l86 



NA TURE 



[April 2 i, 1892 



engine cylinders during admission, by Lieut. -Colonel Thomas 

 English, of Jarrow (Friday). The anniversary dinner will take 

 place on "Wednesday evening, May 4. 



The Royal Academy of Sciences of Lisbon has elected Sir 

 Joseph Fayrer, F.R.S., as a foreign corresponding member in 

 ihe class of mathematical, physical, and natural sciences. 



Dr. R. Thorne Thorne, F.R.S., as was expected, has 

 been appointed principal Medical Officer of the Local Govern- 

 ment Board, in succession to Sir George Buchanan, F.R.S. 



We regret to have to record the death of Miss Amelia B. 

 Edwards. She died on Friday last at Weston-super-Mare. 

 Miss Edwards had done much both in England and in America 

 to awaken public interest in the results of archaeological research 

 in Egypt, She also did excellent service by her work in 

 connection with the organization and control of the Egypt 

 Exploration Fund. 



Mr. J. Carruthers, son of Mr. W. Carruthers, head of the 

 Botanical Department of the British Museum, has been ap- 

 pointed Lecturer in Botany at the College of Agriculture, 

 Downton, for the coming summer. Mr. J. Carruthers has for 

 some time been Demonstrator in Botan5^at the Royal Veterinary 

 College, London. 



An International Economic Congress will be held at Antwerp 

 in August next. 



Mr. W. Clayton Pickersgill, H.B.M. Vice-Consul at 

 Antananarivo, who has just returned to England on leave, has 



brought with him a nearly perfect egg of the extinct gigantic 

 Bird of Madagascar, ^pyornis maximus. This was obtained, 

 like all other previous specimens, from the southern coast of the 

 island, near Cape Ste. Marie. Mr. Sclater will exhibit the egg 

 at the next meeting of the Zoological Society, on May 3. 



All collections of plants received at the Royal Gardens, Kew, 

 are examined, and reports upon them are sent to the donors. 

 When of sufficient magnitude and importance, they are made, as 

 jn the case of the late Colonel Grant's collections in Central 

 Africa, the subject of a detailed memoir. Anything of sufficient 

 interest in smaller collections is illustrated with a plate in 

 "Hooker's Icones Plantarum." Novelties which are not import- 

 ant enough to justify a plate have hitherto been relegated to their 

 proper places in the Herbarium, where they have awaited 

 description by some monographer. Collectors, however, are 

 best encouraged when they see that the result of their labours 

 supplies some tangible addition to scientific knowledge ; so it 

 has been decided that all plants received at Kew of which the 

 novelty can be ascertained with some certainty shall be described 

 for the information of botanists, and distinguished by formal 

 names. Successive decades of plant-descriptions are to be pub- 

 lished in the Keiv Bulletin. The first decade appears in the 

 April number, and suffices to indicate that the series will 



be one of great interest and value. 



Besides the first of the " Decades Kewenses," the April 

 number of the Kcm Bulletin contains sections on Fiji ginger, 

 the agricultural resources of Zanzibar, and the botanical station, 

 St. Vincent. 



We learn from the Kew Bulletin that among the botanical 

 treasures which have lately reached the Royal Gardens, is a 

 second small collection of dried plants, sent by the Rev. R. B. 

 Comins from the Solomon Islands. It includes several highly 

 interesting things. Specially interesting among these are 

 flowering specimens, though not perfect, of the tree that bears 

 the so-called turtle-seeds of the islanders. This tree belongs to 

 the Sapotacece, and will shortly be published as a new genus of 

 that order by Mr. W. B. Hemsley. The seeds are one of the 

 most singular productions in the vegetable kingdom, and the 

 NO. II 73, VOL. 45] 



name given to them by the natives of the Solomon Islands is quite 

 appropriate, as the resemblance is most striking. Mr. Comins 

 collected seeds of what appears to be a second species of the 

 genus, and Kew previously possessed a seed and foliage of a 

 third species, collected in the Fiji Islands in 1878 by Mr. Home, 

 the Director of the Botanic Garden of Mauritius. There are 

 also seeds of one or two other species in the Museum, where 

 they have been for some years, but their origin is unknown. 

 The Bulletin also calls attention to another very curious plant 

 collected by Mr. Comins — Lasianthera paptiana — in which the 

 originally three-celled ovary develops into a fruit with one fertile, 

 dry, woody cell, the two empty cells forming a fleshy body on 

 one side of it. 



It is expected that the Borough Road Polytechnic Institute 

 will be opened in October next. When the ceremony has taken 

 place, two of the three Polytechnics for South London, for which 

 Mr. Evan Spicer and his committee first appealed in 1888, will 

 be at work. The Goldsmiths' Company's Institute at New Cross, 

 which by the munificence of that Company was opened in 

 October last, has considerably over 4000 members on its books. 

 The third Polytechnic, that at Battersea, is in a fair way towards 

 completion, and will, it is hoped, be opened in October 1893. 



Prof. T. G. Bonney, F.R.S., will on Tuesday next, April 

 26, begin a course of two lectures at the Royal Institution, on 

 '' The Sculpturing of Britain ; its later stages " ; and on Thurs- 

 day, April 28, Prof. Dewar, F.R.S., will begin a course of four 

 lectures on " The Chemistry of Gases." The Friday evening 

 meetings will be resumed on April 29, when Dr. Benjamin W. 

 Richardson will deliver a discourse on " The Physiology of 

 Dreams." 



Mr. Alfred W. Bennett will deliver a course of lectures 

 on systematic botany at the Medical School, St. Thomas's 

 Hospital, on Tuesday and Wednesday mornings at 10 a.m., 

 beginning Tuesday, May 3. 



Dr. Symes Thompson will deliver at Gresham College, on 

 April 26, 27, 28, and 29, a course of lectures on " The Eye in 

 Health and Disease." The lectures are to be illustrated by 

 diagrams, and will begin each evening at six o'clock. 



According to a Reuter's telegram, despatched from New 

 York on Monday, two severe shocks of earthquake were felt at 

 Portland, Oregon, at two o'clock on Sunday afternoon, and at 

 various places in the vicinity. Numbers of buildings trembled, 

 and so great was the alarm that people rushed panic-striken into 

 the streets. The vibrations were from west to east, lasting ten 

 seconds in each case. No damage was done, and as the seismic 

 disturbances were confined to two sharp shocks within a brief 

 interval of each other, a feeling of confidence gradually returned. 



Snowstorms of exceptional severity have passed over the 

 country during the last week, and in many parts of the kingdom 

 the fall was heavier than at any time during the past winter. In 

 Scotland, and over the northern parts of England, snow had 

 been falling heavily on several days, and on Good Friday a 

 shallow cyclonic storm area was approaching our south-west 

 coasts from off^ the Atlantic, which occasioned heavy snow- 

 storms in the Channel Islands and south-west of England. The 

 central area of this disturbance passed up the English Channel 

 and over the north of France, accompanied by an unusually 

 heavy fall of snow over the south and south-east of England. 

 The ground was covered in places to the depth of several 

 inches, and the storm caused considerable damage to the tele- 

 graph wires in the southern parts of the kingdom. The night 

 frosts were also very severe, the shade thermometer registering 

 as low as 20° in places. 



The Report of the Kew Committee of the Royal Society for 

 fourteen months ending December 31 last gives an account of 



