2Q6 



NA TURE 



[January 30, 1896 



sea very smooth; barometer 29-83 in., rising; temperature of 

 air 33°, of sea 34°. 



S.s. Labrador, Captain A. Gray ; July 14, 1882, about 56° N., 

 60° W. — " Saw an iceberg, which collapsed with a thundering 

 squash." Next day, " icebergs all over the place, with an 

 occasional collapsing roar. " 



It may be thought, perhaps, that the thundering roars of 

 collapsing bergs would be the explanation of the six reports 

 heard by Captain Deuchars ; but as he had many years' experi- 

 ence whaling and seal fishing in the ice on both sides of Green- 

 land, he would be well acquainted with the sounds from bergs 

 breaking up, and there must have been, therefore, something 

 peculiar about the " guns " to lead him to suggest an electrical 

 origin. 



With reference to M. Van den Broeck's explanation of the 

 expression viist-poeffers as fog-belchings, not fog-dissipators, it 

 may be interesting to add another extract from Captain Deuchars's 

 log: June 15, 1883, in 71° N., 11° W.^" Weather dense fog, 

 with a white bow to south-east, known generally as z.fog-scaffer 

 or de/nolisher." Hv. Harries. 



Meteorological Office, January 17. 



With reference to the letters on this subject which have 

 recently appeared in your pages, and more especially to the 

 communication of my friend Rev. W. S. Smith, relative to Lough 

 Neagh, the following extract from my notes may be of interest : 

 " August 27, 1886.— While standing with Mr. S. A. Stewart in a 

 recently-mown meadow, near Portmore Lough, on the eastern 

 side of Lough Neagh, our attention was attracted by a rumbling 

 noise. The day was very fine and warm, and dead calm, not a 

 leaf stirring, and a few very light clouds were in the sky. The 

 noise was like a short distant peal of thunder, but sounded faint 

 rather than distant. While we watched, a whirlwind suddenly 

 appeared in the direction whence the sounds had come [the 

 north], and at a distance of about a hundred yards from us. A 

 quantity of loose ha:y was instantly whirled upward to a height 

 of about 100 feet, and, after floating about in circles, slowly 



. settled down. A haycock at the spot was much disturbed, and 

 presented the appearance of having endured a gale of wind. 



, The time between the rumbling sound (which closely resembled 

 the distant report of a cannon) and the appearance of the whirl- 



. wind was about half a minute, and the whirlwind lasted some- 

 what over a minute." 



In W. H. Patterson's " Glossary of Words of Antrim and 



. Down," we find the following : "Water Guns. — Sounds as of 

 gunshots, said to be heard around the shores of Lough Neagh 

 by persons sailing on the lake. The cause of the sounds, which 

 are generally heard in fine weather, has not been explained." 

 There is no doubt that the sound we heard was the mysterious 

 " water guns," and there is also little doubt that the noise and 

 the appearance of the whirlwind were closely connected. 



R. Li.OYD Praeger. 



In connection with the recent correspondence upon " Remark- 

 able Sounds," the following quotation may be interesting. It 

 occurs as a footnote in a paper by Prof. S. A. Forbes, of Illinois, 

 upon the "Aquatic Invertebrate Fauna of the Yellowstone 

 National Park, &c.," published in the Bulletin of the U.S. 

 Fish Commission for 1891 (Washington, 1893), p. 215. 



" Here we first heard, while out on the lake [Shoshone Lake, 

 Yellowstone National Park] in the bright still morning, the 

 mysterious aerial sound for which this region is noted. It put 

 . me in mmd of the vibrating clang of a harp, lightly and 

 rapidly touched, high up above the tree-tops, or the sound 

 of many telegraph wires swinging regularly and rapidly in 

 the wind, or, more rarely, of faintly-heard voices answering 

 each other overhead. It begins softly in the remote dis- 

 tance, draws rapidly near with louder and louder throbs of 

 sound, and dies away in the opposite distance ; or it 

 may seem to wander irregularly about, the whole passage last- 

 ing from a few seconds to half a minute or more. We heard 

 it repeatedly and very distinctly here and at Yellowstone Lake, 

 most frequently at the latter place. It is usually noticed on 

 still, bright "mornings not long after sunrise, and it is always 

 louder at this time of day ; but I heard it clearly, though faintly, 

 once at noon, when a stiff" breeze was blowing. No scientific 

 explanation of this really bewitching phenomenon has ever been 

 published, although it has been several times referred to by 

 travellers, who have ventured various crude guesses at its cause, 



NO. 1370, VOL. 53] 



varying from thit commonest catch-all of the ignorant, 'elec- 

 tricity,' to the whistling of the wings of ducks and the noise of 

 the 'steamboat geyser.' It seems to me to belong to the class 

 of aerial echoes, but even on that supposition I cannot account 

 for the origin of the sound." D. J. ScouRFlELD. 



Leytonstone, January 20. 



It may be worth while to put on record the following state- 

 ments of the distances at which the firing of guns have been 

 heard. They were related to me by the late Prof. C. J. Harris, 

 of Washington, and Lee University, Lexington, Virginia, who, 

 in speaking of the distances at which sounds could be heard, 

 said that during "The War"— the Civil War of 1861-65— he 

 had frequently heard the firing of the guns in battles taking 

 place many miles from Lexington ; and so distinct were the 

 reports, that it was easy to distinguish between light and heavy 

 artillery. In particular, I remember his saying that the sound 

 of the cannonading at the Battle of Malvern Hill was distinctly 

 heard at Lexington. Malvern Hill is about 123 miles "as the 

 crow flies " from Lexington. At this battle gunboats were used 

 by the Federals, and the reports of the heavy guns on the 

 boats could be easily distinguished. 



He also said that during the Battle of Manassas— or, as it is 

 also called. Bull Run — the cannonading was heard at Lex- 

 ington. The battle-field is about 125 miles from Lexington. 

 These distances have been furnished me by the Assistant 

 Superintendent of the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey, and are 

 accurate within a mile or two. W. G. Brown. 



Washington, D.C., U.S.A., January 3. 



The Place of "Pithecanthropus" on the 

 Genealogical Tree. 



Writing to Nature (January 16), under the above head- 

 ing. Dr. Eugene Dubois makes the following statement : " In 

 Prof. Cunningham's tree, figured in Nature of December 5, 

 p. 116, he regards the left branch as all human, the right one as 

 entirely simian, and he placed Pithecanthropus midway between 

 recent Man and the point of divarication." In this assertion 

 there are two inaccuracies. I do not regard the left branch as 

 being entirely human, but merely as representing a hypothetical 

 line of human descent. During the debate which took place 

 at the Royal Dublin Society, I was most careful to insist that at 

 a certain point on such a line (marked on the diagram by a x , 

 Nature, December 5, p. 116), we might expect to meet with 

 an individual possessing ape-like and human characters in equal 

 degree ; whilst below that point ape- like characters would 

 predominate, and the human characters diminish until, probably, 

 before we came to the junction of the line with the main stem, 

 the latter had reached a vanishing point. But, again, I did 

 not place Pithecanthropus on the mid-point of the line, but 

 much lower down, as may be seen by a refeience to the diagram 

 itself, where the upper mark of interrogation (?) indicates the 

 place which I assigned to the fossil cranium. 



I would wish to add that my diagram was not drawn with 

 the view of elaborating in any detail a genealogical tree of Man 

 and the Anthropoid apes, but simply for the purpose of eliciting 

 from Dr. Dubois his views regarding the place he wished to 

 assign to Pithecanthropus in relation to Man on the one hand, 

 and the existing Anthropoid apes on the other. 



It seemed to me that a definite statement from Dr. Dubois 

 on this point was desirable, seeing that I considered that the 

 title he had given to his memoir was apt to lead to mis- 

 conception. D. J. Cunningham. 



THE CHEMICAL SOCLETTS HELMHOLTZ 

 MEMORIAL LECTURE. 



IN his Helmholtz memorial lecture, delivered last 

 Thursday, Prof. G. F. Fitzgerald gave an able ex- 

 position and development of those branches of the work 

 of the late Prof. Helmholtz which intimately affect 

 chemistry, and at the same time made an important con- 

 tribution to several much-vexed questions of higher 

 chemical physics. A brief account of the chief points of 

 the lecture is given in the following abstract. 



