340 



NATURE 



\_A7igtist II, 1 88 1 



which will be referred to_ the Royal Commission about to be 

 appointed. 



At the Exhibition of Electricity ihe completion of the English 

 telegraphic department is progressing favourably. The series 

 of solid and compact sounders used in the British service will 

 contrast, not without advantage, with the quadruplex Baudat 

 and other apparatus presented l.y the French administration. 

 The Italian historical section is full of relics of instruments u ed 

 by Galvani, Volta, &c. A large number of antngraphs will 

 be exhibited, among which we may note a letter from V.jlta 

 to Sir Joseph Banks, then president of the Royal Society. This 

 document is .--tatcd to be the fiist description of the Voltaic 

 battery ever written by its i .ventor. A small magnet, which 

 Galileo armed with his own hand, is exhibited, as well as 

 another magnet used by the academicians "del Cimento " for 

 their determination of the laws of the variation of the a; tractive 

 power according to distance. The Academy of Aerostation of 

 Paris exhibits a model of the electro-sublractor, an electrical 

 balloon constructed according to the principles advocated by 

 Dupuy de Lome, and a number of other electrical instru- 

 ments. M. Ju'es Godard, a well-known aeronaut, has sent an 

 electrical warner ; when the balloon is descending an electrical 

 vibrator is set in operation ; when it is ascending another bell 

 rings. This effect is obtained very .'-imply by a valve, which 

 is in equilibrium when the balloon keeps its level, and is moved 

 by a slight wind. The formal opening was to take place yester- 

 day by a visit of the President of the Republic, and the doors 

 will be thrown open to the public to-day, although much remains 

 to be done for the completion of the display, which will be a 

 great success. 



The French Government has appointed a Committee, pre- 

 sided over by Rear-Admiral Bourgeois to ttudy the diflferent 

 appHcations of electricity to navigation. 



The rapid advance of civi'isation, it is admitted, has the 

 effect of causing native races more and more to disappear. It 

 is therefore the duly of scientific ethnology to save the little 

 which exists still in its ori'^inality from destruction, and to pre- 

 serve the few authen'ic fragments of an epoch which threatens 

 to be annihilated. The Anthropological Society of Hamburg 

 has issued an application to all those who have occa ion, either 

 by their position or calling, &c. , especially to consuls, mission- 

 aries, merchants, captains, to enter their notes on little- 

 known countries and their populations on a schedule which the 

 Society will supply. The question^ being intentionally short and 

 as few as possible, any further communications on the character 

 of the country, notes on the climate, crrections of the charts 

 and sailing directions, would be thankfully welcomed. A great 

 service would be rendered also by sending ethnographical objects, 

 photographs, models, &c., which will be entrusted to the care of 

 the Ethnological Museum. 



From a Report on the means employed in France for pro- 

 tecting the vine from de truction by the Phylloxera, by Mr. C. II. 

 Percev.il, H.M, Consul at Bordeau.v, we take the following 

 interesting extract :— "The information which I have gathered 

 on this subject, from official and other sources, tends to reduce 

 the methods used to the following three : — firstly, submersion of 

 the vineyard, when practicable ; .secondly, by employing insecti- 

 cides ; and, thirdly, where the vineyards have been de-troyed, 

 by the plantation of American varieties of vines, who'e roots 

 offer more resistance to the attack of the insect. M. Armand 

 Lalande, the President of the Chaml er of Commerce of Bor- 

 deaux, proprietor of extenive vineyards in the Medoc, a gentle- 

 man to whom I am much indebted for the information and 

 assistance which he has bten kind ennugh to afford me in'^rawing 

 up this Report, addressed a meeting of that tody held in March 



last on various topics, and I translate the following from his 

 remarks regarding the Phylloxera: — 'The Chamber of Com- 

 merce has not ceased to show (he extreme importance which it 

 attaches to all the means employable in combating this dreadful 

 scourge. Of the 2,200,000 hectares which composed the vine- 

 yards of France, 500,000 are destroyed, 500,000 others are 

 grea'ly attacked : it is a loss of more than three milliards to the 

 country. The Gironde is one of the departments which has 

 suffered most : one-third of the vineyards are destro)ed, another 

 third is badly a'tacked. We must admi% with sorrovr, that the 

 very sources of our commerce and of the well-being of our 

 southern population are most seriously compromised. Still we 

 have great hopes that, by energetic and intelligent efforts, we 

 may be enabled gradually to arrest and repair the evil. For the 

 very important vineyards of the Gironde, where submersion is 

 po-sible, it is a sure remedy, which is generally employed, and 

 with invariable succes. In the cases of vineyards already de" 

 stroyed, the remedy seems to be, to reconstitute them by planting 

 American vines as stocks for grafting French cuttings on, which 

 plan has been the subject of satisfactory and conclusive experi- 

 ments for the last few years, especially in Languedoc. Where 

 the vines are not too far gone, a judicious use of sulphur of 

 carbon is a certain means of preservation, and, in most cases, 

 practicable, owing to the moderation of the cost.' He then 

 states that he bases his opinion on astonihing and conclusive 

 result'--, which he has observed in immense vineyards in Langue- 

 doc, and also in others of the Gironde, and pro, o es that steps 

 may be taken to hold an international congress on Phylloxera 

 here in the autumn." The Congress is to open on September 5. 

 As we intimated last week, another Viticuliural Congress meets 

 in Milan next week. Mr. Perceval gives some valuable details 

 on the various methods of treating the disease. 



MM. Koch and Klocke, who have continued during the 

 summer of iSSo their interesting obervations on the motion of 

 the Morteratsch glacier, publish their results in the eighth volume 

 of the Proceedings of the Natural History Society of Freiburg. 

 They have measured each half-hour during a fortnight the motion 

 of a point on the glacier, and this year, as well as during the 

 foregoing year, their results are almost negative, i.e. the motion 

 was so slow, and the advance of their signal-stick was so small 

 and often even negative, that nothing can be inferred until 

 now as to the motion of this glacier. Thus observing, for in- 

 stance, the advance of their signal each half hour, on September 

 II, from midday to six o'clock in the evening, they find the 

 following figures, in millimetres: o"5, -o"5, -o"5, 0'5, 0"0, 

 o'2, -0'2, o'2, -l"o, i'3, -I'S, -l'5, the negative figures 

 show ing a back movement of the signal. Therefore MM. Koch 

 and Klocke have undertaken a thorough verification of their 

 instruments, and they have arrived at the conclusion that the 

 motion observed cannot be attributed to errors of observation. 

 Besides they have devised a special arrangement for keeping 

 their signal motionless in the ice ; they sink into the ice of the 

 glacier a large copper tube w hich is filled with ice and salt, and 

 covered by a small hill of ice, and only then they adjust their 

 scale on the tube. This signal remaining firm throughout the 

 day in the ice, the theodolite being also motionless, and the 

 probable errors of observation not exceeding o"3 miUimetres, 

 the small observed motions must be attributed, they suppose, to 

 some cause yet unknown. 



At a recent preliminary meeting at Fishmongers' Hail it was 

 resolved to hold a public meeting in the above hall on Friday, 

 August 5, to make arrangements for holding an International 

 Fisheries Exhibition in 1883. 



Under the superintendence of Mr. Wallace, rector of Inver- 

 ness High School, several of the scientific societies of Northern 

 Scotland met at Elgin on July 29 and 30. Several papers were 



