136 



NATURE 



[June 



891 



A marine zoological station has been founded at Endoume, near 

 Marseilles, by Prof. Marion, especially for the study of the 

 fishes of the Mediterranean. M. Alphonse Biosson is about to 

 establish at his own expense a zoological station at Point-de- 

 Grave, Gironde, with the especial object of promoting the in- 

 vestigation of the ornithology and entomology of the district. 

 A marine station for physiology has been opened at Tamaris, 

 near Toulon, under the direction of Dr. R. Dubois, Professor of 

 Physiology in the Faculty of Sciences at Lyons. 



The Berlin Academy of Sciences has recently made the fol- 

 lowing grants : — £'i-00 to Dr. Fleischmann, of Erlangen, for 

 researches in development ; £Tf> towards the cost of publication 

 of Dr. Krabbe's work, "Development- History and Morphology 

 of the polymorphous Lichen Genus Cladomia " ; jC6o to Dr. 

 Hartwig, of Bamberg Observatory, towards a series of observa- 

 tions on variation of the earth's axis ; and £40 to Dr. Schmidt, 

 of Halle, for researches on the light reflected from transparent 

 bodies. 



The following are subjects for prize competition, recently 

 proposed by the Belgian Academy of Sciences : — Advancement 

 of our knowledge of the relation of phenomena of solution to 

 phenomena of combinations ; discussion, on the basis of new 

 experiments, of works relating to the kinetic theory of gases ; 

 perfection of the theory of approximative integration, both as 

 regards rigour of methods and facility of application ; researches 

 on the embryonal development of a mammal belonging to an 

 order the embryogeny of which has not yet been investigated ; 

 determination, by means of palaeontology and stratigraphy, of 

 the relations • between formations referred by Dumont to his 

 Laekenian and Tongrian marine systems ; new researches on 

 the formation of polar bodies of animals. The prizes are gold 

 medals, of the value of 1000, 800, and 600 francs. Papers to 

 be written in French, Flemish, or Latin, and sent to the 

 Secretary before August i, 1892. 



Messrs. Richard Fk£:res have issued an illustrated cata- 

 logue of measuring, controlling, and self-registering instruments 

 for scientific and industrial purposes. A descriptive and illus- 

 trated list of instruments has also been published by the 

 Cambridge Scientific Instrument Company. 



The series of lectures annually given in the gardens of the 

 Royal Botanic Society of London upon subjects connected with 

 botany came to an end on Friday last, when Prof. Stewart, 

 F.R. S., President of the Linriean Society, addressed a large 

 number of visitors and students upon ' ' The Relationship between 

 Plants and Animals." The subject, he said, was one of much 

 interest, as affording an explanation of the origin of many ab- 

 normal forms of vegetable growth. This is specially the case in 

 tropical countries, where the struggle for existence is more in- 

 tense than in colder climes ; there the relationship is almost vital, 

 some plants providing food, others shelter, to various kinds of 

 ants, while these pugnacious insects, in turn, protect the plant 

 from damage, by attacking any living thing which approaches it. 

 One plant, known as the buU's-horn acacia, of Central America, 

 provides a species of ant not only with food and drink, in 

 the shape of tiny egg-like bodies upon the leaves— of which 

 the ants are very fond — and a sweet fluid in special cavities on 

 the stalk, but, in addition, furnishes a home in the hollow spines 

 with which it is armed, these, when punctured by the ants, 

 swelling out into perfect miniature bull's horns. In return the 

 ants protect it from its enemies. 



A SERIES of experiments with regard to evaporation from free 

 water surfaces and from earth saturated with water, in sun and 

 in shade, has been recently made by Signor Battelli (// Nuovo 

 Cimento). He used three large tubs or vats, two holding water, 

 -and the third earth on a grating, to which water was admitted 

 NO. II 28, VOL. 44] 



from a pipe entering the bottom. One water-tub and the earth- 

 tub stood a few yards apart on the north side of a high wall ; 

 the other water- tub was in the open, and embedded in the ground. 

 Signor Battelli's results are these : — The quantity of water eva- 

 porated from moist earth is in general greater than that from a 

 free stagnant water surface, when the air temperature rises ; but 

 less, when the latter falls. With increasing wind-velocity, eva- 

 poration increases more rapidly from the water surface. The 

 moister the air, the greater (other things equal) seems to be the 

 ratio of the water evaporated from the moist earth to that from 

 the stagnant water surface. The evaporation of a water surface 

 exposed to the sun's rays is greater than that of a shaded one, 

 not only by day, but in the following night. With rising tem- 

 perature, the ratio between the water quantities from these two 

 surfaces increases somewhat more quickly ; with rising wind- 

 velocity, this ratio diminishes. 



The Photographic Journal of May 22 prints a paper by M. 

 Leon Vidal, on photographic methods of obtaining polychro- 

 matic impressions. One of the writer's objects is to show that 

 typographic and lithographic printers ought to find in photo- 

 graphy " one of their principal auxiliaries." By its aid, he says, 

 their work might be executed "more cheaply, more thoroughly, 

 and more artistically." 



On Sunday, June 7, there was a series of severe earthquake 

 shocks in Italy. The centre of the seismic movement seems to 

 have been in the province of Verona, but the disturbance was 

 felt over a wide area. At Verona three strong shocks, preceded 

 by a subterranean noise like the roaring of artillery, are reported 

 to have occurred at 2 o'clock a.m. The inhabitants rushed in 

 terror from their houses to seek safety in the open streets and 

 squares. One of the assistant mistresses at a boarding-school 

 died of fright. A number of chimneys were thrown down by 

 the oscillation. Still more violent were the effects of the seismic 

 disturbance at other places in the province of Verona, especially 

 at Tregnago and Badia-Calavena. Shocks more or less severe 

 were experienced at Brescia, Belluno, Ravenna, Parma, Modena, 

 and Ferrara. The Central Meteorological Bureau reports that 

 the earthquake was very strongly felt at Florence, where it awoke 

 several people from their sleep. The disturbance also ex- 

 tended to Roa;e, as was shown by the seismograph, the time 

 at which the shock was felt in Rome being 6 minutes and 

 40 seconds after 2 a.m. In Verona and the surrounding dis- 

 tricts slight shocks continued to be felt on Monday and 

 Tuesday. A large stream of lava issued on Monday from the 

 new crater of Mount Vesuvius at the base of the central cone. 

 Signor Palmieri, the Director of the Vesuvian Observatory, holds 

 that this flow is directly connected with the earthquake shocks 

 in the north, and points out that seismic disturbances in Italy 

 generally stop when the eruption of Vesuvius begins. 



In the Report of the Meteorological Service of the Dominion 

 of Canada for the year ending December 31, 1887, just issued, 

 it is stated that nearly eleven hundred warnings of approaching 

 storms were issued by the Service during the year, and that of 

 these warnings 972 were verified, being 88-9 per cent. 



We have the pleasure of recording the issue of the first 

 volume of the Publications of the Vatican Observatory, contain- 

 ing astronomical and meteorological observations for the last 

 nine months of 1890. This Observatory was first established 

 by Pope Gregory XIII. for astronomical purposes, and was 

 used for regular meteorological observations from 1800-1821. 

 After passing through several vicissitudes, a proposal was made, 

 about the time of the Vatican Jubilee Exhibition in 1888, to 

 reorganize the Observatory, and the present Pope accordingly 

 re-established it on a sound basis, and it is now furnished with 

 the best instruments procurable, both for direct observatiors 

 and continuous registration in meteorology, astronomy, mag. 



