5o8 



NATURE 



[March 29, 1894 



The committee appointed by the Council of the Royal 

 College of Surgeons of England to state conditions for giving 

 effect to the proposals of Mr, Charles Clement Walker for the 

 foundation of a prize with a view to the encouragement of the 

 invfiitigation of cancer have, says the Lancet, recommen ded the 

 adoption of the following regulations :—(i) The prize shall 

 be awarded for the best work in advancing the knowledge 

 of the pathology and therapeutics of cancer done either partially 

 or wholly within the five years preceding the year in which the 

 prize shall be awarded ; (2) the first award shall be for the 

 period ending December 31, 1895, after which the prize shall be 

 awarded quinquennially ', (3) the prize shall consist ol i^ioo 

 except on the first occasion, when it will be £60 ; (4) the prize 

 shall be awarded at the quarterly meeting of the Coun cil in 

 the April immediately following the termination of each period, 

 and will not be awarded unless the com:nittee appointed to 

 judge shall consider soms work deserving of it; (5) the 

 committee shall consist of five members chosen by the Council, 

 bat not of necessity members of the Counci 1, and they shall be 

 appointed not less than one year prior to the date of the award 

 of the prize; (6) the grounds upon which the prize is awarded 

 shall be made public; (7) the prize shall be open to foreigners 

 as well as British subjeccs, members of the Council of the Royal 

 College of Surgeons alone being debarred from competition. 



In order to determine the heights of the highest cirrus clouds, 

 only two methods have as yet been successfully attempted, 

 namely, the measurement of altitude and azimuth by two 

 or more observers some distance apart, and the deter- 

 mination of the exact tim> at which clouds are first seen illu- 

 minated by the morning sun, or last seen by the setting sun, 

 coupled with which should be an approximate determination of 

 the altitude and azimuth of the cloud. Prof. Cleveland Abbe 

 gives an account of an observation of the latter kind in the U .S. 

 Monthly Weather Review. On December l6, 1893, at 5.30 

 a.m. an observer at Potosi, Missouri, saw in the sky nearly 

 overhead a bright redness of a tint like that of the rising sun. 

 The phenomenon, which lasted for about fifty seconds, was not 

 caused by a comet or meteor, nor was it auroral light, but was 

 evidently the illumination by the sun's rays of a high, delic ate 

 cirrus cloud. The time of observation was about i hour and 

 40 minutes before sunrise, and allowing for the refraction by the 

 an, it was found that if the cherry-tinted rays of the sun were at 

 that time to illuminate a cloud in the position seen by the 

 observer at Potosi, the cloud must have had an altitude of at 

 least ten miles. Prof. Abbe remarks that in the clear sky of 

 the early morning, and especially in the dry weather of summer, 

 observers will be surprised to find how very early in the morn- 

 ing these delicate clouds may be observed, whence it follows 

 that they must be correspondingly high, in fact, at latitude 52% 

 and on the 20th and 22nd of June they are reported to have 

 bejn seen at midnight, when the sun is only 15" below the 

 northern horizon. 



Hunmel und Erde ior February contains an important lecture 



on cloud-formation, by Prof. W. v. Bezold. He discusses at 



some length the three principal causes of clouds : — (i) loss of 



heat by contact with the cold surface of the earth or sea ; 



(2) mixture of unequally heated masses of air at or near the 



point of saturation ; (3) expansion of air owing to change of 



pressure without sufficient increase of heat ; and he illustrates 



each case by simple experiments. The paper contains some 



good representative pictures of clouds from photographs taken 



by Prof. Riggenbach and Dr. Neuhauss ; and attention is 



specially drawn to certain wave-clouds not included in the 



classifications, but which Prof. v. Helmholtz has shown must 



occur by the passage of one stratum of air over another of 



different density, similar in all respects to the waves caused by 



NO. 1274, VOL. 49] 



the wind passing over a cornfield, or over the surface of the 

 water. These clouds become visible when the two strata of air 

 possess sufficient humidity ; they occur at very different heights, 

 although they appear to belong more to the middle and higher 

 regions of the atmosphere than to the lower. When they are 

 high enough for several of them to be seen at one time, they 

 form the cirro-cumulus cloud, or mackerel sky. Two pictures 

 of these clouds are given in the text. 



We learn from the American Meteorological journal for 

 March, that the papers read at the Chicago Congress of 

 Meteorology, Climatology, and Terrestrial Magnetism, held last 

 August, are to be published by the United States Weather 

 Bureau in several parts, corresponding to the different sections 

 of the Congress. The first part is nearly ready, and the 

 remaining ones are expected to appear shortly. 



The island of Sakhalin, in the extreme east of Asia, remains 

 one of the least known regions of the Western Pacific, partly, it 

 is probable, because of its use by the Russian authorities as a 

 penal station reserved for the worst offenders, to which out- 

 siders are rarely admitted. In the new number of Petcrmanns 

 Mitteilungen, F. Immanuel gives an admirable epitome of the 

 geography and the present condition of the island, collected from 

 the most recent Russian authorities and illustrated by a map. 

 The mountainous northern interior of Sakhalin is still practi- 

 cally unexplored, but the southern and middle portions are 

 fairly well known. The island has mineral resources of con- 

 siderable importance, over two million tons of coal having 

 been raised at Dui in 1890. The climate is changeable 

 and ungenial, rain or snow falling on more than half the days of 

 the year, and snow more frequently than rain. The population 

 in 1891 was estimated to include 16,400 Russians and 3200 

 natives, the latter being mainly Gilyaks (1700) in the north, and 

 Ainu (1 100) in the south. 



From a note in Insect Life it appears that attempts are being 

 made to introduce an effective system of quarantine against 

 injurious insects in California. The State is now importing 

 fruits, trees, shrubs, plants, and seeds from Europe, Austraha, 

 China, Japan, South Sea Islands, South and Central America, 

 and other localities, and hardly a vessel arrives at its ports 

 which does not bring such objects, many of which are infested 

 with some insect or fungus pest. At the Cape of Good Hope a 

 quarantine law is in operation giving the Governor the power to 

 provide by proclamation for protection against the importation 

 and spread of pests, and providing a heavy penalty for its con- 

 travention. It is proposed to adopt similar legislation in 

 Cahfornia, and if the State succeeds in making its measures in 

 this direction effective, its example will in all probability be 

 widely followed. 



The relation of the sounds of fog signals to other sounds 

 forms the subject of an important paper contributed to Science 

 by Charles A. White, of the Smithsonian Institution. The 

 areas of inaudibility which occur well within the range of most, 

 if not all, the fog signals which the various civilised govern- 

 ments have established along their coasts, usually in connection 

 with a lighthouse, are of two kinds. For the first kind the 

 author suggests the name of montumhral areas, since they are 

 true acoustic shadows cast by mountain ridges or islands within 

 the range of the signals. The other kind, which is found in 

 the open sea, and whose origin is not yet understood, he pro- 

 poses to call pseuJuml'ral, since they imitate the phenomena of 

 acoustic shadows. There is, however, one important difference. 

 From experiments performed at Sandy Hook upon a pseuduin- 

 bral area it appears that sounds such as that of a steamers 



