208 



KNOWLEDGE. 



[September. 1901. 



Sir CUTHBERT E. PEEK, bart., m.a., f.s.a., etc. 

 lb is with deep regret that w© have to record the 

 death of so liberal a patron of science as Sir Cuthbert 

 Peck, who died at Brighton on July 6th. He was the 

 only child of Sir Henry, the first Baronet; was born 

 in 1855, and married in 1884 the Hon. Augusta Louisa 

 Brodrick, daughter of the eiglith Viscount Midleton, 

 and only succeeded his father m 1898. He was 

 educated" at Eton and Pembroke College, Cambridge, 

 was J.P. for Devon, Middlesex, and London. From 

 early years he was interested in many branches of 

 science and distinguished himself as an active worker 

 in astronomy and meteorology, was a fellow of the 

 Royal Astronomical, Geographical, and Meteorological 

 Societies, of the Society of Antiquaries and of the 

 Anthropological Institute, and served on various 

 councils of tJie learned societies. He went to Australia 

 in 1882 to obsei-ve the transit of Venus, and on his 

 return he drew up the plans for the Rousdon Obser- 

 vatory neaa- Lyme Regis, South Devon, which was built 

 in 1884. Part of his equipment was a 6.4 Merz 

 equatorial telescope, which has been in use since 1885, 

 in his well-known study of long period variable stars. 

 From the obsei-vatory, Greenwich mean time was 

 furnished to the district. In addition to astronomical 

 work, lie also devoted himself to meteorology, and the 

 annual rejjorts from the observatory were rich in 

 scientiiio infomiation. In addition to the usual 

 meteorological observations, he made somewhat of a 

 speciality of instrimients connected with rainfall and 

 wind velocities, having a registering pluviometer and 

 evaporation tanks, whilst a latticed tower for carrying 

 the anemometers is a conspicuous object of the 

 iieighboui'hood. Some years agO' lie conducted a series 

 of experiments for the purpose of determining the 

 factor for getting the true wind velocity from the 

 Robinson cup anemometer, and eventually adopted the 

 Dines pressure-tube instniment as the standard. It was 

 with this latter instrument that he recorded the highest 

 wind velocity ever registered in England during a gale in 

 1897. Sir Cuthbert was not so keen an ornithologist as 

 his father, but nevertheless he had kept in a good state 

 of preservation the collection of British birds that Sir 

 Henry had made ; whilst a never-failing source of 

 interest to the visitor at Rousdon was the ethnographical 

 museum which he had formed. Science indeed is 

 bereaved by the loss of one who had its intei-ests so 

 near at heart. 



Astronomical. — Additional interest has been given 

 to the well-known " Runaway Star," 1830 Groombridge, 

 by the recent spectroscopic detennination of its 

 velocity in the line of sight which has been undertaken 

 by Prof. Campbell at the Lick Observatory. It results 

 from the obsei'vations that the star is approaching the 

 sun with a velocity of 59 miles per second, which is 

 much less than the probable velocity of about 150 miles 

 per second with which the star moves across the line of 

 sight. The obsei'vations are of rspccial importance as 



demonstrating the possibility of me^asuring the velocities 

 of stars as faint as the 8th or 9th magnitude, provided 

 that their spectra contain well-defined lines. 



Recent investigations of the spectroscopic binary 

 Mizar (Zcta Ursae Majoris) which have been made at 

 Potsdam indicate that the period is probably 20.6 days, 

 and not 104 days as previously deduced at Harvard. 

 Prof. Vogel further finds that the eccentricity of the 

 orbit is 0.502, and the maximum relative velocities in 

 the line of sight 128 and 156 kilometres per second. 

 The system is approaching with a velocity of 16 kilo- 

 metres per second. 



A list of 59 " objects having peculiar spectra," given 

 by Prof. Pickering in Harvard Circular No. 60, is of 

 special interest, as 28 of the object* are included in the 

 Large Magellanic Cloud. Of these, 10 are gaseous 

 nebulse, 15 are stars of the Wolf-Rayet type, and 3 ai-e 

 stai's of the first type with some of the hydrogen lines 

 bright; it will thus be seen that the cloud not only 

 resembles the Milky Way in general appearance, but 

 is also rich in types which specially frequent the Milky 

 Way. Among other objects described, five are of great 

 importance as having sjjectra resembling those of the 

 Wolf-Rayet stars, but with tlie lines dark upon a con- 

 tinuous background. 



Owing to the unavoidable delay in Mr. E. W. 

 Maunders retiu-n to England, the Constellation Study 

 which should have appeared in this number of 

 Knowledge has to be omitted. — A. F. 



Botanical. — The Revue Horticole for July 16 contains 

 a paragraph respecting the experiments carried on under 

 the auspices of the Imperial Society of Horticulture of 

 St. Petersburg with the view to determine the length 

 of time during which the pollen of various plants will 

 retain its vitality. It is shown that the rose can be 

 fertilised with pollen 22 days old, and species of Clivia 

 when it is 3 months old ; further, a cai>e is cited where 

 the pollen of some hybrid Clivias had not lost all its 

 vitality after being collected a year. In a later number 

 of the Revue, Monsieur Mangin draws attention to his 

 res3arches into the subject published in the Bulhfin <le 

 hi Sorirtr bolanique de France, Vol. XXXIII., and gives 

 a short list of plants with the length of time that the 

 pollen retains its germinative power in each case. 

 While the pollen of the common wood-soiTel (Oj-alis 

 acetoxeJla) may be preserved for one day only, that of 

 the Narci^nti^ proved capable of growth for 80 days. 

 Monsieur Mangin obsei-ves tliat the vitality of the 

 pollen is relatively short in plants which flower for a 

 long time. 



In many tropical countries attention is now being 

 paid to the commercial prospects of the leaves of the 

 coffee-tree as a substitute for those of the true tea- 

 plant in the preparation of tea. The natives of 

 Sumatra, where the coffee-tree abounds, use a beverage 

 made from its leaves in jDreference to that obtained 

 from the berries, which, in consequence, are allowed to 

 fall to the ground and decay. When grown for its 

 berries, the cofTce-tree will succeed only in certain soils 

 and situations, whereas an abundance of foliage suitable 

 for making coffee-leaf tea may be produced on almost 

 any fertile soil. A chemical analysis shows that the leaf 

 contains all the characteristic properties of the berry, 

 but is richer in theine. The editor of the Queensland 

 AgricnlfuraJ Joiiriial, in which some interesting notes 

 on the subject have been published, declares the coffee- 

 leaf tea to be a pleasant and refreshing beverage. — 

 S. A. S. 



