36 



NA TURE 



[November 13, 1902 



the Earth ; through the Water ; in the Air." The first lecture 

 will be given on Saturday, December 27, and the dates of 

 remaining are December 30, 1902, and January I, 3, 6 and 8, 

 I9°3- 



At the annual meeting of the London Mathematical Society 

 to be held this evening, Mr. Robert Tucker is retiring from the 

 office of honorary secretary. Mr. Tucker was elected secretary 

 in 1S67, very shortly after the foundation of the society, and 

 has held the office continuously until now. During this long 

 period he has grudged neither time nor labour in the interests 

 of the society ; it is in large measure owing to his zeal and 

 devotion extended over so many years that the society has 

 advanced from a comparatively local beginning to be the repre- 

 sentative society of mathematical science in Great Britain. A 

 circular has just been issued, signed by four past presidents of 

 the society, expressing their belief that many members of the 

 society will concur with them in wishing to offer to Mr. Tucker 

 some permanent mark of their appreciation of his services, and 

 requesting that subscriptions for that object may be sent to Dr. 

 J. Larmor, St. John's College, Cambridge, as soon as possible. 



Writing under date November 6, the Paris correspondent 

 of the Times states that M. Lacroix, the chief of the French 

 scientific expedition to Martinique, has sent a fresh report to the 

 Colonial Office on the situation in that island. It appears that 

 the zone devastated by the recent eruption is less extensive than 

 was at first thought to be the case. The aspect of the volcano 

 has much changed. A cone has been formed in the crater 

 exceeding in height the former summit. So long as it exists 

 the matter projected will fall in all directions instead of being 

 localised as before on the southern and south-western slopes. 



Prof. F. A. Forel sends us from Morges, Switzerland, a 

 cutting from the Gazette de Lausanne of October 31 containing 

 a letter in which he describes the sunset effects at M orges 

 on the evenings of October 2S and 29. Half an hour after the 

 disappearance of the sun, following the gradual extinction of the 

 sunset colours, a peculiar secondary brightening of the western 

 sky was observed and lasted for a second half hour. To begin 

 with, the illumination was of a yellowish-green colour, becoming 

 orange later, and sometimes shading into red near the horizon. 

 Now and then a large, purple-lilac coloured circle with a faint 

 halo and ill-defined contours appeared in the west, having for 

 its centre the sun below the horizon. After observing these 

 effects and noting their remarkable similarity to the sunset 

 displays of 1S83 following the eruption of Krakatoa, Prof. Forel 

 expresses the conviction that the phenomena noticed by him in 

 October are due to the impalpable dust particles in the higher 

 regions of the atmosphere which are to be traced to the recent 

 volcanic disturbances in the West Indies. 



Particulars of the amounts contributed by the various 

 Powers interested in the international scheme of the North Sea 

 fisheries scientific investigation have been given by the Board of 

 Trade. The amount to be expended in this matter by Great 

 Britain during the next three years is 42,000/. , inclusive of 1 250/. 

 towards the maintenance of a central organisation at Copen- 

 hagen. The contributions of other countries (exclusive of the 

 latter item) are as follows : — Denmark — initial expenditure, 

 9600/, ; annual expenditure, 5500/. Germany — initial expendi- 

 ture, 16,500/. (for steamer), 875/. (for equipment) ; annual 

 expenditure, 6250/. Holland — initial expenditure, 666/. (instru- 

 ments, 6cc. ); annual expenditure, 2587/. Norway — initial 

 expenditure, 9500/. (steamer) ; annual expenditure, 7370/. 

 Sweden — initial expenditure, 1055/. ; annual expenditure, 1066/. 

 Russia — initial expenditure, 16,000/. (steamer without equip- 

 ment) ; annual expenditure, 12,800/. Finland — initial expendi- 

 ture, 6,000/. ; annual expenditure, 2.22S/. 



NO. I/24, VOL. 67] 



The utilisation of the internal heat of the earth has often 

 been suggested as an engineering problem of the future. The 

 Rev. E. Rattenbury Hodges directs our attention to an issue 

 of the Boston News Bureau in which a scheme is seriously pro- 

 posed by the official geologist for Pennsylvania of the U.S. 

 Geological Survey and also by Prof. Hallock, ' of Columbia 

 University, New York, for drawing on the earth's internal heat 

 by means of deep borings. The idea is to admit cold water 

 into a deep boring and utilise the hot water and high-pressure 

 steam produced. Mr. Hodges points out that he made similar 

 suggestions in the Popular Science News for January, 1894, in 

 an article on "Our Heat Resources of the Future." He 

 remarked, however, at the time, "The great objection to this 

 drawing on the earth's ancient store of thermal energy would be 

 that her cooling and consequent shrinking would be accelerated ; 

 in other words, earthquakes would necessarily become more 

 frequent, and possibly more violent and destructive in their 

 effects." 



The Atlantic forecasts issued at Washington are based on 

 American, Atlantic and European telegraphic reports, and were 

 begun, the chief of the U.S. Weather Bureau states in his last 

 report, at the beginning of 1901. They were, on June 1 of the 

 same year, made a part of the regular general night forecasts 

 published by the Bureau. In a number of instances, when 

 storms of marked strength were passing eastward off the 

 American coast, advices were issued as to the character of the 

 weather which would probably be experienced by steamers 

 leaving European ports westward bound, and by an arrangement 

 with Lloyd's these forecasts have been cabled over here. In 

 addition to the daily forecasts of wind and weather and special 

 storm warnings, predictions of fog have been issued when con- 

 ditions favourable for fog developments have been indicated in 

 the steamer tracks west of the fiftieth meridian. Reports from 

 Transatlantic steamships have again and again verified these 

 forecasts and special warnings. 



The Meteorological Council has issued a valuable supple- 

 ment to the temperature tables for the British Islands which 

 were published in the early part of this year. Those tables 

 gave the monthly means of the daily maximum and minimum 

 readings for 117 places; the present volume contains the same 

 stations, grouped as before under districts. The table for each 

 month is divided into two parts, showing (1) the values for 

 thirty years and for each five years (for the observations which 

 extend over the whole time), together, with the correction which 

 must be applied to reduce the five years' period to the thirty 

 years' period : (2) the five-yearly mean values for those 

 slations for which the observations extend over less than thirty 

 years, but for which an appropriate correction may be obtained 

 from the values in the first part to enable the mean for thirty 

 years to be computed with a fair approximation to accuracy. 

 The work will be found very useful to actual or intending 

 observers who may wish to compare their results with those of 

 longer series at the same or neighbouring localities. 



As already stated, the eruption of the St. Vincent Soufriere 

 in the night of October 15-16 was followed by another con- 

 siderable fall of volcanic ash on the island of Barbados, 100 

 miles to windward. The particles were found to consist chiefly 

 of minute fragments of felspar, with a little volcanic glass, some 

 ferro-magnesian minerals and a very little magnetite, thus 

 differing considerably from the May samples, which consisted 

 largely of ferro-magnesian minerals, with a considerable amount 

 of magnetite. On this account, the dust of last month is likely 

 to prove of greater fertilising value than that of May last. In 

 connection with the latest dust-storm, the officials of the De- 

 partment of Agriculture endeavoured to determine the effect 

 produced on insect pests and other pests in the field. Two- 



