Jan. 7, 1875] 



NATURE 



193 



of the Patent Office, so that any person using due diligence 

 might easily learn with tolerable certainty whether an invention 

 were new or old, which is not now the case. 



We beg to append a sample page of such two subject-matter 

 indexes as we would submit are urgently required. It is almost 

 superfluous to mention that there are now several hundred 

 thousands of pounds accumulated surplus, and an annual surplus 

 of about sixty thousand pounds, contributed by the veiy class of 

 persons who would benefit by such improved indexes. 



L. L. DiLLW\N, M.P. 



Richard Baggallay, M.P. 



Charles Fox, Mem. Inst. C.E. 



Charles Hutton Gregory, President Inst. C.E. 



Edward Woods, Mem. Inst. C.E. 



C. WiLLL\M Siemens, Mem. Inst. C.E., F.R.S. 



Robert Mallet, Mem. Inst. C.E., F.R..S. 



Frederick J. Bramwell, Mem. Inst. C.E. Council. 



Edward A. CowrER, Mem. Inst. C.E. 

 20th March, 1S68. 



{Copy of R(ply of the Master of the Rolls to Mr. Dillwyn.) 

 Rolls, 31st March, 1S6S. 



Sir, — I transmitted to the Lord Chancellor the memorial pre- 

 sented to me on the 20th March instant by yourself and the 

 gentlemen who accompanied you, relative to the present state of 

 the Patent Office, together with my views on the subject ; and 

 we have since considered tlie matter in consultation together. 



The result of this is that we are prepared to recommend to 

 her Majesty's Government that three gentlemen should be 

 appointed to act as Commissioners of Patents together with the 

 Lord Chancellor and the Master of the Rolls for the time being 

 — one to represent mechanical science, another to represent 

 chemical science, and a third to represent the subjects more 

 usually and more especially comprised in the term "Natural 

 Philosophy." We should propose that the gentlemen to be 

 recommended to her Majesty for this purpose should be, as 

 regards the fiist, from gentlemen to be nominated by the Society 

 of Mechanical Engineers ; as regards the second, from gentlemen 

 to be nominated by the Chemical Society ; and as regards the 

 third, from gentlemen to be nominated by the Council of the 

 Royal Society. But we are not p-epared to recommend that any 

 salary should be attached to the services of these gentlemen. We 

 trust and believe that gentlemen fully competent for the purpose 

 may be found who have sufficient leisure, and who, from their 

 love of science and their desire to disseminate more widely tlie 

 discoveries made in these branches of science, would be willing 

 to give their services without remuneration, and to superintend 

 the general management of the Patent Office, to see that the 

 indexes and abstracts of the specifications are made accurate and 

 complete, and to redress the other defects complained of in your 

 memorial, acting in all these respects in conjunction with the 

 Lord Chancellor and the Master of the Rolls, to whom they 

 would refer whenever the occasion might re quire it. 



I think it, however, desirable to repeat that, on fully consi- 

 dering the subject, both the Lord Chancellor and myself have 

 arrived at the same conclusion, that it would be inexpedient to 

 create either one or more salaried officers for this purpose ; and 

 to say that we should both, if applied to, recommend her 

 Majesty's Government not to accede to thp.t part of the views of 

 the gentlemen who composed the deputation, which had relation 

 to the creation of paid officers. ROMILLY. 



L. L. Dillwyn, Esq., M.P. 



FRANCIS KIERNAA', F.R.S. 



WE have to record the death, on Dec. 31st last, of 

 Mr. Francis Kiernan, whose discoveries in con- 

 nection with the structure of and circulation through the 

 liver, published in the Philosophical Transactions of the 

 Royal .Society, and separately in a work entitled " Ana- 

 tomical Researches on the Structure of the Liver,' are so 

 well known to all physiologists and histologists. 



Mr. Kiernan was bom in Ireland on October 2nd, 1800. 

 His father was a member of the medical profession, who 

 came to this country during his son's younger days. The 

 son was educated at the Roman Catholic College at Ware, 

 in Hertfordshire, and received his medical training at St. 

 Bartholomew's Hospital, where, as a student, he gave 



signs of marked ability, devoting all his energies to the 

 study of anatomy. In 1825 he obtained the membership 

 of the College of Surgeons, and the Fellowship in 1 843. 

 In 1834 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society 

 subsequently receiving the Copley MedaP 



Mr. Kiernan was amongst those most actively engaged 

 in the establishment of the University of London, of 

 the Senate of which institution, on its incorporation in 

 1837, he became a member, and subsequently a frequent 

 examiner in his special subjects. He was never married. 

 In 1865 he was seized with a paralytic stroke, from the 

 effects of which he never fully recovered. 



The investigations of Mr. Kiernan on the liver, together 

 with those of Mr. Bowman on the kidney, will be always 

 looked back to by biologists as the first-fruits of the in- 

 troduction to natural science of the microscope in its 

 modern form. Unlike many such productions, however, 

 they have both fully stood the test of time. 



THE RECENT THAIV 



'T'HE thaw of January i, 1875, happened almost simul- 

 -*■ taneously in Paris and London, and the phenomenon 

 having been observed in both cities, it is possible to come 

 to a definite conclusion concerning many similar occur- 

 rences. 



The e.xact hour of the change in Paris may be stated to 

 have been nine o'clock in the evening. If we suppose it 

 was four o'clock in London, we see that five hours were a 

 sufficient space of time for the gale to run the distance 

 between both cities — about 300 miles. 



Telegraphic warnings had been sent from London to 

 the Paris Observatory, but were of little practical use, for 

 want of proper means to disseminate the intelligence : 

 otherwise, many inconveniences which were experienced 

 by the Parisians, surprised by the falling of sleety snow, 

 would have been avoided. 



This remarkable occurrence may be referred to as 

 affording strong evidence in favour of extending and 

 popularising in both countries the use of weather tele- 

 grams. But I think it may be useful to try to draw from 

 these circumstances some other conclusions. 



In January 1871 I inquired of M. Buys Ballot, now the pre- 

 sident of the Utrecht Meteorological Office, if he could tell 

 me how to foresee if winds were likely to take a favourable 

 course for ballooning from Lille to besieged Paris. I was 

 told by the learned meteorologist to look at the upper 

 clouds, as any real change must of necessity take place in 

 the upper strata of the atmosphere, and descend gradually 

 to the earth. 



Unfortunately these upper clouds were for days and 

 days running from the south, and the opportunity of 

 trying an ascent was lost. Before the sudden thaw of the 

 24th of December, as well as before the ist of January, I 

 saw other clouds taking distinctly the same northern 

 course. It seemed to me that the motion of the upper strata 

 was communicated gradually to the air in closer proxi- 

 mity to the earth, and that the meteorological revolution 

 of the 1st of January was preceded by a great change 

 produced in higher regions through some unknown 

 cause. 



My conclusion secins to me to be supported by the fact 

 that the air was obscured by vapours before the thaw 

 actually took place. The sun lost apparently almost all 

 his warming power, as the difference between /ni/iii/ui and 

 maxima read at the Observatory of Paris at the end of 

 the cold periods amounted to a very few centesimal 

 degrees— three or four only ; clear air and hot sun being, 

 if the theory is supported by facts, an evidence that cold 

 weather is to last for a long period. It seems that the 

 upper current is produced b)' cold and dry air coming from 

 the north and pushed southwards. 



It would be interesting to submit the theory to the test 



