444 



NATURE 



[March 12, 1896 



the King of Saxony. Prizes will be awarded for exhibits of 

 riowers and plants, cut flowers, arrangements of flowers for 

 decorative purposes, plans of gardens and greenhouses, garden 

 buildings, heating appliances, and other horticultural requisites. 

 Applications for space to exhibit flowers and fruit, as well as for 

 forms of entry and programmes of the exhibition, must be made, 

 not later than April lo, to the " Geschaftsamt der II. Inter- 

 nationalen Gartenbau-Austellung, Dresden." 



Herr Andrke's balloon for his polar expedition is taking 

 shape. The upper half is already sewn together, and the parts 

 of the lower half are cut out. The Societe Nordenfelt, who 

 desired that this trust might be given to them, are superintending 

 and controlling the work on the balloon. Arrangements have 

 been made with the builder, Mr. F. O. Peterson, in Gothen- 

 burg, to construct a balloon house, to be ready by May 25, and 

 two competent men, who are assisting in the construction, will 

 go to Spitzbergen to erect the house. The Virgo, the steamer 

 in -vhich the aeronauts will set out for Spitzbergen, will carry 

 about thirty-five tons of sulphuric acid to generate the hydrogen. 

 Great interest is felt in the enterprise all over Sweden. 



In the House of Commons on Tuesday, for the first time 

 since the question of the opening of museums and galleries was 

 raised in Parliament, a majority was obtained in its favour. 

 Mr. Massey-Mainwaring's motion was: — "That, in the opinion 

 of this House, it is desirable that the national museums and 

 .art galleries in London should be open for a limited number 

 of hours on Sundays, after 2 p.m., upon condition that no officer 

 shall be required to attend on more than six days per week, and 

 that any who may have conscientious objections shall be exempt 

 from Sunday duty." On a division, an amendment to the 

 resolution was rejected by 178 votes against 93, and the resolu- 

 tion was then agreed to. It only remains now for the (lovernment, 

 and the Trustees of the British Museum, to put the resolution 

 into effect. 



The Lord Mayor presided on Friday, at the Mansion House, 

 •over a meeting held for the purpose of discussing the arrange- 

 ments for the International Horse and Horseless Carriage and 

 Roads Locomotion Exhibition, which it is proposed to open at 

 the Crystal Palace in May next. Mr. A. Sennett was elected 

 honorary executive commissioner, and executive committees for 

 horse-drawn and mechanically-propelled vehicles respectively 

 were appointed, the members including Sir Frederick Bram- 

 well, Sir Douglas Galton, Sir H. Trueman Wood, Prof. Boys, 

 Sir David Salomons, Mr. G. N. Hooper, Mr. Jacobs, Mr. W. 

 Warby Beaumont, and Mr. E. Macrory, Q.C. It was an- 

 nounced by Sir David Salomons, who occupied the chair during 

 the latter part of the proceedings, that Lord Kelvin had con- 

 sented to join the honorary Council. 



We learn through the Engineer that the management of the 

 Cosmopolitan, a monthly magazine, is offering ^600 in premiums 

 to be awarded 19 horseless carriages presenting the greatest 

 number of points of excellence, as exhibited in a trial trip to be 

 made on May 30. This trip will be from the City HallPark, in 

 New York, to Irvington and back, a total distance of 52 miles . 

 The award will be made upon the following points, the maxi- 

 mum aggregate being 100 : — Speed, 50 ; simplicity and dura- 

 bility of construction, 25; ease in operating, and safety, 15; 

 cost, 10. The route will be along Broadway, through Central 

 Park and over the Washington Bridge, thence along the main 

 Toad to Yonkers, where the course will include five miles of 

 asphalt paving, and then on to Irvington, on the Hudson River, 

 26 miles. There is a good road for the entire distance. 



A BRIGHT aurora was seen at Worcester and other places on 

 Wednesday, March 4. Mr. Lloyd Bozward says that at 7.30 on 

 that evening "a remarkable beam of white light of dazzling 

 NO. 11-]^, VOL. ':^l\ 



brilliancy, far exceeding anything of the kind of recent years, 

 arose from a point in the north-west, extending to the zenith, 

 and spreading out fan-like in rising. So rare have been the 

 appearances of the aurora here of late, and so startling the radiant 

 effulgence, that many persons attributed the beam to the effect 

 of an electric search-light." 



A discovery of much interest has, says Science, recently 

 been made in Western Kansas of an extinct species of Bison, the 

 skull having an expanse of nearly four feet. Embedded below 

 the humerus of the skeleton was a small but perfectly formed 

 arrow-head. The Bison has not yet been identified with 

 certainty, but seems closely allied to B. antiquus, though 

 evidently larger. The formation is apparently the same as that 

 which yielded the skeletons of Platygonus, recently obtained by 

 the University of Kansas. The Bison skeleton, that of a bull, 

 will shortly be mounted in the University museum. 



Though the coral rock in the northern part of the island of 

 Ceylon has long been used in many departments of building, the 

 Ceylon Observer thinks that builders do not avail themselves of 

 the material so fully as they might. The stone is admirably 

 suited by its lightness and toughness of texture for use as arch 

 stones, being very readily shaped by an ordinary saw. Several 

 long arched bridges have been built with it in the Jaffna Peninsula, 

 and have jiroved its great durability as a building stone. It has also 

 been applied to ornamental uses, the dressings and Gothic 

 windows of St. John's Church at Chundikuli having been con- 

 structed of it. Cut into slabs, it has furnished the covering for 

 nearly all the road drainage of the same locality. It is suggested 

 that much employment could be economically found for this 

 rock in the southern districts of Ceylon, its extreme lightness 

 favouring the cost of freightage. 



The effect of African grass-fires in changing the aspect of the 

 vegetation, forms the subject of a short paper by Mr. Scott- 

 Elliot in the current number of Science Progress. Owing to the 

 annual clearing of the ground by these fires, there is no accumu- 

 lation of leaf-mould and stems, and the soil therefore never 

 becomes improved. The season of flowering for many trees and 

 herbaceous plants is completely altered, a large number of the 

 latter sending up flowering stems, entirely without leaves, after 

 the first shower of the rainy season ; and the stems only begin 

 to produce leaves when the rains have well set in. Another 

 curious effect of the fires is the manner in which trees are 

 either kept down or obliged to protect themselves in some way 

 against their action. Of the trees which do manage to exist in 

 spite of the annual conflagration, the most remarkable are the tree 

 Euphorbias, which seem to come out of the most violent fire with 

 only a few scorched branches. Mr. Scott-Elliot brought home with 

 him several specimens of the bark of the six or seven forms of 

 trees which manage to survive the ordeal by fire, and an examin- 

 ation of them led Prof. Farmer to conclude " they all agree in 

 possessing cells which show a certain amount of gummy 

 degeneration of the cells in the bark, together with the presence 

 of a considerable amount of sclerotic cells ; it seems not impos- 

 sible that these two facts may be connected with the resistance 

 of the plants to the fires." 



An ambitious scheme, but, at the same time, one which deserves 

 the careful consideration and full support of all British geo- 

 graphers, was laid before a technical meeting of the Royal 

 Geographical Society, held last Friday, by Dr. H. R. Mill. Dr. 

 Mill proposes that a complete geographical description of the 

 British Islands should be prepared from existing data, supple- 

 mented to a small extent by new researches and by the collection 

 of unpublished information. This should be done on a uniform 

 scale for every small selected unit of the country ; then com- 

 bined into a series of regional memoirs dealing with natural 



; 



