NA TURE 



[May 



1897 



year Mr. F. D. Godman, F.R.S., was elected president, and 

 Mr. O. Salvin, F.R.S., secretary, the editors of the Ibis 

 (Messrs. Sclater and Saunders) remaining as before. 



The first of a series of ten lectures, on the structure and 

 distribution of birds, was given at the Zoological Society's 

 Gardens on May 6, by Mr. F; E. Beddard, F.R.S., prosector 

 to the Society. The lecture dealt with the main points in the 

 external and internal anatomy of the class, special weight 

 being laid upon those characters which are associated with the 

 flight of birds. The lecturer gave a short resume of the 

 characters of the feathering of birds, not omitting to mention 

 that, at present, baffling problem — the presence or absence of 

 the fifth cubital remex. Attention was directed to the fact 

 that although, on theoretical grounds, a continuous feathering, 

 like that of the penguins and struthious birds, was to be looked 

 upon as the primitive state of affairs, it was doubtful whether, 

 in existing birds, the close feathering was not a secondarily 

 acquired character. In support of this, the transitory existence 

 of marked apteria and pterylK in the chick-ostrich, as first 

 described by Miss Lindsay, was pointed out. In describing 

 the essential features of the skeleton, the lightness of the bones, 

 the massing of the chief weight in the middle ot the body, the 

 structure of the hand, and various matters illustrative of the 

 adaptation of that part of the organism to the purposes of flight, 

 were dwelt upon. 



Prok. IIaxki.n's report to the Bombay Chamber of Commerce, 

 •concerning the infection of grain and the vitality of the bacillus 

 of plague in infected grain, is thus summarised in the British 

 Mediail Journal, (i) The microbe has not been found in either 

 stored grain or in parasitic insects inhabiting grain. (2) Grain 

 can be infected by a pure culture of the bacillus of plague, so 

 that an extract made therefrom will cause death from plague 

 in animals (mice). (3) The potency of grain-infected extract 

 rapidly diminishes, so that in a few days it does not kill. 

 Thirteen days is the extreme limit of possible potency ; but Prof. 

 Hankin is led to the belief, by his experiments, that plague 

 bacilli obtaining admission to grain stored as on board ship 

 would certainly become non-infective in four to six days. 



The definition of a standard or standards of thermal efficiency 

 for steam-engines was referred to a Committee of the Institution 

 of Civil Engineers last year ; and the gist of the conclusions, 

 which have just been arrived at, is as follows: (i) That the 

 statement of the economy of a steam-engine in terms of pounds 

 of feed-water per horse-power per hour is undesirable. (2) That 

 for all purposes, except those of a scientific nature, it is desirable 

 to state the economy of a steam-engine in terms of the thermal 

 units required per horse-power per hour (or per minute), and 

 that if possible the thermal units required per brake horse-power 

 should also be given. (3) That for scientific purposes the 

 thermal units that would be required by a perfect steam-engine 

 working under the same conditions as the actual engine should 

 also be stated. The proposed method of statement is applicable 

 to engines using superheated steam, as well as to those using 

 saturated steam, and the objection to the use of pounds of feed- 

 water, which contain more or less thermal units according to 

 conditions, is obviated ; while there is no more practical difiiculty 

 in obtaining the thermal units per horse-power per hour than 

 there is in arriving at the pounds of feed-water. For scientific 

 purposes the difference in the thermal units per horse-power 

 required by the perfect steam-engine and by the actual engine 

 shows the loss due to imperfections in the actual engine. It is 

 pointed out that a further advantage of the proposal is that the 

 ambiguous term ' ' efficiency " is not required. 



In the Mittheilungen der K. K. geographisc/ien Gesellschaft, 

 in Vienna (vol. xl. Nos.- i and 2), there is an exhaustive memoir 



NO. 1437, VOL. 56] 



on the Karlseisfeld or Hallstiitter Glacier of the Dachstein. The 

 first part is devoted to a minute examination of the topography 

 of the region, and the second to an account of the methods and 

 results of a careful survey made by the author. An excellent 

 map is appended. 



The current number of Peteriiiami s Mittheilungen contains 

 the first instalment of a new estimation of the areas of non- 

 European river-basins, by Dr. Alois Bludau. The numbers for 

 South America are here given. Sixteen separate basins make 

 up a drainage area of 16,275,000 square kilometres to the 

 Atlantic ; the Pacific slope, divided into four regions, accounts 

 for 1,056,000 square kilometres; leaving the Titicaca and 

 similar regions, without an outlet to the sea, the remaining 

 274,000 square kilometres. 



We have received from the author a contribution to the 

 rapidly increasing literature of limnology — " Zur Entstehung der 

 Alpenseen," by Dr. L. Swerinzew. Dr. Swerinzew criticises a 

 good deal of recent work somewhat severely, and comes to the 

 conclusion that a number of the types of lake-basins now re- 

 garded as different, are really identical as regards their mode 

 of origin and development. About 90 per cent, of the Alpine 

 lakes found in valleys are held to have been formed simply by 

 the erosive action which gave rise to the valleys themselves. 



M. de Lapparent contributes to La Nature a note on some 

 further considerations suggested by Nansen's discovery of a deep 

 Arctic basin. He points out that the area we may now assign 

 to the Arctic Ocean is almost the same as that given by Murray 

 to the Antarctic Continent — about four and a half million square 

 kilometres, while the depths observed by Nansen correspond in 

 order of magnitude to the heights observed by Ross ; and it is 

 remarkable that a small area like the Arctic Ocean should give 

 soundings equal to the averages obtained in the Atlantic and 

 Pacific. These considerations, similar to those which have led 

 Mr. Lowthian-Green to assume that the earth has a tetrahedral 

 form, suggest that it may really be top-shaped, the spinning 

 point, as it were, being the South Pole. Such a supposition 

 would tend to reconcile the differences of astronomers and 

 geodesists as to the ratio of the polar and equatorial diameters ; 

 for the latter base their value of the polar flattening, 1/294, upon 

 measurements made almost entirely in the northern hemisphere. 

 The value obtained by M. Tisserand from the precession of the 

 equinoxes, 1/297, m^y ^^ found sensibly correct, if the existence 

 of the south polar protuberance, and consequent eftects upon the 

 form of the sea surface, are admitted. 



SiN'CE the great earthquake of 1855, the strongest felt in 

 Tokio was that of June 24, 1894, which forms the subject of a 

 valuable paper contributed by Prof. F. Omori to the Italian 

 Seismological Society. The entire land-area disturbed was 

 about 1 10,000 square miles. The meizoseismal area was a band 

 lying to the east of Tokio, and running north and south, from 

 Iwatsuki to the Bay of Tokio. This band occupies the lowest 

 part of the plain of Musashi, which is the continuation of the 

 axis of the bay, and the earthquake was probably connected 

 with a long fault lying beneath the meizoseismal band. Records 

 of the earthquake were obtained at two observatories in Tokio. 

 At one of these, situated on high and hard ground, the earth- 

 quake consisted of one prominent oscillation, preceded and 

 followed by smaller vibrations ; the maximum horizontal dis- 

 placement being 73 mm. in the direction S. 70° W. and 

 N. 70° E., and the maximum horizontal acceleration 444 mm. 

 per sec. per sec. At the other observatory, which is on low and 

 soft ground, the horizontal displacement was 130 mm., and 

 the maximum acceleration about 900 mm. per sec. per sec. 

 Prof. Omori believes that near the epicentre of a great earth- 

 quake, the movement is generally of the same simple character 



