no 



NATURE 



\yune 6, 1872 



fields with the sum of 100,000/., the interest of which, after his 

 death, is to be applied to the continuation of the investigations 

 which have been carried on for so many years at Rothamsted. 

 It is seldom that we have to record an act of so great munificence 

 directed in a channel calculated to bring about such important 

 results to the scientific department of agriculture. 



Prof. W.\tson, the indefatigable planet hunter of the Ann 

 Arbor Observatory, reports the discovery, on May 12, 1872, of 

 El new asteroid (No. I2i) of the eleventh magnitude. The 

 following observations are communicated by him to Harper s 

 Weekly .— 

 Ann Arbor. Mean Time. Right Ascension. Declination. 



May 12 14'' 13"' 42s 16I' 20™ 37-58' - 18° S3' 9'4" 



,, 13 Ii'ii3"'22'' 16'' 19'" 59-35'' -i8'52'46-2" 



Daily motion in right ascension, —43^; in declination, + 26'. 



Prof. Flower's lectures on tlie Comparative Anatomy 

 of the Organs of Digestion of the Mammalia lately delivered at 

 the Royal College of Surgeons of England are being published 

 with illustrations in the Medieal Times am/ Gazette. 



The last Swiney lecture of the present year will be delivered 

 on Saturday ne.xt, when the general subject of Science in relation 

 to Education will be considered. Tliis will terminate Dr. Cob- 

 bold's tenure of the Chair, which is only open to medical 

 graduates of the Edinburgh University. The collective attend- 

 ances for this series of si.Kty discourses will, we understand, have 

 registered a total of upwards of 15,000, a result which is grati- 

 fying to the friends of popular scientific instruction. 



Mr. Carruthers has printed his Ofiicial Report for 1871 of 

 the Department of Botany in the British Museum. In con- 

 sequence of the extent of the recent additions to the general 

 herbarium, additional cabinets have had to be incorporated, and 

 the old ones rearranged. The exhibition rooms have also been 

 rearranged, with a \iew of making them more instructive and 

 attractive to visitors. Several natural orders in the General and 

 British Herbaria have been rearranged. Among the more im- 

 portant additions to the General Herbarium are 1 7,000 species, 

 chiefly from Central Europe, Alsace, the Jura, the Lower Rhine, 

 Spain, Me.xico, and Labrador, being the herbarium of Auers- 

 wald, of Leipzig; 1,000 from Yucatan, collected by Dr. A. 

 Schott; upwards of 1,000 from Russia ; and upwards of 1,500 

 from Scandinavia, collected by Ahlberg. 



In a letter from General Otto Struve, director of the Palkowa 

 Observatory, and Astronomer Royal of Russia, to Prof. New- 

 comb, of the Washington Observatory, detailing the Russian 

 preparations for observing the forthcoming transit of Venus, and 

 printed in Harper s Weekly, he remarks that the inquiries into 

 the meteorological conditions of the stations selected have given, 

 on the whole, very satisfactoi7 results, particularly for the station 

 on the coast of the Pacific Ocean and in Eastern Siberia (85 

 per cent, of clear sky for December). In two only of the sta- 

 tions chosen, Taschkent and Astrabad, these conditions are not 

 sufficiently satisfactory. For this reason tlie observers designed 

 for Taschkent will probably go to a place about 100 miles west 

 of that town ; and instead of Astrabad it is proposed to take 

 either the island of Aschuradeh, in the Caspian Sea, or, if pos- 

 sible, to cross the Elburz Mountains, and establish observers at 

 Schahrech, in Persia (with nearly absolute certainty of clear sky). 

 The total number of Russian stations will be twenty-four, each 

 of them provided with only one instrument for the transit obser- 

 vation. These instruments are — three 4-inch heliometers, three 

 photo-heliographs, four 6-inch equatorials, and four 4- inch 

 equatorials, provided with filar micrometers and spectroscopic 

 apparatus, and ten 4-inch telescopes, designed merely for contact 

 observations. Each station will also be furnished with clocks, 

 chronometers, and the instruments necessary for exact determi- 



nation of time. The principal instruments have already been 

 ordered. Most of them will be rjady for use in the course of 

 the present or beginning of next year. For these instruments 

 the observers are also in a great part already selected. They 

 will all visit Palkowa for a certain time in 1873 to exercise them- 

 selves in the observations. The geographical positions of the 

 stations will not be determined by the transit observers ; but all 

 stations on which tlie transit has been successfully observed will 

 be carefully determined afterwartis by special expeditions of the 

 general staff or the navy. For this purpose a principal line of 

 telegraphic longitudes will probably be laid next year through all 

 Siberia to Nicolajevsk, with which line the other stations of that 

 part of Russia can easily be joined, either by telegraphic or 

 chronometric operations. With regard to photographic obser- 

 vations, Prof. Struve states that two observers, one at Vilna, 

 and Dr. Vogel at Bothkamp, in Holstein, have been perfectly 

 successful in taking instantaneous observations with dry plates. 



The Cambridge Natural Science Club has just issued its first 

 terminal report. The club was founded March 11, 1S72, by 

 some of the undergraduates and B. A. members of the university 

 for (Rule l) "The promotion of natural science by means of 

 friendly intercourse and mutual instruction." The number of 

 members was at first limited to nine, but at the third meeting the 

 number increased to twelve. The number is limited^in order 

 that the meetings may be held in the rooms of the members. 

 Meetings are held every Saturday evening during term, and 

 during eight weeks of the long vacation, in the rooms of the 

 members in rotation. The member in whose rooms the meeting 

 is held is president for the evening, and (Rule 7) "brings some 

 subject of scientific interest under the consideration of the mem- 

 bers in the form of a short paper, with such practical illustra- 

 tions as the subject admits of." The papers read during this 

 term have been the following; — By Mr. J. C. Saunders, B.A, 

 (Downing College), " On Conspicuous Movements in Plants;" 

 Mr. C. T. Whitwell, B.A., B.Sc. (London), Trinity, "On 

 Isothermals ;" Mr. C. J. F. Yule (St. John's), "On the 

 Anatomy of Pyrosoma ;" Mr. H. M. Martin, M. B., B.Sc. 

 (London) Christ's, "On the Modes of Reproduction of 

 Animals and Plants;" Mr. A. Liversedge (Christ's) "On Super- 

 saturated Saline Solutions ;" Mr. J. E. H. Gordon (Caius), "On 

 Submarine Telegraphy;" Mr. P. H. Carpenter (Trinity), "On 

 the History of the Abbeville Jaw." 



A BOTANICAL and geological excursion class has been com- 

 menced in connection with the St. Thomas's Church Schools 

 Birmingham. President, Rev. T. D. Halstead, rector ; secre- 

 tary, Mr. Miller (brother of the late celebrated chemist) ; con- 

 ductor, Mr. John Turner, F.M.S. The class consists of twenty- 

 five members, most of whom have attended science classes 

 during the winter, and recently competed in the examinations of 

 the Science and Art Department. The class meets every Satur- 

 day afternoon. 



We learn from the British MeJieal Journal that a committee, 

 consisting of Profs. Bamberger, Billroth, Briicke, Duchek, and 

 SchrotT, has been appointed to select candidates to be invited to 

 fill the chair of Pathological Chemistry at the University of 

 Vienna. The names of Iloppe-Seyler (lately appointed to the 

 University of Str,asburg), Kiihne (of Heidelljerg), and Liebreich 

 (of Berlin), are mentioned in connection with the post. The 

 establishment of a professorship of Hygiene in the University is 

 under discussion ; and there appears to be a general agreement 

 among the professors in the University as to the necessity oi 

 having such a chair instituted with as little delay as possible. 



A FAIRLY perfect human skeleton has been discovered by Dr. 

 Revi^re in the caverns of Baousse-Rousse, near Menton, on 

 March 26, and a short paper on this interesting find was read to 

 the Academy of Sciences at a recent sitting. 



