“400 IVA TORE 
beginning Monday efening, October 2, and occupying the entire 
week. The evenings of the week will be occupied successively 
by the Sections in the order of seniority, beginning with the 
Chemical Section. 
A SERIES of six articles ‘‘ by a Contributor,”’ which appeared 
in the Banfshire Journal, has been reprinted as a pamphlet 
entitled ‘Prof. McIntosh on Trawling and Trawling Investi- 
gations: a criticism and analysis.” It is written with evident 
detailed knowledge of the work of the Scottish Fishery Board, 
and of fishery matters in general. Prof. McIntosh’s tables and 
statistics are carefully analysed—the object being to show that 
the conclusions in his book, ‘‘ The Resources of the Sea,” are 
invalidated by the errors which have crept in in the tran- 
scribing and re-arranging of an enormous mass of figures from 
the Annual Reports of the Fishery Board. The matter in dis- 
pute is of such importance that the Fishery Board for Scotland 
in their next report should definitely and authoritatively state 
whether or not they accept Prof. McIntosh’s statements as to 
the results of the trawling experiments off the Scottish coast, 
and, if not, what grounds they have for arriving at a different 
conclusion. 
THE Meteorological Council have published a valuable con- 
tribution to maritime meteorology, viz. Meteorological Charts of 
the Southern Ocean between the Cape of Good Hope and New 
Zealand. The region embraces latitude 30° to 60° S. and longi- 
tude 10° to 180° E., and the charts show, for each month of the 
year, the wind direction and force for areas of 3° of latitude by 
10° of longitude, the barometrical pressure by isobars, temper- 
ature of air and sea by isotherms, and ocean currents, in addi- 
tion to other useful data. The publication will add considerably 
to the information hitherto available for this part of the ocean, 
and will therefore be very serviceable to navigators. Intro- 
ductory remarks draw attention to all the leading results shown 
by the charts, and to the broad features of the distribution of 
barometric systems and of air and sea temperature. In the 
preparation of this work, observations for each four hours have 
been extracted from about 2450 logs kept for the Meteorological 
Office or on board H.M. ships, being all that were available 
between the years 1855 and 1895, and also from numerous logs 
of private shipping companies. 
“* Symons’s British Rainfall” (Stanford) for 1898 contains not 
only the usual statistics and conclusions referring to the distribution 
of rain over the British Isles last year, but also several articles of 
general meteorological interest. Thirty-five self-recording rain 
gauges have been described in previous volumes, and eight more 
are described in the present report, several of them being 
illustrated by diagrams showing the principles of construction. 
In an interesting note Mr. Symons tests the general proposition 
that the annual rainfall increases with the elevation of the 
locality above the sea, by applying it to the English lake 
district. The highest station considered was at Sca Fell Pike 
(3200 feet), and the lowest Greenside Mine (1000 feet). Group- 
ing the stations according to altitude in zones differing by 500 
feet, no sign of increase or decrease of rainfall with altitude was 
found—in fact, the lowest group (1000-1499 feet) and the 
highest (3000 upwards) had identical annual precipitations, viz. 
99°3 inches. Moreover, the rainfall at twenty-nine stations 
having annual amounts of 100 inches or more were arranged 
according to precipitation, but little evidence was afforded of an 
increase with elevation, and many of the results point to a con- 
flicting conclusion. For instance, Seathwaite (altitude 422 feet) 
has an annual rainfall of 135 inches, while at Seatoller Common 
(2000 feet) the fall is 126 inches; Dungeon Gill and Ullscarf 
have both the same fall, though the altitude of the former is 311 
feet, while that of the latter is 2100 feet. Mr. Symons con- 
cludes: ‘* All these cases show that altitude alone has little 
NO. 1556, VOL. 60] 
[AuGusT 24, 1899 
influence on the amount of rainfall, and that in a mountainous 
country attention should chiefly be directed to the trend of the 
hills and valleys in relation to the rain-bearing winds.” 
Dr. HERGESELL, of Strassburg, has contributed to the Z//:s- 
trated Aeronautical Magazine (No. 4, Jahrgang 1899) a mathe- 
matical investigation of the theoretical vertical movements of a 
free balloon. The subject engaged the attention of Mr. J. 
Glaisher in the Zxcyclopaedia Britannica, and is of considerable 
interest for scientific balloon navigation. The first case con- 
sidered is that of the ascent of an imperfectly inflated balloon, 
and the formule give the velocity attained in a stratum of air of 
a definite density, z.e. at a definite altitude, and the time re- 
quired in reaching this stratum. In the case of a perfectly in- 
flated balloon, the investigation shows that the maximum height 
that can be attained depends entirely upon the lifting power, 
and that it is independent of the velocity of ascent, and of the 
resistance of the air. Inthe case of the descent of a balloon, 
it is shown that the velocity of the fall does not continually in- 
crease, as is often stated, but, on the contrary, decreases, and 
that there is no danger in allowing the balloon to descend from 
a great altitude without throwing out ballast, as the velocity of 
the descent decreases according to the greater height from which 
the descent is made. 
M. J. LirpMANN, writing in the /Jowrnal de Physique for 
August, proposes the adoption of an absolute measure of time 
based on the Newtonian constant of gravitation. The possi- 
bility of establishing such a unit depends on the property that 
the Newtonian constant is independent of the units of length and 
mass, and is of minus two dimensions in time ; hence, by making 
the constant of gravitation equal to unity, an absolute unit of 
time is obtained which is found to be equal to 3862 seconds of 
mean time approximately. The afore-mentioned property, how- 
ever, involves the assumption that the unit of mass is of the 
same dimensions as the unit of volume ; in other words, that 
density is of no dimensions. Strictly speaking, M. Lippmann’s 
time unit is of — 4 dimensions in density, and therefore its value 
depends on the nature of the standard substance chosen as the 
unit of density. The proposal practically amounts to this: 
instead of adopting an astronomical unit of density (correspond- 
ing to the astronomical unit of mass) based on taking the mean 
solar second as unit of time, we are to adopt an absolute unit of 
time based on taking water as the unit of density. 
Tue Alétz det Lincet contains in recent numbers two some- 
what closely allied papers on thermo-electricity. The first of 
these is a verification of the principle of thermodynamic equiva- 
lence for bimetallic conductors, by Signor Paolo Straneo, who 
concludes not only that thermo-electric phenomena proceed 
regularly in perfect accordance with theory, but that they can 
be studied with sufficient exactness by temperature-observations 
without having recourse to calorimetry. The determination of 
the Peltier-effect coefficient by the author’s method succeeds even 
in the case in which previous methods are wanting in accuracy, 
namely, when the two metals possess a high specific resistance 
and a feeble Peltier-effect. With the present method, the 
Joule effect only slightly affects the phenomenon under con- 
sideration, 
SIGNOR STRANEO’s method forms the basis of a paper by 
Signor A. Pochettino on variations of the Peltier-effect in a 
magnetic field. The value of the Peltier-effect coefficient was 
observed to vary with the magnetisation. In Signor Pochettino’s 
experiments, it increased up to a maximum value of 0°008968, 
corresponding to a field of ninety-eight units, and then de- 
creased, reaching its normal value (0'008824) in a field of about 
345 units, and continuing to decrease as the intensity of the 
field was further increased. The formula deduced from 
Houllevigue’s experiments, combined with Thomson’s formula, 
f 
; 
