. Then, when the cloud, strongly 

 charged with the electric fluid, passed over this multitude of 

 points, the discharges were sufficiently vivid to give rise to the 

 luminous appearance. The effect was produced by the action of 

 the electricity of the atmosphere on the electricity of the earth, 

 an effect which, on the occasion in question, was considerably 

 increased by the height of the locality, the proximity of a storm- 

 cloud, and the action of the rain, which turned all the trees of 

 the forest into conductors.' " 



A YOUNG female gorilla is now being exhibited at the Crystal 

 Palace. 



At the last meeting of the Swiss Naturalists, Prof. 

 KoUmann (Basel) presented a report of the Anthropological 

 and Statistical Commission, appointed by the Swiss Natural 

 History Society for the investigation of the distribution of 

 the light-coloured and dark-coloured population in Switzer- 

 land. Thanks to the collaboration of many schoolmasters, 

 no less than 250,000 children in twenty-one cantons were 

 described as to the colour of the eyes, hair, and skin, and 

 a very rich and reliable material was collected. It is proved that 

 in Switzerland, as well as in all middle Europe, the light-coloured 

 population decreases from north to south, while the dark-coloured 

 increases, and that it reaches its greatest quantity in the Grau- 

 biinden, sending a rather dense branch to the south-west. It 

 may be concluded that a dark-coloured population immigrated 

 in Switzerland from the south, having also a side-branch which 

 followed the direction from the Rhone to the Rhine. 



We are glad to learn that the great undertaking of printing 

 and publishing a catalogue of the Advocates' Library, Edinbiu-gh, 

 which has been in progress for many years, is now approaching 

 completion. The Library of the Faculty of Advocates ranks 

 next to the British Museum and the Bodleian among the libraries 

 of the United Kingdom. It contains about 262,000 printed 

 volumes, besides manuscripts of great interest and importance. 

 It has had (under the Copyright Act) since the reign of Queen 

 Anne the right of receiving a copy of every book published in 

 the United Kingdom. Last year there were added to the Library 

 4,007 volumes of books, besides periodical, pamphlets, and 



