'466 



NATURE 



[March 14, 1889 



'two months, give the required number, commonly called 

 "7'," within V2 per cent, of 300,000 kilometres per second ; 



' the velocity of light is known to be within 1,4 per cent, of 

 300,000 kilometres per second. Results of previous 



■observers for determining "v" had almost absolutely 



i proved at least as close an agreement with the 300,000,000 

 metres as this. He expressed his obligations to his 



•assistants and students in the Physical Laboratory of 

 Glasgow University, Messrs. Meikle, Shields, Sutherland, 

 and Carver, who worked with the greatest perseverance 

 and accuracy, in the laborious and often irksome observa- 

 tions by which he had attempted to determine "t/" by 

 the direct electrometer method, as exactly as, or more 

 exactly than, it has been determined by other observers 

 and other methods. 



The measurement of " v " by Sir William Thomson and 

 "Profs. Ayrton and Perry, communicated to the British 

 .Association at Bath, was too small (292) on account of 

 the 'accidental omission of a correction regarding the 

 ■efifective area of the attracted disk in the absolute electro- 

 meter. When this correction is applied their result is 

 brought up to 298, which exactly agrees with Profs. 

 Ayrton and Perry's previous determination by another 

 method, in Japan. Prof. J. J. Thomson's result is 296-3. 

 It is understood that Rowland has found 299. The 

 result of Sir William Thomson's latest observations, 

 founded wholly on the comparison of electrometric and 

 ■electro-magnetic determinations of potential in absolute 

 measure, is 30" i legal ohms, or 30'04 Rayleigh ohms. 

 Assuming, as is now highly probable, that the Rayleigh 

 ohm is considerably nearer than the legal ohm to the 

 true ohm, the result for " v " is 300,400,000 metres per 

 second. Sir William does not consider that this result 

 can be trusted as demonstrating the truth within V3 per 

 ■cent. 



NOTES. 



The Royal Society's Bakerian Lecture for the present year is 

 ■to be " On a Magnetic Survey of the British Isles for the epoch 

 January i, 1886," by Prof. A. W. Riicker, F.R.S., and Prof. T. 

 E. Thorpe, F.R.S. 



Captain W. J. L. Wharton, R.N., F. R.S., Hydrographer 

 to the Admiralty, has been elected a member of the Alhenseum 

 Club, in accordance with the rule which empowers the Com- 

 mittee to elect annually a certain number of persons of dis- 

 tinguished eminence in Hterature, science, or art, or for public 

 services. 



The American Association for the Advancement of Science 

 will meet this year at Toronto from August 27 to September 3. 

 It is expected that the attendance will rival that at the Boston 

 meeting of 1880. The President of the Association is Prof 

 Mendenhall. Major Powell, as retiring President, gives the 

 address. 



The French Association for the Advancement of Science will 

 meet at Paris from August 8 to 15. 



The French Ministry of Public Instruction has decided to 

 <;reate a laboratory of pathological physiology at the Ecole des 

 Hautes Etudes, Paris. The Director will be M. Francois- Franck, 

 assistant of M. Marey at the College de France. 



Dr. Selmar Schonland, of the Botanic Garden, Oxford, 

 has been appointed to the Curatorship of the Albany Museum, 

 ■Grahamstown, Cape Colony. 



In the spring, M. Hasselberg will go from Pulkowa to Stock- 

 holm, having been elected Fellow of the Royal Academy of 

 Sciences, and Director of the Physical Institution of the Academy, 

 in succession to Prof Edlund. 



The Bombay Anthropological Society has resolved to com- 

 municate with the executors of Mr. E. T. Leith, the founder o 



the Society, with a view to secure the publication of his literary 

 remains under the supervision and at the expense of the Society. 



Further experiments are to be carried out shortly at 

 Chatham by the Balloon Department with the Bruce system of 

 electric balloon signalling. The apparatus used will be that 

 which the Government purchased of the inventor, Mr. Eric 

 Stuart Bruce. 



We regret to hear of the death of Captain John Ericsson, 

 the famous Swedish engineer. lie died the other day at New 

 York, at the age of eighty-six. Captain Ericsson was a man of 

 extraordinary intellectual resource, and his name stands high 

 among the great inventors of the present century. An effective 

 f crew propeller was invented independently bath by him and by 

 Francis Pettit Smith. Smith's patent was taken out in May 

 1836, a little before Ericsson's ; but the date of Ericsson's 

 invention was considerably earlier than that of his English 

 rival. The screw-propeller of Ericsson was at once adopted by 

 the United States Navy, but in England he had the mortifica- 

 tion of being officially informed that it was useless, because, 

 "the power being applied at the stern, it would be absolutely 

 impossible to make the vessel steer." Afterwards he had 

 occasion to learn that an inventor's difficulties may be not less 

 formidable in the New World than in the Old, for he was badly 

 treated in connection with the Princeton screw steamer, de- 

 signed by him for the United States Government in 1844, and 

 in connection with the Monitor, which he built during the Civil 

 War. During his last years he was much occupied with what 

 he called "the sun motor," an article on which, by himself, 

 recently appeared in Nature (vol. xxxviii. p. 319). 



Dr. John Call Dalton, the physiologist, died at New York 

 on February 1 2, at the age of sixty-four. 



After the ordinary meeting of the Royal Meteorological 

 Society, at 25 Great George Street, Westminster, on Wednes- 

 day, the 20th inst., the Fellows and their friends will inspect 

 the Society's tenth annual Exhibition of Instruments. The Exhi- 

 bition will remain open until Friday, the 22nd inst. It promises 

 to be very interesting and instructive. It will be specially 

 devoted to actinometers and solar radiation apparatus, but will 

 also include several new instruments, and a number of photo- 

 graphs of flashes of lightning, clouds, &c. Persons, not Fellows, 

 wishing to visit the Exhibition, can obtain tickets on npplication 

 to Mr. W. Marriott, Royal Meteorological Society, 30 Great 

 George Street, S. W. 



We have received, from the Meteorological Reporter to the 

 Government of India, the " Registers of Original Observations " 

 made at seven selected observatories during the months of January 

 to July 1888. These observations, although not exactly in the 

 form prescribed, are published in pursuance of a decision of 

 the Meteorological Congress held at Vienna in 1873, that each 

 country should publish daily observations for a certain number 

 of stations. The Indian observations have been published in 

 this monthly form since January 1879, while for the years 1875-78 

 they formed an appendix to the Annual Reports. They con- 

 tain complete information of all the principal elements for four 

 hours daily, together with daily means, and monthly means for 

 each of the four hours. The registers also contain means of the 

 chief elements for each hour of the day at Alipore (Calcutta), 

 and the hourly movement of the wind at Lucknow and Nag- 

 pur. The more rapid dissemination of the information by 

 the publication of monthly parts, instead of annual volumes, 

 renders it more valuable to persons interested in meteorological 

 investigations. 



M. Klossovski, who published some time ago an im- 

 portant work on the thunderstorms of Russia, has now made 

 another valuable contribution to the mate urology of South 



