2 3C 



NA TURE 



[July 8, 1897 



from Bechuanaland a young male giraffe, presented to the 

 Queen on the occasion of her Diamond Jubilee by Chief 

 Bethoen. The giraffe was captured three years ago, when quite 

 young, in the Khalahari desert, and is now at Garanaka, ten 

 miles north-east of Kanye, whither the keeper, on arrival at 

 Cape Town, will proceed to receive it. 



Another motor-cycle race is being organised in France. 

 The date is fixed for August 22, and the course traversed will 

 be from Paris to Cabourg, a distance of 215 kilometres. 



A BIOLOGICAL station, containing aquaria, laboratories, 

 rooms for collections and library, is in course of erection near 

 Sebastopol, on the Black Sea. It is expected that the building 

 will be opened for scientific work during the present year. 



A LARGELY attended meeting, presided over by the Marquis 

 of Tweeddale, was held on Friday afternoon last in the Botanical 

 Theatre of University College, Gower Street, to inaugurate the 

 personal memorial to the late Sir John Pender. The chairman 

 handed over the sum of 5000/. to the College authorities to endow 

 the electrical laboratory at University College, and announced 

 that a portion of the amount subscribed had been expended on 

 a bust of Sir John Pender, and that the balance would be given 

 to the Glasgow University and the West of Scotland Technical 

 College. Lord Kelvin, in a brief speech, said that it gave him 

 great pleasure to have the opportunity of expressing his hearty 

 concurrence with the resolutions of the Pender Memorial Com- 

 mittee as to the mode in which the fund collected should be 

 distributed. He wished to speak of his own knowledge of what 

 Sir John Pender had done. He remembered the first experiment 

 that was made to lay a cable across the Atlantic. The scheme 

 was supported by the then Mr. Pender, who in 1858 was one of 

 the first directors of the company which was started to carry out 

 the work. It was well within his recollection that all the 

 directors resigned one after the other when the temporary suc- 

 cess which attended the laying of the cable was followed so soon 

 by failure. It was certainly a most discouraging result, but Mr. 

 Pender was not to be disheartened. He was the only one to 

 have the will and the power to keep the undertaking afloat, and 

 from 1858 to 1864 he kept it afloat. The success which 

 ultimately attended his efforts they all knew, and our colonies, 

 he was glad to say, were now brought within speaking distance 

 of the mother country. 



A MONUMENT to the memory. or Daguerre has been erected 

 by public subscription at Bry-sur-Marne, and the inauguration 

 ceremony was performed on Sunday, June 27. The memorial 

 takes the form of a bronze bust placed on a stone pedestal, and 

 is the work of Madame Bloch. At the close of the ceremony 

 wreaths were placed upon Daguerre's grave. 



The outline programme of the Cardiff meeting of the Iron 

 and Steel Institute, which is to take place from August 3 to 6, 

 has now been issued. In it will be found full information as to 

 each day's engagements. The following papers have been 

 offered for reading: (i) "On Passive Iron," by J. S. de 

 Benneville ; (2) " On the Diffusion of Sulphides through 

 Steel," by E. D. Campbell ; (3) " On the Manufacture of Tin 

 Plates," by George B. Hammond; (4) "On a Spectroscopic 

 Analysis of Iron Ores," by Prof W. N. Hartley, F.R.S., and 

 Hugh Ramage ; (5) " On Improvements in Shipping Appliances 

 in the Bristol Channel," by Sir W. T. Lewis, Bart. ; (6) " On 

 the Iron Industry of Hungary," by D. A. Louis; (7) "On a 

 Thermo-Chemical Study of the Refining of Iron," by Prof. 

 Honore Ponthiere ; (8) "On Carbon and Iron," by E. H. 

 Saniter ; (9) "On some Mechanical Appliances at Penarth 

 Docks," by T. Hurry Riches ; (10) "On the Application of 

 Travelling Belts to the Shipment of Coal," by Thomas 

 Wrightson. 



NO. 1445, VOL. 56] 



The Times Paris correspondent reports that at last Monday's 

 sitting of the Academy of Sciences a paper by M. Tatin and 

 Dr. Richet, on steam aerodromes, was read. The experiments 

 of the authors are being carried on in emulation of those of Prof. 

 Langley, the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, in Potomac 

 Bay, near Washington. The French experiments have been 

 made at Carquenez, near Toulon. The aerodrome weighed 

 about 70 lb., or two and a half times as much as the American. 

 The power of the engine was about the same — a little more than 

 one-horse power. The French machine had two screws instead 

 of one — one in front and the other behind. The maximum 

 velocity obtained by MM. Tatin and Richet was greater, 

 namely, 18 metres per second instead of 10, but the length of 

 their run was 140 metres instead of more than a kilometre. The 

 duration of the experiment was only a few seconds, instead of 

 more than two minutes. 



That science is being well fostered in our colonies can be 

 gathered by a perusal of the Transactions of the Astronomical 

 and Physical Society of Toronto, the seventh annual volume of 

 which we have before us. This volume contains several interest- 

 ing papers communicated by the active and corresponding 

 members of the Society; and the numerous meetings seem always 

 to have been well attended. The President's address delivered 

 in January last, given in the volume, sums up the aim of the 

 Society. 



Attention is called, in the Engineer, to a simple appliance 

 intended as a substitute for the present crude method of fog- 

 signalling on railways. The appliance is the invention of Mr. 

 Pratt, of Bristol, and has recently undergone in a satisfactory 

 manner a series of experimental tests on the West Lancashire 

 Railway at Southport. The object of the invention is, in times 

 of thick or foggy weather, when the ordinary danger signal 

 would be invisible to the driver, to set automatically in operation 

 the engine whistle, on passing the point where the ordinary fog 

 detonator would be exploded. This is effected by a knife-cutter 

 placed in the 6-foot way — and which is raised when the danger 

 signal is put on — cutting through a brittle metal bar carried on 

 the engine, the cutting through of which operates the lever 

 acting upon the whistle, and which continues to sound until 

 turned off by the driver, when the whole apparatus is auto- 

 matically placed in position for operation when the engine again 

 approaches a danger signal. The apparatus on the engine, 

 which can be readily attached in any suitable position, consists 

 simply of a pair of iron rods, between which slide, on half-rings, 

 a series of the brittle metal bars referred to. When the bottom 

 one is cut through it is thrown off, and brings down a lever rod 

 attached to the engine whistle, which is at once set in operation ; 

 whilst the bar immediately above falls into its place, so that so 

 long as the couple of rods between which these bars slide are 

 kept supplied, the apparatus is always in readiness for signalling 

 to the driver. The only real objection raised to the apparatus 

 by the railway officials present was that it would be absolutely 

 indispensable that every engine travelling over a line should be 

 fitted with the appliance, and as over most main lines different 

 railway companies have travelling powers, this would no doubt 

 be a difficulty in the way of its adoption. 



The collection of Penguins in the Zoological Society's 

 Gardens has received some valuable accessions in the shape 

 of two examples of the little Blue Penguin of New Zealand 

 {Eudyptula tninor), and two specimens of the King Penguin 

 from the Antarctic Seas, neither of which species are often seen 

 alive in captivity. The former birds will be found in the Fish- 

 house, where they are fed along with the other diving-birds, 

 while the King Penguins have been located in an enclosure near 



