July 24, 1884] 



NA TURE 



291 



he saw a cape which he named Robert Lincoln. These 

 observations are interesting. They seem to show that to 

 the north of the American coast the sea is comparatively 

 landless ; while to the north-east the archipelago which 

 borders the north coast of Greenland probably extends 

 for a long distance, perhaps to meet the north-west ex- 

 tension of Franz-Josef Land. Lieut. Greely himself 

 passed the summer of 1882 in the interior of Grinnell 

 Land, in the east of which his station was located. Here 

 he discovered a lake, sixty miles by ten, which he named 

 after General Hazen, the Chief of the Signal Service of 

 the Llnited States. 



From all this it is evident that, besides carrying out 

 their strictly scientific work, the geographical explora- 

 tions of the Greely expedition have been very extensive. 

 From Fort Conger they extended east and west over 

 some 40° of longitude and northward over 3° of latitude. 

 They have enabled us to give more precision on our maps 

 to the north coast of Greenland, and to extend it to the 

 east and north-east. Grinnell Land they have found is 

 an island largely covered by a thick ice-cap with a great 

 lake in the interior, and separated by a narrow channel 

 or fjord from the newly-named Arthur Land to the south. 

 The " palasocrystic ice" of the Nares expedition is a 

 myth, and it is evident that the ice of any part of the 

 Arctic area is for no two successive seasons the same. It 

 must necessarily be continually on the move, piled up in 

 some parts to " pateocrystic " dimensions, while in other 

 parts the sea may be comparatively open. One point 

 seems to us conclusively settled. It is evident from what 

 we know of the present expedition, and of the attempts 

 to rescue it, added to the experience of previous expedi- 

 tions, that there is no way to the Pole by the Smith 

 Sound route for either ships or sledges. What Lieut. 

 Lockwood saw from his vantage-ground to the north-east- 

 wards seems to us to show that the route by Franz-Josef 

 Land is more hopeful than ever, and that, if another 

 attempt is made to reach the Pole, the choice of a 

 starting-point will probably lie between that land and the 

 New Siberian Islands. 



L'ABB£ MOIGNO 

 pRANCOIS NAPOLEON MARIE MOIGNO, ma- 

 -*• thematician, physicist, linguist, and ecclesiastic, was 

 born at Gue'mene' (Morbihan) on April 20, 1804; as he 

 died on Sunday, the 13th instant, he is worthy of a place 

 among the English mathematicians whose names figure 

 in Prof. Sylvester's British Association Address (Exeter, 

 1869). He was descended from a good old Breton family. 

 Moigno first studied at the College de Pontivy, then pro- 

 ceeded to the Jesuit seminary of St. Anne d'Auray. In 

 1822 he went to another house of the fathers at Mont- 

 rouge, where he passed his novitiate. In addition to 

 theology he studied with great enthusiasm both the 

 physical and mathematical sciences ; in these he made 

 rapid progress, and in 1828 arrived at a new mode of 

 getting the equation to the tangent plane to a surface. 

 Leaving Paris in 1830 on account of the Revolution, he 

 spent some time in Switzerland, and here turned his won- 

 derful powers of memory to the acquisition of some eight 

 new languages, at the same time perfecting his knowledge 

 of Latin and Greek. In 1836 the Jesuits appointed him 

 to the Mathematical Chair in their house in the rue des 

 Postes, Paris. Here he published the first volume of his 

 great work, " Legons de Calcul differentiel et integral," 

 following the methods used by, and utilising published and 

 unpublished papers of, Cauchy. As his Superior was op- 

 posed to his scientific work, Moigno broke with the order, 

 and gave himself up to his favourite pursuits. Having in 

 1845 become scientific editor of L'Epoque, he was sent 

 on account of that journal on a visit to England, Ger- 

 many, Belgium, and Holland, and furnished to its 



columns his observations on these countries. About 

 1850 he filled a similar post on the staffs of La 

 Presse and Zt' Pays. In 1852 he became editor-in-chief 

 of Cosmos, a weekly scientific review. His connection 

 with thisjournal closed in 1862, and in 1863 he founded a 

 new journal called Lcs Mondes. 



From the above hasty sketch it will be seen how active 

 Moigno was as a journalist. In 1864 he was made a 

 Chevalier of the Legion of Honour. Moigno wrote a 

 number of works bearing on the relation of science and 

 religion. Of his other works we give a few titles : — The 

 continuation of the " Legons," noted above, the fourth 

 volume containing a part on the Calculus of Variations 

 (written in conjunction with M. Lindeloef, 1S61). " Legons 

 de Mecanique analytique, redigees principalement d'apres 

 les Me"thodes d'A. Cauchy et Vendues aux Travaux les 

 plus recents — Statique." To Liouville he contributed a 

 " Note sur la Determination du Nombre des Racines 

 re"elles ou imaginaires d'une Equation numerique com- 

 prises entre des Limites donne"es : The"oremes de Rolle, de 

 Budan, ou de Fourier, de Descartes, de Sturm, et de 

 Cauchy" (v. 1840), and on a like subject (" Caractere 

 analytique simple et sur auquel on reconnait que la 

 Methode de Newton est applicable") to the Nouvelles 

 Annates de Mathimatiques (x. 1851). But the great part 

 of his writings, by which he is generally known, is 

 physical. The Royal Society's Scientific Catalogue gives 

 the titles of some twenty-five papers, which are con- 

 cerned mostly with light, electricity, heat, and the solar 

 spectrum ; one title only we copy, " Navigation aeVienne 

 avec ou sans Ballon," from Les Mondes. The " Reper- 

 toire d'Optique moderne ou Analyse complete des Tra- 

 vaux modernes relatifs aux Phdnomenes de la Lumiere " 

 (1847-1850) took him some years to write, and is a work 

 of considerable importance. Another useful summary of 

 results is the " Physique moleculaire, ses Conquetes, 

 ses Phe"nomenes, et ses Applications, resume's des 

 travaux accomplis dans les vingt dernieres anne"es " 

 (1868). 



From his actualites scienlifiques we single out here 

 " Science Anglaise, son Bilan au mois d'Aout, 1868: " this 

 gives from the Norwich meeting of the British Associa 

 tion (Moigno was a Foreign Associate, but was not able 

 to be present at the gathering) the Presidential and seven 

 Vice-Presidential Addresses, and the evening discourses 

 by Huxley and Odling. Dr. Hooker's address was not 

 at all acceptable to Moigno, and he prefaces his transla- 

 tion (" pour effacer quelque peu le facheux vernis du posi- 

 tivisme de M. Hooker") with an article of his own, contra- 

 vening the address of a Positivist Professor, Signor Govt, 

 delivered at Turin. 



It is in this last character of a translator of English 

 scientific works (he translated also Pere Secchi's work on 

 the Sun) that Moigno did us Englishmen a great service: 

 the following titles will prove this : — " Sur la Radiation " 

 (Tyndall's Rede Lecture) ; " La Calorescence — Influence 

 des Couleurs et de la Condition me'canique sur la Chaleur 

 rayonnante" (Tyndall) ; " La Force et la Matiere," and 

 " La Force (Tyndall), avec une Appendice sur la Nature 

 et la Constitution intime de la Matiere" (by Moigno) ; 

 "Analyse spectrale des Corps celestes " (Huggins) ; " Sur 

 la Force de Combinaison des Atomes (Hoffmann), avec 

 addition d'un Apergu rapide de Philosophie chimique" (by 

 Moigno) ; " Le Son " (Tyndall) ; " Six Legons surle Chaud 

 et le Froid " (Tyndall). In 1S52 appeared a second edition 

 of the " Trait^ de Teldgraphie electrique . . pre'ce'de'e 

 d'un Expose de la Tele"graphie ancienne de Jour et de 

 Nuit," with an atlas ; in 1S50 he had published his " Pro- 

 clamation patriotique. Belle Invention frangaise." This 

 is a pamphlet on the invention of tubular bridges by M. 

 J. Guyot. In 1861 he wrote another pamphlet entitled 

 " Cotonisation du Lin," which treats of a practical substi- 

 tute for cotton. From the titles of these last pamphlets, 

 as well as from those of many of the preceding works, 



