Oct. 2, 1884] 



NA TURE 



54; 



ware, porcelain, glass, &c, which manifest a remarkable 

 adherence to the body supporting them, and this result he 

 has obtained by the very simple expedient of securing to 

 the lower part of all kinds of goblet objects (Fig. 2) a 

 groove, A A, in the form of a swallow-tail, into which is 

 lodged a band of red india-rubber, a variety of vulcanised 

 india-rubber, forming, when deposited, a kind of circular 

 cushion. Objects furnished in this manner are almost 

 incapable of falling from their places. They may be placed 

 on a wooden table, and the table be inclined (Fig. 1) from 45 

 to 50 or even 60 degrees without upsetting any of them. 

 The most direct and immediate use offered by the pro- 

 perties which a vessel so provided with india-rubber thus 

 acquires is evidently in the shipping service. At the 

 Fisheries Exhibition of last year in London, and at the 

 HealthJExhibition of this year, the inventor has displayed 

 a little barque, the bridge of which is entirely covered 

 with dishes, plates, &c, all furnished in the manner 

 described, and the barque, floating in a basin, may be 



-Arrangement of the india-rubber covering in a 

 A A, provided at the base of the obje 



til groove' 



tossed to and fro in every direction without displacing a 

 single piece. 



All who have been on long voyages at sea know the 

 disagreeable and painful impression produced by the 

 screen of cord laid along the table to prevent the glasses 

 and bottles from falling. 



As an accessory advantage possessed by the undisplace- 

 able india-rubber dishes may be reckoned the less noise 

 they occasion, and the less risk of breaking they run on 

 being clapped down carelessly or hastily on the table. 

 Washhand basins and water-pots may likewise be advan- 

 tageously constructed with the india-rubber band. 



Invalids in bed, and compelled to eat from a board 

 placed more or less horizontally across the bed, and 

 children, so apt to upset glasses and bottles, will both find 

 their advantage in the undisplaceable contrivance. We 

 have thus a simple, ingenious, and useful application of 

 india-rubber, which we thought it incumbent on us to 

 place before our readers. 



NOTES 

 In the Daily Weather Report of the Meteorological Office 

 for Friday last, there appears a note of some importance on 

 the temperature of the Gulf Stream. A comparison has been 

 made between returns from 28 ships, containing 1 16 recent obser- 

 vations, with the data in the charts of the Atlantic sea-surface 

 temperature (recently published by the Office), of the area which 

 lies, roughly speaking, between the latitudes of the North of 

 Ireland and of Bordeaux respectively, and extending half way 

 across the Atlantic. It appears from this comparison that during 

 the past summer the ocean temperature in the course of the Gulf 

 Stream was abnormally high, in June the whole of the above- 

 mentioned area being about 3 above the mean, in July the 

 half of the area nearest to the British Isles being about i° - 5 and 

 in August about 1° higher than the mean. It is to be hoped 

 that similar comparisons will from time to time be given by the 

 Meteorological Office, so that the point may be investigated 

 which was long ago suggested by the late General Sabine, as to 

 there being possibly a connection between the temperature of 

 the tropical and sub-tropical waters of the Atlantic and the 



weather of Europe which followed, and to which we drew atten- 

 tion some years ago (Nature, vol. xxi. p. 142). 



Sir William Thomson lectured on Monday night, under the 

 auspices of the Franklin Institute, at the Academy of Music, 

 Philadelphia, on the "Wave Theory of Light," to a large 

 audience. 



Gen. Pitt-Rivers, as Inspector of Ancient Monuments, has 

 issued a very careful and detailed report on his excavations in the 

 Pen Pits, near Penselwood, Somerset. These pits are on the 

 borders of Wilts, Somerset, and Dorset, and consist of a number 

 of hollows in the surface of the ground of various forms and 

 sizes, without order or regularity in their distribution. They 

 ctfvfei a tract of high land of greensand formation, the area thus 

 originally covered having been estimated at 700 acres. Various 

 conjectures have been made by antiquaries as to their use, some 

 maintaining that the pits are the remains of a great British 

 city, or formidable series of fortifications ; if so, as Gen. Pitt- 

 Rivers points out, it would upset all our conclusions as to the 

 social a'.d political condition of the Britons, and of the extent of 

 the pie-Roman population of these islands. La-t autumn Gen. 

 Pitt-Rivers carried out a series of excavations, cutting a section 

 right across the pits in the parts most likely to yield remains of 

 any possible inhabitants. Not a bit of pottery the size of a pea, 

 he tells us, was found, and no indication whatever that these pits 

 have ever been used as habitations. Ample evidence, however, 

 was found that the pits were used as quarries, from which the 

 inhabitants obtained grind-stones or quern-stones. The remains 

 of quern-stones were found, all bearing marks of having been 

 tool-dressed, and in the villages around many such stones are 

 met with, all of them stated to have been obtained from the 

 pits. It is to be hoped that the very careful piece of work thus 

 performed by Gen. Pitt-Rivers, and his report, will set the 

 question permanently at rest. Several plates of sections, 

 plans, &c, accompany the report. 



A Commission of five French medical men have reported on 

 their investigations as to the real nature and action of the cholera 

 poison. The substance of their report as it appears in the Times 

 is as follows : — "The initial lesion of cholera takes place in the 

 blood. It essentially consists in the softening of the haemo- 

 globin, which makes some globules lose first their clear shape, 

 the fixity of their form, and the faculty of being indented. 

 Those globules adhere together, lengthen out — en olive — stick 

 together, and in fulminating cases especially some are seen 

 which are quite abnormal, while others appear quite healthy. 

 The entire loss of elasticity of the globule (which is shown by 

 the preservation of the elliptic form when it has been stretched 

 out) is, in our view, a certain sign of the patient's death. To 

 stretch out a globule you have merely to alter the inclination of 

 a plate on which a sanguineous current has been established in 

 the held of the microscope. The fluid column stops at one point, 

 whereas the rest continues to flow. An elongation of the inter- 

 mediary globules results, and then a rupture of the column. In 

 the gap thus formed are some scattered globules. If these revert 

 to their primitive form, the patient may recover. If they keep 

 the elliptic form, we have seen death follow in every case, even 

 if the patient's symptoms were not serious at the time of the 

 examination of the blood." 



Education in British Burmah appears to be in a sad con- 

 dition. According to a correspondent of Allen's India Mail, the 

 province has not yet produced any student capable of attaining 

 the B.A. degree, and only five or six have succeeded in passing 

 the first examination in Arts. There is no local school of medi- 

 cine, and such native medicine as exists is a compound of 

 empiricism and a belief in charms and enchantments ; while 

 the principal legal authority has repeatedly deplored the gross 



