642 



NA TURE 



[October 22, 1908 



Australian coast-line. These specimens, added to the 

 extensive series indigenous to the northern and eastern 

 districts of Australia previously contributed by him to the 

 Natural History Museum, constitute the most complete 

 collection of Australian Madreporaria yet brought together. 

 We understand that in recent years Mr. Saville-Kent's 

 attention was given to the artificial cultivation of pearls 

 in the large pearl-oyster. 



October 17 was the 300th anniversary of the election of 

 Francis Bacon as treasurer of Gray's Inn. The tercen- 

 tenary celebration took the form of a luncheon at the inn, 

 when the Benchers entertained a party of distinguished 

 guests. The first night of term, November 2, is to be 

 observed by the members of the inn as a Bacon anniver- 

 sary, and later a marble statue of Bacon is to be erected 

 in one of the open spaces of the inn. Mr. Duke, K.C., 

 the treasurer, presided at the luncheon, and the American 

 Ambassador was the principal guest. Among the party 

 were Sir C. AUbutt, F.R.S., Sir Robert Ball, F.R.S., 

 Sir J. Dewar, F.R.S., Prof. Frankland, F.R.S., Sir W. 

 Huggins, K.C.B., O.M., F.R.S., Sir William Ramsay, 

 K.C.B., F.R.S., Sir Henry Roscoe, F.R.S., Lord Strath- 

 cona, F.R.S., and other men of science. In proposing 

 the toast to " The Immortal Memory of Francis Bacon," 

 Mr. Duke dwelt at greatest length upon Bacon's connec- 

 tion with the legal profession, though he referred to his 

 contributions to science and literature. The American 

 Ambassador, in responding to the toast of " Our Guests," 

 said : — " No man ever held a more extraordinary position 

 than Bacon. It had been given to very few men in the 

 world to change the whole intellectual current and ten- 

 dency of their age and of succeeding ages. The whole 

 effect of what had been called the Baconian philosophy 

 was, according to his own statement of it, to look for 

 fruit. It was essentially practical ; and one of his acutest 

 critics had said of him, his philosophy began in observa- 

 tion and it ended in words." 



Particulars of the auroral display on September 29, as 

 seen by Mr. J. H. Elgie from Roundhay Park, Leeds, 

 are given by him in T.P.'x Weekly of October 15. 

 " Shortly before nine o'clock a fan-shaped series of auroral 

 streamers appeared under the western side of Bootes and 

 the tail of the Bear. One magnificently defined shaft of 

 light immersed Cor Caroli, which glittered vertically 

 under the star at the tip of the Bear's tail. Cor 

 Caroli was almost extinguished. For about an hour 

 after that the northern sky remained quiescent, but that 

 mystical glow continued. So light, indeed, was it, that 

 at 9.25 I could distinctly see the time by my watch. The 

 last of the display occurred at five minutes past ten, 

 when a very beautiful streamer pierced Corona Borealis, 

 and when it had died out the luminous suffusion died out 

 with it." The display was referred to in a note which 

 appeared in Nature of October 8 (p. 575) upon two mag- 

 netic storms observed at the National Physical Laboratory. 



A COMPLETE change of weather has set in over the British 

 Isles during the past week, and the temperature has fallen 

 lower than at any time during the present autumn, the 

 day and night readings towards the close of the period 

 being in fair agreement with the average conditions for 

 the time of year. For the first half of the present month 

 the mean temperature in London was about 10° above 

 the normal, and other parts of the country were similarly 

 warm. Rain has now fallen in most parts of the United 

 Kingdom, but the remainder of the month will have to 

 be exceedingly wet if October is to have its normal rain- 

 fall. In London the aggregate measurement of rain for 



NO. 2034, VOL. 78] 



the forty-two days from September 4 is 0-51 inch, whereas 

 the average for October is 273 inches. At Spurn Head 

 the total rainfall this month to October 20 is o-i6 inch, 

 whilst the average is 2-26 inches. At Nottingham the 

 aggregate to October 20 is 028 inch, at Dover 031 inch, 

 and at Jersey 0-38 inch. A region of high barometer 

 readings has maintained a fairly fixed position over north- 

 west Europe, and this has fended off the inroads of the 

 moving disturbances from the Atlantic, compelling them 

 to follow a more northerly track than usual. The type of 

 weather, however, seems to be gradually assuming the 

 conditions normal to autumn, and lower temperatures may 

 now occur at any time. 



The celebration of the tercentenary of the birth of Torri- 

 celli, to which we referred on July 9, ended on October 15. 

 The following notes may be of interest to some of our 

 readers ; for amplification of them we may refer to 

 meteorological text-books, and more particularly to Prof. 

 Hellmann's article on the origin of meteorological observa- 

 tions and instruments in Himmel und Erde (vol. ii., parts 

 iii. and iv.). Torricelli, the discoverer of the " Torri- 

 cellian tube," afterwards called the barometer by the Hon. 

 R. Boyle, received his first education at Faenza, and con- 

 tinued it at Rome. Some of his works on mechanics 

 having attracted the attention of Galileo, the latter invited 

 him to Florence, where he became the pupil of that great 

 master. The constructors of a pump for the Duke of 

 Florence having applied to Galileo for an explanation of the 

 reason of the water not rising higher than about 32 feet, 

 his cynical reply was that "nature abhors a vacuum"; 

 but this reply apparently did not satisfy him. After 

 Galileo's death Torricelli took up the subject, and 

 assuming that the real cause of the water rising was the 

 pressure of the air, he hit upon the idea of substituting 

 mercury for water, and communicated his plan to his 

 friend Viviani, who first carried out the experiment in 

 1643, and obtained similar results (allowing for difference 

 of density). After this experiment Torricelli immediately 

 declared the true cause of the phenomenon ; in 1644 he 

 also stated that the instrument would show certain varia- 

 tions in the weight of the air. The actual experiment of 

 the decrease of pressure with altitude was made by Perrier 

 on the Puy de D6me in 1648, at the request of Pascal. 

 Apparently Torricelli, who died in 1647, was too much 

 occupied with his mathematical studies to take up the 

 ultimate improvement of the instrument, which at that 

 time had only an arbitrary scale. 



In the October number of British Birds reference is 

 made to the occurrence in Romney Marsh, at no very 

 great distance from Lydd, of three American kill-deer 

 plover in .^pril last. All were shot. These bring the 

 number of British-killed specimens to six ; there is no 

 reason to doubt that these were truly wild birds. 



Fishes from Hawaii and Fiji form the subject of a 

 paper by Dr. D. S. Jordan and Miss Dickerson published 

 as No. 1625 of the Proceedings of the U.S. National 

 Museum. A flying-fish is described as new, while Scomber 

 brachysoiniis is made the type of the new genus 

 Rastrelliger. 



An interesting communication on the systematic position 

 of the Palaeozoic brachiopods of the genus Camarophorella 

 is given by Mr. J. E. Hyde in the Proceedings of the 

 Boston Society of Natural History (vol. xxxiv., No. 3). 

 Hitherto the single known representative of the genus 

 has been associated with Pentamerus, but the discovery of 

 a second species enables the author to state that this is 

 incorrect, its real affinities being with Meristella. 



