June 23, 1892] 



NA TURE 



iS; 



colour drawings of the pavement which he has recently dis- 

 covered in the Palace of Chuenaten at Tell el-Amarna (1400 

 •B.C.) during his recent excavations. This pavement is quite 

 unique in E^jypt, and is especially valuable owing to the mar- 

 vellous treatment of the plants depicted. 



The water-colour sketches exhibited by Prof. F. W. Oliver 

 (for the Scientific Committee of the Royal Horticultural Society) 

 illustrated some typical examples of the damage done to plants 

 by London fog. The injuries shown, he said, were exceedingly 

 prevalent amongst cultivated hot-house plants in the London 

 district during this kind of weather, and extended to a consider- 

 able distance from the metropolis, cases occurring as far as 

 Cooper's Hill and Dorking. The sulphurous acid of the fog 

 seemed, in many cases, to have acted directly on the living sub- 

 stance of the foliage and leaves, producing these lesions, while 

 in others there seemed to have been evidence of an accumula- 

 tive action of the deposits of sulphuric acid. 



Mr. W. Crookes, F. K.S., who at the last soiree repealed 

 some of Tesla's wonderful experiments, exhibited a novelty in 

 the form of burning nitrogen. He employed an electric current 

 of 65 volts and 15 amperes, alternating 130 times a second, pass- 

 ing it through the primary of a large induction coil. From each 

 of the secondary poles, flames became visible, and met at the 

 centre, being composed mamly of burning nitrogen ; when the 

 terminals were separated, so that the flames could not strike 

 across but were in consequence extin;T;uished, it was found that 

 by putting them nearer together a lighted taper was sufficient 

 to re-ignite them. The temperature of the flame exceeds slightly 

 that of a good blowpipe, and a spectroscopic examination of the 

 flame itself shows simply a faint and continuous spectrum. Mr, 

 Crookes pointed out that such a method of exciting an induction 

 coil was first employed by Mr. Spottiswoode in 1880, but "it is 

 not known, however, that any chemical explanation of the flame 

 has before now been published." 



Mr. A. A. C. Swinton showed some very interesting photo- 

 graphs of electrical discharges that had been obtained by simply 

 causing the discharges to take place across the surfaces of pre- 

 pared sensitive dry plates, and consequently without the interven- 

 tion of any lens. The distinctive character of the figures by the 

 two kinds of discharges were very noticeable, so also was the 

 evidence of their oscillatory nature. 



Other electrical exhibits were : — 



An ingenious device for disconnecting the supplier of electri- 

 city if a dangerous voltage happened to be established in a 

 house, and a leakage indicator for high tension currents, both 

 exhibited by Messrs. Drake and Gorham. 



Electrical discharges over prepared surfaces, by Mr. J, 

 Wimshurst, showing that over imperfectly conducting surfaces of 

 large area branch-like forms of flashes are produced, and with a 

 great diflFerence of potential sparks of seven feet in length can 

 be attained. 



High-tension electrical apparatus, by Mr. L. Pyke, for work- 

 ing a considerable number of vacuum tubes from one generating 

 source, the tubes in this case being each connected with termi- 

 nally connected inductors, themselves counterpoised against two 

 external conductors connected to the terminals of the trans- 

 former. 



The Director of the Royal Gardens, Kew, exhibited a speci- 

 men of a double cocoa-nut {Lodoicea seychellarum), with illus- 

 trations showing its germination. This palm is tall and fan- 

 leayed, and peculiar to two of the Seychelles Islands ; its fruit 

 weighing from 25 to 30 pounds. At the germination of the 

 seed, " the embryo is gradually pushed out of the seed by the 

 growth of the seed-leaf (cotyledon). One end of this remains 

 attached to the seed, and conveys to the embryo the nutriment 

 derived from the gradual absorption of the endosperm." Three 

 of the drawings and a model had an additional interest in that 

 they were made by the late Major-General Gordon. 



Mr. Romanes's exhibits of living rats and rabbits attracted 

 much attention, and would perhaps have attracted slightly more 

 if any of the former animals had by chance got astray. They 

 were illustrative of ."^ome of the results of experimental breeding 

 with reference to theories of heredity. The examples clearly 

 showed that the male and female elements did not always so 

 blend together that the offspring presented characters more or 

 less intermediate between those of the parents, but that the 

 progeny sometimes took wholly after the father or wholly after 

 the mother. 



Another animal exhibit consisted in a living specimen of a 

 remarkable non- venomous South African snake {Dasypeltis 



NO. 1182, VOL. 46] 



scabra), from the Zoological Society of London. This animal 

 lives solely on birds' egi-s. Each egg is swallowed whole, and 

 by a muscular contraction of the gullet, its contents flow into the 

 stomach, while the shell is rejected by the mouth in the form 

 of a pellet. 



Among the other exhibits we may mention the system- 

 atic and simple construction of the dark absorption bands 

 A, B, and a in the solar spectrum, after Mr. Higgs's photo- 

 graphs, by Prof A. S. Herschel, F.R.S. ; the photographs of 

 stellar spectra, including Nova Aurigae, Arcturus, &c., by Mr. 

 Norman Lockyer, F.R.S. ;the photographs of leguminous plants 

 for the determination of the fixation of free nitrogen, by Sir J. B. 

 Lawes, Bart, F.R.S., and Dr. J. H. Gilbert, F.R.S.; and an 

 ingenious instrument for measuring the thermal expansion of 

 very minute solid bodies up to high temperatures, and tracing 

 i the volume charge of the silicates up to and over the interval of 

 j plasticity, by Mr. J. Joly, F.R.S. 



j The exhibit in theArcnives Room, by the Postmaster-General, 

 was during the whole evening thoroughly appreciated, the Tele- 

 phone Company's installation being the means by which the 

 j guests were able to listen to the music of Salammbo from the 

 I grand opera at Paris. Previous to the switching on of the opera, 

 \ conversation was carried on with some of the officials at the 

 Paris end, and the accuracy with which the peculiarities of the 

 various voices were transmitted was little short of marvellous. 



The lantern demonstrations also attracted consideral)le atten- 

 tion. Mr. Saville Kent and Mr. C. V. Boys, F.R.S., as at 

 the previous soiree, both showed their photographic slides, 

 those of the former dealing with coral reels, &c., and those of 

 the latter with flying bullets. Mr. Norman Lockyer exhibited 

 some photographs taken both at home and foreign Observatories, 

 illustrative of the application of photography in astro-physical 

 researches. The slides included some beautiful photographs 

 of stellar spectra and solar prominences, from the Paris Obser- 

 vatory ; of the moon and Jupiter, taken with the large Lick 

 instrument ; of the nebulosity surrounding ij Argus, photo- 

 graphed by Dr. Gill, F.R.S. ; of the great February sun-spot, 

 taken in India and forwarded to the Solar Physics Committee ; 

 and of the spectra of Nova Auriga; and Arcturus, taken at 

 Kensington. The most striking slide <>f all was that of the 

 great nebula of Orion, taken by Dr. Common, F.R.S., with 

 his five-foot reflector at Ealing. The apparent brilliancy of the 

 stars, and the wonderful tracery in the nebulous parts, appealed 

 to the eye not so much as an image of a slide on a screen, but 

 as a direct view of this beautiful object through the great 

 telescope itself. The slides shown by Mr. E. B. Poulton, 

 F.R.S., were illustrative of the methods by which the origin- 

 ally opaque wings of certain butterflies and moths had become 

 transparent and usually scaleless ; numerous stages in the 

 generation of scales were also shown. 



THE FOURTH CENTENARY OF COLUMBUS. 



"QURING the present year great celebrations will take place 

 in Spain, Italy, and America, in memory of Columbus 

 and his first adventurous voyage of 1492 Although no public 

 commemoration is arranged for in this country, the Royal 

 Geographical Society, fully conscious of the momentous nature 

 of that first voyage, and of the enormous expansion of geo- 

 graphical science which has resulted from it, set apart 

 last Monday evening lor a special Columbus meeting. The 

 usual exhibition of maps and pictures included a number of early 

 charts of great beauty, and a fine photograph of a contemporary 

 portrait of Columbus, recently made known by Mr. Markham. 

 The paper of the evening, read by Mr. Clements Markham, 

 C.B., F.R.S., was occupied with an account of recent dis- 

 coveries with regard to Columbus, and the correction of 

 many erroneous ideas widely entertained until now. As a 

 critical summary of perhaps one of the most difficult branches 

 of research-— that into the actual life of a popular hero enhaloed 

 with centuries of tradition — this paper is of great value. An 

 abstract of it, and of the appendices on other fifteenth century 

 explorers, is given below. 



Much new light has been thrown upon the birth and early life 

 of Columbus of late years by the careful examination of monastic 

 and notarial records at Genoa and Savona. 



There is no doubt as to the birthplace of Columbus. His 

 father was a wool-weaver of Genoa, whose house was in the 

 Vico Dritto di Ponticelli, which leads from the gate of San 



