March 19, 1896] 



NATURE 



47 



Prof. Agassiz has been in communication with Mr. Saville- 

 Kent for some months past with reference to the best season 

 of the year and most favourable locaHties to adopt as the bases 

 of operation for both • himself and collectors, who will work 

 independently. Mr. Saville-Kent has asked Mr. Ward to make 

 a meaiurement of the selected coral growths at Thursday 

 Island, of which he took photographs and constructed a dia- 

 grammEtic chart six years since. He has also commissioned 

 Mr. Wa-d to secure certain of the more appropriate of these 

 types, with their registered accession of growth, as a supple- 

 mentary addition to the extensive series of the Great Barrier 

 reef and other Australian Madreporaria that he has already 

 contributed to the Natural History Museum. 



Our Anerican correspondent writes, under date March 6 :— 

 Mr. Danie. G. Elliot is on his way to Africa, where he will hunt 

 large gamefor the Field Columbian Museum of Chicago. He 

 will have cjarge of 150 men. At a meeting of the Board of 

 Managers ol the New York Botanical Garden, held on March 

 4, it was ainounced that the following persons had become 

 patrons : J. Pierpont Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, Cornelius 

 Vanderbilt, } D. Rockefeller, Darius O. Mills, Addison 

 Brown, Jame A. Scrymser, .William C. Schermerhorn, 

 Charles P. Day, Oswald Ottendorfer, Samuel Sloan, George 

 J. Gould, Mis Helen M. Gould, J. S. Kennedy, William 

 Rockefeller, Janes S. Constable, Mrs. Esther Herrman (who 

 contributed io,(t)0 dols., instead of 5000 dols., which was 

 her first intentior, as announced in Nature of February 6), 

 and James R. Pigon. The Committee on plans and buildings 

 submitted plans foi the greenhouse. An acre is to be covered 

 by glass, and a tover sixty feet high is to be erected in the 

 middle. The Comnittee was authorised to obtain final plans 

 from architects for he large museum which is to be erected. 

 The scientific directrs were authorised to purchase for the 

 garden museum the lerbarium of Mr. J. B. Ellis, of New- 

 field, N.J., consistinj of 75,000 specimens of fungi. — The 

 storm of March 2-5 was unparalleled at New York City 

 for the protracted seveiiy of the winds, which at one time 

 reached the velocity of eighty-two miles an hour, being two 

 miles faster than any pre^ous record here. Great difficulty was 

 experienced in navigation n the harbour on account of ice, and 

 travel ashore was more ilerrupted by snow than at any time 

 since the memorable blizzaj of March 1888. 



In connection with the filiation of Photographic Societies 

 with the Royal Photograjiic Society, six experimentally- 

 illustrated lectures will be delivered upon the subject of 

 " Photography with the Bichrcnate Salts," beginning on Friday, 

 April 10, and ending on Tuescxy, April 28. 



A MEETING of the Instituti«i of Naval Architects will be 

 opened in the hall of the Society^f Arts, on Wednesday, March 

 25, and will be continued on the wo following days. The Earl 

 of Hopetoun, President of the In^tution, will occupy the chair. 



The anniversary meeting of the "ritish Ornithologists' Union 

 has been fixed this year for Wedne^ay, April 22, when a large 

 attendance is expected. The Uton now numbers nearly 

 three hundred members. 



The next Annual Meeting of tht American Microscopical 

 Society will be held at Pittsburg, Penrylvania, from August 18 

 to 20. The President for the year is D A. Clifford Mercer, of 

 Syracuse, New York. 



Among the lecturers and their subjecj at the Royal Institu- 

 tion after Easter are :— Prof. James Sul', on child-study and 

 education ; Mr, C. Vernon Boys, on ripplt in air and on water ; 

 Prof. T. G. Bonney, on the building and Sulpture of Western 

 i:urope(theTyndall Lectures) ; Prof. Dewa.on recent chemical 

 NO. 1377, VOL. 53] 



progress ; Mr. W. Gowland, on the art of working metals in 

 Japan ; Dr. Robert Munro, on lake dwellings ; and Dr. E. A. 

 Wallis Budge, on the moral and religious literature of .\ncient 

 Egypt. The Friday evening meetings will be resumed on April 

 17, when a discourse will be given by M. (}. Lippmann, on 

 colour photography ; succeeding discourses will probably be 

 given by Prof. G. V. Poore, Colonel H. Watkin, C.B., Prof. 

 Silvanus P. Thompson, Prof. J. A. Ewing, and Prof. J. A. 

 Fleming, among others. 



We regret to announce the discontinuance of the American 

 Meteorological Journal after the forthcoming April number, 

 which ends the twelfth volume, Mr. Robert Ward informs 

 us that the journal has been carried on at a financial loss on 

 the part of the editors ever since its foundation in 1864, and 

 the present step has been decided upon because there seems no 

 hope that it will become self-supporting. Arrangements have 

 been made with the editor of Science, whereby Mr. Ward will 

 contribute short notes on, and reviews of, current meteorological 

 publications to that periodical. He therefore hopes authors will 

 send their publications to him in the future as they have done iri 

 the past. 



The St. Louis Observatory, at St. Helier, Jersey, is being 

 developed under the able direction of Pere Dechevrens, 

 formerly of Zi-ka-wei, in China, well known for his researches 

 on wind, and other subjects in meteorology. This observatory 

 is situated on a small open plateau above the Jesuit College, 

 and one feature of it is a tower, of Eiffel type, about 170 feet 

 high, with spiral staircase, and a number of instruments at the 

 top, connected by a cable of twelve electric wires with recording 

 apparatus in the house. Among these instruments is an 

 anemometer of somewhat special design. A T-shaped support, 

 with orienting arrangement, bears on one arm an anemometer 

 with half cylinders instead of the usual cups, being thus made 

 sensitive, it is claimed, to horizontal currents only ; while a helical 

 fan on the other arm gives the vertical component. The 

 Bulletin for 1895 (the second year) contains very full informa- 

 tion of the various weather elements, including hourly variation 

 of pressure and temperature, and of the velocity of the wind. It 

 is a curious fact, observed at this station, as at the Eiffel Tower 

 in Paris, that the diurnal variation of wind velocity shows an 

 opposite character near the ground and at the top of the tower ; 

 in the former case the velocity reaches its maximum about 

 midday, and in the latter about midnight. The climate of the 

 Channel Islands is interesting in many respects, and a well- 

 equipped station like that of St. Louis may be expected to add 

 largely to our knowledge of it. 



The Report of the Meteorological Council for the year ending 

 March 31, 1895, has just been presented to Parliament. The 

 Council have continued the practice of lending instruments to 

 captains of merchant vessels for the purpose of obtaining 

 observations made at sea, and of supplying instruments to the 

 Royal Navy, A very large proportion of logs returned are 

 classed as " excellent," and these observations have been largely 

 supplemented by the Remark Books kept on H.M, ships, and by 

 logs received from the Ocean Steamship Company of Liverpool 

 and others. Among the works actually published, or in course of 

 publication, are charts of the Red Sea, current' charts for all 

 oceans, and meteorological charts embracing the area from the 

 Cape of Good Hope to New Zealand. It was for the purpose 

 of collecting and publishing information of use to seamen that 

 the Meteorological Department of the Board of Trade was first 

 established in 1854, as the outcome of the Maritime Confei^ence 

 of Brussels in the previous year. But as time went on, the 

 attention of Admiral FitzRoy was turned to the more practical 

 branch of weather prediction, and this subject now forms an 



