Nov. 27, 1 873 J 



NATURE 



63 



and hear his explanation." Surely no such arrangement will 

 satisfy "all the scientific men in the worlj." We contend that 

 as Mr. Casella has publicly claimed the invention as his own, 

 it ought to be decided with equal publicity whether he has done 

 anything more than copy our instrument. 



We again give the description of our thermometer (not 

 in our own words, for v/e might be accused of shaping 

 them to suit our purpose) but in the words of the late Admiral 

 Fitzroy as they appear in the first number of Meteorological 

 Papers, page 55, published July 5, 1S57, in referring to the 

 erroneous readings of all thermometers consequent on their deli- 

 cate liulbs being compressed by the great pressure of the ocean, 

 Admiral Fitzroy says : — 



" With a view to obviate this failing, Messrs. Negretti and 

 Zambra undertook to make a case for the weak bulbs which 

 should transmit temperature but resist pressure. Accordingly, 

 a tube of thick glass is sealed outside the delicate bulb between 

 which and the casing is a space all round wliich is nearly filled 

 with mercury. The small space not so filled is a vacuum into 

 which the mercury can be expanded, or forced by heat or me- 

 chanical compression, without doing injury to, or even com- 

 pressing the inner or mucli more delicate bulb," &c. &c. 



Mr. Casella "did not wish to take irp your valuable space 

 to describe his thermometer." Well, it matters not ; the 

 late Admiral Fitzroy hi? done it for him. He described it six- 

 teen years ago ; and if the reader will take every syllable of the 

 extract above quoted, and substitute the word "alcohol" for 

 " mercury " (which colourable change was effected by Mr. 

 Casella, to the detriment of the instrument), they will have 

 a correct description of Mr. Casella's thermometer in the most 

 minute details. 



Hy. Negretti and Zambr.v 



Rain-gauge at Sea 



I BEG to send you a copy of a letter I received lately 

 from Capt. Goodenough, of the Royal Navy, respecting the use 

 of my rain-gauge at sea. (See Nature, vol. vii. p. 202.) 



Nov. 8 W.J. Black 



" H.M.S. Pearl, lat. 6" S., long. 22 W. 

 " Dear Sir, — I should have taken an earlier opportunity 

 of writing to you about the instrument which you were 

 so good as to design for use on board ship, but have 

 not had the good fortune to fall in with any rain up 

 to the present time with which I could at all events in 

 some measure test and chronicle the rain-gauge. It is odd 

 that in a journey of twenty days I have had only '07 in. of 

 ram, and that although I am at this moment in a district in 

 which an average of seven hours' rain usually falls at this time of 

 the year. On that one occasion '07 in. did fall and was duly 

 caught in your instrument as well as in another mounted on 

 gimbals, the measurements being exactly alike in each. I much 

 prefer the mounting of your instrument, and will report to you 

 as to the amount of weight it requires after some experimenting 

 with it. The usually most steady instrument is one which is 

 heavy, and whose centre of gravity is very near its centre of 

 oscillation. T do not think it would be well to increase the size of 

 the instrument, as it would become inconvenient to place, ex- 

 cept for the use of a man who wishes to devote himself very 

 much to that order of observaLion. Our poop is so high 

 here that I do not anticipate any mixture of sea-spray in the 

 gauge, but if it were so your table would be sufficient to clear it, 

 supposing we had Carpenter's Hydrometer to test with, as we 

 might not expect enough water to float an ordinary one. 

 "I remain, yours very truly, 



"James E. Goodenough 

 "Captain R.N. Command H.M.S. Pmrl, proceedmg jm the 

 Cape to Australasia." 



Glaciers 

 In a letter prmted in your number for Oct. 16 (vol.viii. p. 506), 

 Mr. J. H. RiJhrs states that he lielieves that glaciers existed at 

 or near tlie sea-level in central Hmdustan in the glacial period. 

 Glaciers undoubtedly existed in the Himalyas at a much lower 

 elevation than at present ; there are traces of their action in 

 Sikkim in valleys, the bottoms of which are now only 4,000 ft. 

 above the sea, and in the north-western Himalayas, Mr. 



Medlicott, I think, considers that in some valleys, glaciers 

 descended to within 1,000 ft. of the sea-level, but I liave never 

 heard of any marks of old glacial action in the Indian peninsula 

 south of the Himalayas. There are no mountains in central 

 Hindostan exceeding about 4,000 ft. in height, and a careful 

 examination of the portions of the Nilgiri mountains in Southern 

 India, which rise above S,oooft., has not afforded any proof of 

 the former presence of ice. It is very probable that Mr. Rohrs 

 possesses information upon this subject with which I am unac- 

 quainted, and it is without the least wish to express a doubt of 

 the accuracy of his information, that I ask for any evidence he 

 can produce in favour of his assertion, as the subject is one in 

 which I am greatly interested. 



W. T. Blanford 



JO H ANN NEPOMUK CZERMAK 



TOHANN NEPOMUK CZERMAK was born June 17, 

 J 1828, in Prague. His father, Johann Conrad 

 Czermak, was a rnedical practitioner of high repute in 

 that city, and his uncle, Joseph Julius Czermak, enjoyed 

 a considerable reputation as Professor of Medicine and 

 Physiology, first at Gratz and afterwards at Vienna. 

 Educated at the high school of his native town, Johann 

 Czermak entered upon the study of medicine at the Uni- 

 versity of Vienna in 1S45. In 1847 he moved to Breslau, 

 where he had the great advantage of living with the dis- 

 tinguished physiologist Purkinje. From Breslau he passed 

 on in 1849 to Wurzburg, where in 1850 he received the 

 degree of M.D., publishing on that occasion an inaugural 

 dissertation on " The Microscopical Anatomy of the 

 Teeth," in which he called attention to the larger " inter- 

 globular " spaces so often found in the upper part of the 

 dentine. After a visit to England he settled at Prague, 

 where he became assistant to Purkinje, who then held the 

 chair of Physiology in that place. In 1855 he left Prague to 

 take the chair of Zoology at Gratz ; but zoology was not his 

 proper province, and he gladly accepted in 1856 the offer of 

 the Professorship of Physiology at Krakau, which however 

 he left in the following year for the like chair in Pesth. 

 In both these universities he established physiological 

 laboratories and gave a decided impulse to physiological 

 research ; but the political agitations then rife made life 

 distasteful to him there, and in i860 he resigned his chair 

 and returned to Prague. Such frequent changes must 

 have interfered greatly with sustained research, but by 

 this time Czermak had made his name known as well by 

 several investigations in experimental physiology and in 

 subjective vision, as especially by his researches on the 

 laryngoscope, his treatise on which (" Der Kehlkopfspiegel 

 und seine Verwerthung ") embodying the results made 

 known in various papers in 1S58 and 1859, he published 

 shortly before his return to Prague. 



Here he resided some years, visiting at times En gland, 

 Holland, and France, in order to make the value of the 

 laryngoscope better known to his fellow-workers in 

 science and medicine. There are many in England who 

 retain pleasant memories of these visits. 



The ample means brought to him by the gifted 

 lady whom he had the happiness to marry, enabled 

 him to build in Prague and furnish at his own 

 expense a private laboratory for research, in which 

 he not only worked himself, but which he also placed 

 at the disposal of others. Many would have envied, 

 and few would willingly have let slip, such an oppor- 

 tunity for quiet labour ; but Czermak, conscious of the 

 power he possessed of lucid exposition, delighted in 

 teaching, and felt perhaps the want of the stimulus which 

 pupils afford. Accordingly, when in 1865 he was offered 

 the chair of Physiology in Jena, vacated by the removal 

 of von Bezold to Wiirzbt:r ;, he at once accepted it. 

 Here he continued until, in iS6g, finding the disease to 

 which he eventually succumbed (and the beginning of 

 which he himself attributed to the irritation caused by the 



