54 



NA TURE 



INov. 18, 1886 



"The author said that the draught diminished as the direction 

 of the wind was more and more downwards, but did not go 

 backwards until the inclination amounted to about 30°. The 

 maximum up-draught would occur, not, as was often sup- 

 posed, with a direction of wind vertically upwards, but with one 

 making an angle of about 30° with the vertical. A chimney 

 with a T-piece at the top never produced an unfavourable 

 effect on the up draught, and only in one case failed to produce 

 a favourable one. With a T-piece to which was affixed vertical 

 ends, every wind met with would have a favourable eftect, and 

 no wind known would have an unfavourable effect. 



" Prof. De Chaumonl thought that vertical ends increase the 

 resistance of the up-draught, and described a chimney with a 

 lamp-shade-like top and conical cap, with which it was im- 

 possible to get a down-draught." G. J. Symons, 



62, Camden Square, N.Vv. Registrar Sanitary Institute 



Barnard's Comet 



I WONDER that more has not been written about Barnard's 

 comet (/ 1886). On the 9th, at lyh. Som., in spite of the 

 strong twilight, it was plain with the naked eye as a star. I did 

 not notice its exact brightness, but it was perhaps equal to 

 f Virginis. With the telescope it, head was about 8' diameter, 

 and it had two faint tails at about position-angles 250° and 300°. 

 The former, which was the brighter at its origin, was J° long, 

 and was straight ; the latter I believe was curved, and was i^' 

 Jong. T. W. Backhouse 



Sunderland, November 11 



Aurora 



Last evening (November 2), between the hours of seven 

 and eight o'clock, a bright anrora was visible in this vicinity. 

 At intervals later in the evening, patches of cirrus clouds in the 

 northern sky became luminous. The disturbance of the sus- 

 pended magnet was at its height early in the evening, when the 

 aurora was brightest. It is interesting to note the fact that this 

 aurora was t«enty-six days removed from that of October 7 a.nd 

 8, corresponding to the time of the revolution of the sun on his 

 axis. It is noteworthy, also, that very near to the time of the 

 appearance of each aurora there was a slight renewal of earth- 

 quake activity in South Carolina and other localities. 



Lvons, New York, Nove.nber 3 M. A. Veeder 



" Lung Sick " 



Dr. Emil Holub, in writing to me a few months ago from 



Panda-ma-Tenka, Albert Country, Zambesi, mentions having 



treated his cattle in a similar manner to that referred to in 



Nature of the nth inst. (p. 29). He says :— 



"Shortly after I started northward from the Vaal, a con- 

 tagious disease broke out among my cattle ; there was any 

 amount of sickness among the numerous trains (forty teams a 

 day) going to the Diamond Fields, but I could get no clue to 

 tne lamene-s of the front legs of my bullocks for a long 

 time. Having shot one, the disea-e proved to be a con- 

 tagious pleuro-pneumonia, similar to the ' lung sick ' so 

 prevalent in this neighbourhood, affecting hips and shoulder- 

 blades, causing lameness. The lungs were partly destroyed, 

 ■but the animal had but little cough. I disinfected the whole 

 herd, and vaccinated the healthy as well as the sick. The end 

 of the tail w.as pierced with a narrow-bladed dagger, and a piece 

 of lung full of virus inserted and then band.iged. The second 

 vaccination effectually prevented the spreading of the disease for 

 the whole journey, even in native locations similar to the 

 Bechuanas, in which we were surrounded with 'lung-sick' cattle 

 dying near our encampment." Philip J. Butler 



55, De Beauvoir Road, London, N., November 13 



PAUL BERT 



PAUL BERT, who has died at his post as Governor of 

 Tonquin, was born at Aiixerre in 1833, graduated 

 Doctor of Medicine in 1863, and Doctor of Science in 

 1866. Obtaining a professorship in the Faculty of 

 Science at Bordeaux, M. Bert devoted himself especially 

 to physiology, and in 1869 he obtained the Chair of 

 General Physiology in the Faculty of Science at Paris. 



He continued here his experiments on the influence of 

 changes of barometric pressure on life, and presented a 

 series of papers on the subject to the Academy of 

 Sciences, which awarded him, in 1875, its great biennial 

 prize of 20,000 francs. He entered political life in 1S70, 

 and has all along been known as an advanced Radical. 

 He, however, never lost his interest in science ; he did 

 much to promote education in France, and took an active 

 part in the legislative movement which obtained for 

 M. Pasteur an annual pension of 12,000 francs as a 

 national recompense. I\I. Bert was elected President of 

 the Biological Society in 1S78, in succession to Claude 

 Bernard, whose most brilliant pupil he v\-a3, and more 

 recently was admitted to the Academy of Sciences. In 

 Gambetta's Cabinet of 1881 he was Minister of Public 

 Instruction, and a few months ago accepted the post of 

 Governor of Tonquin, where one of his most notable 

 acts was the founding of a Tonquinese Academy. M. 

 Bert's papers on " Barometric Pressure " were published 

 as a separate volume in 1877, and his lectures at the 

 Museum of Natural History were in 1869 published under 

 the title of " Legons sur la Physiologie Comparde de la 

 Respiration." He also issued, in 1869-70, " Notes d'Ana- 

 tomie et de Physiologie Compardes." For many years he 

 had charge of the scientific department of the Ri'publique 

 Fraiii^aisi'. 



At the sitting of the Academy of Sciences on Monday, the 

 President, M. Jurien de la Graviere, expressed regret that 

 politics had diverted M. Paul Bert from physiology ; and 

 M. Vulpian remarked that his death, though glorious for 

 the country, was a calamity for science, his numerous 

 memoirs having placed him among the first physio- 

 logists of the age. The Academy adjourned in sign ot 

 mourning. 



THE RECENT WEATHER 



A T the close of a short period of somewhat unusual 



-^^ weather conditions, it may be worth while to call 



attention to the more prominent features of those 



conditions. 



Cyclonic systems, some of wide, some of small dimen- 

 sions, have been primarily developed over Western 

 Europe in unusually large numbers. Opportunities for 

 studying those atmospheric conditions from which baro- 

 metric depressions originate within the area of our Euro- 

 pean stations are by no means very rare, but they are 

 nevertheless sufficiently scarce to merit careful scrutiny 

 at the hands of every student of weather knowledge. So 

 much is this the case that a meteorologist of eminence 

 made, some years since, the statement that no one had 

 ever been present at the birth of a storm. 



Considering the disastrous nature of the floods, the 

 sloppiness of earth and sky, and the general misery in the 

 aspect of things, which characterise the event, few of us 

 can wish to be very frequently spectators of it. But when 

 it occurs, the conditions accompanying it should be care- 

 fully attended to. These may perhaps be briefly sum- 

 marised thus : — 



(1) Barometric depressions are primarily developed 

 over a region where atmospheric gradients are slight, the 

 exceptions to this rule being those systems (secondary or 

 subsidiary, as they are termed) which first appear as 

 loops or bulges in the isobars of a large pre-existing 

 cyclone. 



(2) They originate either in the rear of a depression 

 which has already passed away or in the inter-space 

 between two large anticyclones, and more especially 

 when the anticyclones are so large that this inter-space 

 constitutes what is called a "trough" of relatively low 

 pressure. 



(3) They are preceded and accompanied by an enor- 

 mous condensation of vapour into cloud. 



(4) They do not, at the moment of their, birth, appear 



