66 
NATURE 
[ NOVEMBER 19, 1903 
—< 
A most remarkable campaign has been conducted by 
M. Teisserenc de Bort, who, with the aid of Scandinavian 
colleagues, established last summer a kite-flying station in 
Jutland, Denmark, where aérial soundings were made day 
and night, wind permitting, during nine months. After 
the termination of this work the apparatus was transferred 
to a Danish gunboat, and on a cruise in the Baltic Sea 
the following extraordinary results were obtained on five 
consecutive days :—-April 22, at an altitude of 9450 feet a 
temperature of +14°8 F. was found; April 23, at 13,500 
feet, the temperature was 9°-1; April 24, at 4660 feet, 
38°-3. On April 25 an altitude of 19,360 feet, which is 
probably the greatest height ever reached by a kite, was 
exceeded, and an instrument on the lower portion of the 
wire, at a height of 7415 feet, recorded 24°-4. In this 
flight the total length of the wire was 38,000 feet, and | 
the upper 4000 feet, with the highest registering instru- 
ment, broke away, but were recovered. On the morning 
of April 26 an altitude of 8140 feet, with a temperature of 
15°-2, was obtained, and in the afternoon 13,320 feet, with 
a temperature of 39-2. Since the gunboat steamed only 
nine and a half knots, the kites could not be flown when 
there was a complete absence of wind. 
These various experiments amply prove the practicability 
of the writer’s project to investigate the atmospheric strata 
lying above the doldrums and trade-winds, by means of 
kites flown from a specially chartered steamship. This 
plan received the approval of the International Aéronautical 
Congress at Berlin last year, and an application for a grant 
to aid its execution is now before the trustees of the 
Carnegie Institution. On the vessel which the Baltimore 
Geographical Society sent last month to the Bahamas, Dr. 
Fassig, of the Weather Bureau, expected to fly kites, but, 
owing to the substitution of a schooner for a steamer, this 
could not well be done, and therefore the kites were prob- 
ably flown only at Nassau. These observations might serve 
as a starting-point for the work of the expedition proposed 
by the writer, which would proceed across the equator and 
be capable of sounding the atmosphere to the height of four 
miles, notwithstanding the fact that winds either too light 
or too strong for the kites may be encountered when the 
steamer is stationary. 
ae 
THE COUNTY TECHNICAL LABORATORIES, 
CHELMSFORD. 
ESSEX is one of the counties which, since the passing of 
the Local Taxation (Customs and Excise) Act of 1890, 
has devoted the whole of the funds thus provided to the 
purposes of higher education. At first almost the entire 
grant was distributed among some forty local technical 
instruction committees for the purpose of lectures and 
classes in the areas under their supervision, but by degrees 
the greater part has been diverted to the erection, equip- 
ment, or support of secondary and technical schools in the 
more important centres. 
In 1892, when Sir Henry Roscoe and Prof. Meldola were 
members of the Essex Technical Instruction Committee, 
the site of an old grammar school in the centre of Chelms- 
ford—the county town—was purchased, and part of the 
old school buildings were fitted up at a cost of about 30ol. 
as the county laboratories for teaching biology and 
chemistry, the two sciences which are of greatest import- 
ance to the principal industries of ‘the county, viz. agri- 
culture, horticulture, dairying and fisheries. In the 
temporary accommodation thus provided most of the work 
of the past ten years has been carried on, and readers of 
Nature have from time to time had an opportunity of 
judging its character. 
From the commencement until he ‘was appointed agri- 
cultural biologist to the Irish Board of Agriculture in the 
spring of 1902, the committee had the advantage of the 
services of Mr. David Houston as staff-teacher of biology. 
Mr. Houston’s influence was directed towards basing the 
teaching of science on practical laboratory work. It thus 
comes about that the institution has always been known as, 
and still remains, the Laboratories for Technical Instruc- 
tion of the County of Essex. Moreover, the subcommittee, 
which now has the supervision of the laboratories, a com- 
NO. 1777, VOL. 69] 
mittee which, with the single exception of the chairman, 
entirely consists of Essex farmers, adopted plans for the 
new buildings, opened by the President of the Board of 
Agriculture on October 30, which mainly consist of labor- 
atories and work-rooms, and include only one lecture-room 
in the whole institution. 
The part of the old site on which the new buildings are 
placed is within a stone’s throw of the market-place and 
corn exchange, and the intention is to provide, not merely 
a technical school for the younger men, but also a centre 
at which farmers and others can readily obtain scientific 
and practical information respecting farming and the allied 
industries. Thus the principal room, near the entrance 
on the ground floor, is the large agricultural room, 
provided with demonstration and work tables for the agri- 
cultural instruction of students, and also containing an 
agricultural museum and reference library, together with 
diagram frames for displaying the most recent results of 
agricultural experiments. The room will be kept supplied 
with the agricultural papers, and will serve for the meet- 
ings of farmers which are held from time to time on 
market days to discuss agricultural problems. 
On the same floor are the rooms for the head of the 
chemical and agricultural department, the work-room - of 
the assistant who has the management of the field experi- 
ments, a small physical room with dark room for optical and 
photographic work, the common rooms for men and women 
students, and one of the biological laboratories. 
On the first floor is a chemical laboratory capable of 
accommodating twenty students at a time; each work- 
ing bench is provided with drawers and lockers for four 
sets of students, so that eighty students can be taught in 
a term. All the students’ benches face the demonstration 
table, and thus the teaching can be carried on by revision, 
demonstration or experimental work without the students 
leaving their benches. Adjoining are the balance room and 
store room, the latter in direct communication with the 
chemical lecture room, and a private laboratory for the 
analysis of soils, manures, feeding-stuffs, milk, &c., for 
farmers, a department of the work which is found to be 
a most potent means for spreading information. 
On the same floor are some of the rooms of the biological 
department, but shut off from the chemical department and 
reached by a separate staircase. Thus horticultural students, 
for whom the biological staff is responsible, are kept separate 
from the agricultural students, for whom the chemical staff 
is responsible. The common room for all the male 
students stands between the two departments. This 
system of separate staircases has the additional advantage 
of saving room, for a striking feature of the general plan 
is that there is only one corridor in the whole building. 
The biological department includes two large laboratories, 
each provided with a preparation or private work-room, a 
lecturer’s private room, a store room, and museum galleries. 
The two laboratories each accommodate twenty students, 
and, as in the chemical laboratory, the working tables all 
face the demonstration table and black board. 
A cool, lofty and well-lighted basement serves admirably 
for the dairy. The accommodation includes a milk re- 
ceiving room, which it is proposed to equip with separator, 
pasteuriser, and steam apparatus for cleaning milk churns, 
&c., the dairy proper, with butter churns for twelve 
students, a cheese-making room, a cheese-ripening room 
and store. 
a part of the County Education Offices, but these are to be 
diverted to teaching purposes at the end of two years, when 
it is expected that the teaching or experimental work of 
the laboratories will demand increased space. The whole 
building is lit with electricity. The electric current is also 
used for motive power where required, and adapted to 
electrolytic purposes in the chemical and physical labor- 
atories. 
Within three-quarters of a mile of the laboratories is the 
school garden, which has already been planted about five 
years. It is three acres in extent, and is provided with a 
students’ potting shed and glass houses, and consists partly 
of botanical plots and partly of fruit, vegetable and flower 
borders for the practical instruction of gardening students 
in each branch of horticulture. There is no farm in con- 
nection with the laboratories; the agricultural students 
make excursions to well-managed farms in the neighbour- 
A top floor of six rooms is at present used as _ 
