Oct. 20, 1870] 
NATURE 
597 
furnace to the hammer, and for moving them when under the 
hammer. 3. Improved hammers, with a clear unfettered fall, 
and with such width of standards as to give the workmen all the 
comfort and convenience possible in executing the necessary 
operations of shaping, forging, and cutting the material to the 
required form. 
On Hammering and Stone-Dressing Machinery.—Dr. J. H. 
Lloyd. The author claimed to have devised machinery which 
was particularly applicable for cutting, sawing, chiselling, drill- 
ing, and dressing stone and other substances, for forging and 
hammering metals, and for working the tools in general by motive 
power, so as to supersede hand-labour. The invention has not 
yet been applied ; indeed, the improved machinery as yet only 
exists in the state of a model. The paper was illustrated by 
numerous drawings, 
REPORTS OF COMMITTEES 
REPORT GF THE RAINFALL COMMITTEE 
This report was read by Mr. G. J. Symons, the secretary of 
the committee. It commenced by referring to the steps taken 
last year to secure uniformity in the registration of rain by the 
observers throughout the country, and to the acceptance by the 
General Committee of the recommendation of the Rainfall 
Committee that additional observers should be obtained in parts 
of the country where at present such observers are far from one 
another. Dartmoor was last year quoted as an illustration ; 
thither after last meeting Mr. Symons proceeded, and the result 
is that the number of stations in that district has been doubled. 
There are, however, still two parts of the moor where no one 
lives, and no one has yet been found willing to superintend a 
gauge. Reference is next made to other steps taken by the 
committee to secure returns from various other districts, and to 
the success of these efforts. The committee close this portion of 
their report by pointing out that to keep up an amateur staff 
adequate to the requirements of the subject, say from 1,500 to 
2,000 observers, it is indispensable that a number of new ones 
be enlisted each year to supply vacancies caused by deaths and re- 
movyals, and they therefore intimate their desire to receive through 
their secretary (Mr. G. J. Symons, 62, Camden Square, London) 
offers of assistance from parties willing to provide themselves 
with the inexpensive and simple gauge now generally in use. 
The report then proceeded to mention that the secretary has 
during the past year visited and examined the gauges in use at 
upwards of one hundred stations. By this personal intercourse 
greatly improved accuracy and uniformity of procedure is secured. 
‘The committee regret that through want of funds they have been 
unable to make any progress with the collection of old returns 
during the past year. The report then proceeds to describe cer- 
tain experiments carried out at Calne, in Wiltshire, by Colonel 
Ward, with a view to determining the difference in the amount 
of rain collected at various heights above the ground, not so 
much with a view to determining the cause of this variation as its 
amount, and therefrom the possibility or otherwise of reducing 
observations made with gauges at different heights above the 
ground to what they would have been at some uniform datum. 
This portion of the report commences by a brief notice of the 
experiments made by Prof. Phillips at York in the years 1832-35, 
then pass on to illustrate the necessity for the determination of 
these corrections ; thence to a description of the instruments em- 
ployed, and their position ; and then follow a heavy batch of 
tables of the calculations and the results which it is impossible 
to abbreviate. Part of the conclusions were exhibited in the form 
of diagrams representing the total rainfall on the surface of the 
ground, and its decrease at various altitudes above it, one diagram 
giving the mean annual decrease, and a series of twelve others 
the monthly curyes ; from these it was perfectly obvious that the 
difference between a gauge on the ground and one 2oft. high is in 
winter nearly three times as great as in summer, and hence it be- 
comes evident that the mean annual correction is applicable to 
the total fall in one or more years only, and not to individual 
months, for each of which separate corrections are given. The 
report then proceeds to consider the most suitable height for the 
orifice of gauges to be above ground, and gives various reasons 
pro and con, finally concluding that 1ft., as hitherto adopted, be 
still recommended. The report next refers to the tables in an 
appendix giving the monthly fall of rain at about 300 stations 
during the years 1868-69, and to various calculations in different 
states of-progress. ~The report concludes by pointing out the 
great work being done by the voluntary and entirely gratuitous 
Services of nearly 2,coo observers, and suggests that it would be 
alike graceful and an economical act on the part of the Govern- 
ment were they to offer to relieve the observers from the cost of 
reducing and publishing the observations which are now by their 
accuracy and completeness accepted as a type by foreign coun- 
tries and our own colonies, and which are found yearly more and 
more useful in relation to our manufacturing and commercial in- 
terests. The committee conclude with the following words :— 
“A few hundreds annually would probably suffice to hold together 
a body of practised observers which has no equal in the world, 
and which once broken up, could not be replaced, since, irre- 
spective of the difficulty of training the new observers, the con- 
tinuity of the observations would be destroyed.” 
SCIENTIFIC SERIALS 
THE Geological Magazine for September (No. 75) opens 
with an important article by Mr. E. Ray Lankester, describing 
a new species of Cephalaspis (C. dawsonz) from the Devonian sand- 
stones of Gaspé, in Canada. This fish is figured, asalso a spim, 
Machairacanthus sulcatus, which was found associated with it. 
Mr. Lankester also describes the characters of Scaphaspis knerii. 
—Mr. Davidson continues his descriptions of Italian tertiary 
Brachiopoda, which he illustrates with two fine plates containing 
a great number of figures.—Mr. Alfred Marston contributes a 
paper on the transition beds between the Silurian and Devonian 
rocks ; and Mr. Lankester describes and figures a supposed new 
species of Zerebratula (T. vex), obtained from East Anglian 
drifts, but probably derived from beds of Portlandian age. The 
remaining articles in the number are a catalogue of mammalian 
fossils which have been discovered in Ireland, by Mr. R. H. 
Scott, and a reply by Archdeacon Pratt to some remarks by M. 
Delaunay on Mr. Hopkins’s method of determining the thickness 
of the earth’s crust. 
THE Journal of Botany for October commences with some 
Observations on Willows, by the Rey. J. E. Leefe. Dr. Hance 
contributes some carpological notes on Chinese plants ; and Mr. 
A. W. Bennett his paper on the relative period of maturity of 
the male and female organs in hermaphrodite plants, read at 
the Liverpool meeting of the British Association, of which an 
abstract has already appeared in our columns. Dr. Ferdinand 
yon Miiller has a note on some interesting plants gathered near 
Lake Barlee during Mr. Forrest’s recent expedition ; and among 
the borrowed abstracts is one of Mr. Bailey’s useful paper on 
the natnral ropes used for packing cotton bales in the Brazils, 
read before the Literary and Philosophical Society of Man- 
chester. 
THE two longest articles in the American Naturalist for Sep- 
tember are a reprint of Mr. Darwin’s memoir on the move- 
ments and habits of Climbing Plants, and a highly favourable 
review of Wallace’s ‘‘Contributions to the Theory of Natural 
Selection.” Prof. Cope contributes an article on the Fauna of 
the Southern Alleghanies, and Dr, C. C. Abbott one on Mud- 
living Fishes. One of the most interesting papers in the num- 
ber is a very short one by Dr. William Stimpson on the Deep- 
water Fauna of Lake Michigan, containing a short account of a 
series of dredging operations which has been undertaken in this 
lake during the present year of the Chicago Academy of Sciences. 
At a distance of eighteen miles from Chicago, where the depth 
was fourteen fathoms, the sandy or gravelly bottom was found to 
be nearly barren of life. Between the distances of twelve and 
twenty-two miles from off Racine, the average depth was forty- 
five fathoms, and the bottom generally a reddish or brownish 
sandy mud. This bottom was found to be rather densely in- 
habited ; the captures including a AZysis allied to Arctic forms, 
which led the author to refer its original entry into the lake to 
the cold period of the quaternary epoch, two species of Gam- 
marus, a small white Planavia, and a new species of Pisidium. 
The investigation of the materials obtained by the dredging 
parties of the Academy is now in progress, and the results will 
be published in full with iilustrations at an early period. 
SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES 
BRIsTOL ~ 
The Observing Astronomical Society. —Report of Obser- 
vations made during the period’ from Aug. 7 to Sept. 6, 1870, 
inclusive.—Solar Phenomena :—Mr. T. G. E. Elger, of Bed- 
