May 4, 1893] 



NA TURE 



1 1 



been published in the Philosophical Transactions. Dr. Young 

 is also the author of the articles on "Distillation," " Sublima- 

 tion," and " Thermometry " in Thorpe's " Dictionary of Applied 

 Chemistry." 



NOTES. 

 Mr. Charles Chree, Fellow of King's College, Cambridge, 

 has been selected to fill the important office of Superintendent 

 to the Kew Observatory. It is one for which the combination 

 of high mathematical capacity with a practical experience of the 

 apparatus and methods of physical research is especially needed. 

 Mr. Chree obtained in 1884 the hitherto unequalled honour of 

 a first class in the most advanced parts both of the Mathematical 

 and of the Natural Science Triposes, and he has since been much 

 engaged at Cambridge in experimental and mathematical investi- 

 gations. The results of these are published in the Cambridge 

 Philosophical Journal, and in the "Philosophical Trans- 

 actions " of the Royal Society. 



The "James Forrest " lecture will be delivered at the In- 

 stitution of Civil Engineers this evening by Mr. William 

 Anderson, F.R.S. The subject is the interdependence of 

 abstract science and engineering. 



Sir W. H. Flower, F.R.S. , will preside over the fourth 

 annual meeting of the Museums' Association, which will be held 

 in London in July. The meeting, which will last for several 

 days, will begin on Monday, July 3. 



At the meeting of the Victoria Institute on Monday a paper 

 by Prof. Maspero was read in the author's absence by Mr. T. 

 G. Pinches, of the British Museum. The paper embodied the 

 results of Prof. Maspero's investigations during the past ten 

 years as regards the places in Southern Palestine claimed, 

 according to the Karnac records, to have been captured by the 

 Egyptians in the campaign under Sheshonq (Shishak) against 

 Rehoboam. 



The report of the Council of the City and Guilds of London 

 Institute has just been published. We are glad to note 

 that they are " able again to point to steady and continued 

 development in each branch of the Institute's work, as shown 

 by the statistics of their colleges, and— what is more satisfactory 

 — by the positions taken by their students, as the result, to a 

 large extent, of the instruction provided." 



The tercentenary of the foundation of the Botanic Garden 

 I of Montpellier will be celebrated by fcUs from the 20th to the 

 i 28th of May, when the Botanical Society of France will hold 

 1 its special annual session in the town. The botanists of 



! Montpellier offer hospitality to foreign botanists who may desire 

 to attend the files. 

 Since the death of Dr. Prantl the editorship of the crypto- 

 gamic bi-monthly Hedwigia has been undertaken by Dr. G. 

 I Hieronymus, Herr P. Hennings, and Dr. G. Lindau. 



j Under the auspices of the Imperial Academy of Sciences in 

 I Vienna, Dr. E. v. Halacsy, and Prof. Ililber have undertaken a 

 I botanical and geological investigation of Mt. Pindus in Thessaly 

 i| in the course of the present year. 



i) Prof. Martin, on account of his serious and prolonged ill- 

 ! health, has tendered his resignation of the professorship of 

 , biology, which he has held in the Johns Hopkins University 

 t since 1876. 



A new journal of experimental and theoretical physics, called 



Physical Review, and conducted by Edward L. Nichols 



ami Ernest Merritt, will be published for the Cornell University 



NO. 1227, VOL. 48] 



by Messrs. Macmillan and Co., New York and London. The 

 first number will appear on July I. The new journal will be 

 issued bi-monthly, and each number will consist of at least 

 sixty-four pages. It will be devoted to the promotion of original 

 work in physics. 



The Camera Club has issued a "Conference Number" of 

 its Journal, in which an account is given of the proceedings of 

 the Photographic Conference, held lately at the Society of 

 Arts. 



Since our last issue the temperature has appreciably de- 

 creased over these islands ; the maxima have only reached 70" 

 occasionally in the southern and central parts of England, while 

 in all other districts the thermometer has seldom risen above 

 60°. Up to Tuesday, the 2nd inst., the rainfall had only been 

 slight, the greater part being confined to the northern and 

 western parts of the country, where small amounts have been of 

 frequent occurrence. The recent drought has been probably un- 

 precedented in some parts ; at places on the south coast no rain 

 had fallen for forty-five days, while in the neighbourhood of 

 London there were thirty days without rain. The type of 

 weather has recently undergone an entire change ; cyclonic 

 disturbances formed in and near our islands, while the anti- 

 cyclonic conditions temporarily disappeared. With this 

 change in the distribution of atmospheric pressure, the northerly 

 and easterly winds gave place to those from westerly and 

 southerly directions, unsettled and showery weather became 

 general over the whole country, and the softer quality of the 

 air was very perceptible. Notwithstanding the decrease of 

 temperature, the Weekly Weather Report of April 29 showed 

 that it was above the mean in all districts, the excess varying 

 from 3° to 5° in the north and west, to d" or Y '" most parts of 

 England. The rainfall for the week was, of course, less than 

 the mean in all districts, while bright sunshine was very preva- 

 lent over the entire kingdom ; in the Channel Islands the per- 

 centage of possible duration was as high as 81, and in all dis- 

 tricts it greatly exceeded the average. 



Dr. Paul Schreiber has communicated to the Meleoro- 

 logische Zeitschrift for April an account of some extraordinary 

 snowballs which fell at Glashutte, in Saxony, on December 4 

 last. After a storm which had lasted ten minutes, a calm sud- 

 denly occurred, and light balls of snow measuring from four to 

 five inches began to fall. The balls lay on the ground until the 

 next day, there being from five to twelve of them to a square 

 yard. Dr. Schreiber thinks that the phenomenon was of an 

 electrical origin, as the preceding disturbance seemed to point 

 to a thunderstorm. 



Prof. Hellmann, to whom meteorologists are so much in- 

 debted for many laborious investigations into the history of 

 old observations and instruments, has recently made an im- 

 portant addition to early meteorological literature by the pub- 

 lication of Das alteste Berliner Wetter-Buch, containing obser- 

 vations made in Berlin in 1700-1701, by Gottfried Kirch and 

 his wife, being the first part of a manuscript of over 1000 

 quarto pages. During the preparation of Dr. Hellmann's 

 valuable work on the climate of Berlin he had made constant 

 search for these observations, which were known to have been 

 in Berlin about fifty years ago, and he at last discovered them, 

 strangely enough, in the Crawford Library at the Edinburgh 

 University. It is well known that Lord Crawford (then Lord 

 Lindsay) took an interest in collecting works on comets, and 

 these old manuscripts contained a number of such observations, 

 in addition to meteorological data. Dr. Hellmann's account of 

 the search for, and the discovery of, the manuscript, and of 

 the antecedents of the Kirch family, is exceedingly interesting. 



