3°4 



NA TURE 



{July 27, 1882 



long, bow-shaped spurs, each of which secretes a drop of 

 honey (Fig. 9). The carpels are also reduced to five, the 

 regularity of number being itself a common mark of 

 advance in organisation. Various columbines accord- 

 ingly range from red to purple, and dark blue. Our 

 English species, A. vulgaris, is blue or dull purple, though 

 it readily reverts to white or red in cultivated varieties. 

 Even the columbine, however, though so highly special- 

 ised, is not bilaterally but circularly symmetrical. This 

 last and highest mode of adaptation to insect visits is found 

 in larkspur (Delphinium ajacis), and still more developed 

 in the curious monkshood (Aconitum napellus), Fig. 10. 

 Now larkspur is usually blue, though white or red blos- 

 soms sometimes occur by reversion ; while monkshood is 

 one of the deepest blue flowers we possess. Both show 

 very high marks of special adaptation ; for besides their 

 bilateral form, Delphinium has the number of carpels 

 reduced to one, the calyx coloured and deeply spurred, 

 and three of the petals abortive ; while Aconitum has 

 the carpels reduced to three and partially united into a 

 compound ovary, the upper sepals altered into a curious 

 coloured hood or helmet, and the petals considerbly 

 modified. All these very complex arrangements are 

 definitely correlated with the visits of insects, for the two 

 highly abnormal petals under the helmet of the monks- 

 hood (Fig. 1 1 ) produce honey, as do also the two long 

 petals within the spur of the larkspur. Both flowers are also 

 specially adapted to the very highest class of insect visitors. 

 Aco/iitum is chiefly fertilised by bees ; and Sir John 

 Lubbock observes that " A nthopliora pilipes and Bonibus 

 hortorum are the only two North European insects which 

 have a proboscis long enough to reach to the end of the 

 spur of Delphinium datum. A. pilipes, however, is a 

 spring insect, and has already disappeared, before the 

 Delphinium comes into flower, so that it appears to 

 depend for its fertilisation entirely on Bombus hortorum." 

 ( To be continued.) 



FREDERIC KASTNER 



FREDERIC KASTNER, who is known to the scien- 

 tific world as the inventor of the Pyrophone, has 

 recently died, as we announced at the time, at the early age 

 of thirty years. He was the son of an Alsacian composer 

 of some merit, Georges Kastner, and was himself an ac- 

 complished musician. Educated partly at Paris and partly 

 at Strasburg, he imbibed a love of science, and at the early 

 age of fourteen years was already assisting his teachers in 

 the chemical laboratory. When seventeen years of age he 

 invented and patented a novel form of electromotor, in 

 which a series of electro-magnets were caused to act in 

 succession upon a rotating arbor. After the war of 

 1870-71, in which he was driven from Strasburg, he de- 

 voted himself to studying the properties of musical 

 flames. The discovery of Higgins in 1777, that a hydro- 

 gen flame burning within the lower end of an open glass 

 tube could set up a musical note, had been the starting 

 point of a number of hitherto barren attempts by Schaff- 

 gotsch and others. Without knowing anything of the 

 experiments of Schaffgotsch, Barrett, or Tyndall, young 

 Kastner set to work to experiment, with the deter- 

 mination to construct a musical instrument on this 

 principle. For two years he worked at the sub- 

 ject, endeavouring to temper the harsh tones of the 

 flames and to produce a purity and constancy in their 

 notes. He tried tubes of different sizes and forms. He 

 varied the form of the gas jet, and essayed to introduce 

 two or more jets into one tube. At last, in 1871, he dis- 

 covered that when he employed two flames he could 

 control their note at will, being silent when both were 

 close together, but producing sound when they were 

 separated. This phenomenon, which Kastner called the 

 interference of flames, was the real starting-point of 

 Kastner's Pyrophone or Flame-Organ, which he patented 



in 1873. This organ had for its pipes glass tubes of 

 different lengths, two hydrogen flames burning in each at 

 the proper height. A very simple lever-arrangemeat 

 served to separate the flames at will. In this form the 

 instrument was presented to the Academic des Sciences 

 at Paris, and publicly exhibited. Two subsequent improve- 

 ments followed. A circle of small jets of common coal gas 

 was found to answer quite as well as the two hydrogen jets, 

 the circle being constructed so that by a simple mecha- 

 nical contrivance it could be increased or diminished in 

 size, thus separating or reuniting the flames at will. The 

 second improvement was the application of electric cur- 

 rents and an electromagnetic apparatus enabling the flame- 

 organ to be played at a distance. The first instrument 

 of this kind constructed by Kastner was in the form of a 

 singing-lustre hung from the chandelier in his mother's 

 house. The pyrophone was shown at the Royal Institu- 

 tion in January, 1875, and at the Society of Arts in the 

 succeeding month. It was also shown at the Loan Col- 

 lection of Scientific apparatus at South Kensington in 

 1S76, and at the Paris Exhibition in 1878. In 1876, 

 moreover, an account of the instrument and of the 

 researches which led to its construction was published by 

 Kastner under the title of " Flammes Chantantes." The 

 strange, weird tones produced by the instrument attracted 

 the notice of musicians. Gounod sought to introduce the 

 pyrophone into his opera of "Jeanne d'Arc," and Kcene- 

 mann at Baden Baden, in 1879, actually introduced the 

 instrument on one occasion. A decline, however, seized 

 the young inventor, whose strength for some years ebbed 

 slowly away, and he died all too soon to see his invention 

 fairly recognised by the public. 



THE NEW AFRICAN EXPEDITION 

 TT is now understood to be quite settled that a new 

 •!■ African exploring expedition will start next year. 

 The Royal Geographical Society have, as might have 

 been expected, taken the opportunity of Mr. Joseph 

 Thomson's return from the completion of his engagement 

 to the Sultan of Zanzibar to obtain his services as leader, 

 and it is certain that no bettter selection could have been 

 made. 



Mr. Thomson will leave England in the Spring of 1883, 

 and proceed to Zanzibar to organise the expedition. 

 From Mombas, a port on the East African coast, to the 

 north of Zanzibar, he will direct his course straight to 

 Kilimandjaro, and do his best to explore the snowy 

 ranges ot this celebrated mountain, which but one Euro- 

 pean has as yet ever reached. Passing across the water- 

 parting he will then descend through an entirely unknown 

 country to the eastern shore of Lake Victoria Nyanza, 

 and return to the coast by a more northern route, in 

 the course of which it is hoped he may be able to visit 

 Lake Baringo and Mount Kenia — another peak known 

 to run far above the snow-level, but concerning which 

 further details would be very desirable. 



As a mere geographical expedition it will be thus seen 

 that the proposed route will be one of great interest, em- 

 bracing, as it does, the transit through much utterly 

 unknown country, and the exploration of two mysterious 

 snow-crowned mountains, which, according to the usual 

 view of the conformation of the African Continent, appear 

 to be quite out of place in the districts in which they are 

 situated. But still more interesting problems will be 

 solved, if steps are taken to investigate the unknown 

 fauna and flora of Kilimandjaro and Kenia. The animal 

 and vegetable life of these mountains must be entirely 

 different from that of the plains by which they are sur- 

 rounded. They will prove to have been derived either 

 by modification from the adjacent lower districts, or by 

 immigration from the north — in any case, presenting 

 phenomena of first-rate importance to the student of 

 geographical distribution. 



