August 30, 1900] 



NATURE 



421 



culture; 10-12, Folklore ; 13-14, Fish Culture and Arboriculture ; 

 14-19, Agriculture and Fisheries; 15-20, Aeronautics ; 22-28, 

 Acetylene. 



Prof. Giard, director of the biological station at Wimereux, 

 has been made Chevalier of the Order of Leopold by the Belgian 

 Government, as a recognition of the hospitality which he has 

 extended to Belgian students and naturalists at his laboratory 

 for many years. 



Dr. J. VV. B. Gunning, the director of the State Museum at 

 Pretoria, speaks in high terms of the way in which he has been 

 treated by the new British authorities. He has not only been 

 confirmed in his post at the museum, but also materially assisted 

 in his efforts to add to it a zoological garden, which he had 

 planned before the outbreak of hostilities. It was to this (in- 

 cipient) garden that the celebrated lioness (now in the Regent's 

 Park Garden) was presented by Mr. Rhodes, but subsequently 

 returned to the donor by Mr. Kruger's order. 



An international association for the promotion of psychical 

 research has been established under the title : Societe Inter- 

 nationale de I'Institut Psychique. A Bulletin has been issued 

 containing a report of the inaugural meeting held at Paris on 

 June 30, and explaining the objects of the organisation. The 

 Comite de Patronage includes the names of Prof. Mark 

 Baldwin, Prof. W. F. Barrett, Sir William Crookes, Prof. O. J. 

 Lodge, and Mr. W. H. Myers. The general secretary is 

 M. Yourievitch, Russian Embassy, Paris. 



A MONUMENT to Bertrand Pelletier and J. B. Caventou, 

 renowned as pharmaceutical chemists, was unveiled at Paris, by 

 M. Moissan, ^during the recent International Congress of 

 Pharmacy. Caventou was born in 1795, and studied at the 

 Paris School of Pharmacy. While pharmacist at the St. Antoine 

 Hospital he met Pelletier, and their fruitful collaboration began. 

 Two years after discovering brucine and strychnine they were 

 able to announce the discovery of quinine, and with rare dis- 

 interestedness they made their work public by presenting an 

 account of their methods and results to the Paris Academy of 

 Sciences on September 11, 1820. In their memoir they stated 

 that they had succeeded in isolating cinchonine and quinine 

 from both yellow and red cinchona bark, and described the thera- 

 peutic properties of these substances. In 1827 the Montyon 

 prize of the Academy of Sciences was awarded to them in recog- 

 nition of their valuable discovery, and now the monument, 

 representing the two investigators together, stands to remind 

 observers of their joint services to science and humanity. 



The International Meteorological Congress will be opened 

 at Paris on Monday, September lo, under the presidency of 

 M. E. Mascart, and will continue during the week. The 

 International Meteorological Committee, which met last year 

 at St. Petersburg, decided that it would convene, at the same 

 time as the Congress, the various committees appointed by the 

 Paris Conference in 1896. These committees are the fol- 

 lowing: — (i) Terrestrial Magnetism and Atmospheric Elec- 

 tricity. (2) Aeronautics. (3) Clouds. (4) Radiation and 

 Insolation. The first of these committees held an important 

 meeting at Bristol in 1898, the proceedings and resolutions of 

 which have been published in the reports of the British Associ- 

 ation. A great number of ascents, both with free as well as 

 captive balloons, have been made in different countries, for the 

 systematic investigation of the upper regions of the atmosphere. 

 Finally, the publication and discussion of the international 

 observations of clouds, made in 1896-97, will probably be 

 completed in 1900 in the majority of the countries taking part 

 in the same. From this it will be seen that communications of 

 very high interest will be brought before the Congress. The 

 NO. 1609, VOL. 62] 



questions which will be dealt with are not restricted exclusively 

 to meteorology properly so-called : they will include, generally, 

 everything which affects the physics of the globe. The meetings 

 of the Congress and of the committees will be held at the 

 House of the Societe d'Encouragement, 44, Rue de Rennes, 

 where the International Conference met in 1896. Communi- 

 cations relating to the organisation or to the programme of the 

 Congress should be addressed to Mons. Angot, general secretary, 

 12, Avenue de I'Alma, Paris. 



A Reuter telegram, dated Madrid, August 24, states that 

 twelve fragments of a meteorite have fallen on the boundary of 

 the provinces of Jaen, Cordova and Granada. The fall was 

 preceded by a series of loud detonations. One fragment, 

 weighing about a pound, which was picked up at Val, in the 

 province of Jaen, is said to be of hexagonal shape, grey on the 

 surface, and of a greenish colour inside. 



As attempts are being made to found a domestic science, and 

 to introduce exactitude into the operations of the kitchen, a 

 note in the Monthly Weather Review recording the actual 

 experience of a housekeeper at Albuquerque, New Mexico, is 

 of interest. It appears that cooking recipes and practices 

 which are trustworthy not far from sea-level are worthless at 

 Albuquerque, the altitude of which is 4933 feet. Water boils 

 there at 202° F., instead of 212" F. ; hence articles of food, the 

 cooking of which depends upon heat applied through the 

 medium of water, require a longer time for cooking than is 

 given in the cookery books. On account of the extreme dry- 

 ness of the atmosphere, farinaceous foods, such as beans, corn, 

 &c., lose so much of their moisture that they have to be left for 

 a long time in water before cooking, in order to be softened. 

 But the worst difficulty is with cake-making. Ordinary recipes 

 as to number of eggs and amount of baking powder break down 

 altogether, and housekeepers have to modify them if they wish 

 their operations to be successful. As the barometric pressure 

 determines to what extent the disengaged carbon dioxide shall 

 expand and aerate the dough, this may explain the different 

 action of baking soda and egg batter. In any case, the observa- 

 tion is interesting, and chemists may find it worthy of their 

 attention. 



La Nature of August 18 contains an article, by M. E. Roger, 

 director of the meteorological station at Chateaudun, near Paris, 

 entitled ** The Greatest Heat of the Century." A temperature of 

 103° 6 in the screen was observed there on July 27 of this year. 

 The nearest temperature to this hitherto recorded in the vicinity 

 of Paris during the last hundred years was loi^'S at Montsouris 

 Observatory on the 20th of the same month. At Poitiers in 

 July 1870, a temperature of io6°-2 was recorded. Among the 

 highest temperatures recorded in or near London are 95° '2 at 

 the late Mr. Symons' station, Camden Town, on July 16 last, 

 and 97° • I at Greenwich in July 1881 ; in that month a reading 

 of 101° was obtained at Alton, Hants. 



The Pilot Chart of the North Atlantic Ocean for August, 

 issued by the U.S. Hydrographic Office, contains a diagram 

 showing the path of the noteworthy cyclonic tropical storms of 

 the years 1898 and 1899, together with the time of their 

 duration, which varies from 2 to 39 days ; two of the storms 

 were traced entirely across the Atlantic. Taken collectively, 

 the several tracks exhibited show the doubtful accuracy of 

 generalised statements concerning certain characteristics of these 

 storms, such as their velocity, the latitude of their recurvature, 

 &c. Thus the statement is often made that in the higher 

 latitudes, after recurvature, the velocity along the track will 

 average 25 or 30 miles an hour. However true this may be as 

 the statement of an average, its untrustworthiness with regard 

 to a particular storm is well shown by one of the tracks laid down. 



