April 27, 1905] 



NA TURE 



61 



medal. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Societ} 

 in 1877. He received the military medal for hi;- 

 services in the Mutiny. He was also a Fellow of 

 Calcutta University, and from 1879 to 1881 he was 

 president of the .-\siatic Societv of Beng-al. 



W. T. B. 



The report on the natural history collections made in the 

 Antarctic regions by the Biscovciy Expedition, to be pub- 

 lished by the trustees of the British Museum, and edited 

 by Prof. E. Ray Lankester, F.R.S.. promises to be of 

 particular interest 'and importance. The working out of 

 the collections has been entrusted to nearly fifty naturalists, 

 each of whom will deal with material in which he is 

 specially interested. Inquiries concerning the zoological 

 and botanical collections should be addressed to Mr. F. 

 Jeffrey Bell, British Museum (Natural History), Cromwell 

 Road, London, .S.W. 



The council of the Institution of Civil Engineers has 

 made the following awards for papers read and discussed 

 before the institution during the past session : — Telford 

 gold medals to I^ord Brassey, K.C.B., and Mr. C. S. R. 

 Palmer ; a George Stephenson gold medal to Mr. Lyonel 

 E. Clark; a Watt gold medal to Mr. J. F. C. Snell ; 

 Telford premiums to Messrs. L. F. X'ernon-Harcourt, 

 R. W. Allen, and \Vm. Marriott; a Crampton prize to 

 Mr. A. Wood-Hill, and the Manby premium to Mr. E. D. 

 Pain. The presentation of these awards, together with 

 those for papers which have not been subject to discussion 

 and will be announced later, will take place at the in- 

 augural meeting of next session. Sir Alexander Binnie has 

 been elected president of the institution in succession to Sir 

 Guilford Molesworth, K.C.I.E. 



Mr. W. E. Cooke, Government astronomer for Western 

 Australia, writes to us from the observatory at Perth to 

 direct attention to an unusual seismic disturbance in that 

 place. During March 5 there were three marked earth- 

 quakes in the space of a few hours, and these reached their 

 maxima at i6h. 25 Sm., igh. oim., and ijh. 42-6m. The 

 times are given in Greenwich civil time. Each maximum 

 was preceded by tremors from fifteen to twenty minutes 

 earlier, and by a large wave from ten to fifteen minutes 

 before the maximum. It is noteworthy that the transit 

 circle was displaced considerably in both level and azimuth. 

 .Another earth tremor, the greatest yet registered on the 

 Milne seismograph at Perth, occurred on March 19. There 

 were no preliminarv tremors ; the disturbance proper com- 

 menced abruptly, and reached a maximum in iq-6m. 



The workers at the Port Erin Biological .Station during 

 this spring vacation include Prof. B. Moore, Dr. H. E. 

 Roaf, and Mr. B. Whitley (all from the biochemical de- 

 partment of the University of Liverpool), Mr. J. A. Dell 

 and Mr. E. Standing (from the University of Leeds), Prof. 

 Herdman, Mr. W. Dakin, and Mr. W. .\. Gunn (from the 

 University of Liverpool), and Mr. Chadwick, the curator. 

 Prof. Moore and his party are investigating the changes 

 produced in the growth of embryos by alterations in the 

 constitution of the sea-water and other conditions of the 

 environment. The other workers are engaged on various 

 lines of zoological research. The fish-hatching is now 

 going on rapidly, and more than three millions of plaice 

 fry have already been turned into the sea this month. The 

 parent plaice in the spawning pond were evidently about 

 a fortnight earlier in reproducing this season than last, as 

 the first fertilised eggs were obtained on February 14. and 

 in large quantity, as against March 3 in 1904. 

 NO. 1852, VOL. 7 l] 



It is proposed to send out a special series of telegraphic 

 time signals beginning at 11.55 P-m., United States 

 Eastern Standard Time (mean time of the 7sth meridian 

 west from Greenwich), on May 3, and ending at mid- 

 night, according to the plan followed daily at noon. These 

 special time signals will be sent out by request of the 

 American Railway Association, with the approval of the 

 Secretary of the Navy, in honour of the International 

 Railway Congress, which is to meet in the capital of the 

 United States on the following day. It is hoped that the 

 principal observatories of the world will make efforts to 

 receive and time these signals accurately, and reports of 

 such observations may be made at once, without expense, 

 through the courtesy of the various telegraph and cable 

 companies. This was done in the case of the New 

 Year's Eve time signals from the United States Naval 

 Observatory, which are reported to have reached the 

 Toronto Observatory in o 00s. ; Lick Observatory, 005s. ; 

 City of Mexico, o-iis. ; Manila, o-37s. ; Greenwich, 1-335.; 

 Sydney, Australia, 2-253.; Wellington, N.Z., 4-oos. ; and 

 Cordoba, Argentina, 7-7S. From the rapidity and accuracy 

 with which these time signals are transmitted over con- 

 necting land lines, as a result of long experience in trans- 

 mitting the daily noon signals, it seems very probable, if 

 the telegraph companies will take especial care in their 

 transmission and not interpose any secondary clocks or 

 human relays, that they may serve to give fairly accurate 

 determinations of longitude at any telegraph station on 

 the .-American continent where they can be noted exactly 

 and compared with accurate local time. 



It was decided in the Chancery Division of the High 

 Court on .\pril 19 that the public has not the right of free 

 access to Stonehenge. The question of free access was 

 raised by an action in which the Attorney-General claimed 

 an order against Sir Edmund Antrobus to remove the 

 fencing which now encloses Stonehenge, and an injunc- 

 tion to restrain him from erecting any such fencing. The 

 claim was based on two grounds :— (i) that Stonehenge 

 is a national monument of great interest and is subject to 

 a trust for its free user by the public ; (2) that there are 

 public roads running up to and through Stonehenge, and 

 that those roads have been blocked by the defendant's 

 fencing. Mr. Justice Farwell, who heard the action, de- 

 cided that both these claims were untenable ; and he there- 

 fore dismissed the action, with costs. In concluding this 

 judgment, his Lordship is reported by the Times to have 

 remarked :— " I hold that the access to the circle was 

 incident only to the permission to visit and inspect the 

 stones, and was, therefore, permissive only, and, further, 

 that the tracks to the circle are not thoroughfares, but 

 lead only to the circle, where the public have no right 

 without permission, and, therefore, are not public ways. 

 The action accordingly fails, and ought never to have 

 been brought. It is plain that the vicinity of the camp 

 and the consequent increase of visitors compelled the 

 defendant to protect the stones if they were to be pre- 

 served ; and he has done nothing more, than is necessary 

 for such protection. I desire to give the relators credit 

 for wishing only to preserve this unique relic of a former 

 age for the benefit of the public, but I fail to appreciate 

 their method of attaining this. The first claim to dis- 

 possess the defendant of his property is simply extravagant, 

 so much so that, although not technically abandoned, no 

 serious argument was addressed to me in support of it. 

 The rest of the claim — for rights of way over the net- 

 work of tracks shown on the plaintiff's plan— if successful 

 would de'feat the relators' object. If these ways were left 

 unfenced and heavy traffic passed through the circle, there 



