204 



NATURE 



[ytily I, 1880 



excursions are organised every year by the station, and for these 

 it always has at its disposal pilot-boats and other small vessels 

 of the Dutch marine. Since its opening, in the summer of 1876, 

 the station has repeatedly received proofs of appreciation 

 from different quarters. Thus on the Scotch coast a similar 

 station has been erected after the drawings and notes furnished 

 by the Dutch Society ; the International Exhibition of Fish and 

 Fisheries, this ^year held in Berlin, rewarded the practical side 

 of the institution with a silver medal. Further particulars may 

 be obtained from the Secretary of the Commission for the 

 Zoological station." 



Dr. Hermann Muller's long-promised work on Alpine 

 Flowers is being printed, and will be published towards the end 

 of the year. 



Mr. Daniel Grant has given notice that he will to-day ask the 

 First Commissioner of Works whether he will take into his con- 

 sideration the advisability of substituting the electric light for the 

 purpose of illuminating the House in place of the gas now used 

 in the roof. 



The annual exhibition of the Photographic Society at Pall 

 Mall will open on Saturday, October 2, and close on November 

 13 Friday, September 24, is the last day on which pictures 

 can be received. 



The Times Geneva correspondent writes under date June 20 

 that a remarkable electrical phenomenon occurred at Clarens on 

 the afternoon of Thursday last. Heavy masses of rain-cloud 

 hid from view the mountains which separate Fribourg from 

 Montreux, but their summits were from time to time lit up by 

 vivid flashes of lightning, and a heavy thunderstorm seemed to 

 be raging in the valleys of the Avants and the Alliaz. No rain 

 was falling near the lake, and the storm still appeared far off, 

 when a tremendous peal of thunder shook the houses of Clarens 

 and Tavel to their foundations. At the same instant a mag- 

 nificent cherry-tree near the cemetery, measuring a metre in 

 circumference, was struck by lightning. Some people who were 

 working in a vineyard hard by saw the electric " fluid " play 

 about a little girl who had been gathering cherries and was 

 already 30 paces from the tree. She was literally folded in a 

 sheet of fire. The vine-dressers fled in terror from the spot. 

 In the cemetery six persons, separated into three groups, none of 

 them within 250 paces of the cherry-tree, were enveloped in a 

 luminous clovid. They felt as if they were being struck in the 

 face with hailstones or fine gravel, and when they touched each 

 other sparks of electricity passed from theii' finger-ends. At the 

 same time a column of fire was seen to descend in the direction 

 of Cliatelard, and it is averred that the electric fluid could be 

 distinctly heard as it ran from point to point of the iron railing 

 of a vault in the cemetery. The strangest part of the story is 

 that neither the little girl, the people in the cemetery, nor the 

 vine-dressers appear to have been hurt ; the only inconvenience 

 complained of being an unpleasant sensation in the joints, as if 

 they had been violently twisted, a sensation which was felt with 

 more or less acuteness for a few hours after. The explanation 

 of this phenomenon is probably to be found in Prof. CoUadon's 

 theory of the way in which lightning descends, as described in 

 Nature, vol. xxii. p. 65. The Professor contends that it falls 

 in a shower, not in a perpendicular flash, and that it runs along 

 iiranches of trees until it is all gathered in the trunk, which it 

 '■arsts or tears open in its effort to reach the ground. In the 

 instance in question the trunk of the cherry-tree is as completely 

 shivered as if it had been exploded by a charge of dynamite. 



The number of lions in Algeria is fast diminishing, and it is 

 expected that the animal will soon be extirpated from the colony. 

 As there is an increasing demand for public exhibitions at fairs 

 and zoological gardens, an establishment has been formed at 

 Bona, by a private individual, for lion-breeding. 



The Commission for the construction of the Trans-Saharan 

 Railway has determined that this great work shall be preceded 

 by the establishment of a telegraph line connecting Algiers with 

 St. Louis in Bengal vid Timbuctoo. 



We hear that Mr. J. R. Gregory, the well-known mineral 

 dealer in London, has been awarded at the Sydney Exhibition a 

 first <r/aM— equal to a gold medal — and a third class, for his 

 collections of minerals and fossils, and geological collections. 



We are asked to state that the business of Messrs. R. and J. 

 Beck, the manufacturing opticians, has been removed from 

 No. 31, Cornhill, to No. 6S, Comhill. 



The success achieved by M. Paul Desmarets in his balloon 

 photographs, to which we referred last week, has created some 

 sensation in the scientific world of Paris. The photographs 

 obtained by him at Rouen were exhibited and explained by M. 

 de Fonvielle in a lecture delivered at Versailles Mairie on June 

 22, at a sitting of the Societe des Sciences Naturelles. They 

 have been presented by MM. Paul Desmarets and Jovis to the 

 Minister of War ; M. Janssen will present them at the Academy 

 of Sciences, and M. W. de Fonvielle to the Geographical 

 Society. One of the photographs will be published next Satur- 

 day in the Monde Illustri, having been photogi'aphed on wood 

 and engraved. The electrical apparatus which enabled M. Paul 

 Desmarets to obtain his eliclu's, and the obturators have a weight 

 of 700 grammes only, including the elements required. Steps 

 are being taken for the systematic photographing of Paris and 

 vicinity. One plate shows a piece of land covered with houses, 

 gardens, and roads in the vicinity of Rouen, measuring 300 

 yards by 300 yards, and executed on the scale of jj^. The 

 altitude was about 1,100 metres. The second photograph was 

 in the direction of W.N.W., facing the horizon. All the 

 Seine, from Rouen Railway Bridge to Guellebceuf, is seen with 

 wonderful distinctness. The city of Rouen was concealed by a 

 dense cloud, and is lost in darkness. The details on the banks 

 can be magnified and examined at leisure. This remarkable 

 ascent was made from Rouen on June 14, with Gabriel, a new 

 balloon of 1,200 cubic metres belonging to M. Tovis, and built for 

 the express purpose of crossing the Channel, weather permitting. 

 It is owing to the uncertainty of the weather that this enterprise, 

 of wliich we have spoken already, has been postponed. 



We learn from a circular forwarded to us that the Epping 

 Forest and County of Essex Naturalists' Field Club will hold 

 their next Field Meeting on Saturday afternoon, July 3, for the 

 purpose of thoroughly inspecting the ancient earthworks of 

 Ambresbury Banks and Loughton. Tiie archaeological conductor 

 for the occasion is Major-General Pitt-Rivers, F.R.S. 



M. Tessie du Motay, a French chemist who had invented a 

 continuous process for the preparation of oxygen gas and appa- 

 ratus for oxyhydric lighting, has recently died at New York at 

 the age of sixty-two. 



The excursions arranged for by the Geologists' Association are 

 to Maidstone on July 10, Leith Hill and Dorking July 24, and 

 Bristol on August 16 and five following days. 



On Tuesday evening Signor Alberto B. Bach gave an interest- 

 ing lecture at the Royal Academy of Music on the cultivation of 

 the voice, and on his invention, the Resonator, an instrument 

 somewhat of the nature of an artificial palate, intended to 

 increase the power of the voice without any additional expendi- 

 ture of breath. We hope to be able to give some further 

 notice of this important invention next week. 



NatuR.\L caverns of enormous size— one being 600 feet long — 

 have been discovered within the last few days in the neighbour- 

 hood of West Harptree, near Wells, in Somerset. The investi- 

 gations are still being carried on, and the discoveries have excited 

 SDme interest among antiquaries and archa;ologists. 



