148 



NA TURE 



[Dec. 



out the character- in which the fossils agreed with, and those in 

 which they differed from, Bahvna, asserted that in those particular 

 respects the animal to which the remains belonged agreed with a 

 genus of whales which lie had just described under the name of 

 MacUayiiii, from a sjjecimen in the Australian Mu-eum in 

 Sydney. Perhaps Prof. Flower regards these vertebra; as not 

 those of a cetacean at all ; but if he agrees with the authorities 

 just named on that point, the case seems to resolve itself into 

 this, viz. either this «hale lived in Mesozoic times, or its remains 

 have come from some Tertiary formation. If the former, and 

 particularly if its age is, as regarded by Prof. Sedgwick and 

 Prof. Seeley, J\n'as-ic, Prof. Flower's hypothesis of theevohuion 

 of the Cetacea from the Ungnlates is hardly probable, when we 

 con-ider the known fads as to the development of that group 

 during the Tertiary period, even if we allow for whatever weiglit 

 Stereognathus may afford of an approach to an Ungulate type in 

 Jurassic times. If the latter, and these remains came originally 

 from some older Tertiary formition, it follows that such a for- 

 mation has, though no traces of it are now to be found, once 

 existed in the .area between Ely and the eastern watershed of the 

 Pennine, because the whole of the material of the clay in which the 

 remains were found is made up of the wreck of formations from 

 that area alone. Searles V. Wood 



Martlesham, near Woodbridge, December 6 



" Cosmic Dust " 



The report on Baron Nordenskjold's expedition to Greenland 

 this year, recently given in Nature, undoubtedly contains im- 

 portant results as to the physical geography of that country. Its 

 statements, of course, will require a more detailed explanation 

 than this preliminary report can give ; one statement especially, 

 on account of its significance, induces me to call the reader's 

 attention to a fact which it will be necessary to take into con- 

 sideration in discussing the question. 



The statement is contained in the following words at the end 

 of the article : — "I hope when this (viz. the dust found on the 

 inland ice) has been exhaustively analysed, to be able to furnish 

 fresh proofs in support of the theory that this deposit is, at all 

 events partly, of cosmic origin, and thereby contribute further 

 materials for the theory of the formation of the earth." 



The fact to which I have alluded is this : Next to the observa- 

 tions furnished by travelling over the inland ice, it appears to 

 me that an examination of the fresh and pure fragments of it 

 from the very interior of the country, which are pushed out in 

 the shape of icebergs, must give the best key to the solution of 

 the problem. We know that the mass of which the-e bergs are 

 fragments is formed of snow accumulated during hundreds of 

 years, and it has taken hundreds of years for the ice thus formed 

 in the central regions to travel to the seashore. Consequently 

 the dust which during the lapse of centuries has fallen upon the 

 surface of the glacier must have been mixed up with the snow, 

 and thereby spread over or embedded in the chief mass that 

 constitutes the bergs. 



As to my own observations, I have always found the chief 

 mass that constitutes the large bergs to exhibit the appearance of 

 perfectly pure ice, only permeated wiih thin air-bubbles, and the 

 earthy matters of the bergs distinctly confined to isolated dykes, 

 layers, conglomerates, or even to entire smaller bergs issuing 

 from certain fjords. But I confess that my attention never was 

 directed to a more minute investigation of the chief berg 

 ice, and still less to the problem here mentioned. I 

 do not remember to have seen anything mentioned by my 

 friends Steenstrup, Helland, and Hammer that could throw- 

 sufficient light upon this question. I therefore here present it to 

 your readers who are experienced in Arctic researches and may 

 feel inclined to communicate their ooinions upon it. 



Christiania, Norway, December 5 Henry Rink 



On the Incubation Period of Scientific Links 

 The length of the dormant period during which a certain class 

 of scientific discoveries has to remain unrecognised before they 

 are made available is a subject that may form an interesting 

 chapter in the hi^toi-y of science. I will cite one or two 

 examples, in one of which I am personally interested, as illus- 

 trating my meaning, particularly as T think they will enable me 

 to point out the cause of this strange anomaly at a time when so 

 much attention is being given to original research, and yet which 

 will leave the results of original research to lie dormant for 



years after they have been realised. As illustrating the fact that 

 most imi'ortant laws may remain for many years dormant, I have 

 but to cite the law of Avogadro, which remained unnoticed for 

 fifty years, until the investigations of Dumas proved it to be a 

 most important aid in chemical research. The law of Dulong 

 and Petit on the connection between the specific heat and the 

 atomic weight of the elements had to pass through a dormant 

 period of more than twenty years befr)re it was resuscitated by 

 the experiments of Regnault. More than forty years ago I 

 announced a new law connecting the physiological reactions of 

 inorganic substances with their isomorijhous relations. This 

 law, althougli founded on an extensive series of exrieriments, 

 and ince verified by the investigation of the action of the com- 

 pounds of more thnn forty of the elements, has up to the present 

 time remained entirely dormant, not having been noticed, as far as 

 I am aware, by any writer on physijlogy. A French chemist, 

 M. Rahuteau, has recently very cavalierly consigned it aux 

 inogagi-s till passt', apparently under the idea that it is a revival 

 of the hypothesis that connected the action of poisons with the 

 more or less acute angles of their crystals. Now, however, the 

 important part played by these inorganic substances as physio- 

 logical reairents is beginning to be recognised (see Ringer, 

 yoiirnal of Physiology, January and August, 1883 ; Brunton and 

 Cash, Proc. Koy. Soc, vol. xxxv.). 



The question presents itself as to what there is peculiar in 

 these laws which distinguishes them from those which find an 

 immediate recogniiiou by men of science. I think the distinc- 

 tion will be found in the fact that these hibernating laws gene- 

 rally form connecting links between twj branches of science 

 which had not, up to the time of the discovery of these laws, 

 been of much mutual assistance. The law of Avogadro, for 

 example, established a new link between chemistry and physics, 

 and for its application the chemist had to be familiar with the 

 manipulations required for the determination of the density of 

 vapours and gases, a subject scarcely alluded to in treatises 

 on chemistry at the beginning of the century. The law of 

 Dulong and Petit forms another linlc between chemistry and 

 physics, requiring for its verification methods which, at the time 

 of its discovery, were almost exclusively in the hands of phy- 

 sicists. As for the law connecting the physiological action of 

 a substance with its isomorphous relations, when it was first 

 published the distance between chemistry and physiology was 

 greater than that between physics and chemistry at the 

 time of the di-covery of Avogadro, and should the sub- 

 ject be already attracting the attention of physiologists, after 

 a latent period of but forty-four years, this fact affords 

 evidence that science is now advancing at a more rapid rate 

 than formerly. The question is an interesting one as to 

 the possibility of something being done to shorten the period 

 during which these linking laws remain unricognised. Offering, 

 as they generally do, important aids for the advancement of 

 science, it certainly is desirable that some means might be taken 

 to prevent their being shelved amongst les baggages dii passe, so 

 that at some future period the whole subject has to be gone over 

 dc novo. In the case of phy-iological discoveries, it certainly 

 would seem to be the duty of the Antivivisection Society to see 

 that the many experiments which had been )ierformed to verify 

 them were made available, so that a great deal of vivisection 

 might thus be avoided without the progress of science being 

 retarded. James Blake 



San Francisco, November 13 



Meteor 



This afternoon, at 5.27 p.m., I observed here a meteor of 

 great brilliancy, a note of which may be worth jiublishing. The 

 moon, within three days of being full, was shinmg unclouded, 

 and the western sky was still glowing with the fading tints of 

 another gorgeous cloud-glow, when a bright light caused me to 

 look up. It was due to a bright meteor a few degrees south of 

 and below the moon. Its path was about 20^ in length between 

 south-east and south, inclined at an angle, roughly speaking, of 

 10° to the horizon, its mean altitude being jiroliably 20°. Three 

 minutes later, at 5.30 p.m., I heard a low, distant, rumbling 

 sound, which was not improbably the report of its explosion. 



G. M. Whipple 



Kew Observatory, Richmond, Suri-ey, December II 



Physical Society, November 10 



Under the above heading in Nature of Nov. 15, p. 71, I 



notice it is stated that I have found the velocity of sound in air 



