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NA TURE 



[November 18, 1922 



away. One may readily agree with the author that a 

 freshly killed dog would give off little odour at a 

 temperature below freezing-point, and one must 

 accept his opinion that the body was practically 

 invisible in the hole ; but there seems to be no con- 

 clusive evidence that the incident of the killing could 

 not have been both seen and heard by the vultures. 

 Dr. Beck's theory is that none of the ordinary senses 

 suffices to explain events like this, and that some 

 " occult sense," by which he means a sense not within 

 the scope of our own subjective experience, must be 

 invoked. He would have us believe that birds 

 possess a special " homing sense " and a special 

 " food -finding sense," while a " mate-finding sense " 

 is mentioned as a third possibility, ft seems more 



than doubtful, however, whether naming new senses 

 adds anything to our knowledge of the subject. The 

 idea of a sense has little meaning if divorced from the 

 idea of a sense-mechanism, and a " food-finding sense " 

 implies that food (a comprehensive term in the case 

 of birds) is capable of acting as a direct and simple 

 physiological stimulus through some unknown channel 

 of perception which is independent of such more 

 obvious properties of the food as its appearance and 

 odour. Granted that birds have powers of percep- 

 tion transcending our subjective experience, it is 

 surely more reasonable to attribute these to greater 

 acuteness of the known senses than to imagine 

 new senses for which no physiological basis can be 

 suggested. 



Our Astronomical Column. 



Fireball on October 31. — fn daylight on the 

 earlv evening of Tuesday, October 31, at 5.10, an 

 unusually brilliant meteor was observed from various 

 places in the south of England, including Neath, 

 Hereford, Bournemouth, Goring, Witney, and on the 

 eastern boundary of South Wales. The accounts of 

 its appearance, while they all testify to the startling 

 lustre of the object, are yet imperfect and inexact 

 in describing the course it traversed. There were 

 only a few of the brighter stars visible at the time. 

 On the basis of the available data it is impossible 

 to compute a perfectly satisfactory real path for the 

 meteor, but it appears probable that the radiant 

 point was at 194° +33°, and that during its luminous 

 flight the meteor was over the region from Brecon 

 to Wiltshire, the height declining from. 65 to 29 miles. 

 Further observations would be valuable. 



Solar Physics Observatory, Cambridge. — The 

 ninth annual report of the Director of the Solar 

 Physics Observatory has recently been issued ; in it 

 is described briefly the work done during the year 

 April 1921 to March 1922. The observations of two 

 novae, Nova Aquitae III. and Nova Cygni III. (1920), 

 have been under discussion ; those of the former are 

 expected to appear in Parts 2 and 3 of vol. 4 of the 

 annals, while the latter have been communicated to 

 the Royal Astronomical Society (Mon. Not. R.A.S. 

 vol. 82, p.. 44). The well-known variable ji Lyra- has 

 been investigated, and 64 spectrograms taken at 

 Cambridge in 1921 and 96 taken in 1907 at the 

 Allegheny Observatory are being reduced. It is 

 stated that the indications of the results are that the 

 system of j3 Lyrae contains probably at least four 

 components in relative motion. Three lines of work 

 relate to the investigation of the circulation of the 

 atmosphere of the sun. The first is a detailed dis- 

 cussion of the shapes of the clustered masses of 

 flocculi, recently referred to in this column, showing 

 that these masses are inclined at certain angles to the 

 solar equator. The second is a study of the proper 

 motions of the sunspots and the movements of zones 

 of prominence activity ; while the third is the deter- 

 mination of the solar rotation by the spectroscopic 

 method, also recently described. The observations 

 and experiments in the department of meteorological 

 physics have been continued. It is interesting to 

 note that the mounting of the three-foot reflector 

 will be completed since the staging has now been 

 finished. 



"I hi Meteors of the Pons-Winnecke Comet. — 

 Mr. G. Shain, of Pulkovo ( >1 servatory, discusses tins 



meteor swarm in Astr. Nach., No. 5190, noting that 

 the agreement of the radiant with that calculated 

 from the cometary orbit indicates a common tangent 

 to the two orbits, but identity is only shown if they 

 are found to have the same secular perturbations. 

 It will be remembered that it was in this manner 

 that Prof. J. C. Adams showed that the period of 

 the Leonids must be about 33 years. Since the 

 meteors seen in June 1916 were 10 months behind 

 the comet, their perturbations by Jupiter in the 

 ensiling revolution were different ; the meteors made 

 their nearest approach to Jupiter (distance 0-719) 

 in mid-May 1918. The following are the calculated 

 perturbations between May 1917 and May 1919: 

 Afi-65'-9, Ai +4i'-5, A7t+59'-5, A^ - i3"-5, ^<p-45'-5, 

 and A<7+-047. The date of the chief display went 

 back from June 28, 1916, to June 27, 1921, in 

 good agreement with the above change of the node. 

 The comet itself went still nearer to Jupiter than 

 the meteors and suffered larger perturbations. Mr. 

 Shain considers that the indications are all in favour 

 of connexion between the comet and meteors, and 

 notes that a similar shower was seen in early July 

 1867, 1868, 1869, 1872 by several observers. 



Kalocsa Observations of Prominences. — The 

 Rev. B. G. Swindells, S. J., gives a useful summary in the 

 Observatory for October of the work on prominences 

 by Father J. Fenzi at Kalocsa from 1886 to 1917. 

 The curve of prominence activity is synchronous with 

 that for the spots, but the distribution is different. 

 At minimum the chief prominence-development is in 

 latitude 50 = . There are none at the poles and few 

 at the equator. The prominence - zone extends 

 towards the poles as maximum approaches and, for a 

 short time at maximum, the poles are the seat of 

 greatest prominence - activity. But a state of 

 quiescence soon returns at the poles, not to be dis- 

 turbed for nearly n years. It is as though two 

 waves of activity start from lat. 50 , one filling the 

 equatorial gap, the other approaching the poles from 

 all sides, so that there is a great heaping-up there, 

 which soon collapses again. While these changes are 

 different from those of the spots, they accord with the 

 changes in the coronal rays, so that the latter appear 

 to be closely connected with the prominences. In 

 some eclipses coronal arches have been seen sur- 

 rounding prominences, which is a further argument 

 for connexion. It is not difficult to imagine that the 

 more finely divided matter expelled in a prominence- 

 eruption should rise to a great height under such 

 influences as light pressure and electrical repulsion. 



NO. 2768, VOL. I io] 



