346 
NATURE 
[ Feb. 8, 1883 
saving of labour and of annoyance to passengers. Several 
companies both in France and in other countries now 
employ M. Ancelin’s method of heating; the French 
Western Railway Company use it in their carriages from 
Paris to Havre, and also to Dieppe. In England, M. 
Ancelin states, the London and North Western Com- 
pany had, last winter, 3000 of his acetate pans in use, 
and double that number during the present year. 
He shows that his system may be applied to domestic 
purposes as well as onrailways. Itis certainly preferable 
to charcoal, which, in France, is a fertile cause of death by 
asphyxia. Fig. 1 shows a portable apparatus, which 
may be used in private carriages, and even as a foot-pan 
in bed, and several other purposes, its heat lasting five 
hours. The smaller figure shows a form of heater which 
may be used in a lady’s muff or even in the pocket. The 
openings by which the acetate is introduced are het- 
metically closed, and the substance does not require 
renewal except at very long intervals. In filling the 
receptacle certain precautions must be used, which may 
be easily learned after a little practice. To renew the 
heat in the pans they have only to be kept in boiling 
water for half an hour. 
NOTES 
WE believe that two English observers are being sent out to 
record the approaching Eclipse of the Sun, and that the American 
Government have been asked, and have agreed, to find places 
for them with the American expedition. M. Janssen will be the 
head of the French expedition, which will be located on one of 
the smallest islands of the Caroline Archipelago. 
On the proposition of M. Fremy, the Academy of Sciences will 
defray, from its own funds, the expense of sending a naturalist 
with the Eclipse Expedition. The Austrian Government will send 
to the same station M, Palisa, the director of Pola Observatory. 
For the two last weeks M. Dumas has been unable to attend 
to his duties of Perpetual Secretary of the Academy of Sciences. 
He has been suffering from bronchitis, but we are happy to | 
state that no anxiety whatever is being felt by his friends. 
A MATHEMATICAL Society has been founded at Edinburgh, 
the initiatory meeting having been held in the University on 
Friday last. Mr. John S. Mackay, M.A., F.R.S.E., Mathe- 
matical Master in the Edinburgh Academy, was chosen the first 
president, and Dr. Knott, secretary. Professors Tait and 
Chrystal were elected honorary members. 
GENERAL PiTt-RIivers has offered his well-known and inyalu- 
able collection, now in the South Kensington Museum, to the 
University of Oxford, on condition that the University provides a 
suitable building for it. It is to be hoped, for the sake of the Uni- 
yersity and in the interests of science, that the authorities will 
accept the collection on the conditions imposed by the generous 
donor, though we should deeply regret its removal from London. 
WE are not surprised that the London School Board should 
have hesitated last week to commit itself to the importation at 
once of technical education into elementary schools. The adop- 
tion of Dr. Gladstone’s motion, that a committee be appointed 
to consider how best the Board could help in the matter, seems 
to us to be the judicious course to follow. 
THE following premiums are offered by the Society of Arts 
for the 129th Ses-ion of the Society (1882-83) :—Benjamin 
Shaw Prize.—1. A Society’s gold medal, or 20/., for the best 
plan for ‘‘ obviating or diminishing risk to life in the operations 
of coal mining.” 2. A Society’s gold medal, or 20/., for the 
best plan for ‘‘ obviating or diminishing risk to life in the manu- 
facture, storage, and transport of explosives.”” The Council of 
the Society leave it to #e competitors to bring the plans under 
their notice in any way they may think proper, whether by 
model, written description, or otherwise. Howard Prize.—A 
prize of 100’. for the best essay on the Utilisation of Electricity 
for Motive Power. Preference is to be given to that essay 
which, besides setting forth the theory of the subject, contains 
records with detailed results of actual working or experiment. 
The Society reserves the right of publishing the prize essay. 
Fothergill Prize.—A Society’s gold medal, or 20/., for the best 
invention having for its object the prevention or extinction of 
fires in theatres or other places of public amusement. Designs, 
plans, models, essays, descriptions, inventions, &c., intended to 
compete for any of the above prizes, must be sent in on or b2fore 
October 31, 1883, to the Secretary of the Society of Arts, John 
Street, Adelphi, London. 
THE Industrial Society of Berlin offers a number of prizes, 
amongst which we note the following :—1. Fora method of 
precipitating zinc by galvanism from its dilute sulphate solution, 
50/7, 2. For the examination of German crude petroleum, with 
directions for preparing a good commercial product, 757. 3. 
For a criticism of the usual indications of the value of iron and 
a proposal of more useful indications, 157. 4. For a plan of the 
technical arrangements of a public institute for the examination 
of tissues, in order to oppose the frequent adulterations met with 
in textile industries, 157. 5. For ameliorations in salt mines 
and salt works, 75/. 
THE Birmingham papers report the Town Hall crowded with 
working men to hear a lecture from the Rev. W. Tuckwell, 
Rector of Stockton, near Rugby, on ‘‘ The Midland Boulders 
and the Great Ice Age.” The lecturer described the erratic 
blocks of the neighbourhood, and some recent discoveries of 
boulder clay at Birmingham and Stockton. He presented in a 
popular form the discoveries and theories of Croll, Geikie, Boyd 
Dawkins, Lubbock, Evans; and drew a picture of early man 
| and his brute contemporaries as revealed by the bones and im- 
plements of the caves and river gravels. The lecture was illus- 
trated by lime-light views of glaciers, extinct animals, and human 
implements ; and was followed on the succeeding evening by a 
conversazione at the same place, when Mr. Tuckwell exhibited 
and explained to successive crowds throughout the evening a 
| splendid collection of implements, ranging from the earliest 
paleolithic to the latest bronze ornaments and weapons, kindly 
lent without charge by Mr. Bryce Wright, of Regent Street. 
Both evenings were arranged by the Sunday Lecture Society, 
which provides popular scientific lectures every Sunday night 
throughout the winter half of the year in the four largest Board 
Schools in Birmingham, with special lectures in the Town Hall 
three times in the year. The lectures, as was the case with Mr. 
Tuckwell’s, are frequently marked by a religious, though not by 
a sectarian tone ; and the crowded audiences consist of persons 
rarely or never seen in chur.h or chapel. 
Tue Berlin Academy of Sciences is about to send Dr. Lepsius, 
Professor of Geology at Darmstadt, with an assistant, to Athens, 
to make a geological survey of the neighbourhood, and 
endeavour to decide the question of the origin of the Athenian 
marbles. 
Unbrr the presidency of Count Hans Wilczek and the Baron 
Victor Erlanger, an International Electric Exhibition will be held 
in Vienna, opening on August 1, and closing on October 31. 
It will be an undertaking of a private nature, but is specially 
favoured by the Government. 
THERE seems to be a serious decline in the once flourishing 
oyster fisheries of Denmark. Last year only about two million 
oysters were taken, which is far below the average, nor was the 
quality so good as usual. There were no new banks discovered 
during the year. The most important are now those in the 
| Gulf of Vendsel and at Fladstrand. 
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