A-ov. II, 1886] 



NA TURE 



35 



Camelli. This botanist was a member of the Society of Jesus, 

 and was born at Brunn, in Moravia, April 21, i55l ; after a 

 life spent for the most part in the Philippines, he died at 

 Manila, May 2, 1706. Linnxus commemorated him in the 

 genus Camellia, and the introduction of this well-known plant 

 into Europe is generally attributed to him. The manuscript 

 transmitted by Camelli to Ray was accompanied by a large 

 number of drawings, part only of which Ray seems to have 

 been able to afford the expense of pub'ishing. We learn from 

 the Comftcs rciidiis of the Societe Royale de Botanique de 

 Belgique for October 9, 1SS6, that the whole of the drawings 

 still exist in a folio volume in good preservation in the library of 

 the Jesuits' College at Louvain. It contains 257 autograph 

 plates, with 556 figures of plants, and three plates, with nine 

 figures relating to zoolog}'. It was purchased at the sale of the 

 library of Antoine Laurent de Jussieu (February 6, 1858), in 

 whose handwriting it is carefully annotated, and was presented 

 to the Jesuit College by Count Alfred de Limminghe. 



Dr. Walter L. Buller, C.M.G., F.R.S., the well-known 

 New Zealand ornithologist, has been promoted to the Knight- 

 hood of the Order of St. Michael and St. George. 



The honorary degree of D. Sc. has been conferred by the 

 Senate of the Royal University of Ireland upon the Rev. S. J. 

 Perry, F.R.S., and Prof John Perry, F.R.S. 



The Committee appointed by the Prince of Wales to assist 

 in framing a scheme for the proposed Imperial Institute is 

 ludicrously inadequate and unrepresentative. The President of 

 the Royal Academy appears, but why is the President of the 

 Royal Society omitted ? Surely science will have far more to 

 •do with such an institute than art. The only representative of 

 science is Sir Lyon Playfair, and he has been appointed 

 probably more on account of his connection with the 1 851 

 Exhibition than with science. If the Committee is to gain the 

 confidence of the public it must be of a very different 

 character. 



I.\ view of the progress achieved of late in the domain of 

 celestial photography, the French Academy of Sciences has 

 decided to propose that an International Conference be held in 

 Paris next spring to make arrangements for the elaboration of 

 a photographic map of the heavens to be simultaneously executed 

 by ten or twelve observatories scattered over the whole surface 

 of the globe. 



According to the Report of the Director of the Leander 

 lilcCormick Observatory of the University of Virginia for the 

 year ending June I, 18S6, the buildings and instruments are in 

 excellent repair ; the great 45-feet dome revolving fully as easily 

 as when first erected. The Parkinson and Frodsham clock, 

 formerly belonging to the Physical Laboratory, has become the 

 property of the Observatory. It is now in Washington, 

 in the hands of a jeweller, to be cleaned and recased. The 

 great equatorial has been chiefly employed in the examina- 

 tion and sketching of southern nebulae. The nebula in 

 Orion and the Trifid and Omega nebulae have received 

 special attention. 351 observations of miscellaneous nebulae 

 have been made, resulting in 226 drawings, and the dis- 

 covery of 233 nebulae which are supposed not to have been 

 hitherto detected. The features seen indicate that the perform- 

 ance of the instrument employed surpasses that of any of the 

 great reflectors which have been used in the examination of 

 nebulae, the examination of complicated structures seldom fail- 

 ing to show features not noticed elsewhere. Only a few nights 

 have been suited to the micrometrical measurement of double 

 stars. Seventy-six observations have, however, been made of 

 stellar pairs, nearly all of which are close and diflicult. Ac- 

 cording to the Director, Mr. Ormond Stone, the past year has 

 been, without exception, the poorest for astronomical observa 



tions which he has ever known. Not only have there been an 

 unusual number of cloudy nights, but even on clear nights the 

 definition has been almost always extremely poor. The Obser- 

 vatory is open to the general puUlic every day, except holidays 

 and Sundays, between 2 and 5 p.m. It is also open to a 

 limited number of visitors once each month at 8 p.m. 



By the kindness of the under-mentioned gentlemen, lectures 

 will be delivered as follows before Christmas at the Royal Vic- 

 toria Hall and Coffee Tavern; — November 16, Mr. A. T. 

 Anmdel (Madras Civil Service), "Glimpses of India and its 

 People"; November 23, Mr. Arthur Brown, "The Yellow- 

 stone Region" ; November 30, Prof A. W. Riicker, "Early 

 History of the Earth and Moon " ; December 7, Rev. W. H. 

 Dallinger, " Plants that Prey on Animals and Animals that 

 Fertilise Plants " ; December 14, Prof. Boyd Dawkins, " In- 

 troduction of the Arts into Britain." With regard to the 

 classes now held in the building, about eighty students have 

 joined, many of whom are attending more than one class, and 

 it is expected that fresh cl.i^sei will shortly be started. A very 

 satisfactory feature of the matter is that the students are genuine 

 artisans, who would not otherwise have good teaching within 

 their reach. 



In the form of a leaflet reprinted from Humboldt (Band v. 

 Heft to), M. Habenicht, of Gotha, sends us a " Contribution to 

 the Morphology of the Kosmos." Although his emendation of 

 the nebular hypothesis can scarcely be called an improvement 

 upon it, it is one among many symptoms of the breaking up of 

 ideas on the subject, and their tendency to flow into new 

 channels. M. Habenicht remarks that, in the primitive nebula, 

 "the laws of Nature slumber." For the convenience of the 

 majority of speculators on origins, their awakening should be 

 indefinitely postponed. His theo.y of planetary formation 

 depends upon disparity of temperature, the inner side of the 

 originating ring being warmed by the central body, while the 

 outer side radiates freely into space. The result is unequal 

 contraction occasioning rupture at the weakest place, whereupon 

 a remarkable process ensues. Through the tightening of its 

 outer surface, the ring coils up from the outside into two spirals 

 containing very different quantities of matter, which eventually 

 rush together from opposite directions, and coalesce into a 

 planet. This dual origin is visible in the dis-imilarity of the 

 terrestrial hemispheres, as well as in certain aspects of Mars, 

 and in some rare glimpses by Dawes of the disposition of light 

 and shade on Jupiter's third satellite. The analogy is even 

 carried out, we are told, in the organic world, from the tiny 

 seed-leaves of the embryo-plant to the symmetrical yet not 

 strictly balanced arrangement of limbs in the highest order of 

 beings. But the planet-producing rings, to behave as M. Habe- 

 nicht suppo es them to have behaved, s'lould have possessed 

 rather the qualities of caoutchouc than those of any known or 

 imaginable "nebulous" stuff. 



Under the title of " Sea-Level and Ocean-Currents," Prof. 

 J. S. Newberry sends the following letter to Science : — "Put-in 

 Bay Island, October 16, l8S6. — At II o'clock Thursday evening, 

 the 14th inst., I witnessed here a -remarkable fact, the effect of 

 the late tremendous wind-storm. This commenced about 7 a.m., 

 and began to let up at 1 1 o'clock in the evening, or a little later. 

 I then went down to the shore in front of my house, and found 

 the lake lower than the average by fully 6 feet ! This is the 

 greatest depression from such cause I have noticed during a 

 residence here of nearly twenty-four years. We have not, within 

 thii periol, had such a high wind stealily continued for so 

 long a time. The captain of the steamer Chief Justice Waite, 

 running between Toledo and the islands, reports the fall of 

 water-level at Toledo as about 8 feet." In discussing the 

 general question with reference to previous correspondence. 

 Prof. Newberry says :—" The question is, not whether the 



