474 



NATURE 



{April IS, 1875 



In the first place, a material had to be provided which 

 would admit of being engraved rapidly without burr or 

 chipping, and would, without further preparation, serve 

 as a mould for type metal. Secondly, drill pantagraphs 

 had to be adapted to engrave the lines, and to be fur- 

 nished with a gauge so as to vary their depth at pleasure. 



The actual process is as follows : — The outline of the 

 land is kept standing, and the composition is nm in a 

 mould bearing this outline on one face. The block, 

 which is now an outline chart of the British Islands, is 

 then placed under the pantagraph drill, which reduces 

 the original drawing, furnished from the Meteorological 

 Office, to one-fourth. The barograms and wind-arrows 

 are put on direct from the drawing, the figures and words 

 by means of templates, in order to ensure uniformity in 

 the type. 



The instant the block is engraved it is ready to be 

 stereotyped, and then it is a simple matter to adapt it in 

 the usual manner to the cylinder of the machine. 



The initiative in this new method of weather illustra- 

 tion is due to Mr. Francis Galton, and the practical 

 details have been carried out by Messrs. Shanks and 

 Johnson, of the Patent Type Founding Company. 



It is hardly necessary to allude to the value of such 

 charts as these as a means of leading the public to gain 

 some idea of the laws which govern our weather changes. 

 As soon as they appear in our afternoon papers, we may 

 hope for a more intelligent comprehension of the diffi- 

 culties which beset any attempt to foretell the weather of 

 these islands for the space of even twenty-four hours. 



We may safely say that with these charts we have not 

 seen the end of weather illustration, which was set on 

 foot more than four years ago by Sir W. Mitchell in the 

 Sldppiiig Ca^cfie, and has been continued daily ; but 

 whatever improvements may hereafter be introduced in 

 the process, it must be remembered that the credit of 

 breaking the egg is due to the gentleman we have named. 



THE ECLIPSE EXPEDITION 



THE local arrangements for the Eclipse parties, to 

 which we referred last week, have, we now know, 

 been altered in the cases both of the Bay of Bengal and 

 Siam parties. 



With regard to the former, letters received from Galle, 

 written shortly before the sailing of the Enterprise (which 

 had arrived at that port from Calcutta with C.ipt. Water- 

 house, Profs. Tacchini and Pedler, and tlnee photo- 

 graphic assistants on board), state that it had been deter- 

 mined to give up Mergui, first because the accommo- 

 dation there was doubtful, and secondly, because, in the 

 opinion of those best informed, a cloudless sky at 

 Camorta was almost a certainty. Hence there will be 

 two strong parties on Camorta itself as widely separated 

 as possible ; and here, it will be remembered, the totality 

 is longer than at any other station, being no less than 

 4m. 27s. at Kaikul. 



The Indian Government had been careful to prepare 

 huts for observatories on this island before even the 

 Enterprise had left Calcutta ; and as certain parts of it 

 are Icnown to be malarious, all the observers will sleep on 

 board the steamer. 



With regard to the Siam party, a Reuter's telegram, 

 dated Singapore, April 8, shov/s that this party, instead of 

 going direct to Chulai Point, has gone to Bangkok ; and 

 it would appear from the telegram that the observatories 

 •were being erected at some spot nearer Bangkok than the 

 proposed station. 



NOTES 



It is with the greatest satisfaction we record that on Tuesday 

 Mr. James Dewar, Demonstrator of Chemistryin the University of 

 Edinburgh, was elected to the Cambridge Jacksonian Professor- 



ship ; all the other candidates hivinj withdrawn. As our readers 

 know, Mr. Dawar has already done excellent work, and is so 

 wilely known as a gifted investigator as well as a first-rate 

 teacher, that his presence at Cambridge will be a great gain, not 

 only to that University, but to English Science. 



The Alerl and Discovery, the two ships destined for the 

 Arctic Expedition, are to be commissioned to-day. In addi- 

 tion to the naturalists specially appointed. Captain Mark- 

 ham and several of the lieutenants and sub-lieutenants have 

 been undergoing special instruction in the instruments they will 

 have to use — astronomical instruments, pendulums, magneto- 

 meters, and spectroscopes. 



At Monday's sitting of the French Academy of Sciences, a 

 letter was read from M. Puiseux, giving a rSsiwil of his calcula- 

 tion for the solar parallax, founded on the recent Transit obser- 

 vations, M. Puiseux has made a comparison between the St. Paul 

 Transit observations by Mouchez, and those of Pekin by 

 Fleuriais. The exact amount of the parallax is 8 '879". Both 

 observers had 6-inch refractors. The comparison of the results 

 obtained by Fleuriais and another observer at St. Paul with 

 a 4-inch refractor gives 8 '84". M. Puiseux, in computing>> 

 the sources of error, states in his letter that the error cannot be 

 more than -^-^ of a second, by supposing the error to be two or 

 three seconds of time for the moment of transit. M. Puiseux 

 spoke briefly in support of the opinion expressed in his letter. 



The following from the Kolnische Zcituii^ of March 25, in 

 reference to tl;e recently invented "hardened glass," will be in- 

 teresting ; — According to the reports of Pliny, Petroniu=, and Dion 

 Cassius, a man is said to have invented the making of flexible and 

 malleal^le glass in the time of the Emperor Tiberius. The happy 

 inventor — some call him a glass-maker, others an architect — 

 brought to the Emperor a vase made from tlie new glass, with the 

 hope of a rich reward. TheEmperor, fearing that tlie new material 

 might cause a decrease in the value of gold and silver, threw the 

 vase to the ground in a passion. Tlie vase, however, did not break, 

 but was only bent like metal, and the inventor at once repaired 

 the damage done with a little hammer; whereupon the Emperor 

 had the poor fellow killed on the spot, so that lie should not tell 

 his dangerous secret to anyone. For years people have lost 

 themselves in conjectures of what material this malleable glass 

 miglit have been ; some thought it was .iluminium, otliers that it 

 was mehed chloride of silver ; none, however, were certain. From 

 various quarters tlie invention is now announced of a new glass 

 which resis'iS blows -and the action of fire. Last autumn a 

 company was formed at Bourg, in France, vi'ith a capital of 

 1,200,000 francs, for the working oi an invention in this line, 

 made by a M. de la Bastie. The German Glass-makers' Union 

 communicated with this company with a view to purchase the 

 invention, but this remained without further consequences, 

 as the demands of the company were exorbitant. In the 

 meantime it had been found that the elasticity was given 

 to the glass by dipping the same, while it is heated to a half 

 hquid state, into a hermetically closed bath of oil or fat, 

 substances llierefore which melt far below the boiling-point 

 of water. In Silesia, where repeated experiments have 

 tested the qualities of the De la Bastie glass, another 

 new glass was invented a few days ago, by Herren Lubisch 

 and Riederer, in Count Solm's glass-works, Andreashiitte, 

 at Klitschdorf, ne.ir Bunzlau. This glas>, which the inventors 

 call "metal glass," is so hard, that when a pane lies on 

 the ground and a leaden ball of forty grammes weight falls 

 upon it from an elevation of twelve feet, it receives not the 

 slightest impression ; nor is it in the least affected when dipped 

 whilst red-hot into cold water. Window panes, lamp cylinders, 

 and other articles of domestic use made from this metal glass, 

 can therefore almost be denoted as unbreakable. 



