33° 



NATURE 



[August 3, 1882 



in one room, and there should be no journeying to distant 

 galleries ; of course where a library is so small that all its books 

 can be stored in one room a great difficulty is avoided. Each 

 room being separate and all being built of fireproof material and 

 only communicating by a light iron gallery, which goes round 

 the central area, they are both quiet and fireproof. In each 

 room a row of reading tables will stand under the windows at 

 one end, and the remaining space will be covered with double 

 shelves, not more than yh feet high, with passages 3 feet or 3J 

 feet wide between. No ladders will thus be required, and the 

 high temperature will be avoided. Vet twenty-five volumes to 

 every square foot of flooring can be stored in this way, and 

 hence a room 40 feet X 40 feet will hold 40,000 volumes ; ten 

 such rooms on a floor give 400,000 volumes, and five storeys 

 high will hold 2,000,000. 



Mr. Clement L. "Wraggk has written to the Times 

 earnestly entreating all visitors to Ben Nevis to co-operate with 

 him and the Scottish Meteorological Society to prevent damage 

 to the instruments on the mountain. These are, of course, kept 

 under lock and key, and till lately all has gone well with them. 

 But on the morning of July 23 it was found that wanton mischief 

 had been done to the intermediate station at the Red Burn 

 Crossing, about 2700 feet above the sea. A hole had been 

 made in the thermometer box, the louvre forced off, and the 

 wet bulb thermometer forced from its screws, and broken. The 

 compass points had also been removed. It seems difficult to 

 account for such acts. Mr. Wragge's appeal to the British 

 public will not, we trust, be in vain. 



In connection with the forthcoming electro-technical exhi- 

 bition in Munich, the Bavarian Kunstgewerbe-Verein has 

 announced a prize competition for light-fittings (lustres, brackets, 

 candelabra, &c.) suitable for the electric light. The Edison 

 illumination, to be maintained by about So horse-power, will be 

 no way inferior in extent to that in Paris ; the restaurant-hall, 

 with garden, library, and reading room, one or two streets, 

 and the theatre, will be lit with 800 Edison lamps of various 

 strength, from S to 100 candles. Mr. Edison's plans for 

 centrally lighting up a whole city quarter with 14,000 lamps 

 of 170,000 total candle-power will be shown ; the system 

 is to be tried in New York. Schuckert, of Niirnberg, will, from 

 the roof of the crystal palace, light up the Frauenthurme with a 

 reflector lamp of 10,000 candle-power ; also the temporary theatre 

 with an upper light of 4000 candle-power; he will also exhiKit 

 several transportable electric lights for war purposes, railways, 

 &c. Special interest will attach to an effort to utilise the water- 

 power of the Hirschau, about three miles from the palace ; the 

 current will work a lift or thrashing machine in the palace by 

 day, and illuminate the garden and the Kbnigsplatz by night 

 (11 lamp; of 1000 candle-power each). The copper wire will 

 be 3 mm. thick. A provisional plan of the Exhibition is sup- 

 plied with the Eleclrotecktusche Zeiischrifi for July. 



The Council of University College, London, have accepted a 

 fund raised in memory of Miss Ellen Watson, a former student. 

 A Memorial Scholarship consistii g of the income of the fund is 

 open to students of either sex who display very marked merit in 

 applied mathematics. 



The Herald (N.Y.) correspondent with the party in search of 

 the lost crew of the Jeannettt has been impressed by the beauty 

 of the teeth of natives of Northern Siberia. He saw old men of 

 sixty and seventy with sets of teeth small and pearly white, 

 polished and healthy. Decay and suffering are unknown. A 

 physician of Yakutsk attributed this to the habits and the kind 

 of food eaten by the natives, and to a certain care taken by them 

 from childhood up. First, the natives do not touch sugar in any 

 form, for the simple reason that they cannot afford to buy it. 

 Secondly, they are in the habit of drinking daily large quantities 



of fermented sour milk summer and winter, which is antiscor- 

 butic, and is very beneficial in preserving the teeth. And lastly, 

 they have the habit of chewing a preparation of the resin of the 

 fir tree, a piece of which, tasting like tar, they masticate after 

 every meal, in order specially to clear the teeth and gums of 

 particles of food that may remain after meals. The gum or 

 resin is prepared and sold by all apothecaries in Siberia, and is 

 much used by Russian ladies. 



The International Committee of the Red Cross Society of 

 Geneva have recently offered a prize of 2000 francs for three 

 studies (to be complementary of each other), on the art of im 

 provising means of help for the wounded and sick ; the first to 

 relate to the production of means of treatment, the second to 

 means of transport, the third to the sudden providing of an 

 ambulance or a field-hospital. Papers to be sent in before 

 April 1, 1883. 



MM. Hachette and Co. will publish in a few weeks the 

 fir.-t volume of anew series — " Les Drames de la Science" — 

 entitled " La Pose du Premier Cable" ; the author is M. W. de 

 Fouvielle. 



From Signor Ricco's report on latitudes of groups of sun-spots 

 in 1SS1, it appears that 258 groups or formations of spots and 

 cavities were observed (82 presenting only cavities). The group? 

 of the northern hemisphere seemed to have longer duration ; 

 more of them reappeared after one or more rotations. They 

 were also richer in spots. The groups of latitudes under 15 

 were always displaced towards the equator, those of latitudes 

 over 15° towards the poles. The development of groups is more 

 rapid than their disappearance. The distribution was : — In the 

 northern hemisphere, 132 groups in a zone of 22° between +7' 

 and +29° with a maximum at + 20° ; in the southern, 126 groups 

 in a zone of 30 (therefore broader) between - 3 and -33°, 

 maximum at - 18°, more pronounced than in the other hemi- 

 sphere. The centres of the two bands of spots was at the same 

 latitude, lS°. The band without spots or cavities, between the 

 other, was about 10' in breadth, with centre at +2°. In the 

 northern hemisphere the greatest duration belonged to the groups 

 in the lowest latitudes (generally the groups richest in spots and 

 most durable are at the latitudes of maxima). 



For determination of high temperatures at the Imperial 

 Porcelain Manufactory in Berlin, pyroscopes of noble metal have 

 been long used with the best success ; the materials are pure 

 silver and gold, silver alloys with 20, 30, 40, 60, and 80 per 

 cent, of gold, and gold-platina alloys with 5, 10, or 15 per cent, 

 platina. Silver-platina alloys are objectionable, because at high 

 temperatures the silver is very volatile, so that the composition 

 changes. Also alloys of gold with more than 15 per cent. 

 platina are not used, because they do not suddenly melt down ; 

 but an alloy richer in gold separates out, while a skeleton 

 richer in platina remains, to melt at a higher temperature. 'For 

 the measurement with alloys, balls of 1 to 2 gr. weight, between 

 parchment paper, are hammered on the anvil to about the thick- 

 ness of a penny-piece ; the pieces are bent so that they can stand 

 upright, and placed in rows, arranged according to melting-point 

 in small cupels of clay, magnesia, or bone-ash, in such a way 

 that they can be seen from without, through a hole. For a new 

 experiment they have merely to be flattened out again, and put 

 into the same cupel. In this way temperatures from the melting- 

 heat of silver to nearly that of cast-steel can be determined 

 pretty exactly. 



We have received " Fragments of the Coarser Anatomy o< 

 Diurnal Lepidoptera," by Mr. Samuel II. Scudder, being an 

 account of dissections of caterpillars and chrysalids of butter- 

 flies ; it is issued partly with the view of calling attention to the 

 need of work on a subject which is very imperfectly known at 



