August 



1892] 



NATURE 



361 



under common management. Further, once given the means of 

 distributing power instead of water, an important extension of 

 the project becomes possible. 



Besides supplying power to industries which may locate them- 

 selves at Niagara, the power may be transmitted to the existing 

 factories in Buffalo and Tonawanda. 



Arrangements are already proceeding to transmit 3000 horse- 

 power to Buffalo, a distance of 18 miles, to work an electric 

 lighting station. 



In 1890, Mr. Adams, the President of the Niagara Construc- 

 tion Company, visited Europe to examine systems of power 

 distribution. It was in consequence of this visit that the im- 

 portant modification of the plans of the Company involved in 

 the substitution, to a large extent, of a system of power distribu- 

 tion, for a system of water distribution came to be adopted. 

 The American engineers were anxious to obtain the best Euro- 

 pean advice as to the methods best suited to the local conditions. 

 A commission was formed, consisting of Lord Kelvin, Dr. Cole- 

 man Sellers, Prof. Mascart, and Colonel Turrettini, and an 

 invitation was given to engineers and engineering firms in 

 Europe and America to send in competitive projects for the 

 utilization of the power at Niagara and its distribution to different 

 consumers at Niagara and in Buffalo by electrical or other means. 

 Many of the plans sent in were worked out with great care and 

 completeness. As to the hydraulic part of the projects there 

 was some approach to general consent as to the arrangements to 

 be adopted, but as to the methods of distributing the power 

 there was an extraordinary diversity. 



Generally the Commission reported in favour of electrical 

 distribution, with perhaps a partial use of compressed air as an 

 auxiliary method. 



Generally also they reported in favour of methods of distribu- 

 tion by continuous currents in preference to alternating currents. 

 Since the date at which the Commission reported, the Frankfort- 

 Lauffen experiment has been made, and in the opinion of some 

 electrical engineers a distinct advance has been achieved in the 

 use of alternating currents at high potential. 



The Company has not yet decided to adopt any plan for the 

 central stations except in a tentative way. One or more tur- 

 bines of 5,000 horse-power are to be erected, and probably at 

 first this power will be distributed to Buffalo by an alternating 

 current system. 



The cost of a steam horse-power at Buffalo is reckoned at 

 35 dollars per annum. I believe the Company will be able to 

 deliver power at from 10 dollars for large amounts, and a greater 

 price for small amounts, this price being reckoned for twenty- 

 four hour days. 



The new industry of electric lighting has made necessary the 

 provision of large amounts of motive power. Electric traction 

 similarly depends on the supply of motive power. New chemi- 

 cal and metallurgical processes are being introduced which 

 entirely depend for their commercial success on the supply of 

 motive power at a low price. 



Niagara is likely to become not only a seat of large manu- 

 facturing operations of familiar types, but also the home of im- 

 portant new industries. 



NOTES. 



We regret to have to announce the death of Sir Daniel 

 Wilson, the President of Toronto University. 



Although the sixth International Geographical Congress will 

 not assemble in London until June, 1895, arrangements are 

 ilready being made in connection with it. The organizing 

 ommittee is not quite completed, and the Royal Geographical 

 - iciety is still adding to it. Among those already nominated 



• the President of the Society (Sir Mountstuart Grant Duff), 

 liia honorary Secretaries of the Society (Messrs. Douglas Fresh- 

 field and Henry Seebohm), Sir George Bowen, Sir Charles 

 Wilson, General J. T. Walker, Major Darwin, M.P., Mr. J. 

 Scott Keltie, Sir Frederick Abel, Sir Henry Barkley, and 

 > leneral J. F. D. Donnelly. This committee is busily engaged 

 in making its arrangements. 



There has been a recrudescence in the eruption of Etna 

 during the past week. We trust that there is a local successor 

 NO. II 89, VOL. 46] 



to the lamented Prof. Silvestri to give us some day a complete 

 history of the phenomena. 



The weather during the past week has been very unsettled, 

 although during the first part the disturbances were mostly 

 confined to the north. The anticyclone which had for some 

 time lain to the westward of our islands moved southwards, 

 and shallow depressions appeared off Scotland. The prevailing 

 winds were consequently westerly or south-westerly, and tem- 

 perature was rather above the average, except in the north and 

 west, where the daily maxima were frequently below 6o^ being 

 some degrees lower than the average. On Sunday a rather 

 deep depression from the Atlantic became central over our 

 islands, accompanied by very heavy rainfall in Ireland and 

 Wales, and rainy weather subsequently spread over the whole 

 of the kingdom ; while a considerable fall of temperature and 

 strong northerly winds followed the passage of the depression 

 to the eastwards. The report issued by the Meteorological 

 Council for the week ending the 6th instant shows that the 

 rainfall only exceeded the mean in the north of Scotland ; in 

 all other districts there was a deficit. The deficiency was 

 greatest in the south-west of England, where it amounted to 

 eight inches since the beginning of the year. 



Prof. Loeffler, of the University, Greifswald, has published 

 two articles in the Ccntraiblatt fiir Bakteriologie, on his disco- 

 very of, and experiments with, the Bacillus typhi murium, and 

 on the result of its application, at the request of the Greek 

 Government, to arrest a plague of field-mice in Thessaly. In 

 view of their scientific interest, these articles have been trans- 

 lated under the direction of Mr. Harting, and will appear in the 

 next number of The Zoologist. 



Von Hellmuth Panckovv contributes an article on the 

 dwarf races in Africa and South India to the recent number of 

 the Zeitschrift det- Geselhchaft fiir Erdkunde. 



A MOST important report of the sugar- cane borers, which do 

 so much harm in the West Indies, from the pen of Mr. W. F. H. 

 Blandford (Lecturer on Entomology, Cooper's Hill), appears in 

 the Keiv Bulletin for July and August. 



Til's. Monthly Weather Review, of the Dominion of Canada, 

 for April 1892 contains notices of aurora seen on almost every 

 day of the month. The most widely-observed display occurred 

 on the 23rd, 24th, and 25th. 



The Abhandlungen of the Royal Prussian Meteorological In- 

 stitute (Bd. I., No. 5) contains a very elaborate investigation, 

 154 quarto pages, of the aspiration apparatus invented by Dr. R. 

 Assmann, of Berlin, an instrument intended to determine the 

 true temperature and humidity of the air under any conditions. 

 The first apparatus of this kind was invented by Mr. John Welsh 

 in 1853, and was used by him and also by Mr. Glaisher in their 

 balloon ascents, after which time it appears to have been over- 

 looked, or set aside, until it was again reinvented by Dr. Ass- 

 mann, in a modified form, in 1889. We cannot enter into the 

 construction of the apparatus here, further than stating that by 

 the rotation of discs, the continual renewal of the air in connec- 

 tion with very sensitive thermometers is ensured, by which 

 means sudden changes of temperature which cannot be followed 

 by an ordinary thermometer are indicated. The apparatus is 

 used at the Prussian Institute and at the German colonies in 

 Africa as a standard instrument for the determination of the true 

 temperature and humidity of the air. For ordinary stations how- 

 ever, or for observations at sea, we presume that it is not likely 

 to come into general use. 



The report of the director of the Hong Kong Observatory for 

 the year 1891 contains a table of the monthly and yearly rainfal 

 value for about forty years. The mean yearly value is 



