516 
NATURE 
[March 29, 1883 
in many cases he was the only individual able to speak the 
Malay and Dusun dialects. A large number of scientific ob- 
servations and notes on climate, geology, &c., of Borneo made 
during these expeditions will probably be published. Mr. 
Hatton, who had scarcely attained his twenty-second year at the 
time of his death, was a Fellow of the Chemical Societies of 
London and Berlin and of the Asiatic Society. 
THE Gothenburg Museum will be represented at the coming 
Fisheries Exhibition by a magnificent selection of exhibits from 
its Zoological Section, the expenses of which will be borne by 
Dr. Oscar Dickson. This collection will be selected, arranged, 
and taken care of to London by Dr. A. H. Malm of that 
Museum. The collection will consist of the choicest gems of 
the Museum, among which are five rare species of whales, and 
the ichthyological fauna of the province of Bohus, a; well as 
the well-known collection of herrings of various kinds and from 
different countries belonging to the Museum, There will also 
be sent a collection of skeletons of the fishes and birds compris- 
ing the fauna of Southern Sweden. The entire selection made 
by Dr. Malm is remarkable for its scientific accuracy, as well as 
finish. He will also show privately a splendid collection of 
Mollusca from the Cattegat. 
THE Commission, consisting of Baron Norden<kjéld, Consul 
Elfwing, and Prof. Gyldén, which the Royal Swedish Geo- 
graphical Society had appointed to report on the question of an 
international meridian and a common time, has come to the 
conclusion that it would undoubtedly be a matter of great diffi- 
culty to decide as to the former on account of national jealousies, 
but it has offered a solution of the latter question which is 
worthy of notice. Ifthe Greenwich meridian is fixed on as the 
common one, it would strike a point 180° from Greenwich, east 
of New Zealand, and if another circle is drawn 90° from Green- 
wich, its western half would nearly touch New Orleans, and its 
eastern a point a few minutes east of Calcutta. This system 
would furnish four cardinal times, viz. one European, one 
American, one Asiatic, and one Oceanic. As it would however 
be necessary to find several mean times for Europe, Prof. Gyldén 
proposes that twelve meridians be drawn from Greenwich, 
which he numbers at intervals of 2}°, which will make the time 
of the places falling under each differ from those under the 
nearest meridian by 10 minutes of actual time. These meridians 
as numbered would either touch the places mentioned below, or 
fall so near them that the actual difference would be of no 
consequence. The difference of time from 1om, is however 
shown in the parentheses: No. 1, Paris (40s.); No. 2, Utrecht 
and Marseilles (Im. 29s.) ; No. 3, Bern (t6s.) and Turin (42s.) ; 
No. 4, Hamburg (6s.), Altona (14s.), Gottingen {14s.), and 
Christiania (2m.); No. 5, Rome (50s.), Leipzig (26s.), and 
Copenhagen (20s.); No. 6, Sweden (15s. from common mean 
time); No. 7, Briez (Prussia); No. 8, Konigsberg (2m.) ; 
No. 9, Abo (Im.) and Mistra (Greece) (5s.) ; No. 11, no place 
of importance; No. 12, St. Petersburg (1m. 14s.), and Kiev. 
Further east it is not suggested to carry the system. Should the 
various European countries decide on adopting the mean time 
of the nearest meridian they might be arranged as follows :— 
No. 1 for France; No. 2 for Holland and Belgium ; No. 3 for 
Switzerland; No. 4 for Norway and Western Germany; No. 5 
for Denmark, Central Germany, and italy ; No. 6 for Sweden 
and Austria; No. 7 for Eastern Germany ; No. 8 for Hungary ; 
No. 9 for Poland and Greece ; No. 10 for Finland, Roumania, 
and Bulgaria; No. 11 for Turkey; No, 12 for Eastern Russia. 
West of Greenwich No. 1 would serve for Spain, and No, 3 
for Portugal. By this system Prof. Gyldén thinks it would 
be a simple matter for every one to remember that the differ- 
ence between two meridians, as, for instance, between London 
and Paris, was exactly 1o minutes. Prof, Gyldén also suggests 
| : 
that, for the convenience of travellers and others, all pu slic 
clocks should be provided with: coloured rings showing the 
differences of time between the various meridians. 
THIs wiater, at a large number of private and official sozrées in 
Paris, the electric light has been used from storage batteries in a. 
very simple manner. The accumulators are carried in a vehicle 
which is stationed in front of the house, and electric wires are 
conducted into the building through the windows. Incandescent 
lamps are placed in the ordinary candelabras, and the fitting of 
the most complex lighting is an affair of a very few hours. 
THE new Elphinstone-Vincent dynamo machine was shown 
the other evening to a large party of visitors at Messrs. Unwin’s. 
printing offices ; 411 Swan incandescent lights of twenty candle- 
power being well sustained by an engine of not at all large 
dimensions. The exhibition seems to show that the Elphinstone- 
Vincent machine in its present form of maturity is one of con- 
siderable merit. Its most notable feature is that the arma.ure 
works between both external and internal magnets, that the 
saddles of wire of which the armature is formed constitute a 
very simple construction, that there is close proximity in the 
working parts to the magnets, and that, all the parts of the 
machine being duplicated, taking to pieces and repairing can be 
most readily effected. 
THE Commissioners on Technical Education—Mr. Woodall, 
M.P., Mr. Samuelson, M.P., Mr. Wyer Smith, and Mr, Magnus, 
with Mr, Redgrave, secretary—paid a flying visit to Edinburgh 
last week. They visited, we understand, the Watt Institute— 
where they were received by Prof. Fleeming Jenkin and Lord 
Shand, to whom they expressed themselves highly satisfied with 
the tuitional and other arrangements of the Institute—the 
Museum of Science and Art, and Heriot’s Hospital. One half 
of them afterwards inspected the Merchant Company’s Schools, 
and the other half several of the Board Schools, 
Tue Surveying Expedition, under the direction of M. de 
Lesseps, has left Hamma, Tunis, and visited the mouth of the 
Oued Melah, which is to form the outlet of the projected Inland 
Sea Canal. It is declared that the result of the investigations 
shows that the cutting of the earth may bz accomplished without 
difficulty. : : 
M. CocueEry, the Minister of Postal Telegraphy, presided over 
the fir-t monthly dinner of French Electricians, which is to take 
place on the 2st of every month, at the Café Durand. English 
electricians wishing to join should communicate with the director 
of L’Electricité, 16, Rue du Croissant, Paris. The president of 
the meeting for April 21 will be M. Berger, ex-director of the 
Electrical Exhibition of 1881. 
A TELEGRAM from Copenhagen states that ‘‘ volcanic ashes ” 
have fallen in the neighbourhood of Trondhjem, Norway, and 
that a serious eruption of Mount Hecla is therefore supposed to 
have taken place. If these ‘‘ ashes” are the dust referred to in 
our note last week (p. 496), then they are not of a volcanic 
character, according to the examination of Dr. H. Reusch of 
Christiania University. On this subject a Glasgow correspondent 
writes :—‘‘ My son, who is a passenger by the P. and O, steamer 
Deccan to the East, writes on February 27, when the steamer was 
in the Red Sea: ‘ Nothing of note oceurred till evening, when 
G. and myself determined to sleep on deck, on account of 
the heat. We accordingly did so, and retired to our bunks 
about 4 a.m, ... During our sleep on deck we were much 
annoyed by a quantity of small particles of dust which covered 
our faces, pillows, &c., and indeed was spread all around. . . . 
I am convinced it must have been a shower of lava dust, which, 
it is well known, is often carried hundreds of miles from the 
crater where it has origin, The dust was of hard particles. 
