324 



NA TURE 



[February 4, 1892 



According to the Berlin correspondent of the Times, a 

 curious rosy light overspread the sky above Berlin from 9 till 

 1 1 o'clock on the evening of January 26, and made many people 

 think that a great fire had broken out somewhere. Early on the 

 following morning the Emperor telephoned to the central fire 

 brigade station to inquire what had happened, but received 

 answer that the effulgence was a natural phenomenon. 



In March 1891, a Select Committee of the House of Com- 

 mons was appointed to consider the subject of the registration 

 of teachers. Two Bills which had been introduced into the 

 House of Commons, one by Sir Richard Temple, the other by 

 Mr. Arthur Acland, were referred to the Committee ; and it exa- 

 mined a large number of witnesses whose opinions were worthy of 

 being carefully considered. The Report of this Committee has 

 been issued by the National Association for the Promotion of 

 Technical and Secondary Education, and deserves the attention of 

 all who are interested in educational questions. The following are 

 the conclusions at which the Committee arrived : that the regis- 

 tration of teachers in secondary schools is in principle desirable ; 

 that any Educational Council to be established for the furtherance 

 of such registration should be composed of nominees of the State, 

 representatives of the Universities, and members elected by the 

 teaching profession ; that the qualifications for registration 

 should include evidence both of attainments and of teaching 

 capacity ; and that additional facilities are required for the 

 training of teachers in secondary schools. The Committee was 

 of opinion {a) that existing teachers should not be put on the 

 register merely as such, but should not suffer from any legal 

 disability ; {b) that both existing teachers and future teachers 

 should be admitted to the register on producing such evidence of 

 intellectual acquirements and teaching capacity as might be 

 required by the Council ; {c) that the register should, as soon as 

 might appear reasonable in such case, be made compulsory upon 

 existing teachers in the event of their appointment to teach in a 

 secondary school, assisted by endowments or public money, and 

 upon future teachers in these, and ultimately in all other 

 secondary schools ; {d) that teachers certified by the Education 

 Department should be placed on the register, with an indica- 

 tion, as in the case of other teachers, of the natuie of their 

 certificate. 



The Committee on the Indexing of Chemical Literature, ap- 

 pointed by the Chemical Section of the American Association 

 for the Advancement of Science, refers with pleasure, in its 

 ninth annual report, to the fact that a new Dictionary of Solu- 

 bilities is in progress by a competent hand. Prof. Arthur M. 

 Comey, of Tufts College, College Hill, Massachusetts, has 

 written to the Committee that the work he has undertaken will 

 be as nearly complete as possible. He estimates that the dic- 

 tionary will contain over 70,000 entries, and will make a volume | 

 of 1500 to 1700 pages. The arrangement will be strictly alpha- 

 betical, and in all cases references will be given to original 

 papers. The Committee also prints a letter fin which Mr. '' 

 Howard L. Prince says that in the U.S. Patent Office, of which 

 he is librarian, an index is being made for about 150 journals, 

 notably those upon the subjects of chemistry, electricity, and 

 engineering, both in English and foreign languages. The gene- 

 ral plan is alphabetical, but he departs from it sufficiently to j 

 group under such subjects as chemistry, electricity, engineering, j 

 railroads, &c., all the subdivisions of the art, so that the elec- 

 trical investigator, for instance, will not have to travel from one 

 end of the alphabet to the other to find the divisions of genera- 

 tors, conductors, dynamos, telephones, telegraphs, &c. An- 

 other fact mentioned by the Committee is that an extensive 

 bibliography of mineral waters is being prepared by Dr. Alfred 

 Tuckerman. 



NO. I 162, VOL. 45] 



The Institute of Jamaica has begun the issue of special 

 publications. The first, the Rainfall Atlas of Jamaica, contains 

 thirteen coloured maps showing the average rainfall in each month 

 and during the year, with explanatory text. The maps are 

 based upon observations made at 153 stations from about the 

 year 1870 to the end of the year 1889. The available stations 

 are irregularly distributed, being for the most part sugar-estates 

 and cattle-pens, and in consequence of this irregularity the 

 island has been divided into four rainfall divisions. The north- 

 eastern division has the largest rainfall, then comes the west 

 central, next the northern, and lastly the southern. The annual 

 distribution of the rainfall varies from 30 to 35 inches in a 

 few places to over 100 inches in the north-eastern division. 

 The greatest fall is in October, and the least in February. The 

 : driest stations are on the north-eastern and south-eastern shores. 

 I The maps show the distribution and average amount of rain- 

 1 fall very clearly by different tints, and cannot fail to be of both 

 scientific and practical utility. The work has been prepared by 

 Maxwell Hall, the Government Meteorologist. 



In the new number of the London and Middlesex Note- 

 book, Mr. G. F. Lawrence says that some months ago he 

 obtained a stone hammer of unusual form from the Thames at 

 Hammersmith. It is in the form of a cushion, and is beautifully 

 polished all over. The shaft-hole is \% inch in diameter, and is 

 an inch nearer one end than the other. The material is a 

 beautifully veined claystone, of a light greenish colour, and the 

 hammer measures 4^ inches in length, 2^ inches broad, and is 

 i^ inch thick. Mr. Lawrence knows of only two other speci- 

 mens of this type which have been found in the southern 

 counties ; both are in the British Museum. The Edinburgh 

 Museum, however, contains several, some of handsome material 

 and finish, while others are of a less beautiful, but most service- 

 able granitic stone. The type seems to belong to the Bronze 

 Age. Such specimens as the Hammersmith example must have 

 been, Mr. Lawrence thinks, more than mere implements. He 

 suggests that they were symbols of chieftainship, and handed 

 down from one to another, as sacred badges of office, as the 

 beautiful jade weapons were in New Zealand. 



Mr. E. p. Ramsay, Curator of the Australian Museum, 

 Sydney, has reported to the trustees that during the year 1890 no 

 fewer than 320 specimens were bought for the ethnological collec- 

 tions. The most important of them were a fine lot of greenstone 

 axes and old clay cooking-pots from New Caledonia ; fine-made 

 mats, baskets, hats, native hair lines and fishing hooks, from 

 Gilbert and Kingsmill Group ; necklaces, drums, and other rare 

 articles of native dress, from British New Guinea ; clubs, spears, 

 cava-bowls, and food-baskets, from Viti or Fiji ; stone headed 

 spears, from Bathurst Island, Torres Straits. Among 74 

 specimens acquired by exchange were a valuable collection of 

 Neolithic worked flints from the Chalk Hills, South Downs, 

 England ; worked flints, from the Thames ; Palaeolithic worked 

 flints, from the river gravels, near London ; polished basalt celts, 

 from Ireland ; celt socket, formed of the base of the red-deer, 

 from Swiss lake-dwellings ; old English flint and steel, from 

 Yorkshire ; modern French peasant's pipe-ligliter, flint and 

 steel ; iron lamp, or " cruzie," in use since Roman times in 

 Scotland; brass lamp, being a modification of the "cruzie," 

 from Antwerp ; cornelian an-ow-tips, from Arabia ; photo- 

 graphs of Hindu pipes. 



An excellent hand-book on " Viticulture for Victoria" has 

 been issued by the Royal Commission on Vegetable Products in 

 that colony. The work has been compiled by Mr. P'ran^ois de 

 Castella, of whom the Commission says that from training and 

 experience he is especially qualified for the task of preparing a 

 manual for vine-growers. During the last few years a fresh 

 impetus has been given to this industry in Victoria, and Mr. 



