34 



NATURE 



[May 8, 1890 



NOTES. 

 The first conversazione of the Royal Society will be held 

 at the Society's Rooms, Burlington House, on Wednesday next, 

 May 14. 



The Royal Geographical Society is to be congratulated on 

 the brilliant reception accorded under its auspices to Mr. Stanley 

 at the Albert Hall on Monday. All the arrangements had been 

 made with the greatest care, and the proceedings were in every 

 way most successful. No one who was fortunate enough to be 

 present could fail to see how fully the English people recognize, 

 and how warmly they appreciate, Mr. Stanley's achievements. 



The Chancellor of the Exchequer will receive a deputation 

 •on May 15 from the Marine Biological Association of the 

 United Kingdom in reference to the Treasury grant in aid of 

 that Society's investigations of the natural history of marine 

 food- fishes. A large monograph on the common sole, illustrated 

 by many coloured plates, will be among the evidences of work 

 •done which the Association will submit to Mr. Goschen. The 

 Fishmongers' Company have recently raised their contribution 

 to the funds of the Association from ;^200 to £^co a year. 



On Monday evening various questions as to the effects of the 

 dog-muzzling order were addressed to Mr. Chaplin in the 

 House of Commons. He said: — "The return of deaths from 

 hydrophobia since the muzzling order came into force are not at 

 present in the hands of the Board of Agriculture. But I am 

 glad to say, with regard to rabies, that in every county which 

 has been placed under the regulations, and in the country as a 

 whole, there has been a marked diminution in the number of 

 outbreaks since the passing of the order. For instance, in 

 1889, for the last two quarters of that year there were 133 cases 

 in the third, and 81 cases in the fourth quarter reported to the 

 Board. For the first quarter of the present year they have been 

 reduced to 39, and for the month of April there have only been 

 seven cases throughout England, as compared with 11 for 

 March, 14 for February, and 14 for January of the present 

 year. In the metropolis and the West Riding, although there 

 has been a large diminution, cases are still of constant occur- 

 rence, and there have also been comparatively recent outbreaks 

 in Hampshire and West Sussex, in which latter county a 

 muzzling order has been imposed by the local authority. With 

 regard to Lancashire and the home counties of Essex, Hertford- 

 shire, Surrey, and Kent, so far as they are not included in the 

 metropolitan district, no cases have been reported for a consider- 

 able period, and if the reports continue to be as favourable in 

 the case of the home counties as they have been of late, I shall 

 hope to be able to modify the order, if it is not suspended, at no 

 distant time. I may be allowed to add, as it will be of interest 

 to the public, that since the order has been enforced, of the 

 rabid dogs seized in public places, nine were properly and 

 securely muzzled, and were thus prevented from doing mischief." 



Prof. G. J. Romanes, F.R.S., has been elected President 

 of the Sunday Society, in succession to Sir James D. Linton, 

 P.R. I., and will deliver his Presidential address at a meeting 

 to be held in London in June. 



The Pharmaceutical Society will hold a conversazione at its 

 house on Tuesday evening, May 20. 



The German Ornithological Society will hold its annual 

 meeting at Berlin from May 9 to 12. 



M. C. W. RossET has arrived at Hamburg after having been 

 absent in Egypt, Cochin China, and China for three years. He 

 has made a most interesting scientific collection, which will be 

 presented to the Ethnographical Museum of Berlin. 



The recent investigations of Dr. Rudolf Kcenig, of Paris, into 

 the composition of musical so unds and the theory of timbre will 



form the subject of an important paper to be read on May 16, 

 at the meeting of the Physical Society, by Prof. Silvanus P. 

 Thompson. Dr. Kcenig is sending over to this country for 

 exhibition on this occasion a number of his wave-sirens and 

 other expensive and elaborate apparatus, by which he has de- 

 monstrated the points of his research. Amongst the apparatus 

 are some special appliances for producing audible beat-tones by 

 the interference of two note;;, each of which is too shrill to be 

 separately heard. Musicians, as is well known, have never 

 taken cordially to the current theories of Helmholtz respecting 

 overtones and their relation to the consonance or dissonance of 

 intervals and chords. As Dr. Koenig's investigations have 

 carried matters to a point beyond the speculations of Helmholtz, 

 and not altogether in accordance with them, the occasion 

 promises to be of unusual interest. It is expected that Dr. 

 Kcenig will himself be present at the meeting, which is to be 

 held at 6 o'clock at the Physical Laboratory of the Science 

 Schools, South Kensington. 



At the Royal Academy banquet on Saturday, Sir William 

 Thomson responded for "Science." He spoke chiefly of the 

 mutual obligations of science and art. Aerial perspective, 

 he said, first became known io scientific men through the 

 artist's practical knowledge, and the use made of it in every 

 conceivable representation of light and darkness, of house 

 interiors and exteriors. 



The Select Committee on the sweating system refer in their 

 Report to the evidence submitted to them as to the incomplete- 

 ness of the education of workmen. " The remedies suggested," 

 says the Committee, " are, on the one hand, a renewal of the 

 apprenticeship system ; and, on the other, the promotion of a 

 larger system of technical education. We think that the en- 

 couragement of technical education for all classes of artisans is 

 more likely to prove an efificient remedy than a recurrence to 

 the old system of apprenticeship." 



It is reported from the ruby mines of Burmah that a ruby 

 weighing 304 carats has been found. 



A PUBLIC library is to be established at Hyderabad, and the 

 Nizam's Government has also decided to undertake an archaeo- 

 logical survey of the State. 



Father Francis Denza, the Director of the new Vatican 

 Observatory, is sending a circular in English to the Observatories 

 of all English-speaking places, asking them to exchange publica- 

 tions with his institution. The authorities of the Vatican 

 Observatory, which "now revives under the protection of His 

 Holiness, Pope Leo XIII.," are anxious that it may render great 

 service to science. Hence they feel the necessity of entering 

 into communication with every existing scientific establishment 

 of a similar kind. Father Denza expresses a hope that the 

 directors to whom he appeals will let him have all the past 

 publications of their respective Observatories. 



Mr. W. C. Mills, Secretary of the Archaeological Society of 

 New Comerstown, Ohio, has found a Palseolilhic flint imple- 

 ment in the gravel of the glacial terrace which everywhere lines 

 the valley of the Tuscarawas river. Mr. G. F. Wright, to 

 whom the implement was submitted, went to see the spot where 

 it was discovered, and contributes to the Nation an interesting 

 paper on his researches and conclusions. At this spot the 

 surface of the terrace is thirty-five feet above the flood-plain of 

 the Tuscarawas. The implement was found by Mr. Mills him- 

 self in undisturbed strata, fifteen feet below the surface of the 

 terrace ; so that it is " connected, beyond question, with the 

 period when the terrace itself was in process of deposition. " 

 Thus it adds "another witness to the fact that man was in the 



