2IO 



NATURE 



[October 21, 19 15 



UPPER AIR TEMPERATURES^ 



THIS interesting publication of fifty-eight pages 

 gives an account of some fifty to sixty ascents 

 made at Batavia, Java, and over the neighbouring 

 seas. Batavia Hes in the latitude of 5° S., and 

 observations from a place so near the equator are of 

 especial value ; these observations also were designed 

 for the purpose of giving information on several 

 interesting points. 



The first half of the book gives the detailed account 

 of each ascent, that is to say, the temperature and 

 relative humidity at each 100 metres both on the 

 ascent and descent, and the second half discusses the 

 results obtained. The first point discussed is the 

 thickness of the land wind at night and the tempera- 

 ture inversion. The highest temperature was found 

 at 170 metres, and the depth of the land breeze was 

 130 metres. The high pressure which prevails over 

 Australia in winter, the winter, that is, of the southern 

 hemisphere, sometimes stretches as far northwards as 

 Batavia, and interesting figures relating to one of these 

 periods are given. Very similar conditions seem to 

 prevail there as in Europe in anticyclonic areas ; on 

 rising from the surface, a decrease of temperature 

 with an increasing humidity is met with, but at a 

 height between 20 and 30 km. excessive dryness 

 with a temperature inversion, or at least a great 

 slackening in the temperature gradient, occurs. 



These observations do not depend on kite or 

 balloon observations alone, since the summits of some 

 of the mountains are high enough to give similar 

 records. 



In England, the dreary type of anticyclonic cloud 

 that so often covers the sky for days together in 

 winter nearly always, perhaps always, lies just under 

 a sharp inversion of temperature and a layer of ex- 

 cessively dry air, but the height of this inversion 

 seldom reaches 2 km. In Batavia, the cloud layer is 

 replaced by a sheet of moist air in which small cumuli 

 prevail (in the daytime). In both cases the damp and 

 the dry strata are sharply divided, and Dr. Braak 

 discusses the reasons of this arrangement. There 

 cannot be much doubt that the extreme dryness is due 

 to the air having descended from a colder, and there- 

 fore dryer, level, dryer, that is, in the sense of having 

 a smaller amount of water vapour ; but dry air, as 

 Tyndall pointed out long since, cannot radiate or 

 absorb radiation with any freedom. Probably radia- 

 tion from the vapour of the damp strata, which can 

 occur freely through the dry air above, has a good 

 deal to do with the formation of the cloud, especially 

 the sea, but they are not numerous enough to show 

 the magnitude with any certainty. 



The daily temperature change by day over the sea 

 and the nightly change over the land are also dis- 

 cussed. Dr. Braak finds over the land in the early 

 afternoon a gradient from o to 300 m. of 134° per 

 100 m. Over the sea he finds practically no daily 

 change at the sea surface, the amplitude being about 

 one-third of a degree, but the value increases some- 

 what up to 600 m. The observations suffice to show 

 that there is little daily change of temperature over 

 the sea, but are not numerous enough to show the 

 magnitude with any certainty. 



Some interesting remarks are made on the fall of 

 temperature at night, and on an irregularity in the 

 change. The double daily oscillation of the baro- 

 meter in low latitudes is quite sufficient to produce 

 measurable changes of temperature. It is so 

 commonly stated that the adiabatic change of 



1 " Koninklijk Magnetisch en Meteorologisch Observatorium te Batavia.' 

 Verhandelingen No. 3. Drachen Freiballon- und Fesselballon-berbacht- 

 ungen. Von Dr. C. Braak. Pp. 58. (Batavia : Javasche Boekhandel en 

 Drukkerij.) 



NO. 2399, VOL. 96] 



temperature in air is produced by change of height 

 that one is apt to overlook the fact that change of 

 height by itself is absolutely without effect upon 

 temperature, and that the rise or fall is due to 

 pressure changes only, change of pressure being 

 usually, but by no means always, due to change of 

 height. W. H. Dines. 



A MANX TRIBUTE TO EDWARD FORBES. 



THE London Manx Society has issued a report of 

 the meetings held in London on February 13 to 

 celebrate the centenary of the birth of Edward Forbes. 

 The report (" Edward Forbes, Great Manx Naturalist, 

 Botanist, Geologist, Zoologist," 45 pp., is.) contains 

 an address by Sir Archibald Geikie, Forbes 's bio- 

 grapher, on his life and geological work, appreciations 

 of his zoological work by Prof. Ewart, Prof. Mcin- 

 tosh, and Prof. Herdman, and of his botanical work 

 by Prof. Bottomley; also contributions by Prof. Boyd 

 Dawkins, Mr. Whitaker, and Dr. J. W. Evans, a 

 letter by Mr. Ulrich on behalf of the Palaeontological 

 Society of the United States, and the words of Forbes's 

 "Dredging Song." Forbes was born in 1815 in the Isle 

 of Man, and was educated in Edinburgh; in 1841 he 

 was appointed naturalist to H.M.S. Beacon during her 

 survey of the JEgean Sea and coasts of Asia Minor. 

 The following year he became Professor of Botany at 

 King's College, which he held, for part of the time, 

 together with the appointments of Palseontologist to 

 the Geological Survey and Lecturer on " Natural 

 History as applied to Geology" at the Royal School 

 of Mines, until his election to the chair of Natural 

 History in Edinburgh in 1854. His death a few months 

 later was, according to Sir Archibald Geikie, "one of 

 the most grievous losses which British science has 

 sustained in our time." His work was remarkable 

 for its wide range, brilliant originality, and philo- 

 sophic insight. Huxley wrote of him in 185 1 that "he 

 has more claims to the title of a philosophic naturalist 

 than any man I know in England." Some of his 

 conclusions on the relations of the British flora to 

 fauna were rejected by his contemporaries and imme- 

 diate successors, but, according to Prof. Mcintosh and 

 Dr. Scharff, they have been established in the main. 

 Mr. E. V. Ulrich, of Washington, reports that Forbes's 

 teaching has "exerted a profound influence on palason- 

 tologists the world over," that the principles he enun- 

 ciated now "assume a commanding importance," and 

 that probably no British author on his subjects has 

 been more followed and quoted in America than 

 Forbes. Forbes was a man of great literary distinc- 

 tion ; he was a first-class humorist, and a frequent 

 contributor to Punch; and Sir Joseph Hooker has 

 recorded that owing to his talents and his personality 

 "he was beloved and admired beyond any natura'l 

 historian of his day." 



EDUCATION AND INDUSTRY ."^ 

 I. 

 HTHE British Association, by establishing Section L, 

 has recognised education as a branch of science 

 and made provision for its advancement. 



But education — I am speaking of that part of it in 

 which human educators intervene— is still regarded 

 as belonging to politics and literature, rather than to 

 economics and physiology. To many people the very 

 title of this paper, "Education and Industry," will 

 appear incongruous. Is there not a great gulf fixed, 

 say they, between hazy views of education high in 

 the clouds above, and the hard facts of science or 

 technology far in the depths beneath? 



\ Abridged from a paper read to the Educational Science Socti n (L) of the 

 British Association on September ii, l.y Princ'pal J. C. Maxwell Garnett. 



