36 



NATURE 



[May 8, 1890 



Messrs. Neill and Co. have issued a volume giving a list 

 of the contents of the first thirty-four volumes of the Trans- 

 actions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, with an index of 

 authors and an index of subjects. The Society was founded in 

 1783, and published the first volume of its Transactions in 1789, 

 adopting demy quarto as the size of the page. A slightly larger 

 size has now been chosen, that the Society's Transactions may be 

 uniform with those of the Royal Society. A new series may thus 

 be said to have been begun. Messrs. Neill and Co., who have 

 been printers to the Society since its foundation, present a copy 

 of the volume to each member, "as a slight acknowledgment 

 of their appreciation of the favour shown their firm for more 

 than a century." 



We have received the twentieth annual report of the Welling- 

 ton College Natural Science Society. A good record of work in 

 various departments is presented, and an account of some very 

 interesting lectures is given in the " minutes of open meetings." 



Some time ago the Japanese Minister of Education summoned 

 a committee to discuss the system of building best adapted to 

 withstand earthquakes. For the use of this committee, Prof, 

 Milne, of Tokio, compiled a great quantity of information re- 

 specting building in earthquake countries. The various reports 

 collected by him, with some original articles of his own, he has 

 now brought together in a work which is printed as vol. xiv. of the 

 Transactions of the Seismological Society of Japan. The com- 

 pilation ought to be of great service to builders in countries 

 where shocks of earthquake are frequently felt. 



Messrs. Williams and Norgate have published a second 

 edition of Mr. F. Howard Collins's "Epitome of the Synthetic 

 Philosophy," which we recently reviewed. The work has been 

 favourably received in America, and is being translated into 

 French, German, and Russian. 



A VOLUME on the Paris Exhibition of 1889, by M. Henri de 

 Parville, has just been published by M. J. Rothschild. It is 

 pleasantly written, and illustrated by 700 vignettes. 



The Geneva Society of Physics and Natural History has 

 issued the second part of the thirtieth volume of its Memoires. 

 Besides the President's Report for 1888, a bibliographical bul- 

 letin, and a list of members, the volume contains papers on the 

 movements of electrified bodies, by M. Ch. Cellerier ; new or 

 little-known locustides in the Museum of Geneva, by M. Alph. 

 Pictet ; on the flora of Paraguay, by MM. M. Micheli and R. 

 Chadat; and on certain fossils of Japan, by MM. J, Brun and 

 J. Tempere. The volume includes many illustrations. 



Messrs. Macmillan and Bowes, Cambridge, have issued 

 the first part of a Catalogue (No. 230) of books on the 

 mathematics, pure and applied, containing many works of the 

 old mathematicians, mathematical and astronomical journals, 

 observations, &c., including many from the libraries of the late 

 Arthur Buchheim, Fellow of New College, Oxford, and E. 

 Temperley, Fellow of Queens' College, Cambridge. 



A Catalogue of zoological and palseontological works has 

 been issued by Messrs. Dulau and Co. It includes works on 

 mammalia, and on anthropology and ethnography. 



Prof. Everett sends us the following extract from the 

 East Anglian Daily Times. It is by Mr. Herman Bidell, of 

 Playford, who is well known . in Suffolk, and is 'thoroughly 

 competent to describe accurately phenomena he observes : — 

 " I shall be glad to draw the attention of those inter- 

 ested in thunderstorms to a magnificent example of ruin by 

 lightning we have in this village. The parish of Playford was 

 visited on Saturday last (the 26th) by one of those volatile clouds 



heavily charged w ith electricity that so often remind us of the 

 approach of summer. The tree struck stands about 300 yards 

 north-east of the church, close by the footpath leading to Great 

 Bealings, one of a row of ' old English ' poplars running east 

 and west. At the foot the tree is about 2\ feet in diameter, 

 tapering more or less regularly to a lo-inch diameter at the top. 

 Here the electric fluid came in contact with the trunk some 40 

 feet from the ground. The two topmost branches are intact, 

 but the bark is completely stripped from top to bottom, the 

 southern half of the body being riven into matchwood. The storm 

 came up from north-west, with a very light breeze, shifting right 

 and left of north. The cloud was a dense dark blue — the effect, in 

 part, of the sun in front — a detached mass of vapour with fringed 

 edges, differing little, except in density and its proximity to the 

 earth, from others which during the forenoon had floated over. At 

 half-past one o'clock a few drops warned four or five men at 

 work close to the tree to take shelter under a stack 200 yards off 

 — a fortunate warning, for no sooner had the cloud drifted over- 

 head than a blinding flash, accompanied by a terrific peal of 

 thunder, left the tree a magnificent ruin, spread over not less 

 than two acres of land, more or less covered with bark, branches, 

 and riven trunk. One solid piece of 5^ pounds was picked up 

 126 yards away from the tree. Other debris lies 70 yards in an 

 opposite direction, and as an evidence of still more inconceivable 

 force, small pieces of riven trunk or bark, some under half an 

 ounce in weight, were found right in the face of the wind, nearly 

 60 yards from the tree. What force could have been applied to 

 Such light particles is beyond comprehension. Nothing that I 

 have ever seen effected by lightning approaches this ruin. 

 Larger trees have been shivered in this parish, but I never 

 saw a tree completely barked all round, with one half liter- 

 ally riven into fibre, leaving the other half of the trunk a 

 whitened stem, still standing as a forty-feet shaft to be seen a 

 mile away. (The remnant is a conspicuous object in a north- 

 westerly direction all the way from a point east of the old 

 Kesgrave Schools for half a mile towards Ipswich on the 

 Martlesham and Rushmere roads). The electric fluid left the 

 tree at the foot, following the direction of the fence for about 

 15 or 20 feet, threw up a sod .about a foot square, and there 

 pierced the soil into the earth. Four hundred yards in a direct 

 line north-east of the tree stands Playford Mount, the residence 

 of Mr. Kemp- West, a commanding object in the landscape. 

 Here some half-dozen of the fine glass plates in the front windows 

 are shattered to atoms, the result, I apprehend, of concussion 

 from the report of the explosion. I have never known this 

 effect from the severest storm in the neighbourhood, but the 

 thunderclap is described as terrific. The tree, as standing, is 

 worth going to see, and, I will add, is of easy access from the 

 road past the church," 



The Engineer and Engineering iox May 2 contain much in- 

 formation concerning the proposed great tower in London, 

 The drawings, plans, and designs of the competing schemes are 

 now being exhibited in the Drapers' Hall, Throgmorton Street, 

 E.C. Engineering appears to think that, if the tower is to pay, 

 it must be provided with some attractions to bring the people 

 again and again ; and if these attractions could be raised 200 

 feet or 500 feet above the smoke, they would be immensely in- 

 creased. The country cousin and the conscientious sight-seer 

 would go to the summit, but the first stage would detain the 

 bulk of the visitors. Engineering also observes that, in re- 

 viewing the various designs, we must frankly admit that none 

 excels the Eiffel Tower in beauty and grace. No fewer than 

 eighty- six competitors have sent in designs. 



An interesting paper upon cyanogen iodide, CNI, is com- 

 municated to the current number of the Berichte by Drs. Seubert 

 and Pollard, of the University of Tiibingen. On account, 

 probably, of the extremely poisonous nature of this compound. 



