April 14, 1870} 
scarcely any intermission. For the week ending April 2nd the 
mean temperature at Blackheath was 37'2°, or about 8° below 
the average of the corresponding week in the last fifty years. 
From the reports for sixteen different stations in England, eight 
in Scotland, and one in Ireland, forwarded every week by 
Mr. Glaisher to the Gardener's Chronicle, it appears that the 
temperature was much lower in the South than in the North of 
England, or in Scotland. The lowest averages are given at 
Portsmouth and London (Blackheath); the highest for England 
at Liverpool, Salford, and Newcastle; while these latter are 
several degrees lower than the lowest mean in Scotland. The 
average temperature for that week in London was 7° lower 
than in Edinburgh, and 1r° lower than in Dublin. 
Mr. Symons’s ‘British Rainfall for 1869” contains an 
enormous mass of information respecting the distribution of the 
rainfall throughout the kingdom during last year, with other 
meteorological statistics. The extremes of rainfall during the 
year at the places of observation in England were 198:19 in. at 
the Stye, in Cumberland, and 20’o9in. at North Sunderland, 
while many places in the south-east of Scotland enjoy even a 
dryer climate, the fall at East Linton, Haddington, being only 
15°77in. So much injury is done to science by the publication 
of statistics based on incorrect data, that Mr. Symons’s 
“Rules for Rainfall Observers ”’ should be in the hands of every- 
one who possesses a rain-gauge. 
M. Bourtot, Professor of Mathematics in the Lyceum at 
Colmar, believes he has established the fact, contrary to the 
opinion of Arago, that during the Middle Ages the climate of 
Alsace was milder than at present. He traces a relation of 
chronological coincidence, if not of cause and effect, between the 
change of climate and the precession of the equinoxes. 
THE honour of knighthood has been conferred on Mr. Ronalds 
for his early researches in telegraphy. 
THE execution of the Faraday memorial has been committed 
to the well-known sculptor, Mr. Foley. 
PRoF, TYNDALL’s most recent contribution to the ‘‘ germ- 
theory” is contained in a letter to the Zzmes of the 7th instant. 
He has observed that the air breathed out of the lungs, especially 
at the close of a long voluntary exhalation, is ‘‘ visibly pure,” or 
produces, when passed across a strong beam of light, the familiar 
black smoke-like clouds caused by the entire absence of organic 
matter. He confirms the explanation given by many medical 
men, and especially by Prof. J. Lister, of Edinburgh, for the 
exclusion of air from fresh wounds, that the putrefaction of 
wounds is caused by the germination of the germs of organic life 
contained, under ordinary circumstances, in large numbers in the 
air. Ina reply to this letter in the Zies of yesterday, Dr. H. 
C. Bastian makes the startling assertion that, in conjunction with 
Dr. Frankland, he has met with living organisms in hermetically- 
sealed vessels, from which all air had been removed, and after 
the contained fluids had been raised to a very high tempera- 
ture. Some solutions containing organic matter and other 
ingredients were prepared in the following manner :—After a 
perfect vacuum, above the level of the fluid, had been 
procured in the glass vessels by means of Sprengel’s air- 
pump, the drawn-out necks of the flasks were closed by 
means of the blow-pipe flame. The airless flasks, con- 
taining then the fluid itself as the only possible germ-containing 
material, were submitted, in a suitable apparatus, by 
Professor Frankland, to a temperature varying from 148° 
C. to 152° C. for four hours, and yet, after having been 
placed under the influence of suitable conditions, in the 
course of a few weeks, living organisms—many of them 
altogether new and strange—were found in these fluids. These 
extremely important results are about to be communicated to 
the Royal Society. 
NA TORE 
ona 
THE Soirée of the Royal Microscopical Society to be held 
at King’s College on the 20th inst., seems likely to be supplied 
with a large number of objects of interest. Mr. Charles 
Stewart prints a descriptive catalogue of 100 microscopic 
objects selected to illustrate the Invertebrate sub-kingdom, to 
be exhibited on that occasion. 
In an article in the Artisan, for April, on the Influence of 
the Suez Canal on Trade with India, Sir Frederick Arrow 
states that at the present moment the influence of the Canal is 
heing felt in a decrease of the cost of fuel east of the Isthmus, 
which will certainly have a great effect on the cost of carriage, and 
therefore on the cost of laying down produce and goods. The 
existence of the route, he believes, will stimulate production, 
not only in India, but in the various countries which it brings 
into the family of commercial relations. 
ON the 12th of March, the Houwg/i, one of the largest of the 
packet-boats belonging to the Messageries Impériales, of 2,000 
tons burden and 500-horse power, entered the quarantine port of 
Frioul direct from the China seas, having traversed the Suez 
Canal without encountering the slightest obstacle. The cargo 
consisted of 1,300 bales of silk, 300 chests of tea, and other 
valuable freight, and there were in addition seventy passengers. 
WE learn from Mr. Worthington G. Smith, in reference to a 
recent report of the proceedings of the Woolhope Naturalists’ 
Field Club, that he has in preparation a Clavis Agaricinorum, 
which will be an analytical key to the genera and sub-genera of 
the British Agaricini ; designed to give an immediate clue to 
their proper generic and sub-generic position, and thus assist in 
their ultimate determination. 
Mr. BENTLEY announces for early publication, ‘‘Trayels in 
the Air,” by Mr. Glaisher and others, with numerous full-paged 
coloured lithographs and woodcuts. 
A NEW work is preparing for publication by Arthur Scott 
Donkin, M.D., Lecturer on Forensic Medicine to the Univer- 
sity of Durham, &c., being a history of the British Diatomaceze, 
with plates illustrative of each species. 
THE New York Technologist, a new magazine especially de- 
voted to engineering, manufacturing, and building, published 
in New York, describes a new contrivance for preventing 
people looking into a room, while light is not excluded. 
It consists of a number of glass rods arranged either ver- 
tically or horizontally, and secured together by appropriate 
frames, forming a series of cylindrical lenses which break up the 
light and throw it into every part of the room, thus producing a 
soft and diffused glow which is very beautiful and pleasant. 
The glass rods may be of any colour, and by an arrangement of 
the colours very beautiful effects can be produced. ‘The contri- 
vance is the invention of Mr. Demuth. 
THE Pharmaceutical Society offers a silver medal for the best 
Herbarium collected in any part of the United Kingdom between 
the Ist of May, 1870, and the Ist of June, 1871, to any associate, 
registered apprentice, or student of the society, not over thirty- 
one years of age. 
THE Photographic Art Fournal, No. 2, is a very good 
number. It contains four excellent illustrations: ‘‘ The Stirrup 
Cup,” from a painting by Verschur, exquisitely soft in tone, done 
by the Woodbury process; ‘‘ Netley Abbey,”’ by Mr. Edwards’s 
new process of printing in printing-ink in a common printing 
press, which seems to give exceedingly good results; ‘‘ The 
Muleteer’s Loye,” an example of Mr, Fruwirth’s phototype 
process, also pulled in a common printing press, from an electro- 
typed surface-block which was reduced from a woodcut by the 
sole action of light and chemical agents ; and ‘‘A Village Street 
in Switzerland,” apparently an ordinary silver-print. The com- 
parison of these photographs certainly gives the palm to the 
new processes, both as to distinctness and softness of tone. 
