Fepruary 4, 1897 | 
NATURE 
B)- 5) 
some grounds more accurate information, because a 
cloud produced under peculiar circumstances, such as a 
mountain-cloud cap, for example, may appear stationary 
under even a strong current of wind. 
As an instance of another welcome result that attends 
cloud photography, we might refer to the confirmation it 
affords of recent mathematical investigation concerning 
the origin of cloud. Herr von Helmholtz has demon- 
strated that when one current of air passes over another 
of different density or different temperature, waves must 
arise at the two surfaces in contact, similar to those pro- 
duced on water under the action of wind. These atmo- 
spheric waves are, however, of quite different dimensions 
to the ordinary water-wave. The distance between two 
contiguous crests in the atmosphere is incomparably 
larger than the similar wave-length in water, and, indeed, 
may be reckoned in kilometres. Air waves become 
visible when sufficient moisture is present, and the wave- 
crests can be seen in the form of clouds presenting the 
appearance of parallel billows, and for which the name 
of ““Wogen wolken” has been suggested. In this form 
they have been repeatedly photographed. A well-known 
example that has been frequently reproduced, has been 
taken from the Lick Observatory. From other elevated 
stations, where the conditions have been favourable, 
pictures of these nebulous waves have been secured, 
proving the justness of the views held by Helmholtz. A 
mass of alto-stratus cloud will frequently show that a 
subsequent stage of the process of formation has been 
reached. When the regular parallel billows produced 
between strata of air have met other currents having 
different velocities and densities, the result is to break 
up the regular form into more or less lozenge-shaped 
pieces, of which the appearance is very familiar, and the 
methods and terms of description equally numerous. To 
do away with these vague terms of description, and to 
substitute others which may have closer reference to the 
physical structure, and perhaps indicate something of 
the relative heights of clouds, is one result for which 
we may look from the more satisfactory application of 
photography to cloud phenomena. 
NOTES. 
Av last Thursday’s meeting of the Royal Society, the follow- 
ing words of congratulation were addressed to Lord Lister, the 
President, by Sir John Evans :—‘‘ As Treasurer and as one of 
the older of the Fellows of this Society, I beg to offer you on 
their behalf and my own our most hearty congratulations on the 
high yet well-merited honour that Her Majesty has been graciously 
pleased to confer upon you by elevating you to the Peerage. 
We have great satisfaction in feeling that, while this distinction 
is a fitting recognition of the value of your life-long labours in 
invoking the aid of science to the relief of suffering humanity, 
it comes at a time when this Society has the honour and pleasure 
of looking up to you as its President. If anything could add to 
that satisfaction, itis the fact that with your new dignity you are 
sull able to retain the name of Lister, for the name of Lister, 
among the inhabitants of all the civilised countries of the globe, 
is ‘familiar in their mouths as household words.’” 
WE understand that Lady Prestwich is collecting material for 
a biography of the late Sir Joseph Prestwich, and will be grate- 
ful to friends if they will forward to her any letters they possess, 
addressing to Shoreham, near Sevenoaks. These will be at once 
copied and carefully returned. 
A GERMAN antarctic meteorological station will be established 
shortly in Victoria Land, under the direction of Dr. Rudolph 
Mewes. The station will be in connection with the German 
South Polar expedition, and will have for its object the deter- 
mination of meteorological conditions during the antarctic 
winter. 
NC. 1423, VoL. 55] 
Dr. NANSEN will lecture upon his Arctic expedition, at the 
Royal Albert Hall, on Monday next, at 9 p.m. A Reuter 
dispatch from Christiania says that during his visit to Great 
Britain Dr. Nansen will deliver forty-seven lectures. The ex- 
plorer will then go to Germany, and at the end of March will 
be present at a great demonstration of the Geographical Society 
in Berlin, organised in his honour. On leaving Berlin Dr. 
Nansen will go to St. Petersburg, where he will have an 
official reception. Subsequently he will visit Paris in response 
to an intimation conveyed to him by the French Consul-General 
in Christiania, and will again be the object of an official recep- 
tion. Early in October next, accompanied by his wife, Dr. 
Nansen will leave for New York, in order to deliver a course of 
fifty lectures in various cities of the United States. 
Iv may be remembered that a sum of money was raised, and 
placed in the hands of the Royal Society, to found a scholarship 
im honour of Joule. The Council of the Society resolved that 
the scholarship should be awarded alternately in England and 
in other countries, for the purpose of encouraging young investi- 
gators to walk in the steps of Joule. In accordance with this 
decision, the Royal Society asked the Paris Academy of Sciences 
to nominate a candidate for the award this year; and we learn 
from La Nature, that the Committee appointed to consider the 
claims of young French physicists have selected M. Jean Perrin, 
of the Ecole normale, for that distinction. 
Dr. CLEGHORN, Sanitary Commissioner for Bombay, is the 
special Indian medical expert selected by the Indian Government 
to attend the International Conference, to be held in Venice on 
February 10, to consider what means Europe should take to 
control the bubonic plague, should that disease advance towards 
the confines of Europe. Dr. Thorne Thorne, principal medical 
officer of health to the Local Government Board, has accepted 
the appointment of British Technical Commissioner at the same 
Conference. 
THE honour in which Pasteur’s name is held throughout the 
world is shown by the fact, announced in the British Medical 
Journal, that the subscriptions in France and other countries for 
a statue to the great investigator now amounts to more than 
£10,000. M. Paul Dubois has been selected as the sculptor, 
and the site for the statue will probably be the space between 
the Rue de Medicis and the Luxembourg Gardens. More than 
£20,000 has already been spent in the erection of statues of 
Pasteur in various parts of France. As an instance of the high 
regard in which he is held outside that country, it may be men- 
tioned that the municipality of Mexico has given the name of 
Pasteur to the gardens situated in front of the National School 
of Medicine in that city. 
WHEN the regulations for the muzzling of dogs in London 
and adjoining counties came into force at the beginning of last 
year, it was pointed out in these columns that rabies could not 
be stamped out by leaving local authorities to deal with it. The 
welfare of adjacent districts is so closely involved, that to place 
in the hands of different County Councils the power to enforce 
regulations for preventing the spread of disease, which knows 
not county boundaries, is absurd on the face of it. The only 
way to effectually cope with the evil is for some central 
authority, as, for instance, the Board: of Agriculture, to compel 
joint action on the part of authorities having control over the 
areas where rabies exist. A muzzling and registration order so 
enforced for a couple of years would, in all probability, bring 
about the disappearance of the disease from our island. The 
report, just issued, of the Departmental Committee of the Board 
of Agriculture, appointed at the end of last April, ‘* to inquire also 
and report upon the working of the laws relating to dogs,” bears 
out this opinion. Statistics are quoted to support the ccn 
