November 28, 1912] 



NATURE 



365 



foreign countries, to take such steps as are necessary 

 in order to coordinate the collection of subscriptions. 

 Donations may be sent to the "Treasurers of the 

 Lister Memorial Fund, Royal Society, Burling-ton 

 House, W." Cheques should be made payable to 

 "The Lister Memorial Fund," and crossed "Bank of 

 England, Western Branch." 



Reports of an earth-shock at Sunninghill, Ascot, 

 and other places at about 9 a.m. on November 19 were 

 published in several London daily papers last week. 

 In replv to an inquiry as to whether the alleged shock 

 had been recorded at Kew, Dr. C. Chree, F.R.S., 

 supirintendent of the Kew Observatory, writes : — 

 " Tlie Kew seismic and magnetic records have 

 been examined with the view of seeing whether 

 there were any indications of seismic move- 

 ments which could be associated with tremors and 

 .sounds recently reported from other parts of the 

 London basin. There were, especially on November 

 i<) — though not at 9 a.m. — several tiny movements 

 of the type which Prof. Milne now accepts as seismic 

 provided they occur simultaneously at two or more 

 stations. But the only movement that would natur- 

 ally be accepted as seismic without such confirmation 

 is one on the afternoon of November 19. Its begin- 

 ning and end are open to considerable uncertaintj' 

 owing to the presence of movements which may or 

 may not be seismic. The movements shown extend 

 from ih. 57m. to 3h. 46m. p.m., with short inter- 

 ludes. The undoubtedly seismic movements extend 

 from about 2h. 40m. to 3h. om. p.m. There 

 are two maxima of movement, the larger 

 I'o mm. (o'5s") about ah. 44m., the smaller 

 o'- mm. about 2h. 56m. Owing to the long natural 

 period of oscillation of the seismograph boom, the 

 instrument is scarcely designed to show local short- 

 period tremors of very small amplitude." 



Cari-egrams received last week from Kingston, 

 Jamaica, tell of a hurricane that had been experienced 

 in that island which caused serious damage in the 

 western part of it. The storm began on November 15 

 and continued with increasing fury for several days, 

 'i'lie following telegram, received from the Governor 

 of Jamaica, was read in the House of Commons on 

 November 25 : — " Parishes of St. James's, Hanover, 

 and Westmoreland suffered from two periods hurricane 

 intensity Sunday, 17, and Monday, 18; all bananas in 

 ihcse parishes totally destroyed, bread-fruit, coconuts, 

 and ground provisions seriously damaged, and native 

 food supply crippled. Conditions of a similar kind to 

 that of eastern parishes after 1903. Hurricane flooded 

 gullies, destroyed houses recklessly placed in them; 

 loss of life '.Montego Bay about 40; about 15 reported 

 elsewhere ; other casualties not extensive ; canefields 

 Westmoreland harried by wind, but will recover to a 

 large extent for crop; some in St. James's damaged 

 by flood debris; some sugar works destroyed, new 

 factories stood well; as usual, destruction of flimsy 

 and decayed tenements Savanna-la-Mar, Lucea, and 

 country." The storm, doubless, was of the revolving 

 type, and the centre probably passed considerably to 

 the south and west of Jamaica. West India hurricanes 

 are very rare in November, authentic records of such 

 NO. 2248, VOL. 90] 



occurrences numbering fewer than a score in this month 

 during the last 300 years. October and November 

 storms keen, as a rule, well over to the western side 

 of the ocean throughout their track, from their first 

 appearance between the sixtieth and eightieth meri- 

 dians of west longitude, until thcv disappear, while 

 proceeding north-eastward between Newfoundland and 

 the eightieth meridians. 



It is announced that Mr. Austen Chamberlain has 

 received 48,000/. towards the 100, ooo^ which he is 

 raising for the London School of Tropical Medicine. 



The Right Hon. Earl Fortescue has consented to 

 accept the office of president of the twenty-eighth 

 congress of the Royal Sanitary Institute, to be held 

 at Exeter on July 7-12, 1913. 



A lecture, entitled " Birdland through the Bioscope, 

 in Colour," will be delivered by Mr. Oliver G. Pike in 

 the new building of the Young Men's Christian .\sso- 

 ciation, Tottenham Court Road, W.C., on Wednesday, 

 December 4, at 8 p.m. 



We learn from The Chemist and Druggist (hat Prof. 

 P, Sabatier, professor of chemistry at the Toulouse 

 faculty of sciences, has decided to give his portion of 

 the Nobel prize to the Toulouse Institute of Chemistrv 

 for the purpose of defraying the cost of new- buildings 

 for the institute. 



We are requested to state that a biography of the 

 late Victoria Lady Welby is in course of preparation. 

 It is hoped that her friends and correspondents may 

 be willing to assist by placing such letters as they may 

 possess at the disposal of her family The greatest care 

 will be taken of the letters, and they will be returned 

 to their respective owners intact at the earliest possible 

 date. The letters should be sent to Sir Charles Welby, 

 Bart., C.B., Denton Manor, Grantham. 



The death is announced by Reuter's Paris corre- 

 spondent of M. Charles Bourseul, one of the earliest 

 workers in telephony, at eighty-three years of age. 

 M. Bourseul's suggestions for the electrical trans- 

 mission of speech were acknowledged by Dr. Graham 

 Bell and Mr. Edison more than thirty years ago, and 

 the following extract from Prof. Cajori's "History of 

 Physics" describes them: — "The earliest record of a 

 theoretical telephone was contained in Du Moncel's 

 ' Expos^ des Applications,' Paris, 1854, when Charles 

 Bourseul, a French telegraphist, conceived a plan of 

 transmitting speech by electricity. The author says, 

 ' Suppose a man speaks near a movable disc sufTi- 

 cicntly flexible to lose none of the vibrations of the 

 voice ; that this disc alternately makes and breaks the 

 current from a battery, you may have at a distance 

 another disc which will simultaneously execute the 

 same vibrations.' Bourseul did not work out his idea-, 

 to a practical end." 



According to an announcement in a recent number 

 of the Zeitschrijt fiir Beleiichtungswesen, an illu- 

 minating engineering society has now been formed 

 in Germany. There are therefore now three such 

 societies in existence, the society in the United States 

 (formed in 1906), the society in London (formed in 



