November 7, 1907] 



NATURE 



meteorites, and also gives g^eneral notes on the history 

 of meteorites and collections of meteorites, especially 

 as retjards the aims of the latter. 



Prof. E. Cohen (.^nn. S. .African Museum, igo6, 

 vol. v., pp. 1-16, with 3 plates), describes the meteoric 

 stone of 305 lb. \\ hich was observed to fall on January 

 3, 1903, at the mission station of St. Mark's, in 

 Transkei, Cape Colony. The description of the micro- 

 scopical structure and chemical composition of this 

 stone was completed by Prof. C. Klein, another well- 

 known worker on meteorites, who also died recently 

 (1907). 



Mr. L. L. Fermor (Records Geol. -Survey India, 

 1907, vol. .XXXV., pp. 79-96, with 12 plates) collects 

 loffether information respecting' the circumstances of 

 the fall of various Indian meteorites, and gives brief 

 notes on their external characters. At greater length 

 libid., pp. 68-78, with 3 plates) he describes the fall of 

 stones near Dokachi, in Bengal, on October 22, 1903 ; 

 here, along a line six miles in length, twenty-four 

 fragments, with a total weight of 3838 grams, were 

 picked up. A list is given of seventy-one meteoritic 

 falls recorded in India since 1798; more records exist 

 in later years, and in the more thickly populated dis- 

 tricts, and latterly they have averaged one each vear. 

 .All, except three, of these Indian meteorites are com- 

 posed of stony material. 



Prof. O. C. Farrington (Field Columbian Museum, 

 Geol. Ser. , 1907, vol. iii., pp. 57-110) collects together 

 360 published analyses of 248 meteoric irons, tabulat- 

 ing them in different classes according to the structure 

 of the iron. It is then seen that there exists a close 

 relationship between chemical composition and struc- 

 ture. All irons with a hexahedral structure are very 

 uniform in composition (94-I2 per cent. Fe), whilst 

 in those with an octahedral structure the amount of 

 nickel increases with the fineness of the lamellae. In 

 the ataxite group, in which the structure is finely 

 granular to compact, there is more variation in com- 

 position. The average composition of all meteoric 

 irons is approximately Fe, 90; Ni, 9; Co, 0*9; Cu, 

 0-02 per cent. The same author also describes in 

 detail in the same journal the siderite of Rodeo, Mexico 

 (found 1852), the siderolite of South Bend, Indiana 

 (found 1893), and the aerolite of Shelburne, Ontario 

 (fell -August 13, 1904). 



The papers on meteorites noted above are but a few 

 selected at random from the manv that have been 

 recentlv published : except in details, one paper is, 

 however, more or less a repetition of another. 



L. J. S. 



NOTES. 



The president and council of the Royal Society have 

 recommended the following fellows for election as members 

 of the council for the ensuing year at the anniversary 

 meeting on November 30 : — President, Lord Rayleigh, 

 O.M. ; treasurer, Mr. A. B. Kempe ; secretaries. Prof. 

 J. Larmor, Sir .Archibald Geikie, K-C.B. ; foreign secre- 

 tary, Prof. J. R. Bradford; other memhers of council, 

 Dr. H. F. Baker, the Right Hon. A. J. Balfour, Sir 

 William Crookes, Mr. Francis Darwin, Sir George 

 Darwin, K.C.B., Prof. J. C. Ewart, Prof. D. Ferrier, Mr. 

 C. T. Haycock, Prof. S. J. Hickson, Prof. J. Joly, the 

 Hon. C. A. Parsons, Dr. A. Scott, Prof. A. C. Seward, 

 Prof. F. T. Trouton, Dr. A. D. Waller, Mr. W. \A'hitaker. 



The late Dr. Edward Sang's collection of MS. calcula- 

 tions in trigonometry and astronomy has been gifted to 

 the British nation by the Misses Sang, and the president 

 and council of the Royal Society of Edinburgh have been 

 appointed custodiers of the collection, with power to 



NO 1984. VOL. yy 



publish such parts as may be judged useful to the scien- 

 tific world. The society has also been given custody of 

 the duplicate electrotype plates of Dr. Sang's 1871 new 

 seven-place table of logarithms to 200,000, with power to 

 use them for reproducing new editions, or publishing ex- 

 tended tables of seven-place logarithms. At the meeting 

 of the society on November 4, the chairman, Dr. R. H. 

 Traquair, F.R.S., read a statement regarding Dr. Sang's 

 monumental work. The manuscript volumes number 

 forty-seven in all, the contents of thirty-two of which are 

 in transfer duplicate. Vols. i. to iii. contain the details of 

 the steps of the calculations on which the results contained 

 in the next thirty-six volumes are based. Vol. iv. con- 

 tains the logarithms, calculated to twenty-eight figures, of 

 the prime numbers up to 10,000, and a few beyond. Vols. 

 V. and vi. contain the logarithms to twenty-eight figures 

 of all numbers up to 20,000. From these the succeeding 

 thirty-two volumes are constructed, giving the logarithms 

 to fifteen places of all numbers from 100,000 to 370,000. 

 This colossal work must ever remain of the greatest value 

 to computers of logarithmic tables. It is a great national 

 possession. The other tables in the collection are trigono- 

 metrical and astronomical. Of special interest are the 

 tables of sines and tangents calculated according to the 

 centesimal division of the quadrant. It is hoped that ere 

 long some of these tables may be published in such a 

 form as to make them more immediately accessible to 

 computers. They are the foundation of Dr. Sang's pub- 

 lished book of seven-place logarithms to 200,000, un- 

 doubtedly the most perfect of its kind ever printed. The 

 complete account of the various tables will be printed in 

 the society's Proceedings, and other scientific bodies will 

 have their attention directed to the importance of the 

 collection now in the custody of the society. 



The Huxley memorial medal of the Royal -Anthropo- 

 logical Institute was presented to Prof. E. B. Tylor, 

 F.R.S., on Tuesday, November 5, in recognition of his 

 distinguished services to anthropology. On October 2 

 Prof. Tylor celebrated his seventy-fifth birthday, and the 

 anniversary was made the occasion of the presentation to 

 him of a volume of essays representative of British anthro- 

 pology. The current volume of the Journal of the Royal 

 -Anthropological Institute is dedicated to Prof. Tylor ; and 

 the presentation of the Huxley memorial medal is another 

 mark of the esteem in which he is held by anthropologists. 



Sir Oliver Lodge has accepted the invitation of the 

 council of the Faraday Society to succeed the late Sir 

 William Perkin as president of the society. 



On October 20 the Paris newspaper VEclair liberated 

 10,000 pilot balloons from a boat on the Seine. One of 

 these balloons was found at mid-day on October 21 at 

 Undermannlaani, near Kausala, which is on the railway 

 mid-way between Helsingfors and Wiborg, in Finland. 

 The distance is 1950 kilometres. The balloon was found 

 twenty hours after the start, and, assuming that it had 

 only just fallen, the average rate was nearly 100 kilo- 

 metres per hour. The lift of the balloons, including weight 

 of postcard, &c., was supposed to be about i gram, but 

 departures from this value must have been frequent, for 

 Mr. Charles J. P. Cave, who witnessed the ascents and 

 sends us these particulars of them, states that the rates of 

 ascent of different balloons varied greatly. The diameter 

 of the balloons was about 35 centimetres. The greatest 

 distance covered by a manned balloon is 1925 kilometres, 

 in the ascent of Count de la Vaulx from Vincennes on 

 October g, 1900. 



