JuLy 17, r902} 
NA TORE 
py, 
walks rounda field and successively plants his staff upright 
where a change in the directions of the boundary occurs ; 
at each point the observer at the plane table rules the 
direction line and marks the distance, repeating the 
operation for each successive point, so that the survey of 
the field is made during the time taken by the staff man 
in walking round the field and making the necessary halts 
at each point for the observation to be recorded. The 
scale and view photographed through the plane table 
instrument is shown in Fig. 3. 
The same optical principle has also been employed by 
Sir Howard Grubb in the construction of a level to be 
used in making rapid estimates of gradients in road 
making and laying out property. 
The observer sees at the same instant a fiducial mark, 
the bubble of the level, and an arc marked with degrees 
projected on to the field of view. 
The excellent optical device has also been utilised in 
the construction of a prismatic compass and a clinometer. 
M. HERVE FAYE. 
LL who have taken any interest in the advance of 
science, more particularly in the direction of astro- 
nomy and meteorology, will hear with regret of the death 
of M. Hervé Faye, which sad event was announced last 
week. A long course of scientific industry has marked 
his career, and a great distance seems to separate the 
workers of to-day from the epoch when Faye and many 
others, whose names are now but a matter of history, 
laboured strenuously and successfully to make the paths 
for their successors more easy and of more rapid attain- 
ment. Nearly sixty years have passed since M. Faye 
first came prominently before the world as the discoverer 
of a comet, to which his name has always been attached, 
and it will serve to make us appreciate the advance ac- 
complished in one lifetime if we recall the fact that this was 
the first elliptic comet the period of which was determined 
by calculation alone, without any assistance drawn from 
observations made at previous returns. Faye, at that 
time an assistant in the Paris Observatory, recognised 
the necessity of computing an elliptic orbit, but the credit 
of determining the first orbit of considerable eccentricity 
from a few days’ observations belongs to Goldschmidt, 
who was stimulated to the task by Gauss. Then the 
information and the methods of the Zheoria Motus had 
not filtered through a score of text-books and come into 
the hands of numberless computers, whose deftness of 
calculation had been whetted by the discovery of 
hundreds of asteroids, the orbits of which stood in need 
of determination. 
But it will be rather on his philosophical writings | 
than his scientific observations that the reputation of 
Faye will rest and be honoured by his countrymen. 
It | 
may be that to some of his theories a general assent has | 
not been given, and that in some cases later discoveries 
have modified the views the distinguished physicist 
expressed, but no doubt will be entertained concerning 
the clearness and ability with which those views have | 
been uttered, or of the influence they have had on 
French thought. Ever since the time that Laplace in a 
few pregnant sentences sketched the plan on which the 
solar system might have been constructed, the subject 
has been a favourite speculation among French physicists. 
M. Faye has not been able to resist the temptation to 
attack this subject, and though, like all attempts at | 
universe. construction, the scheme of M. Faye fails to 
meet all the difficulties which beset the problem, yet it 
is a most suggestive contribution to the subject, and 
should prove an incentive to further inquiry. In some 
respects ‘this cosmogonic theory contrasts very favour- 
ably with that of Laplace, and in others, as was natural, 
it falls behind that of his great predecessor ; but this is 
NO. 1707, VOL. 66] 
not the place to enter into any details or criticisms of the 
argument developed. In recalling, however, the services 
which M. Faye rendered, one would not willingly for- 
get this finished essay (“Sur ?Origine du Monde”), in 
which is given, with much that is suggestive, a lucid 
explanation of the state of our knowledge of the solar 
and stellar systems. 
Similarly, it would be out of place to discuss here the 
views he expressed on the constitution of the sun, the 
causes of sun-spots, the behaviour of solar prominences or 
the chemistry of the sun generally. All these are sub- 
jects that fell under Faye’s notice and which he treated 
broadly and philosophically, but necessarily without the 
facts and knowledge that later observations have brought 
to light. In cosmical physics and chemistry he was to 
a great extent a pioneer, and if his theories are in some 
cases for this reason insufficiently supported by exact 
observation, they are generally characterised by a 
breadth of view and thoroughness of conception that 
contrasts favourably with contemporary opinion. In the 
discussion of problems connected with cosmical meteoro- 
logy, or with the motions of our own atmosphere, he was, 
perhaps not so happy, and his writings on cyclonic 
motions, the laws of storms, the behaviour of tornadoes, 
and the exceptional phenomena which we occasionally 
experience will probably be soon forgotten. Not so, how- 
ever, with such works as the “Cours d’Astronomie 
nautique” and other mathematical books with which he 
has enriched French literature, and which are models of 
arrangement and of clearness of expression. 
One could with difficulty recall the numerous services 
which M. Faye rendered to his Government or the 
acknowledgments that he received from foreign scien- 
tific bodies. He was, of course, Membre de l'Institut 
and besides a seat at the Bureau des Longitudes 
which he had occupied since 1862, in succession to Biot, - 
he was called by Marshal MacMahon to fill in his 
Cabinet the office of Minister of Instruction, at a time 
when it was thought not impossible that M. Faye might 
have become Director of the Paris Observatory in suc- 
cession to Le Verrier. He was elected a Foreign Asso- 
ciate ofthe Royal Astronomical Society so long ago as 
1848, while Belgium, Venice, the United States of 
America enrolled him among the members of their 
scientific societies. Full of years and distinction he is 
removed from us, and with him another link that con- 
nects the science of to-day with the science of the past. 
W. E. P. 
NOTES. 
THE new botanical laboratories of the Chelsea Physic 
Garden are to be opened by Earl Cadogan at a garden 
party there on Friday, July 25. 
A REuTER telegram from Kronstadt in yesterday’s 7zmes 
reports that on July 14 the Italian cruiser Car/o Alberto received, 
for the first time, messages by wireless telegraphy from the 
Poldhu station in Cornwall. These are the first experiments in 
wireless telegraphy over a distance of 1600 English miles in a 
straight line by land, and the results are said to have been most 
successful, the messages received having been very distinct. 
Amonc the Civil List Pensions announced in a Parliamentary 
Paper just issued are the following :—Mr. W. H. Hudson, in 
recognition of the originality of his writings on natural history, 
150/.; the Rev. Dr. John Kerr, F.R.S., in recognition of his 
valuable discoveries in physical science, 1007; Mrs. S. C. 
Tones, in recognition of the services rendered by her late 
husband, Principal John Viriamu Jones, to the cause of higher 
education in Wales, 757. ; and Mr. H. Ling Roth in considera- 
tion of his services to anthropology, 70/. 
