April I, 1875] 



NATURE 



429 



necessary to say now that it is a patient and elaborate 

 investigation from original sources of the usually obscure 

 history and origin of vegetable drugs. Those who best 

 know how to appreciate the book find their admiration 

 everywhere divided between its laboriousness and its 

 perfect conscientiousness. 



A life so spent leaves little else to record. He accom- 

 panied Dr. Hcoker in a tour in Syria ; in 1S67 he was 

 elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, and was a member 

 of the Council at the time of his death. Of the Linnean 

 Society he was vice-president and treasurer, and his place 

 in it will not be easy to fill. The Society has passed 

 through a somewhat serious crisis for a learned body. 

 The change from the rather old fashioned retire- 

 ment of its rooms in Soho Square, and afterwards in 

 the main building of Burlington House, to its present 

 stately quarters, has produced a certain strain upon 

 a constitution always essentially conservative. That 

 difference of temperament between the members of suc- 

 cessive generations which is a constant physiological 

 phenomenon, found in Daniel Hanbury an exception. 

 Perfectly cautious, he was perfectly free from prepos- 

 session, and no proposition — however revolutionary — 

 seemed to him unreasonable if he could convince himself 

 that it would add to the welfare of the body which he 

 wished to see take the lead as the chief Biological Society 

 of the country. 



TWENTY-THREE HOURS IN THE AIR 



THE longest aerial tiip on record was m.ade by the 

 " Zenith,'' a balloon which ascended from Paris on 

 Thursday, 23rd March, at half-past six in the afternoon, 

 and landed at Montplaisir, near Arcachon, 700 miles 

 from Paris, on the following evening at half-past five. 

 The aeronaut was M. Sivel, and the passengers MM. 

 Gaston Tissandier, the editor of La Naiure, M. Albert 

 Tissandier, his brother, an artist, and two other gen- 

 tlemen. 



The balloon drifted southwards from La Villette gas- 

 works for a few miles, when, crossing Paris, it deviated in 

 a westerly direction before reaching the fortifications. 

 It then travelled south-west during the whole of the night, 

 crossing Meudon, Chevreuse, Tours, Saintes, &c., up to 

 the mouth of the Gironde, which was crossed at ten 

 o'clock in the morning, 600 miles having been run in 

 15^ hours. The wind, which was not strong, having 

 gradually diminished, the crossing of the Gironde occu- 

 pied not less than thirty-five minutes. As the sun became 

 bright and the weather hot, a brisk wind blew from the 

 sea towards the land, but only up to an altitude of goo 

 feet. The aeronauts took advantage of this current to 

 escape the upper current drifting towards the sea, and 

 followed the margin of the Gulf ef Gascony by alternate 

 deviations obtained by changes of level. 



Landing was accomplished without any difficulty by 

 throwing a grapnel, and all the instruments were taken 

 back to Paris. Most interesting observations have been 

 taken, and will be described to the Academy of Sciences 

 at an early sitting. But we arc enabled to give a 

 summary of these through the courtesy of our friend M. 

 Tissandier. 



A quantity of air was sent by an aspirator through 

 a tube filled with pumice saturated with sulphuric 

 acid in order to stop the carbonic acid and ascertain 

 how many hundreds of grains aie contained in each 

 cubic foot. A series of experiments were made at differ- 

 ent levels from 2,700 to 5,000 feet, the utmost height 

 reached. The analysis will be made by a new method 

 invented by MM. Tissandier and Hervd Mangon, a mem- 

 ber of the French Institute. 



The electricity of the air, tested with copper wires 

 600 feet long, was found nil, except at sunrise. It is 



known that at that very moment an ascending cold current 

 is almost always felt. 



The minimum of temperature was about -f 25° Fahr. ; 

 at Paris, on the same night, it was about -f 28° at the 

 Observatory. 



The moon was shining brilliantly, with a few cirrus 

 clouds that manifested their presence by a magnificent 

 lunar halo, which was observed from five o'clock to six 

 in the morning. 



The phenomenon gradually developed : the small halo 

 (23") showed itself first, and afterwards the large halo 

 (46"), but as the aeronauts were at a small distance 

 below the level where icy particles were suspended, the 

 larger halo, instead of being circular, was seen projected 

 elliptically. The dimensions of the smaller halo had been 

 somewhat diminished. The horizontal and the vertical 

 parhelia (or rather paraselenic) circles crossing each 

 other at right angles on the moon, a cross was seen in 

 the middle of a circle, and an ellipse concentric to it. 

 The several phases of the appearance were sketched and 

 will be sent to Nature. The last part of the pheno- 

 menon was a cross, that remained longer than the two 

 halos, which had vanished before the rising of the sun. 

 W. DE FONV lELLE 



ON A PROPELLER IMITATING THE ACTION 

 OF THE FIN OF THE PIPE-FISH* 



'X'HEpeculiarmechanism of thedorsal finof the Pipe-fish 

 {Syngiialhiis) and Sea-horse {Hippocampus), Fig. i, 

 which is also known to be present in the Electric Eel 

 {Gyiniio/us), has been referred to by more than one 

 naturalist. In his " Handbook to the Fish-house in the 

 Gardens of the Zoological Society," Mr. E. W. H. Holds- 

 worth, speaking of the Pipe-fish, remarks that " they 

 generally maintain a nearly erect attitude, supporting 

 themselves in the water by a peculiar undulating move- 



:^ 



Fig. I.— Side view of Branched Sea-iior£e [Hi/'focamfus rumuhstis), in 

 which the dorsal undulath)g fin is clearly shown. 



ment of the dorsal fin ; " and the late Dr. Gray, in the 

 Proceedings of the Zoological Society,! also says that 

 " they swim with facility, but not veiy rapidly, and they 

 seem to move chiefly by the action of the dorsal and 

 pectoral fins. The former is fully expanded when they 

 move, and in very rapid motion, the action being a kind 

 of wave commencing at the front end and continued 

 through its whole length, continually repeated, so as to 

 form a kind of screw propeller." 



• The substance of a k-cture deli^■cred l>y Prof. A, H. Garrod at the 

 Royal Institution, March 16. 



t P.Z.S. i86i,p. 238. 



