March 23, 1899] 



NA TURE 



49« 



The report of the Council of the Scottish Meteorological 

 Society, presented at the general meeting of the Society yester- 

 day, mentions, among other matters, that the observations at 

 the two observatories on Ben Nevis are now ready to go to 

 press, down to December 1896, together with a general dis- 

 cussion of the results, and several other discussions of separate 

 important inquiries raised by the observations. A paper on 

 the meteorology of Ben Nevis, accompanying the hourly ob- 

 servations, was read by Dr. Buchan at the meeting of the Royal 

 Society of Edinburgh on March 6. Among the papers in the 

 number of the Society's Journal to be published during the 

 coming summer will he a discussion of the annual rainfall of 

 Scotland from the beginning of the century to 1S98, with tables 

 giving the annual amounts at many stations from which long- 

 continued observations are available. Another paper will be a 

 discussion of the observations on fog, made at the Scottish 

 lighthouses for the ten years from 1889 to 189S. The heavy 

 and tedious work of charting on daily maps of Scotland the 

 rainfall at 120 stations, the fog at the lighthouses, the storms of 

 wind reported at the lighthouses as having actually "'occurred, 

 along with the phenomena of weather noted at the Society's 

 stations, proceeds apace, and already about a year and a half of 

 this work may be regarded as completed. This means the con- 

 struction of 487 maps, specimens of which were shown to the 

 meeting. Grateful reference is made to the gift of 500/. by Mr. 

 J. Mackay Bernard, of Kippenross, for the high- and low-level 

 observatories at Ben Nevis. As the result of this patriotic 

 beneficence, the work of the two observatories is still being 

 carried on by the directors. 



The death of Mr. Jeremiah Head, on March 10, deprives the 

 engineering profession of one who has played an important part 

 in mechanical science during the middle and latter part of this 

 century. From an obituary notice in the Times, we learn that 

 Mr. Head was born at Ipswich in 1835, being a descendant of 

 an old Quaker family, and was apprenticed in 1854 to Robert 

 Stephenson at Newcastle-on-Tyne. During the term of liis in- 

 dentures he so distinguished himself that when out of his time 

 he was taken on the designing staft of the great civil engineer. 

 In the year 1864 Mr. Head became a partner in a business for 

 the manufacture of iron plates, and after spending twenty years 

 in it, the works were sold to another firm, and Mr. Head be- 

 came a consulting engineer. With his son he did some notable 

 work during the last few years in bringing before the notice of 

 British steelmakers some of the more important advances that 

 have been made in America in the manufacture of iron and steel. 

 In 1896 he read a paper before the Institution of Civil En- 

 gineers on the American and English methods of making steel 

 plates ; and so lately as last month he and Mr. A. Head con- 

 tributed a joint paper to the same institution on the " Lake 

 Superior Iron Ores."' These two papers were a revelation to a 

 large number of people in this country, who had not realised 

 how rapidly the Americans were forging ahead in the production 

 of iron and steel, and the many improvements that had been 

 introduced into Transatlantic practice. Mr. Head was presi- 

 dent of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers during the 

 years 1S85-86, when the institution was passing through a very 

 critical period of its existence. In 1893 he was president of the 

 Mechanical Science Section of the British Association. He was 

 a member of numerous technical and scientific societies, includ- 

 ing the Institution of Civil Engineers. He founded the Cleve- 

 land Institution of Mining Engineers in the early sixties. 

 Although this is but a local .society, it has had great influence 

 on the iron and steel industry of the kingdom, and has been in- 

 strumental in causing the Cleveland district to be considered the 

 centre of the British iron industry. 

 NO. 1534, VOL. 59] 



Al;ai.\ the world's record for kiteflying for scientific purposes 

 has been broken at the Blue Hill Observatory, Massachusetts. 

 On February 21 an altitude of 12,440 feet was reached by a 

 recording instrument attached to a string of tandem kites. This 

 is 366 feet higher than the preceding best record. The flight 

 was begun at 3.40 p.m., the temperature at the surface being 40' 

 and the wind seventeen miles an hour. At the highest point 

 the temperature was 12° and the wind velocity fifty miles ar» 

 hour. Steel wire was used as a flying line, and the kites, four 

 in number, were of an improved Hargreave pattern, with curved 

 surfaces, made after the pattern of soaring birds' wings. The 

 upper kite carried an aluminum instrument weighing four 

 pounds, which recorded graphically temperature, wind velocity,, 

 humidity, and atmospheric pressure. The combined kites hact 

 an area of 205 square feet and weighed twenty-six pounds, while 

 the weight of the wire was seventy-six pounds. The upper kite 

 remained above two miles for about three hours. 



CHARC0.4L has been used for many years in Australia to 

 precipitate gold on a large scale from its solution as chloride, 

 and it is doubtless this circumstance which has led to it.s 

 employment in Victoria to precipitate gold from cyanide 

 solutions. In a paper by Mr. J. I. Lowles, read at the meeting 

 of the Institution of Mining and Metallurgy on March 15, the 

 details and results of the process are given, from which it 

 appears that the expense and inconvenience are far greater tharj 

 in zinc or electrolytic precipitation. At a typical cyanide mill in. 

 Victoria, lo.oco lbs. of charcoal contained in 198 tubs are \n 

 constant use to precipitate 700 ozs. of gold per month. T» 

 recover the gold the charcoal is burnt, and the ash melted with 

 borax in crticibles. In the course of the month about 8 cwt. of 

 ash is melted with 16 cwt. of borax, the total cost being over 

 Ij-. td. per oz. of bullion 900 fine, exclusive of the waste of 

 cyanide which occurs as the solution passes through the char- 

 coal. The chemical interaction involved in the precipitation is 

 not understood. 



Dr. Alexander Agassiz's munificent gifts of natural' 

 history collections to the Museum of Comparative Zoology of 

 Harvard University have already been mentioned in these 

 columns. In the annual report of President Eliot an extract is 

 given from the records of the Corporation of the University, in 

 which the Corporation specify the gifts and express gratitude 

 for them. It appears from this that Dr. Agassiz has never 

 received any salary for his services to the museum in various 

 capacities .since i860. Between September i, 1871, and 

 September i, 1897, he expended for the benefit of the museum 

 from his private means, without making any communication on 

 the subject to the President and Fellows, over seven hundred and 

 fifty thousand dollars, including his expenditures on objects now 

 formally transferred to the Corporation, beside contributing 

 about fifty thousand dollars to other university objects in gifts 

 known at the time to the President and Fellows. Dr. Agassiz 

 has thus shown, by devoted service and generous benefactions, 

 his deep concern for the welfare of the museum in which his 

 distinguished father took so great an interest. 



The last Bollettino (vol. iv. No. 7) of the Italian Seismo- 

 logical Society contains a valuable study, by Dr. A. Cancani, 

 of the Adriatic earthquake of September 21, 1897. This was 

 by far the strongest earthquake felt in Italy during that year, its 

 disturbed area containing about 235,500 sq. km. The origin, 

 as shown by the isoseismal lines and the observed directions of 

 the shock, lay beneath the -Adriatic, about 20 km. from the 

 coast between Pesaro and Ancona. At least two distinct kinds 

 of undulations were perceptible, even without the aid of instru- 

 ments — namely, rapid vibrations with a period of from i to 5 a 



