March 15, 188 3] 
observations on September 1, and the magnetical observations 
on September 3. Apparently all was well at the date of the 
letter, December 19, 1882. 
Mr. WILLIAM HENRY M. CurRIsTIE, F.R.S., Astronomer 
Royal, has been elected by the Committee to be a Member of 
the Athenzeum Club, under Rule 2, which provides for the 
admission of persons distinguished in literature, science, or the 
arts, or for public services. 
M. Dumas was not able to be present at Monday’s sitting of 
the Academy of Sciences. His recovery is not quite so rapid 
as it was hoped and expected to be. 
In the Civil Service Estimates for 1883-4 the total vote for 
education, science, and art amounts to £4,748,556, a net increase 
of £165,531 over the previous year. 
THE sixth International Congress of Orientalists will be 
opened at Leyden on September Io next. 
' Mr. MItne, who has recently returned to his post in Japan, 
has suggested to the Japanese Government the great utility of 
establishing a series of observations for the study of earthquakes ; 
earth-tremors ; earth-pulsations; earth-oscillations, or permanent 
changes of level ; terrestrial magnetism ; fluctuations of under- 
ground water; earth temperatures; eruptive phenomena, &c. 
We trust that the Japanese Government will see it to be their 
interest, in a land of earthquakes,-as well as the interest of 
science, to take the advice of Mr. Milne, who has already done 
so much for seismology. Mr. Milne writes that he is more and 
more convinced that there are ‘‘earthquakes” of so slow 
period that neither observers nor ordinary instruments record 
them. The Japanese papers report that a volcano in the Asuma 
Yuma range has burst out. 
Mr, A. H. KEANE has been elected Corresponding Member 
of the Italian Anthropological Society. 
Mr. Rospert LinpDsAy has been appointed Curator of the 
Edinburgh Botanic Garden, 
A SPECIAL general meeting of members only of the Associa- 
tion for the Improvement of Geometrical Teaching will be 
held at 8 p.m., on March 20, at University College, (1) to 
authorise the publication of Books i. and ii. of the Elementary 
Geometry as revised by the committee ; (2) to appoint three 
trustees of the property of the Association. 
THE Institution of Naval Architects began its annual meeting 
yesterday, and continues to-day and to-morrow. Among the 
papers in the programme are the following :—On certain points 
of importance in the construction of ships of war, by Capt. G. 
H. Noel, R.N. ; The influence of the Board of Trade rules for 
boilers upon the commercial marine, by J. T. Milton; Sea- 
going torpedo-boats, by M. J. A. Normand ; Some experiments 
to test the resistance of a first-class torpedo boat, by A. F. 
Yarrow; On the modes of estimating the strains to which 
steamers’ are subject, by Wigham Richardson ; On the extinctive 
effect of free water on the rolling of ships, by P. Watts; A de- 
scription of a method of investigation of screw propeller efficiency, 
by H. B. Froude ; The speed and form of steamships considered 
in relation to length of voyage, by James Hamilton ; On fog- 
signalling, by J. MacFarlane Gray; Method of obtaining the 
desired displacement in designing ships, by R. Zimmermann. 
THE Royal Commissioners for Technical Education—Messrs. 
Samuelson, M.P., Woodall, M.P., P. Magaus, and Swire Smith 
—accompanied by Mr. G. R. Redgrave (secretary), visited Bir- 
mingham on March 8, and devoted several days to a careful 
inspection of the Mason College, Midland Institute, &c. The 
Commissioners were much interested in the system of practical 
science instruction which is being carried on in the Board 
NATURE 
469 
Schools under the direction of Mr, Jerome Harrison, F.G.S., 
and both heard lessons given in the new Icknield Street Schools, 
and examined the newly built laboratory, &c. We hope shortly 
to present to our readers an account of the system by which 
about 2500 of the elder boys and girls in the Birmingham Board 
Schools are now receiving lessons in elementary science, at, 
practically, little or no extra cost to the town of Birmingham, 
It is proposed to establish the new Professorship of Physiology 
at Cambridge in the ensuing Easter term. The appointment of 
a Professor of Pathology is also declared by the General Board 
of Studies to be urgent. The Medical Board has recently 
unanimously reported that the appointment of a Professor otf 
Surgery is urgently necessary ; and Prof. Humphrey has offered 
to resign the Professorship of Anatomy and accept the Profes- 
sorship of Surgery for the present, without stipend. 
THE death is announced of William Desborough Cooley, the 
author of a History of Geographical Discovery, a Physical Geo- 
graphy, and other geographical works, and who at one time 
wrote largely on theoretical African geography. 
THE half-yearly General Meeting of the Scottish Meteoro- 
logical Society will be held to-day. The business before the 
meeting is: (1) Report from the Council of the Society ; (2) 
Address by Prof. Piazzi Smyth, at request of the Council, on 
Rainband Spectroscopy ; (3) the Meteorology of Ben Nevis in 
1882, by Clement L. Wragge. 
THE Réforme, the new Paris paper, which has established 
telegraphic communication with London, publishes daily a 
translation of the previsions issued by the Meteorological Board 
of London, which is read by the French public at the same time 
as in England. 
M. LaLANNE, Member of the Academy of Sciences, has been 
elected a Life Senator in the Liberal interest. It seems to be 
becoming almost a constant practice of the French Senate to 
select its ‘‘ Irremovables” from among the several classes. of the 
Institute. 
Aw Electrotechnical Society has been formed at Vienna, 
similar to the one existing and flourishing at Berlin. 
THe German astronomers who had proceeded to Punta 
Arenas in Magellan’s Straits in order to observe the last transit 
of Venus have at last returned to Germany. 
A METEORIC stone weighing a hundredweight fell near 
Alfianello, near Bresci1, on February 16 last. It entered the 
ground to a depth of two metres, and caused a shock like that 
of a slight earthquake. 
A memorr, for which a gold medal (600 francs) has been 
awarded by the Belgian Academy, is by Prof. Fredericq, 
of Liege; it is on the influence of the nervous system on 
the regulation of temperature in warm-blooded animals, After 
many experiments, the author affirms that cold acts on the sensi- 
tive nerves of the skin, and through them on centres of thermo- 
genesis in the medulla oblongata. These centres react, and 
through centrifugal nerves cause an increase of the phenomena 
of interstitial combustion, especially in the muscles ; but we also 
fight with cold by a diminution of the losses of heat, the vessels 
of the skin being constricted, owing to an excitation of the vaso- 
constrictor centres, through impression of the sensitive nerves of 
the skin by cold. M. Fredericq considers that the system does 
not (as most physiologists say) contend against heat by diminishing 
the production of heat. The regulation of temperature is simply 
based on increase of the losses of heat, by dilatation of the 
cutaneous vessels, by acceleration of the outer circulation, in- 
creased secretion and evaporation of sweat, and greater ad- 
