Avueust 8, 1912] 
NATURE 
591 
JOINT MEETING OF LEARNED AND 
TECHNICAL SOCIETIES .IN CORNWALL. 
‘T. HE recent meeting—the outcome of the happy 
suggestion of a -number of representative 
Cornishmen more than a year ago—furnished an 
opportunity such as has never before occurred, for the 
members of council and officers of our principal scien- 
tific and technical societies to meet each other, while 
at the same time making acquaintance with the 
mining and engineering industries of what is one of 
the oldest mining districts in the world, and probably 
the premier district as regards record of continuous 
working. Visits to typical tin-mines, china-clay pits, 
and engineering works formed part of the programme, 
including a trip to the uranium mines from which the 
British Radium Corporation obtains its supplies of 
pitchblende. 
One of the most interesting features was a visit to 
the King Edward Mine, a real working mine which 
produces and sells ‘“black-tin,’ and, as_ part 
of the Cornwall School of Metalliferous Mining, is 
worked entirely for, and largely by, students. The 
success which this, the only mine in the world which 
is worked on such lines, has achieved in the promotion 
of technical education has led to the suggestion for 
an amalgamation of the Cornwall schools with the 
Imperial College of Science and Technology. 
The excellent work of the Royal School of Mines 
(now one of the units forming the Imperial College) 
is seriously handicapped by the lack of a practical 
training ground for the study of mining, ore-dressing, 
and mineral valuation, &c., and arrangements might 
possibly be made by which certain of the Royal Col- 
lege of Science students in geology, mineralogy, and 
technical mineral chemistry could also spend a portion 
of their time in a district where commercial require- 
ments are paramount, where conditions for practical 
working are ideal, and where technical education may 
be said to have been born in 1833, when the Royal 
Cornwall Polytechnic Society was founded. The roll 
of this institution, together with those of the other 
two Cornish societies, includes some of the most cele- 
brated names in connection with science and engineer- 
ing, and the records of the men whom Cornwall has 
furnished and is still furnishing afford ample justifica- 
tion for an amalgamation useful and honourable to 
them and to others having more funds but fewer 
facilities for completing their curriculum. 
THE METEOROLOGICAL OFFICE AND I'S 
OBSERVATORIES. 
TS year 1910 will be memorable in the history of 
the Meteorological Office, not only because it 
witnessed the removal of the office to South Kensing- 
ton, but also because in the same year the Meteoro- 
logical Committee took formal charge of the observa- 
tories at Kew and Eskdalemuir, and provision was 
thus made for the natural coordination of meteorology 
with the geophysical sciences of terrestrial mag- 
netism and seismology. 
The premises in Victoria Street, Westminster, which 
had been the home of the Meteorological Office for 
more than forty years, had been designed as resi- 
dential flats, and had no facilities for observation or 
experiment. The only observatory under the direct 
control of the office was situate in the south-west of 
Ireland, two days’ journey from London, and thus 
any experiments with regard to instruments or special 
observations that were required had to be carried out 
by arrangement with some other authority. 
In preparing the plans for the new building at 
South Kensington the needs of the office in this 
NO. 2232, VoL. 89] 
respect were kept in view, and amongst other pro- 
visions a large flat roof was arranged for, conveniently 
| accessible from the other parts of the building, and 
| with a small laboratory, photographic room and work- 
shop in direct communication. 
Immediately the new building was occupied Dr. 
Shaw organised a corps of observers and set on foot 
a regular system of meteorological observations. At 
present there are installed on the roof an anemometer, 
thermograph, and solar radiation recorder, each with 
its recording parts conveniently arranged for public 
inspection. In addition there is a self-recording rain 
gauge, a wind-direction recorder, and a sunshine 
recorder. Within the building are barographs of the 
ordinary pattern, and a microbarograph recording 
minor fluctuations of pressure. By the courtesy of 
the trustees of the British Museum it has been pos- 
sible to arrange, in addition, a meteorological station 
in the grounds of the Natural History Department. 
An interesting development in cloud photography 
has been made possible by the cooperation of Mr, 
John Tennant, and simultaneous photographs of the 
same cloud being taken on the roof of the office and 
at Mr, Tennant’s house, about a mile distant, the 
pictures are afterwards combined to form stereoscopic 
slides. 
While these arrangements indicate a considerable 
advance, there has been a no less marlsed advance as 
regards the associated observatories. For more than 
forty years the Meteorological Office had maintained 
an observatory at Valencia, co. Kerry, and by means 
of annual subsidies it had secured continuous meteoro- 
logical records at a number of other observatories in 
the British Islands. Results from all these institu- 
tions have been collected by the office, and for the 
twelve years, 1869-1881, reproductions of the daily 
curves, on a reduced scale, have been published in 
The Quarterly Weather Report. The whole series of 
original records form probably a unique register of 
the atmospheric phenomena of any country. 
In 1910, as already stated, an arrangement was 
entered into between the Royal Society, the National 
Physical Laboratory, and the Meteorological Com- 
mittee, and with the sanction of H.M. Treasury, 
under which the Meteorological Office took over the 
observatories, both at Kew and at Eskdalemuir, and 
is now therefore directly responsible for the control of 
three observatories, situated respectively in the south- 
east of England, the south-west of Scotland, and the 
south-west of Ireland. 
Of the three observatories, that at Valencia, which 
has been longest under the control of the office, was 
at first and for many years a purely meteorological 
observatory, but observations of the magnetic elements 
were added in 1900 at the request of a committee of 
Irish physicists, of whom the late Earl of Rosse was 
one of the most active members. 
Of the other observatories, that at Kew is the 
oldest. The building was erected by King George III. 
in 1769, and it was in regular use as an astronomical 
observatory and physical museum from that year until 
1841, when it passed into the hands of the British 
Association, in the care of which it remained for the 
next thirty years. 
In 1871 the British Association withdrew its support, 
and the responsibility for the observatory passed to 
the Royal Society, when Mr. J. P. Gassiot generously 
presented securities representing 10,o0ool. as a fund 
to secure the ‘‘maintenance of a central magnetical 
and meteorological observatory at Kew.” 
Notice of this gift was received by the Royal Society 
in March, 1871, and in June of the same year a deed 
expressing the donor’s wishes was sealed and a com- 
| mittee was appointed to administer the trust. The 
