350 



NA TURE 



[February 1 1, 1892 



An appeal on behalf of the Polytechnic (Regent Street) 

 Institute has been issued this week by Lord Reay, Lord Comp- 

 ton, Mr. Mundella, Sir Lyon Playfair, Dr. Gladstone, and 

 other gentlemen, who have lately been appointed on the 

 governing body. They have found the following condition of 

 affairs : — Mr. Quintin Hogg has himself up to the present time 

 paid all the deficiencies of the Institute, besides finding very large 

 sums for constantly building and adding to the premises, 

 amounting to in all about £\^o,<x>o. Over ;i^23,ooo is con- 

 tributed annually in fees, subscriptions, &c., by those who 

 make use of the Institute, and ;i^35oo is allowed by the City 

 Charities Fund, but there still remains to be met a yearly 

 deficit of ;^4O0O. The only way in which the governing body 

 could curtail expense would be to close the Young Women's 

 Institute and the large and numerously attended Art School. 

 They are, of course, extremely reluctant to take this step ; so 

 they ask those who value the work done by the Polytechnic to 

 provide a sum of ;i^4000 per annum for three years. By that 

 time, they trust, aid for technical education may be forthcoming 

 from the London County Council. A donation of £'^00 for 

 this year's expenses has been promised by Mr. J. Carnegie, and 

 it may be hoped that the governing body will have the satis- 

 faction of being able to meet the difficulty. As they point out, 

 more students are now receiving technical education at the 

 Polytechnic than were being so instructed in the whole of 

 London before the institution was started ; and there is not the 

 slightest exaggeration in the statement that it would be difficult 

 " to over-estimate the benefits which have accrued to the nation 

 at large, and London in particular, from this branch alone of the 

 Polytechnic work." 



A COMPANY has presented to the Committee of Ways and 

 Means in connection with the World's Fair, Chicago, a propo- 

 sition which is likely to attract some attention. The company 

 proposes to connect all the large cities of the United States by 

 wires in such a manner that when the President presses the 

 button for the official opening of the Exposition he will not only 

 start in motion the machinery of the World's Fair, but will 

 ring the fire bells and hoist the Stars and Stripes in every town 

 in the country, and also open " the largest mechanical, electrical, 

 and musical concert ever given on earth." According to the 

 American journal Electricity, this is all to be done without cost 

 to the Exposition management. Nothing is asked beyond the 

 sanction of the management to the proposed idea, consent to 

 proceed, and the assurance that a similar privilege will be given 

 to no other person or company. 



According to a report recently published in Germany, there 

 were, in 1889, 5260 workmen killed in accidents, and 35,392 

 seriously injured. These losses do not vary much from one year 

 to another. M. Vacher, in La Nature, compares the figures 

 with those of the killed and wounded at Gravelotte— one of the 

 most murderous battles in this century — which were 4449 and 

 20,977. The industries furnishing most accidents are as follows, 

 in descending order : mines, railways, quarries, subterranean 

 works, building, breweries. All industries are arranged in 64 

 corporations, and it is estimated that more than 4I millions of 

 w9rkpeople are insured. Wounds and fractures are the most 

 usual form of injury, and the duration of treatment tends to in- 

 crease every year, by virtue of a law which makes an allowance 

 when incapacity for work exceeds three weeks (this \yas based 

 on the observation that fractures were generally healed in three 

 weeks). Since this law was introduced, the treatment of fractures 

 has taken longer. Theie are always more accidents in winter 

 than in summer, and on Mondays and Saturdays than on other 

 days. Also there are twice as many accidents from 9 a.m. to 

 noon, and from 3 to 6 p.m., than from 6 to 9 a.m., and from 

 noon to 3 p.m. Better light in summer, and fatigue towards 

 NO. II 63, VOL. 45] 



the end of each half-day of six hours, are supposed to explain 

 some of these variations. 



In the February number of Nature Notes, Mr. Robert 

 Morley vouches for the accuracy of a story which seems to in- 

 dicate the possibility of very tender feeling in monkeys. A 

 friend of Mr. Morley's, a native of India, was sitting in his 

 garden, when a loud chattering announced the arrival of a large 

 party of monkeys, who forthwith proceeded to make a meal off 

 his fruits. Fearing the loss of his entire crop, he fetched his 

 fowling-piece, and, to frighten them away, fired it off, as he 

 thought, over the heads of the chattering crew. They all fled 

 away, but he noticed, left behind upon a bough, what looked 

 like one fallen asleep with its head resting upon its arms. As it 

 did not move, he sent a servant up the tree, who found that it 

 was quite dead, having been shot through the heart. He had 

 it fetched down and buried beneath the tree ; and on the morrow 

 he saw, sitting upon the little mound, the mate of the dead 

 monkey. It remained there for several days bewailing its loss. 



At the meeting of the French Meteorological Society on Jan. 5, 

 M. Janssen, in his Presidential address, said that meteorology was 

 passing through a critical and interesting period of its history ; 

 it cannot fully render the important services expected of it until 

 it has been sufficiently cultivated for its own sake, without 

 reference to its application to other sciences, such as agricul- 

 ture, &c. He could not too strongly recommend the more 

 general use of photography for the registration of certain phe- 

 nomena. Observations in balloons, and on mountain-stations, 

 should be utilized as much as possible, as the latter will have a 

 considerable effiect on the progress of the science. He also 

 urged the necessity of constructing self-registering instruments, 

 working automatically for a lengthened period, owing to the 

 difficulty of obtaining continuous records at the highest stations. 

 M. H. Lasne made some remarks on the subject of a com- 

 munication by M. Teisserenc de Bort at a previous meeting 

 relating to barometric gradients. He thought that the repre- 

 sentation of the surface isobars drawn in section in a conve- 

 niently chosen vertical plane, is of advantage from a graphical 

 point of view, in order to show approximately the march of the 

 phenomena. On the other hand, he was of opinion that, if 

 calculations were introduced with a view to greater precision, 

 there would be no longer any advantage in making use of the 

 difference of height of the surface isobars. 



General Greely, Chief Signal Officer of the United States 

 Army, has just issued a set of international monthly charts of 

 mean barometric pressures and wind directions at about noon 

 (G.M.T.) for 1882 and 1883, for a large part of the northern 

 hemisphere. It will be remembered that this was the period at 

 which special observations were made by the International Polar 

 Expeditions. All the data available for the Polar regions have 

 been used in the preparation of these charts, and they therefore 

 contain more observations made within the Arctic Circle than 

 any previous charts issued by the Signal Office. They show 

 that the general features of barometric pressure in the Arctic 

 regions are a principal minimum in July, followed by a prin- 

 cipal maximum in November, with secondaries in January and 

 April (or May) respectively. The author states that he has 

 prepared, and hopes soon to publish, charts of the mean monthly 

 pressures, as determined for the northern hemisphere from the 

 international synchronous observations during ten successive 

 years. He also expresses the hope that some of the meteoro- 

 logists connected with the International Polar Expeditions will 

 confirm or disprove the theory of a regular march of barometric 

 pressure from month to month throughout the earth, and not 

 simply to and from the oceans and interior of continents, with 

 alternating summer and winter. The unravelling of the com- 



