November 12, 190S] 



NA TURE 



37 



It is in Anglesey, where Sir Norman Lockyer observed 

 a tendency in the monuments to ante-date the solstice, so 

 to speai<, that we find definite arrangements of fairs con- 

 firming his findings. 



Information on the point, from the monuments and the 

 fairs or festivals, is as yet incomplete. I am only trying 

 to coordinate some of it. .A court used to be held every 

 three weeks in the parish of Llangeinor, Glam. The 

 Roman notice of the Comitia extended over three market- 

 days. Banns must be published on three Sundays. 



Concerning the winter solstice celebrations, one is re- 

 minded of the Boy Bishop of Salisbury, a choir-boy elected 

 as bishop on St. Nicholas' Day, December 6, who was 

 allowed to bear the title until Holy Innocents' Day, 

 December 28, just three weeks. The Christmas festivities 

 used to be continued in Pembrokeshire for three weeks. 

 The Government in the time of Charles I. prohibited 

 the playing of cards, &c., at Gray's Inn during the 

 year, " except on the twenty days of Christmas holidays 

 only." 



I cannot help thinking that a three weeks' interval is 

 provided for in the orientation of some churches. As a 

 rule, the older churches are oriented to May or November ; 

 then come churches oriented to the equinox. I find N. 76° 

 or 77° E. and N. 80° or 8i° E. to be rather common 

 orientations. 



Since writing the foregoing, I have looked up some 

 Welsh calendar lore. Provision seems to have been made 

 for the various three-weeks' intervals suggested by the 

 fairs. There appear to have been four Lents, as they mav 

 be called. The source of my information is Dr. 

 Gwenogvryn Evans's report on a Peniarth MS., which 

 he dates " after 1484 " (" Report on Welsh MSS.," vol. i., 

 pp. 406-7). Dr. Evans gives only the beginning of each 

 item in the MS. 



There was a " pask bychan," little Easter, connected 

 with the Feast of St. Hilary, January 13, which is just 

 three weeks before the ^'ebruary festival of the May-year, 

 February 4. January 13 is also St. Elian's Day, and at 

 I.lanelian, Anglesey, the Gwyl Mabsant, or patronal wake, 

 used to be prolonged for three weeks. 



Then there was the " pask " (Easter) proper. Mention 

 is also made of the " pask kynharaf, " the earliest Easter, 

 though the report on the point is tantalisingly brief. As 

 Easter proper ends the ecclesiastical year, the " earliest 

 Easter " may very well be connected with the August 

 festival of the May-year, August 8, as suggested by the 

 fairs. 



Then comes the " grawys ayaf, " winter quadragesima. 

 It is connected somehow with the Feast of St. Linus, and 

 that is all I can gather from the report. St. Linus' Day 

 is Noveniljer 26. Though the word " grawys " is a 

 shortening of "quadragesima," perhaps it is here applied 

 to the shorter interval of .Advent. It certainly corresponds 

 with the latter. It is worth noting, however, that 

 J.nnuary 13 is some forty days from the beginning of the 

 winter "grawys." 



Thus we have three " nasks " or Easters mentioned, and 

 the word " grawys " used twice. I suspect that there were 

 four of each, corresponding with the four seasons of the 

 year, and the four Gorscdds of the Bards. 



JoiiN' Griffith. 



Women and the Chemical Society. 



Wk venture to ask for the hospit.dity of your columns 

 in order to make a statement of some importance in view 

 of the announcement made by the president of the Chemical 

 Society of the large majority of the fellows who are in 

 favour of the admission of women to the society (Proc. 

 Chem. Soc, iqo8). 



Four years ago a memorial was presented to the council 

 of the Chemical Society praying for the admission of 

 woinon to_ the fellowship of the society. This memorial 

 bore the signatures of nineteen women, all of whom were 

 lecturers or demonstrators in chemistrv in university 

 colleges or actively engaged in original cliemical invcstiga- 

 NO. 2037, VOL. 79] 



tions. The council at that time was unable to take any 

 steps in the matter, but promised that the memorial should 

 not be lost sight of in any further action that might be 

 taken (Proc. Chem. Soc, 1905, xxi., 103). 



The question having been raised again by the presenta- 

 tion of a petition signed by 312 fellows in June last, we 

 communicated in July with our co-signatories of the 1904 

 memorial, and with other women of equal repute as 

 chemists, in order to ascertain how many women at the 

 present time desire the privileges afforded by fellowship 

 of the Chemical Society. 



We have received replies from twenty-eight women, all 

 of whom are of similar standing and possess similar 

 qualifications to those of the original signatories, express- 

 ing their interest in the present movement and their inten- 

 tion of at once becoming candidates for admission to the 

 fellowship of the Chemical Society if the council should 

 reach a favourable decision in this matter. 



From rumours that have reached us, there appears to 

 be some uncertainty in the minds of some fellows of the 

 society as to the number of w^omen who are prepared to 

 avail themselves of the first opportunity of seeking the 

 fellowship, and we hope that the publication of the above 

 statement will remove all misunderstanding on this point. 



Ida Smedley. 



M. A. WlIITELEY. 



November 9. 



Mercury Bubbles. 



I REME.viBER Seeing mercury bubbles, like those described 

 by Mr. J. G. Ernest Wright in Nature of November 5 

 (p. 8), sixty years ago, when I was a junior student at 

 the Royal College of Chemistry under Hofmann. In the 

 basement laboratory was a tap delivering water under 

 considerable pressure from a cistern on the roof, and it 

 was a favourite experiment to take a basin half full of 

 mercury and water and to turn the tap suddenly on it. 

 The rush of water carried down air into the mercury, and 

 great bubbles of the metal rose, floating on the surface 

 of the water. I do not remember seeing bubbles as large 

 as 22 mm. in diameter, but frequently they were as large 

 as ordinary marbles. 



I cannot recall any publication of the phenomenon, but 

 there must be many chemists living who can corroborate 

 what I have described. William Crookes. 



November Meteors. 



Tii.1T memorable and suggestive epoch, the middle of 

 November, has again arrived. At midnight the well-known 

 stars in the " Sickle of Leo " exhibit themselves in the 

 east and suggest meteors galore to the expectant observer. 

 The conditions are not favourable this vear, for the parent 

 comet returned in 1899, and must now, with the denser 

 region of its meteoric swarm, be at an immense distance 

 froin the earth. The probability is, therefore, that we 

 shall only encounter a tenuous part of the stream, and that 

 a few straggling Leonids will illumine our skies on the 

 nights following November 14 and 15, but the meteors 

 may be much more numerous than expected, as they have 

 been in certain previous years. 



The moon will be near her east quarter, and situated 

 in the same region of sky as the radiant at the important 

 lime, so that her light will offer some impediment in 

 regard to the fainter meteors. 



It will be desirable to maintain a watch of the sky 

 on the mornings of November 15 and 16, and to record, not 

 only the number of meteors visible, but the apparent paths 

 of the brighter ones. An important end is served by 

 securing duplicate observations of individual objects, and 

 thus enabling their real paths in the atmosphere to be 

 computed. Apart from this the annual observation of 

 a meteoric .shower, whether rich or feeble, is necessarv 

 in learning its history, for even negative results concerning 

 its return may be really valuable, though the spectacular 

 effects are disappointing in the extreme. With particul.ir 

 regard to the Leonids they are never wholly absent, bein<' 



