352 



NATURE 



[February 8, 1894 



few glass tubes and the liquids to be experimented with are 

 almost the only things required in addition to a plentiful supply 

 of care in cleaning. An investigation of the problem from purely 

 dynamical considerations might well tax the powers of an 

 ambitious mathematician, and provide tripos problems for many 

 years. 



SCIENCE IN THE MAGAZINES. 

 'T'*HE Foitnightly again takes the first place, as regards 

 -*- scientific articles, in the magazines received by us. Mr. 

 Herbert Spencer contributes to it a paper on the late Prof. Tyn- 

 dall, Prof. Karl Pearson writes on " Science and Monte Carlo," 

 and Mr. H. O. Forbes states the grounds of his belief in 

 "Antarctica: a Vanished Austral Land." Mr. Spencer does 

 not dwell upon the more conspicuous of Prof. Tyndall's intel- 

 lectual traits, but upon a few characteristics concerning which 

 little has been said. Chief among these powers of thought was 

 " the scientific use of the imagination." Tyndall insisted upon 

 the need for this. "There prevail, almost universally," Mr. 

 Spencer points out, "very erroneous ideas concerning the 

 nature ot imagination. Superstitious people whose folk-lore 

 is full of tales of fairies and the like, are said to be imaginative ; 

 while nobody ascribes imagination to the inventor of a new 

 machine .... strange as the assertion will seem to most, it 

 is nevertheless true that the mathematician who discloses to 

 us some previous unknown order of space-relations does so 

 by a greater effort of imagination than is implied by any poetic 

 creation." The faculty with which Tyndall was largely en- 

 dowed was that of constructive imagination, and he used that 

 talent in all his work. Among other points upon which Mr. 

 Spencer dwells in the eulogy of his dead friend, are Tyndall's 

 intellectual vivacity, and the .r Club described by Prof. Huxley. 

 The influence that the Club eventually exercised in the scientific 

 world is shown by the fact that it contained four presidents of the 

 British Association, three presidents of the Royal Society, and 

 presidents of the College of Surgeons, of the Mathematical 

 Society, and of the Chemical Society. The number of mem- 

 bers is now reduced to five, and the Club is practically dead. 

 The object of Prof. Pearson's essay is to show that chance 

 as it applies to the tossing of an unloaded coin has no 

 application in Monte Carlo roulette. The discussion of 

 records of the roulette-tables leads to the strange result 

 that " the random spinning of a roulette manufactured and 

 daily readjusted with extraordinary care is not obedient to 

 the laws of chance." In the Fortniohtly of May last, Mr. 

 Forbes gave reasons for believing that " there must have existed 

 in the Southern Seas an extensive continuous land similar to 

 that in the Northern Hemisphere, on which the common ances- 

 tors of the forms unknown north of the equator, but confined to 

 one or more of the southern extremities of the great continents, 

 lived and multiplied, and whence they could disperse in all 

 directions." He then remarked that this lost continent "lies in 

 part beneath the southern ice-cap, and it approached to, or in- 

 cluded, the Antarctic Islands, as well as extended northward to 

 unite with the southern extremities of South America, perhaps 

 with Africa, and with the Mascarene, the Australian, and the 

 New Zealand continental islands." Mr. Forbes now brings for- 

 ward a mass of evidence in support of his view, dealing in detail 

 with the distribution of different divisions of the animal 

 kingdom. 



The Century contains a biographical sketch of Mr. Nikola 

 Tesla, by Mr. T. C. Martin, illustrated by an excellent portrait 

 of that investigator. Mr. Tesla comes of an old Servian stock, 

 and is but thirty-six years of age. His electrical work began 

 in the Polytechnic School at Gratz, where he distinguished him- 

 self in experimentation. He afterwards becaine an assistant in 

 the Government Telegraph Engineering Department at Buda- 

 pest, from which he passed into an electric-lighting estab- 

 lishment in Paris. A little later he crossed the Atlantic, and 

 entered one of Mr. Edison's workshops. When his term of 

 apprenticeship there had ended, he struck out for himself, his in- 

 vestigations eventually leading him to the brilliant phenomena 

 produced with currents of high potential and high frequency. 

 " Recently,"' says Mr. Martin, " the high-frequency generators 

 with which he had done so much of this advanced work have been 

 laid aside in discontent for an o-cillator, which he thinks may not 

 only replace the steam-engine with its ponderous fly-wheels and 

 governors, but embodies the simplest possible form of efficient 

 mechanical generator of electricity." 



NO. 1267, VOL. 4q] 



Orchid lovers — and who are not lovers of those marvellous 

 plants? — will find pleasure in reading an article on "Orchids," 

 contributed by Mr. W. A. Styles to Sc7-ibner. The article is 

 embellished by M. Paul de Longpre, with fourteen illustra- 

 tions of the beautiful and fantastic forms of orchid flowers. Mr. 

 Styles gives an account of a collector, who, when offering his 

 plants for sale, explained that they had a special value, inasmuch 

 as he had taken pains to destroy all that remained in their 

 native woods. "This ingenuous avowal," continues Mr. 

 Styles, " suggests a new danger to the orchid supply. It has 

 already been necessary to pass laws in Switzerland to protect 

 the endelweiss from tourists ; there are societies in many 

 European countries to rescue rare and native plants from ex- 

 tinction by amateur botanists and others. In our own country 

 a few extremely local ferns and wild flowers are already in 

 danger of extermination, and in the case of certain species of 

 orchids of a limited range, each one of which has a money value 

 regulated by the scarcity of the plants, the greed of man 

 furnishes a motive for the wholesale destruction of all which 

 cannot be carried away. The beautiful Disa grandiflora has 

 already become scarce on Table Mountain, and the authorities 

 at the Cape of Good Hope have found it necessary to forbid 

 collecting it in order to prevent its total destruction. Rajah Sir 

 Charles Brooke, of Sarawak, in Borneo, has issued an order to 

 forbid the collection of plants in the country under his control, 

 and if restrictions like this come to be enforced throughout the 

 tropical regions tributary to the British Empire, it will cause 

 consternation among the importers, who are receiving more than 

 half a million orchids every year." Scribuer also contains a 

 striking article by Mr. J. C. Harris, on the terrible storm that 

 devastated the Sea Islands and the coast of the United States 

 from Charleston to Savannah last August. 



A long di>cussion of Sir Henry Howorth's "Glacial Night- 

 mare" appears in the (quarterly Revieii) (No. 355)- -^"^ Q.ox\.- 

 clusion the reviewer remarks: "We venture to record the 

 opinion that in his treatment of the rival claims of iceand of water, 

 as to which was the chief factor in producing the great Drift at 

 the close of the Pleistocene epoch, our author has succeeded 

 in shifting the balance of probability, and transferring it to the 

 action of the latter." 



Among other contributions of scientific interest in the 

 magazines received by us is an interview with Dr. A. R. 

 Wallace, F.R. S., on "Heredity and Pre-natal Influence," pub- 

 lished in the Humanitarian ; an article in Longman s, in which 

 Mr. J. G. McPherson brings together a number of elementary 

 facts relating to "Colour," and a paper on "Vegetable 

 Monsters," by Mr. Edward Step, in Good Words. Mr. Step 

 describes the current fictions concerning the so-called Devil-tree, 

 the Upas-tree, the manchineel {Hippomane mancinella), and the 

 Scythian Lamb {Agnus Scythicus). We have received the 

 Contemporaiy, but it does not contain any articles on scientific 

 topics. 



UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL 

 INTELLIGENCE. 



Oxford. — The voting for the board of the Faculty of Natural 

 Science last week resulted in the election of Messrs. J. E. 

 Marsh, H. Balfour, A. G. Vernon Harcourt, W^. Esson, G. C. 

 Bourne, and R. E. Baynes. Mr. R. H. Bremridge has been 

 elected to a Senior Demyship at Magdalen College. Mr. 

 Bremridge obtained a first class in the Honour School of 

 Natural Science (Physiology) last year. Mr. Rj. T. Giinther 

 has been chosen as science tutor at Magdalen College, to 

 succeed Mr. E. Chapman, who is leaving Oxford at the end of 

 the Summer Term. 



Professor Ray Lankester is issuing a volume of studies 

 made in the Linacre Department since his election to the 

 Professorship. The volume, which bears on its cover a medal- 

 lion with a likeness of Linacre, contains papers by Dr. W. B. 

 Benham, and Messrs. Minchin, R. T. Giinther, Goodrich, 

 Pycraft, and others. 



Cambridge. — The electors to the Downing Professorship of 

 Medicine, vacant by Dr. Latham's resignation, will meet for 

 the purpose of electing his successor on March 3. Candidates 

 are to send twelve copies of their testimonials (if any) to the 

 vice-chancellor (the Rev. A. Austen Leigh, Provost of King's) 

 by Monday, February 26. 



The Council of the Senate have published, in the Uni- 



