i84 



NA rURE 



[yune 23, 1887 



caused yearly by the inundations and mountain torrents, and of 

 the advantage of planting the mountain declivities with trees or 

 shrubs. One of the chief features of the past year is the com- 

 pletion of the Observatory of the Pic de I'Aigoual, in the depart- 

 ment of Gard, which has been established in the interest of 

 forest meteorology. A series of experiments is to be made on 

 the influence of various kinds of soil and vegetation in 

 storing the water caused by rainfall, and on the time 

 necessary for its evaporation and percolation. 



The Bolletlino Mensualc of the Italian Meteorological Society 

 for May contains the report of the first annual meeting of the 

 Council, held on April 14. The principal matters discussed 

 were : the co-operation of the Italian Navigation S jcieties ; the 

 development of the service of medical meteorology at Naples 

 and other towns ; and the preparation of a map of the globe 

 showing all the stations of the Society both at home and abroad. 

 It was proposed to encourage observations of the temperature of 

 the surface of the ground, and to publish the results of these and 

 other observations already collected. The second annual 

 meeting of the Council was fixed for the autumn. 



The Observatory at Batavia has just published vol. vii. of its 

 series, containing the magnetic observations (only), from Sep- 

 tember 1883 to December 1885, together with the results from 

 July 1882 to December 1885, prepared under the direction of 

 Dr. van der Stok. The observations show a well-defined de- 

 crease of the declination in 1884-85, at the rate of nearly two 

 minutes a year, and a decrease of the horizontal fores at the rate 

 of o "00012 a year. The vertical force has continued to increase, 

 and the dip shows a progressive value of about 7' '5 a year. It 

 is intended in future to issue, yearly, a volume containing both 

 the magnetic and the meteorological observations, but the 

 publication of the meteorological observations for the years 

 1883-85, and the discussion of the results for the twenty years 

 during which the observations have been niade, are indefinitely 

 delayed, owing to pressure of other work. 



Mr. Clement L. Wragge, the newly-appointed Govern- 

 ment Meteorologist of Queensland (see Nature, vol. xxxv. 

 p. 229), has published the meteorological synopsis of the Bris- 

 bane Observatory and rainfall reports for the colony for January 

 to March 1887, and also his report of the inspection of the sta- 

 tions. The inspection disclosed the thorough disorganization of 

 many of the stations. For instance, at Cooktown, a station of 

 the first class, the spirit thermometer had the enormous error of 

 15°, owing to the volatilization of the alcohol. At Normanton, 

 anotherfirst-class station, the shade thermometers were "exposed" 

 in the sitting-room. It is unnecessary to multiply instances, and 

 we merely quote Mr. Wragge's concluding remark that " the 

 majority of the meteorological records and results already pub- 

 lished are unreliable and valueless." We hope with him that 

 the new system will gradually attain a position of excellence 

 equalling that which obtains in this country. 



We have received a copy of the lecture delivered lately by 

 Dr. Orme Masson, the Professor of Chemistry in the University 

 of Melbourne, on the first occasion on which he addressed him- 

 self publicly to a Melbourne University audience. The subject 

 is, "The Scope and Aims of Chemical Science, and its Place i 1 

 the University." Dr. Masson has a clear, fresh, and vigorous 

 style, and in this lecture he brings out with much force the part 

 which chemistry has played in modern material progress, and its 

 fitness to serve as an instrument of intellectual culture. He 

 expresses a hope that there may always be at the University of 

 Melbourne a small band of students devoting the bulk of their 

 time for a few years to chemical research. The University, he 

 says, will soon have " well-equipped laboratoiies, not only for 

 the practical instruction of large classes of medical students and 



others, but for the accommodation of those specialists who go 

 further in the work, requiring to be provided with the more 

 elaborate paraphernalia of experimental science." 



At the opening meeting, on April 19, of the Royal Society 

 of Tasmania for the session of 1887, Mr. R. M. Johnston read an 

 interesting paper on the question, " How far can the general 

 death-rate for all ages be relied upon as a comparative index of 

 the health or sanitary condition of any community ? " The 

 object of the paper was to demonstrate that the general death- 

 rate of any one place, although in itself due to a combination 

 of many causes, may be taken as a fairly trustworthy local index 

 to health and sanitary condition, but that it is a most faulty 

 index as regards the comparative health and sanitary condition 

 of different localities. The latter fact he attributed mainly to 

 the extreme variability in the proportions of persons living in 

 different places under the principal age groups. 



Mr. E. Stanford, of Charing Cross, has just issued three 

 volumes of his series of Tourists' Guides. They are Guides (o 

 Suffolk, Wiltshire, and the Wye and its neighbourhood ; the 

 first by Dr. J. E. Taylor, the second by Mr. R. N. Worth, and 

 the third by Mr. G. Phillips Bevan. Each of the volumes has 

 been carefully compiled, and is worthy of the useful and well- 

 known series to which it belongs. 



An interesting collection of Indian antiquities is now being 

 exhibited at the Albert Hall, It includes, among other objects, 

 a large number of Palaeolithic and Neolithic implements, remains 

 from Indian grave-mounds of the prehistoric aborigines, copies 

 of rude cave pictures and marks on rocks, and Buddhist sculp- 

 tures and terra-cotta seals found among the ruins of Kusinagara. 

 The objects exhibited form part of a collection made in India by 

 Mr. A. C. Carlyle, late of the Archaeological Survey of India. 



The remains of a cemetery belonging to the age of the Gauls 

 have recently been discovered in Paris, in the old P'aubourg St. 

 Germain, at the corner of Rocroi and Bellechasse Streets. Fifty- 

 two tombs have been found, with skeletons, most of which are 

 skeletons of women and children. Only twelve are skeletons 

 of men. Many weapons and implements have also been 

 unearthed : swords, lances, shields, and bronze and iron 

 instruments of all descriptions. 



The grasshopper plague is giving serious trouble in Algeria 

 this year. The efforts made to destroy the eggs have proved 

 useless. In one district 50,000 gallons have been collected and 

 burned. This represents the destruction of 7,250,000,000 

 insects. 



It is observed in the French army that diseases of the heart 

 are very common. In a recent study of this subject, certain 

 military doctors show that they arise from the fatiguing duties 

 imposed on recruits, at an age when, generally, the development 

 of the body is not in harmony with that of the heart, being 

 either in advance of it or behind it. In the latter case, there is 

 hypertrophy of growth ; in the former, insufficiency (the more 

 common occurrence). An instance is given in which a regiment 

 in garrison in the West, in 1880, had on an average twelve to 

 fifteen men per thousand invalided annually (the normal figure 

 for the French army), of which number two or three had hyper- 

 trophy of the heart. A colonel came to the regiment who had 

 very faulty notions as to the amount of drill and fatigue the men 

 could stand. By September 1883, the number of heart-invalids 

 had risen steadily to twenty-two out of forty-five {i.e. about one 

 in two). 



A BRILLIANT discovery is announced in the current number of 

 the Berichteder Deut. Chcm. Gcs. by Dr. Theodor Curtius, who 

 has succeeded in preparing the longsought-for hydride of nitro- 

 gen, (NH2V2, amidogen, diamide, or hydrazine, as it is variously 



