106 Annals of the Philosophical Club 



be prudent to discontinue either making or printing the 

 observations. 



Mr. Grove afterwards asked for the reason why currents 

 of air, when they issue from tubes on flat surfaces, instead 

 of blowing these away, rather attracted and drew them 

 closer. Mr. Wheatstone replied that rather complex 

 explanations of this had been given, which, however, 

 amounted to supposing that the fugitive particles of air 

 produced a vacuum, and then the surrounding air kept the 

 surfaces together. Mr. Grove replied that he had, of late, 

 been inclined to take that view, by observing that when 

 matter was moving in any direction than that in which 

 gravity acted, its weight was diminished. In the above- 

 named experiments the surfaces would remain equally 

 mobile in any direction when all was tranquil, but when 

 the air between them was in rapid motion transverse to the 

 direction in which gravity acted, they would be kept by 

 this at a certain distance. 



At the 2Oth (anniversary) meeting (April 30th), Mr. 

 Wheatstone read a letter from Dr. Hooker, who wrote from 

 Darjeeling to say that he had just returned from a three 

 months' journey among the snows of Eastern Nepal and 

 Sikkim, in the course of which he had reached in mid- winter 

 a height of from 13,000 to 14,000 feet on a mountain 28,000 

 feet high. 1 The weather had been remarkably fine, he had 

 brought back safe his two portable barometers, had kept 

 ' a tolerable meteorological register with many hundred 

 observations,' and corresponding observations had been 

 made for him at Darjeeling. He had visited four snowy 

 passes on spurs from Kinchinjunga, and had camped for 

 three days on its southern face in the snow, which, however, 



1 On this adventurous expedition, described in chapters ix. to xv. of 

 the Himalayan Journals, Dr. Hooker travelled on the western and southern 

 side of Kinchinjunga, encamped at elevations of 13,000 feet, and ascended 

 to heights, or crossed passes, from 16,000 to 17,000 feet above the sea. 

 The occasion mentioned seems to have been early hi January, 1849, at 

 some cattle huts called Jongri, 13,140 feet, to the north-west of Mon 

 Lepcha, near the Rathung river. Strictly speaking, it is on the southern 

 flank of Kabru (24,015 feet) rather than Kinchinjunga, but the two peaks 

 are connected by a ridge every part of which is above 22,000 feet. 



