,26 



NA TURE 



\yan. 31, 1889 



ti£\v metal and red cobalt chloride, which possesses all the pro- 

 jierties of green nickel chloride, which has thus been decomposed 

 in'o a red and a colourless salt. 



NOTES. 

 . The Rojal Society has recently entirely recast the rcijulations 

 vnder which the (Jovernment fund of /4000 for the promotion 

 <jf scientific research is administered. 



Mk. Common's 5-foot telescope is now completed, and photo- 

 graphs of the moon and nebulte have already been taken to test 

 the figure of the silver-on-glass speculum. We hear the results 

 are quite satisfactory. Congress is to be asked to vote 250,000 

 •dollars for the purchase of a refractor of the same dimensions for 

 the Washington Observatory. 



Mr. Isaac Roberts, working on the lines laid down by Mr. 

 Common, has recently, by exposures of over four hours, obtained 

 most important additions to our knowledge of the nebulae of 

 Orion, Andromeda, and the Pleiades. 



We believe that the Royal Astronomical Society has this year 

 awarded its medal to M. Loewy, of the Paris Observatory. 



Pkok. Corfield has been elected an Honorary Member, 

 and Dr. Louis Paikes a Foreign Associate, of the Societe 

 Fran9aise d'Hygiene. 



Last week's number of the Electrician contains a notice of 

 the work of Sir William Thomson, accompanied by an admir- 

 able steel engraving. 



The new Laboratory at the Normal School of Science, built 

 for the accommodation of the students in the practical courses 

 in physics and astronomical physics, is now finished. Ii; 

 accommodates about eighty students. 



' The Medals and Funds to be given at the anniversary 

 meeting of the Geological Society on February 15 have been 

 dwarded by the Council a-i follows : the Wollaston Medal to 

 Prof. T. G. Bonney, D.Sc, F.R.S. ; the Murchison Medal to 

 Prof. James Geikie, F.R.S. ; the Lyell Medal to Prof. W. 

 Boyd Dawkins, F.R.S. ; and the Bigsby Medal to Mr. J. J. Harris 

 Teall ; the balance of the Wollaston Fund to Mr. A. Smith 

 Woodward, of the British Museum ; that of the Murchison 

 Fund to Mr. Grenville A. J. Cole, of the Science Schools, 

 South Kensington ; and that of the Lyell Fund to M. L. Dollo, 

 of the Royal Museum at Brussels. 



At the last meeting of the Mineralogical Society, there was 

 described a new mineral species, an oxychloride of lead, 10 

 ^vhich the name of " daviesite " was assigned. This mineral was 

 found as very minute crystals in a specimen from Sierra tjorda 

 in Bolivia. The crystals are very rich in faces, and belong to 

 the ortho-rhombic system ; their parametral ratios are a : b : c — 

 I '2594 : I : o'£oi8 ; they are elongated in the direction of the 

 vertical axis, parallel to which there are faces of the prism (no) 

 and the pinacoid (100), and they are terminated sometimes by a 

 simple basal plane (001), sometimes by the domes (on), (031), 

 loi), (301), (501), and the pyramids (211), (121), (221), (521). 

 The optic axes are visible when the basal plane is normal to the 

 axis of the convergent polarized light. 



The Scientific Department of the Scotch Fishery Board, in 

 view of the approaching great spawning period of the marine 

 food- fishes, have begun a series of systematic investigations at 

 some of the more important fishing-grounds lying off the east 

 coast of Scotland. From a report presented to the Fishery 

 Board by Prof Ewart, it appears that one of the Board's 

 raturalists (Mr. T. Scott) has recently made some interesting 

 observations on board the large steam-trawler Soiithesk, of 

 Montrose, as to the spawning of the plaice (Fleuronectes 



platissa) at Smith Bank, a well-known ground in 20 fathoms of 

 water, lying off the Caithness coast, where operations were 

 carried on for several days. A great variety of fish were obtained ; 

 but, except a few gurnards, only the ])laice, which were present 

 in great numbers, were spawning. Specimens both quite ri| e 

 and partly spent were captured by the trawl, while the tow-net 

 revealed the presence of countless multitudes of floating eggs on 

 the surface— in all stages of development — as many ai io,ood 

 being obtained in one haul. These were shown to be almost 

 entirely the ova of plaice, the remainder being the ova of the 

 gurnard. Such an opportunity of witnessing the spawning of a 

 shoil of flatfish on so gigantic a scale, and of proving so clearly 

 the relationship between the spawning fi ih and the pelagic ova, 

 doe-; not often occur. 



A Botanical Station was established early last year at 

 St. Lucia on the most unpretentious footing. A Committee 

 appointed to supervise the work of the Curator, Mr. John Gray, 

 reports that, " considering the difficulties incidental to the start- 

 ing of such an undertaking, the ]:)eculiar nature of the ground, 

 and the limited funds available for the purpose, the work thus 

 accomplished is satisfactory." The Committee says that the 

 mostencouragingfealureof Mr. Gray's report is the general appre- 

 ciation shown by the agriculturists of the district in the success of 

 tlie Station, as shown by their increasing disposition to seek advice 

 from the Curator, and to try and obtain seeds from him. Already 

 the demand for cocoa, coffee, and nutmeg plants is so great that 

 additional land will have to be acquired for the extension of the 

 Garden. 



Lord Wolselev, who is not often caught tripping in making 

 hasty statements, writes as follows in the current number of the 

 /(';-/«z]o-,5//(' AVz'/Vrc' .•—" The battles of the future will be very 

 different from even those of 1870. . . . One remarkable change will 

 be the absence of nearly all that terrific noise which the dis- 

 charge of five or six hundred field guns, and the roar of musketry 

 caused in all great battles. . . , The sound of cannon will be slight, 

 and will no longer indicate to distant troops where their com- 

 rades are engaged, or the point on which they should consequently 

 march. Our sentries and advanced posts can no longer alarm 

 the main body upon the approach of the enemy by the discharge 

 of their rifles. The camp or bivouac will no longer be disturbed 

 at night by the spluttering fire of picquets in contact with the 

 enemy. Different arrangements for giving the alarm upon the 

 approach of hostile columns will have to be resorted to. The 

 main column on the march cannot in future be warned, by the 

 shots of flanking parties, of the enemy's proximity, and a battle 

 might possibly be raging within a few miles of it without that 

 fact becoming at once apparent." Will some competent member 

 of the " Scientific Corps " kindly explain, or are they all in 

 civil employ? 



We make the following extract from a letter addressed by 

 Mr. A. W. Tuer to a contemporary :—" The melodious hum 

 of skating was perhaps never heard to greater advantage than 

 through the crisp air of a bitterly cold morning little more than 

 a fortnight ago— the first Sunday in the year. Almost as soon 

 as Kensington Gardens were entered, one became conscious of 

 a clearly-defined musical sound coming from the direction of the 

 Round Pond— G as nearly as I could judge, but corrected to 

 G sharp, when, half an hour later, I got to a piano. I had 

 wished to compare ;he notes — probably lower — given forth by 

 other and larger sheets of ice, but procrastination strangled an 

 opportunity which perhaps others will take when it again offers. 

 Comparing a sheet of ice to a taut string, and the countless 

 skates to the hairs of a bow— scientifically, a poor comparison 

 enough— the sound might be expected to have been like that 



I produced Vy the scraping of a fiddle, but it exactly resembled 



. the whistle of a distant locomotive." 



