456 



NATURE 



[September 7, 1893 



county boroughs is that many of the councils have either erected 

 or decided to erect, technical schools, or have taken over 

 exirting schools, for the purpose of supplying technical instruction 

 under their direct control, to which they have decided to apply 

 the whole of the funds at their disposal, which in some cases 

 include the proceeds of a rate levied under the Act of 1889." 



At the Cambridge suTinier meeting, recently concluded, a 

 lecture was delivered in the hall of St. John's College, on the 

 late John Couch Adams, by Dr. Donald MacAlister. The lec- 

 ture gained in interest from the fact that Dr. MacAlister was a 

 personal friend of the late professor, and was in consequence 

 able to supply many interesting details as to his life. This 

 was particularly the case when speaking of Dr. Adams' eaily 

 training. Many know that Adams was a s'zar of St. John's, 

 but perhaps few realise what a strenuous courseof self education 

 had preceded his election. He taught himself algebra when a 

 boy at his father's farmhouse in Cornwall, and piepared himself 

 for Cambridge at a country school and at the local Mechanics' 

 Institute. A curious entry is to be found in Adams' diary for 

 June 26, 1841, during his second year at Cambridge : " Went 

 to Johnson's (the bookseller in Trinity Street) and read Professor 

 Airy's report on the state of astronomical science," showing, as 

 Dr. MacAlister explained, that his interest lay in that direction 

 at that lime as at a slightly later date. In the Tripos it is well 

 known that Adams was as far above the second wrangler, in an 

 exceptional year, as the second was above the wooden spoon. 

 In a surprisingly short space of time, by 1846, Adams became 

 celebrated for his discovery of Uranus, but it may not be remem- 

 bered that for a short time he was a Professor at St. Andrews. 

 On his return to Cambridge as the Lowndean Professor, he be- 

 came associated with Pembroke College, as from 1853 he was a 

 Fellow there. The University, as a memorial, has undertaken 

 the publication of his works, and a monument of some kind is 

 shortly to be placed in Westminster Abbey. 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 

 Paris. 

 Academy of Sciences, August 28. — >f. Loewy in the 

 chii''. — On a typhoon of last year in the China seas, by M. H. 

 Faye. — R. P. Chevalier, Director of the Meteorological Obser- 

 vatory of ZiKa-Wey, has sent an account of the terrible typhoon 

 of October 7-10, 1892, which led to the lo5s of the British mail 

 steamer Bokhara, to M. Faye. A close study of the pheno- 

 menon has revealed the fact that there was no high-pressure 

 area f t a distance of 600 to 1000 miles round the centre. This 

 result is entirely in opposition to Ferrel's theory which asserts 

 that every cyclone is surrounded by a high pressure area repre- 

 senting an anti-cyclone. P. Chevalier is also convinced that in 

 low latitudes cirrus clouds form a constant indication of a 

 distant typhoon. Accorriing to him, the centre of a typhoon 

 and its direction are indicated by the point on the horizon 

 whence the cirri appear to diverge, an observation which 

 would locate the originof typhoons in the region of low-latitude 

 cirri, i.e. at a height of about 1200 or 1300 m., instead of at 

 the surface of the earth, as often supposed. But P. Che- 

 valier believes that the interior motions of the cyclone 

 are represented by rectilinear convergent trajectories curved 

 by the rotation of the earth, so that the air ascends in all the 

 phenomena, except at the centre, where even he does not go so 

 far as to deny the descending movement so clearly observed by 

 Manille. lie observes, however, that the foot of the cyclone 

 was lifted above the surface at intervals, to descend in another 

 portion of its track, and that it was independent of the nature 

 of the ground, thus characterising itself as a phenomenon 

 originating in the higher atmospheric strata exclusively. — 

 Chrono-photographic study of the different kinds of locomotion 

 in animals, by M. Marey. — In order to photograph dilferent 

 animals in motion, reptiles must be placed in a sort of circular 

 canal where they can run on indefinitely, the chrono-photo- 

 graphic apparatus being placed above this canal. Fishes are 

 made to swim in a similar canal filled with water illuminated 

 from above, so that they appear dark on a light ground, or 

 from above, so as to appear light on a dark background. The 

 principal difficulty lies in causing the animal to move in its 

 natural manner. Some interesting analogies may be observed 

 between simple creeping and more complex movements. An 

 eel and an adder progress in the water in the same manner ; a 

 wave of lateral inflexion runs incessantly from the head to the 

 tail, and the speed of background propagation of this wave is 



NO. 1245, VOL. 48] 



only slightly superior to the velocity of translation of the animal 

 itself. If the eel and the adder are placed on the ground, the 

 mode of creeping will be modified in the same manner in the 

 two species. In both, the wave of reptation will have a 

 greater amplitude, and this amplitude grows more and more as 

 the surface becomes smoother. In fishes provided with fins, and 

 in reptiles possessing feet, there remains, in general, a more or 

 less pronounced trace of the undulatory motion of reptation. 

 The grey lizard, when photographed at the rate of forty or fifty 

 exposures per second, exhibits this clearly, and also reveals the 

 f,act that the mode of progression by means of the feet is 

 diagonal, and analogous to trotting. This gives rise to an 

 alternation of convexity and concavity in the body on each 

 side. — On a property of a class of algebraic surfaces, by M. 

 Georges Humbert. — On the third principle of energetics, by 

 M. W. MeyerhofTer. — The new principle recently added by M. 

 Le Chatelier to thermodynamics, to the effect that every foim 

 of energy may be decomposed into two factors, one of which 

 is of a constant magnitude, was enunciated two years ago by 

 M. Meyerhoffer in the following form : everything which lakes 

 place in the world consists of processes in which the different 

 capacities change their potential without changing in quantity, 

 where the two factors are the capacity {Inhalt) and the 

 potential. 



GOTTINGEN. 



Royal Society of Sciences. — The Nachrichten (April to 

 June) contains the following papers of scientific interest. 



April. — H, Weber : Researches in the Theory of Numbers 

 in the domain of Elliptic Functions, III. Th. Liebisch : The 

 Spectrum Analysis of the Interference Colours of Biaxial 

 Crystals. G. Bodlander : Expeiiments in Liquids containing 

 Substances in Suspension, I. 



June. — Lazarus Fletcher : Remarks on the Catalogue of the 

 Meteorite Collection of the Giittingen University. F. Kohl- 

 rausch and W. Ilallwachs : On the Density of Dilute Watery 

 Solutions (with diagrams). F. Hultsch : The Approximate 

 Values of irrational square roots given by Archimedes (with 

 diagrams). 



CONTENTS. PAGB 



The Public Health Laboratory 433 



The Arctic Problem 434 



Our Book Shelf:— 



B.iltzmann : " Vorlesung Uber Maxwell's Theorie de: 



Electricitiit und des Lichtes " 435 



Jukes-Browne: "Geology: an Elementary Hand- 

 book" 435 



Blaise Pascal : " Recit de la Grande Experience de 



I'Equilibre des Liqueurs " 436 



L ;tters to the Editor :— 



The Organisation of Scientific Literature. — F. G. 



Donnan ; A. B. Basset, F.R.S 436 



Drought and Heat at Shirenewton Hall in 1893. 



(///aj/rate/.)— E.J. Lowe, F.R.S 436 



Some Recent Restorations of Dinosaurs. — Prof. O. C. 



Marsh 437 



Insects Attracted by Silanum. — Prof. T. D. A. 



Cockerell 43^ 



Old and New Astronomy. — Mrs. S. D. Proctor- 

 Smyth ; The Reviewer 438 



Suicide of Rattlesnake.— E. L. Gabbett 438 



The Early Asterisms. I. By J. Norman Lockyer, 



F.R.S 438 



Publications of the Zoological Station at Naples. 



By Prof. Anton Dohrn 44" 



British Association, Nottingham Meeting. By Prof. 



Frank Clowes 443 



Science in the Magazines 443 



Notes . . 444 



Our Astronomical Column : — 



The Tran4t of Venus of 1874 447 



The Planet Venus 447 



" Memoire dclla Societa," &c 44° 



Geographical Notes 44" 



Meeting of the French Association. By Prof. J. P. 



O'Reilly 44» 



Variations of Latitude. Hy Prof. C. L. Doolittle . 451 



University and Educational Intelligence 455 



Societies and Academies 45^ 



