January 12, 1893] 



NA TURE 



253 



ciples of Psycho-Physiology." The Friday evening meeting 

 will begin on January 20, when Prof. Dewar, F. R.S., will give 

 a discourse on " Liquid Atmospheric Air." 



The severe frost which set in just before Christmas was 

 succeeded by a rapid rise of temperature in Scotland on 

 Friday, but in England the thermometer did not rise much 

 above the freezing point until about twenty-four hours later. 

 On the 5th and 6th instant the thermometer fell below 

 10" in many parts of Great Britain, and snow was falling 

 in Scotland, which afterwards spread to many parts of 

 England. The absolute shade minima recorded were — 2° at 

 Braemar, and 2° at Fort Augustus, in the north of Scotland. 

 The distribution of pressure was unusually high over Scandi- 

 navia and northern Europe (inadvertently referred to in our 

 issue last week as over these islands) having reached about 31*3 

 inches in Central Russia on the 4th, while areas of low pres- 

 sure lay over the Gulf of Genoa and the south-west of Ireland. 

 The latter depressiongraduallyextended eastwards, causing strong 

 easterly gales on the Irish coasts, while the anticyclone over 

 Europe gradually gave way, the barometer at Haparanda on 

 Monday being i '5 inch lower than a few days previously. By 

 Sunday all stations reported temperatures above the freezing point, 

 while in the south-west of Ireland the maxima reached 47° and 

 in the south of France even 63°, These changes were accom- 

 panied by rain in most parts of the country, which added ma- 

 terially to the rapidity of the thaw. Bright aurora was seen on 

 Monday night in Scotland and Ireland. On Tuesday an 

 anticyclone from the north-westward was spreading over our 

 islands, with finer weather and lower temperatures generally, 

 frost occurring in the north of Scotland and the central parts of 

 England. The lVeekly\Weather Report of the 7th instant showed 

 that the temperature in the eastern and midland parts of Eng- 

 land was 12° to 13° below the average for the week ; at several 

 of the inland stations in England the daily maxima were below 

 32° through the whole period. 



An enlightened Bengali, Babu Govind Chandra Laha, has 

 contributed fifteen thousand rupees towards the expenses of the 

 proposed snake laboratory at Calcutta. We may expect, 

 therefore, that the institution will soon be in full working order. 

 According to the Pioneer Mail, two main lines of research will 

 be followed in the laboratory. So-called cures for snake-bites 

 will be tested under strictly scientific conditions, and the pro- 

 perties of the snake poison as such will be investigated. The 

 laboratory will be the only institution of its kind in the world, 

 and the Committee of the Calcutta Zoological Gardens, who 

 have taken the matter in hand, expect that it will be largely 

 resorted to by the scientific inquirers who visit India during 

 cold weather. In accordance with the practice of scientific 

 laboratories in Europe, a charge will be made for the use of 

 the tables and instruments at a rate sufficient to cover working 

 expenses. Work done on behalf of the Government will also 

 be charged for according to a regular scale. 



The members and friends of the Society for the Study of 

 Inebriety met on Tuesday to congratulate Dr. Severin Wielobycki 

 on having completed one hundred years of life. 



Prof. Bain contributes to the new number of Mind an 

 interesting sketch of the career of the late Prof. G, C. Robert- 

 son, with whose name Mind will always be intimately asso- 

 ciated. Prof Bain includes in his article the admirable notice 

 of Robertson written by Mr. Leslie Stephen for the Spectator. 



We are glad to note the publication of a fifth edition, revised 

 and augmented, of the Official Guide to the North Gallery at 

 the Royal Gardens, Kew. It includes a short and interesting 

 biographical notice of Miss North. A map is given to convey 

 ■some idea of the extent to which her collection illustrates the 

 •vegetation of the temperate and tropical regions of the world. 

 NO. 12 II, VOL. 47] 



A NEW edition of the list of members of the Institution of 

 Civil Engineers, corrected to the 2nd inst., the seventy-fifth 

 anniversary of its establishment, shows that the aggregate num- 

 ber of all classes is 6341, an increase during the past year at the 

 rate of 3^ per cent. 



A PSYCHOLOfiiCAL laboratory has been established at Yale 

 College, where Prof. Ladd has for some years been lecturing 

 on physiological psychology. Science gives an interesting 

 account of the new institution, which has been placed under the 

 charge of Dr. E. W. Scripture, a pupil of Wundt. The labo- 

 ratory consists of fifteen rooms, three of which, including an 

 "isolated" room, are given over entirely to research. The 

 isolated room is a small room built inside of -another room ; 

 four springs of rubber and felt are the only points in which it 

 comes in contact with the outer walls. The space between the 

 walls is filled with sawdust as in an ice-box. The room is thus 

 proof against sound and light, and, according to Science, affords 

 an opportunity of making more accurate experiments on the 

 mental condition than any yet attempted. 



Students of ethnography will be interested to hear that 

 Dr. N. B. Emerson, of Honolulu, is preparing a full account of 

 the Polynesian canoe. In a communication printed in the new 

 number of the Journal of the Polynesian Society he points out 

 that the various migrations of the ancient Polynesians and their 

 progenitors, from whatever source derived, must have been 

 accomplished in canoes or other craft, and that the -ivaa, the 

 pahi. Sec, of to-day, however modified they may be under the 

 operation of modern arts and appliances, are the lineal descend- 

 ants of the sea-going craft in which the early ancestors of the 

 Polynesians made their voyages generations ago. He holds, 

 therefore, that a comparative study of the canoes cannot fail 

 to shed light on the problems of Polynesian migrations and 

 relationships. 



An interesting little paper on the destruction of wild birds' 

 eggs, and egg-collecting, is contributed to the new number of 

 the Annals of Scottish Natural History, by Col, W. H. M. 

 Duthie. Collectors who require to be specially dealt with 

 he groups in three classes — the aimless, the greedy, and the 

 mercenary. In contrast with these is "the true collector," 

 whom Col, Duthie defines as " a naturalist, acquainting him- 

 self with birds, their habits, flight, migration, language, and 

 breeding haunts ; his egg-collecting being only one of the means 

 of acquiring this knowledge," The true collector should collect 

 for himself, and should never receive an egg into his cabinet 

 unless authenticated by an individual in whom he can implicitly 

 trust. If all collectors were of this type, egg-dealers would 

 cease to exist, and with them would disappear the tribe of 

 hangers-on whom they maintain, 



A GOOD study of the form of eggs has been recently 

 made by Dr. Nicolsky of St. Petersburg. He constructs an 

 abstract formula, by which different eggs can be compared 

 without regard to absolute dimensions. Calling the longer axis 

 1000, he obtains a figure representing the ratio of the longest 

 transverse axis to it, and another, that of the distance of the 

 obtuse end from the "centre," or point where the longer axis 

 cuts the plane of the equator ; then forms a fraction with these 

 two figures, and takes it as the formula of the egg. Various 

 explanations have been offered for the different forms of eggs. 

 Dr. Nicolsky traces all to gravity. He considers that every egg 

 not yet coated with a solid shell departs from the spherical form 

 and elongates, simply because of pressure on it by the walls of 

 the ovary. In birds which keep a vertical position when at 

 rest (such as the falcon and owl) the soft egg becomes short 

 through the bird's weight acting against the ovarian pressure. 

 In birds which, like the grebe, are nearly always swimming, 

 the egg lengthens, because the body weight acts in the same 

 direction as the ovarian compression. Lastly, eggs become 



