Nov. 22. Ifc'63j 



NATURE 



^1 



vital importance in the larger questions of meteorology. 

 It may be noted here that it was found necessary to take 

 the barometer, which had been for upwards of two years 

 exposed in the cairn to the severe weather of the Ben, to 

 Edinburgh to be thoroughly overhauled. It has since 

 been conveyed to its permanent place in the Observatory, 

 and is in excellent order. The full equipment of the 

 Observatory is delayed till next summer, when the 

 directors will have before them Mr. Buchan's report on 

 the instruments in use at the different European meteoro- 

 logical observatories he visited in the autumn, the work 

 of the Observatory during the next eight months, and the 

 results of Mr. Omond's investigations into different 

 methods of observing on Ben Nevis. 



NOTES 

 We deeply regret to announce the death of Sir William 

 Siemens on Monday night, at the age of sixty years. His death 

 is attributed to rupture of the heart, the result of a fall which he 

 sustained a fortnight since. We must defer to next weel< a 

 detailed notice of Sir William's career and work. 



If is proposed to acquire for the Cambridge Museum of 

 Comparative Anatomy the beautiful collection illustrating the 

 fauna of the Bay of Naples, which Dr. Dohrn exhibited at the 

 International Fisheries Exhibition. The cost will be only 80/., 

 little over that of the glass jars and the alcohol in which the 

 animals are preserved. 



Lieut. Wissmann, the African traveller, has just left Ham- 

 burg again on another three years' exploration in the Congo 

 region. He has undertaken to furnish the Royal Museum at 

 Berlin with all the natural history specimens which he may col- 

 lect during his travels, and has even been prevailed upon by 

 some anthropologists to take plaster casts of all the races he 

 may come in contact with. 



The Hidow of the late Mr. John Elder, of Glasgow, has 

 given the munificent sum of 12,500/. to the University of 

 Gla-gow for the purpose of endowing a chair of naval archi- 

 tecture. 



We regret to learn of the death of Mr. James Stewart, C.E., 

 who has done so much for the exploration of the region around 

 Lake Nyassa. At the time of his death he was engaged in the 

 fomiation of a road between Lakes Nyassa and Tanganyika. 



Dr. Hector, F.R.S., stated at a recent meeting of the Wel- 

 lington (N.Z.) Philosophical Society, that his two self-registering 

 barometers had shown a remarkable up and down vibration on 

 the revolving drum upon whiclr the record is marked on dates 

 correspondnig with those of the Sunda earthquake, and a severe 

 earthquake twenty-six hours afterwards, which was felt all along 

 the northern coast of Australia. This agitation was quite distinct 

 from those caused by ordinary atmospheric influences. He 

 attributed the curious tidal disturbances which occurred on the 

 New Zealand coast in August to those earthquakes. 



In a letter from Maranhao, Brazil, the writer states that from 

 August 31 up to September 6, the sun, until 7 a.m., could be 

 looked at without the least difficulty, its light being as soft and 

 pale as the moon's. 



At its meeting, October 27, Science states, the Philosophical 

 Society of Washington listened to a communication by Dr. T. N. 

 Gill on the ichthyological results of the voyage of the Albatross, 

 and to one by Prof. A. Graham Bell on fallacies concerning the 

 deaf. Dr. Gill described two anomalous fishes, one of which 

 required the institution of a new order. 



Herr Jacobson, who has spent four years on the north-west 

 coast of America in making ethnological collections for the Berlin 



Museum, has recently returned, and will sail for Europe. Dr. 

 Leonhard Stejneger has arrived in San Francisco, en route for 

 Washington. He has spent a year in Behring Island in the stady 

 of its fauna, and in collecting remains of the extinct Arctic 

 sea-cow. 



At the recent meeting of the American Association, Mr. C. V. 

 Riley read a paper on " Some recent discoveries in reference to 

 Phylloxera." Every new fact, he said, in the life-history of the 

 insects of this genus has an exceptional interest, because of its 

 bearing on the destructive grape-vine Phylloxera. The genus is 

 most largely represented in this country by a number of gall- 

 making specie, on our different hickories, and the full annual 

 life-cycle of none of them has hitherto been traced. The galls 

 are produced, for the most part, in early spring ; the 

 winged females issue therefrom in early summer ; and thence 

 forth, for the remainder of the year, the whereabouts of the 

 insect has been a mystery. The author has for several years 

 endeavoured to solve this mystery, and at last the stem-mother 

 (the founder of the gall), the winged agamic females (issue of the 

 stem-mother), the eggs (of two sizes) from these winged females, 

 the sexed individuals from these eggs, and the single impregnated 

 egg from the true female, have been traced in several species. 

 There is some evidence, though not yet absolutely conclusive, 

 that this impregnated egg hatches exceptionally the same season ; 

 al.o, of a summer root-inhabiting life. In Phylloxera spinosa, 

 which forms a large roseate somewhat spinous gall on Carya 

 alba, and which has been most closely studied, the impregnated 

 egg is laid in all sorts of crevices upon the twigs and bark and in 

 the old galls, in which last case ihey fall to the ground. Up to 

 this time they have remained unhatched, and will in all proba- 

 bility not hatch till next spring, thu^ corresponding to the 

 "winter egg" of the grape Phylloxera. 



The Times Calcutta Correspondent, in speaking of the possi- 

 bility of opening up Thibet to Indian trade by way of Darjeeling, 

 states that the Prime Minister of the Lama at Shigatze, said to 

 be a most intelligent man, sent recently to Darjeeling for a 

 supply of English books, photographic and other scientific 

 apparatus. 



The piercing of the Arlberg Tunnel was unexpectedly com- 

 pleted on Tuesday afternoon last week. In length the new tun- 

 nel ranks third among the great tunnels of the world, its length 

 being 10,270 metres, while the Mont Cenis Tunnel is 12,323, 

 and the St. Gothard 14,900 metres. But w-hile the excavation 

 of the first lasted no less than fourteen years and a half, and 

 that of the second about eight, the Arlberg Tunnel will have 

 taken, when vaulted and ready to receive the first locomotive, 

 not more than four years, thanks to the experience acquired 

 during the construction of the first two Alpine tunnels, and to 

 some innovations which constitute another important step in the 

 art of engineering required for the construction of large tunnels. 

 I'he engineers of the St. Gothard Tunnel introduced dynamite 

 for blowing up the rock, already pierced through by the boring 

 machine, which useful tool was naturally not disregarded in the 

 construction of the new tunnel. It was also only natural that 

 the Ferroux percussion boring machine, first introduced at the 

 Mont Cenis works, should be again employed, under the super- 

 vision of the inventor himself, who in the meantime had con- 

 siderably improved his powerful boring instrument ; but this 

 time the Brandt turning borer, fir,t employed at the works of the 

 St. Gothard, was allowed to compete with the Ferroux percus- 

 sion borer, the former being used in boring on the tunnel's 

 western side, and the latter on the eastern. To- this end, severa' 

 streams from the heights of the snow-covered Arlberg were 

 gathered on the eas'.ern side into reservoirs, from which 

 two turbines and three water columns were directed to the 

 machines, which compressed the air to five atmospheres, with 



