Dec. 13, 1888J 



NATURE 



^53 



Europe, becaase it is on the existence or non-existence of 

 anticyclonic areas over Russia that bad weather may 

 either steer clear of our coasts, or pass clean over us and 

 cause enormous damage to life and property. 



Dr. Koppen's adaptation of composite portraiture for 

 anticyclones will, when fully developed, doubtless lead to 

 the discovery of principles which must be of considerable 

 practical importance in our every-day life, and meteoro- 

 logists should direct their attention to the discovery of 

 some law which will indicate the approach of a change 

 in the distribution of high barometer readings. At 

 present we know absolutely nothing of what is taking 

 place over the Atlantic out of sight of our own coasts, and 

 the ordinary weather-charts cover such a small extent of 

 North-Western Europe that they do not give us a fair 

 idea of what the conditions are to the eastward. As the 

 facts indicated become more fully known, we shall 

 probably see an extension of the Weather Report area, 

 and a corresponding improvement in forecasting. 



The " Vierteljahrs-Wetter-Rundschau" appeared origin- 

 ally in various numbers of the Anna/en der Hydrographie 

 und Maritimen Meteorologie, the official publication of 

 the Deutsche Seewarte, and are now reprinted in separate 

 form. 



NOTES. 



The members of the " Provisional Committee " appointed at 

 the International Geological Congress in London, with reference 

 to preparations for the next meeting of the Congress at Phila- 

 <Ielphia, met at New Haven on Thursday, November 15. All 

 were present except Dr. T. Sterry Hunt, who was confined to 

 New York by illness. By vote, twenty-four members of the 

 Permanent ' or Organizing Committee were appointed, as fol- 

 lows : — C. A. Ashburner, J. C. Branner, T. C. Chamberlin, 

 "G. H. Cook, J. D. Dana, W. M. Davis, C. E. Dutton, G. K. 

 ■Gilbert, James Hall, A. Heilprln, C. H. Hitchcock, Joseph 

 LeConte, Dr. J. Leidy, J. P. Lesley, O. C. Marsh, J. S. New- 

 berry, J. W. Powell, J. R. Procter, N. S. Shaler, J. J. Steven- 

 son, C. D. Walcott, R. P. Whitfield, H. S. Williams, 

 Alexander Winchell. The Committee has power to add to its 

 number. Dr, J. S. Newberry was appointed temporary Chair- 

 man. With this action, the duties of the Provisional Committee 

 •ended. The first meeting of the Permanent Committee will be 

 held in Washington in the month of April. One of the publi- 

 cations presented to the recent session of the Congress in 

 London was a voluminous Report on seme important questions 

 in American stratigraphical geology. We learn from an article 

 in the December number of the American Jotirnal of Science, by 

 Prof. Dana, that, in his opinion, the views of the great majority 

 of American geologists are not fairly represented in that Report. 

 The Committee now appointed will certainly be regarded by 

 geologists in Europe as a thoroughly representative one, which 

 will, no doubt, take good care that the general body of geological 

 ■opinion in the United States shall be adequately put before the 

 ■world at the Philadelphia meeting. 



On Tuesday the completion of the ninth edition of the " Ency- 

 clopaedia Britannica " Was celebrated by a dinner given by Dr. \V. 

 Robertson Smith, the editor, in the hall of Christ's College, 

 Cambridge. Upwards of a hundred contributors were present, 

 and among them were many eminent men of science. Respond- 

 ing for " Science," Dr. Archibald Geikie said the old limits 

 within which culture was confined had proved to be .iltogether 

 too small for the progress of the present day. The soldiers of 

 the republic of science had sometimes been accused of a strong 

 <lesire to attack University culture and carry it by storm. For 

 his part he wished that it might stand, but that no barrier should 

 he in'.erposed against the freest communion between the people 

 nside and the newer and wider ci-y around their borders. 



An Anthropological Congress is to be held at Vienna durir»g 

 August next. 



An important paper by Prof. Virchow, on " Land and People 

 in Ancient and Modern Egypt," appears in the current number 

 of the Transactions of the Berlin Gesellschaft fiir Erdkunde. 

 It embodies some of the results of Prof. Virchow's ethnological 

 researches during his recent visit to Egypt. It has hitherto been 

 thought that the fellaheen of to-day are of exactly the same 

 physical type as that of the most ancient known Egyptian 

 population. Prof. Virchow, however, holds that the evidence 

 afforded by the oldest sculpture, as well as by the skulls of 

 the earliest period, tends to show that the primitive type in 

 Egypt was brachycephalic, whereas the types which exist at the 

 present time, and have existed for ages,. are dolichocephalic and 

 mesocephalic. Whether the change was produced by the in- 

 fluence of environment, or by the influ'c of new races, cannot, 

 according to Prof. Virchow, be definitely determined by the 

 evidence at present at our disposal ; but, of the two views, the 

 latter, he thinks, is the more probable. 



The inaugural lecture delivered before the University of 

 Glasgow by Prof. Max Midler, as Lord Gifford's Lecturer in 

 Natural Theology, has just been published by Messrs. Longmans, 

 Green, and Co. In this lecture, Prof. Midler presents a most 

 interesting account of the ideas which have regulated the work 

 of his life. His conception of " the science of religion" will 

 serve as the test, and, he hopes, the confirmation, of his theories 

 relating to language, mythology, and thought. 



The New England Meteorological Society proposes to have 

 a Loan Exhibition of Meteorological Apparatus, Photographs, 

 &c., at the Institute of Technology, Boston, in connection with 

 its fourteenth regular meeting in January 1889. The Society 

 has issued a request for contributions. 



The Report of the Norwegian party of the International 

 Polar Investigation contains the results of the observations 

 which were made according to the programme decided upon at 

 the Polar Conference at St. Petersburg, in August iSSi. The 

 observations were made at Bossekop in Alten, in lat. 69" 58' N. 

 and long. 23° 15' E. of Greenwich. The first volume, issued in 

 1887, contains the astronomical and meteorological observations, 

 and the second volume (Christiania, 1888) gives the results of 

 the magnetic determinations and observations of aurorce. In 

 the meteorological section, tables are given of the hourly 

 readings of the temperature and humidity of the air, height of 

 barometer, direction of winds and nature of clouds, extending 

 from August 1882 to August 1883 inclusive, and concluding, 

 with monthly averages. In vol. ii. are given the records of the 

 determinations of the magnetic declination and horizontal and 

 vertical intensity. These were made fortnightly during the 

 year, at intervals of five minutes during the day, so that the 

 carefully-executed curves expressing the results of the observa- 

 tions are very detailed and convenient for comparison with the 

 complete descriptions of auroral displays, the records of which 

 are also contained in this volume. No doubt these results will 

 be of great service in correlating aurorce with magnetic 

 disturbances. 



The Royal Meteorological Society has published its "Meteoro- 

 logical Record " for the first quarter of this year, containing the 

 monthly results of observations made at its stations, with remarks 

 on the weather by Mr. W. Marriott. The Society commenced 

 the organization of stations on a uniform plan in 1874, and these 

 were supplemented by another class of stations, termed climato- 

 logical, in 1880. J ince 1881 the results have been published in 

 a separate form unc'er the above title. A map of the stations is 

 issued annua'ly, and shows that they are fairly well distributed, 

 except in Wales. In addition to the monthly results, tables of 

 daily rainfall are given for a number of station', and of ihj 



