228 
INARA RE. 
[AucusT 3, 1899 
mode of transmission of energy was John Hague, In addition 
to using a partial exhaust system to work cranes and tilt ham- 
mers, Hague applied this mode of transmitting energy to driving 
the machinery of powder mills, so as to remove the danger of 
steam-engine fire to any distance needed for safety. He also 
applied it to work the individual cutting-out presses and coining 
presses of a mint which he constructed for Rio Janeiro, 
VALLANCE’S (Medhurst’s) system of atmospheric railway was 
put to work in 1861, in the case of the ‘‘ Pneumatic Postal 
Despatch,” which was, in that year, laid down experimentally 
in Battersea Fields. In 1863 a line on this system was laid and 
got to work from Euston to the Holborn Post Office, a distance 
of about one and half miles, with the intention of going forward 
another mile to the General Post Office. In this case the Q- 
shaped tube was as much as 4 feet high by 5 feet wide. The 
trains were blown” and ‘ sucked” backwards and forwards. 
A vacuous, or a pressure, condition of a few inches of water was 
found sufficient for the propulsion. In 1844, Mr. Brunel 
recommended the atmospheric system for the South Devon 
Railway, and by 1846 it was actually laid down nearly the whole 
way from Exeter to Newton. Four atmospheric trains ran on 
the line each way daily in 1847. In the life of Brunel, it is 
stated that 865 horse-power were required to do the work that 
he had a right to expect would have been done by 300 horse- 
power. By August 1848 the valve had begun to fail throughout 
its length. The cost had been 1160/. per mile, and in August 
1848, just four years after Brunel had advised the trial of the 
atmospheric system, he reported that he did not recommend its 
extension, and, in fact, suggested it only as an assistant on 
inclines. The directors then suspended operations, and, after- 
wards, locomotives were used throughout. 
SEVERAL populararticles on scientific subjects appear in thecur- 
rent number of the Certury Magazine. Of particular interest are 
two articles on tornadoes, one by Mr. John R. Musick giving a 
description of a tornado witnessed by him at Kirksville, Missouri, 
in April of this year, and another by Prof. Cleveland Abbe on 
tornadoes in general. Mr. Musick’s testimony as to the effects 
of the tornado is most astonishing. He says that when the 
storm struck the city, ‘‘doors, shutters, roofs, and even whole 
houses were sent soaring and whirling to a height of three or 
four hundred feet. I saw the wheel of a wagon or carriage and 
the bodies of two persons flying up into the storm-cloud. One 
house was lifted upwards to a height of over one hundred feet, 
when it seemed to explode into a thousand fragments, which 
went soaring, whirling and mingling with the other débris.” 
Perhaps the most remarkable experiences were those of three 
persons who were caught up in the storm, and after being 
carried nearly-a quarter of a mile, were let down so gently that 
none was killed. Several horses and many other animals were 
taken up by the storm and carried to considerable distances. 
One horse was carried two miles by the storm and alighted un- 
injured. An orchard south of the city had the trees torn up by 
the roots, carried four or five hundred yards, and piled into 
some vacant fields, An idea as to the fury of the wind may be 
formed by the size of the trees uprooted. Some of these were 
from twelve to eighteen inches in diameter, with roots ten feet 
in length. The earth from which they had been jerked is said 
to have looked as if it had been torn by dynamite explosions. 
As to the origin of tornadoes, Prof. Cleveland Abbe remarks 
that the point about which there has, perhaps, been the most 
uncertainty relates to the rotatory motion of the wind at the 
centre of the path of destruction, From the information he has 
been able to gather it appears that generally a west or north- 
west wind is blowing over the country, with a front of many 
miles in length, which trends south-west and north-east. This 
cool north-west wind pushes aside a gentler southerly wind that 
NO. 1553, VOL. 60] 
had been prevailing over that same region during the previous 
twenty-four hours. In the long belt, or trough, where these 
two winds meet, the warmer southerly wind is suddenly elevated 
and cooled by expansion, as also by mixture with the under- 
current of cold north-west wind. A cloud is thus formed, or in 
fact rolls of clouds, along the whole front of the area of north- 
west wind. At certain favourable spots the cloud soon becomes 
so large as to form a special indraft upwards through its centre, 
and the ascending wind must necessarily acquire a spiral ascending 
movement. The direction of rotation in this spiral is almost 
invariably the same as that of the hurricanes of the Atlantic 
Ocean, or the general storms attending the areas of low pressure 
that move eastwards over the United States, namely counter- 
clockwise. 
THE Report of the U.S. Weather Bureau for the year ending 
June 1898 shows that no time has been lost in developing the 
Meteorological Service of the West Indies; arrangements have 
been made for observations being cabled twice daily from several 
islands to Kingston (Jamaica) and the central office in Washing- 
ton, and negotiations are being carried on with the French 
authorities for the co-operation of the observers in Martinique. 
The maintenance of observations at Havana during the period 
of hostilities with Spain is also very gratifying. The important 
work of producing a thoroughly satisfactory kite has seriously 
occupied the attention of the Weather Bureau ; sixteen stations 
have now been completely equipped, and the observers have all 
received a course of instruction in Washington. The observ- 
ations hitherto made in the exploration of the upper air by this 
means contain much information that is new and of practical 
importance, independently of their value in making weather fore- 
casts. The Canadian Meteorological Service has established a 
continuous record of the oscillations of the waves of Lake 
Ontario, which seem to show a connection with atmospheric 
conditions. These oscilliations are of much interest from severah 
points of view, and the subject is engaging the attention of the 
U.S. Weather Bureau. 
THE second annual report of the Council of the Rontgen 
Society shows that steady progress is being made. The Society 
numbers 148 ordinary members and five honorary members. 
Fresh evidence is continually received of the value of Rontgen 
rays in surgery, and there is much useful work open to the 
Society in the way of stimulating improvements in apparatus 
and in methods of investigation. The Council announce that 
Mr. William Noble has consented to be nominated as president 
for the ensuing year. He was among the earliest workers with 
X-rays. and has done useful service in radiography and on the 
physical side of the subject which it is the Society’s object to 
advance. 
THE volume of Sitzungsberichte of the Royal Bohemian 
Academy for 1898 contains, amongst other communications, a 
number of mathematical papers. These include notes on theory 
of curves, by C. Kiipper (Prag); on a property of factorials, 
and remarks on trigonometric series with positive coefficients, 
by M. Lerch (Freiburg) ; on the residues of functions defined 
by differential equations of higher order, and on a system of 
semi-curvilinear coordinates, by Michel Petrovitch (Belgrade) ; 
on the infinitesimal geometry of certain plane curves, by J. 
Sobotka (Vienna) ; a note on spherical harmonics, by Franz 
Rogel (Barmen) ; and on the principal propositions of stereo- 
graphic projection regarded as corollaries of Quetelet and 
Dandelin’s theorem, by Carl Pelz (Prague). 
FroM Messrs. Williams and Norgate we have received a 
copy of the Sztzungsberichte und Abhandlungen of the ‘‘ Isis” 
Society, of Dresden, for 1898. It contains a paper, by W. Hall- 
wachs, on determinations of the refractive indices of solutions. 
