34 



NA TURE 



[June 5, 1890 





the Birmingham General Hospital, to be held in Birmingham 

 on July 29, 30, and 31, and August i next. There will be three 

 addresses — an address in medicine, by Sir W. Foster, M.D., 

 M.P., of Birmingham ; an address in surgery, by Mr. Lawson 

 Tait, of Birmingham ; and an address in therapeutics, by Dr. 

 William Henry Broadbent, of London. The scientific part of 

 ihe meeting will be carried on in twelve sections. It is now 

 fifty-six years since the Association first held its meeting at 

 Birmingham. 



At a meeting of the London Committee of the Edinburgh 

 Exhibition on Tuesday, Mr. S. Lee Bapty, the general manager 

 of the Exhibition, said the visitors during the first month had num- 

 bered 470,000. This was largely in excess of his most sanguine 

 anticipations, and was all the more remarkable considering the 

 state of the weather during most of the month. If the same 

 number of visitors continued each month till October, there 

 would be a total of over four millions. A very important ex- 

 hibit of electrical appliances from forty manufacturers in France 

 had just arrived, and these would be on view at the lime of the 

 approaching visit of the Lord Mayor and Sheriffs of London to 

 Edinburgh. 



V At the meeting of the Society of Arts on May 15, Mr. C. 

 Washington Eves read a valuable paper on Jamaica and its 

 forthcoming Exhibition. Apparently there is good hope that 

 the Exhibition will be a decided success. The exhibits will be 

 divided into six groups — raw materials ; implements for obtain- 

 ing raw materials ; machines and processes used in preparing 

 and making up the raw materials into finished products ; manu- 

 factured goods ; educational appliances ; fine arts, literature, and 

 science. The section devoted to science will include maps and 

 charts of the West Indies, and objects relating to engineering, 

 sanitation, gas, electricity, astronomy, and anthropology. After 

 the reading of the paper there was a discussion, in the course of 

 which Mr. Morris, of Kew, said there was every indication that 

 makers of machinery and others would send out appliances, and 

 there was but little doubt that immense good would result to the 

 island from the Exhibition. 



The last Friday evening discourse at the Royal Institution 

 will be given on June 13, by Prof. Silvanus P. Thompson. The 

 subject will be " The Physical Foundation of Music." 



The authorities of Wadham College, Oxford, announce that 

 in the election to one of several exhibitions which are open to 

 competition preference will be given to any candidate who shall 

 undertake to read for honours in natural science from the time 

 of his admission into College, and to proceed to a degree in 

 medicine in the University of Oxford. 



The American Nattiralist states that the Marine Biological 

 Laboratory at Boston, U.S.A., has issued a satisfactory annual 

 report. The laboratory was crowded last s-ummer, and the 

 trustees appeal for donations to the amount of 7000 dollars for 

 additions to the building, an increase in the library, and a 

 steam-launch. 



The Botanical Society of Regensburg — one of the oldest 

 societies of the kind in Germany — celebrated its hundredth 

 anniversary on May 15. 



The late Herr M. Winkler, of Gorlitz, has bequeathed his 

 fine herbarium, comprising 150,000 specimens, and his botanical 

 library, to the Botanical Garden at Breslau. 



The members of the German and Austrian Alpine Club have 

 elected a scientific committee, consisting of Prof. Penik, Vienna, 

 Dr. Finsterwalder, Munich, Councillor Hann, Vienna, Prof. 

 Partsch, Breslau, and Prof. Richter, Graz. This committee 

 will investigate scientific questions relating to the Alps, devoting 

 especial attention to glaciers and mountain streams. The results 

 will be made known in the official publications of the Club. 

 NO. 1075, VOL. 42] 



The new Zoological Garden and Park at Rock Creek, 

 Washington, to which we referred the other day, will be under 

 the direction of Mr. W. T. Hornaday. It is stated that Prof. 

 Frank Baker will be prosector, and will have charge of the 

 department of comparative anatomy in the United States 

 National Museum. 



Telegrams received at New York on June 3 stated that 

 shocks of earthquake had been felt at Lima on the previous 

 morning. The earthquake was one of the severest that had 

 been experienced there for years. There were three distinct 

 shocks. 



We learn from Science that the Princess Louise, which arrived 

 at Victoria, B.C., from Skidegateand way ports, on the evening 

 of April 24, brought news that on February 24 an earthquake 

 shock was felt on all the islands around Skidegate, especially on the 

 west coast of Queen Charlotte Islands, where a few old shanties 

 were levelled to the ground. The totem -poles of the Indians 

 shook like leaves, and in some places the earth was cracked. 

 The shock lasted for about thirty seconds, during which time the 

 Indians were wild with fright. A number of them ran to the 

 church and crowded in. Since that time there have been about 

 twenty different shocks, the last one being on April 12, 

 although none was nearly so severe as the first, A very slight 

 shock was felt at Skeena. 



Dr. David P. Todd, writing to the Nation from the U.S.S. 

 Pensacola, at Ascension, on March 16, refers in terms of high 

 appreciation to the work done in meteorology by his colleague 

 Prof. Abbe. A "nephoscope" was specially constructed for the 

 Expedition on board the Pensacola. Prof. Abbe has elaborated 

 a method for the use of this instrument in determining the actual 

 height and velocity of clouds by combining observations made 

 when the vessel or observer moves successively in two different 

 directions, or with two different velocities ; and he calls this the 

 "aberration method," to distinguish it from ordinary parallax 

 methods. His main work has been a determination of the 

 motions of the atmosphere from a study of the lowest winds and 

 the successive strata of clouds ; and, to this end, he has main- 

 tained daily observations with the nephoscope at sea, and when 

 possible on shore. The visible clouds, he concludes, give little 

 or no information as to the motions of the atmosphere in the 

 widest sense, but prove that the atmosphere is everywhere 

 divided into local systems of currents, so that we have winds 

 circling around a storm-centre, a high barometer, an ocean, or a 

 continent ; and, at least in the Atlantic, have no winds that 

 circulate exactly as they would do on a rotating, uniform, smooth 

 globe. The angles of inflow and outflow have been determined 

 for three or four successive strata of air in mid-Atlantic ; also 

 the relations of the cloud-appearances to distant storms, squalls 

 rains, and changes of wind, with such accuracy that on many 

 occasions predictions of such phenomena have been made and 

 verified. 



Me. S. H. C. Hutchinson, Meteorological Reporter for 

 Western India, has written an excellent "Brief Sketch of the 

 Meteorology of the Bombay Presidency in 1888-89." The meteoro- 

 logy of that year was characterized, Mr. Hutchinson says, by 

 strongly marked deviations from the weather conditions of an 

 average year. Of these, the most noteworthy were, a general 

 rise of abnormal barometric pressure for a considerable period, a 

 general deficiency of rainfall in September, and the scanty rain- 

 fall throughout the year. Mr. Hutchinson points out that all 

 these variations are of much practical importance, and, from a 

 scientific point of view, of considerable interest, inasmuch as 

 they confirm the laws or principles deduced from the meteoro- 

 logical data of many past years. These laws or principles are, 

 that the rainfall is deficient when barometric pressure is above 



