2 to 



NA TURE 



\yan. 2 2, 1874 



those interested in the welfare of the colony are hound to do all 

 in their power to bring it into thorough working order, and 

 enable it to become a national institution. The school is 

 possessed of a good metallurgical laboratory, but its efficiency 

 Is sadly hampered for want of funds, the fees payable by the 

 comparatively small number of students being quite insufficient 

 to maintain the requisite staff ot teachers. Government grants only 

 500/. a year, private subscription and fees amounting to about 

 another 200/., but to keep up a full staff of lectures, the Council 

 require an income of at least double what is now at their com. 

 mand. This is surely a case in -which the industrial welfare of 

 the whole colony is involved, and we tlierefore think it is certainly 

 the duty of the Government to see that the Ballaarat School of 

 Mines does not fall short of complete efficiency for want of 

 funds. 



Among Mr. Murray's announcements of new works we notice 

 the following, which may be of interest to our readers : — " A 

 Memoir of Sir Roderick Impey Murchison," based upon his 

 journals and letters, with notices of his scientific contemporaries, 

 and a sketch of the rise and progress, for half a century, of 

 paljeozoic geology in Britain, by Professor Archibald Geikie, 

 LL.D., F. R. S. This book will be published, we understand, early 

 in the spring. " The Moon, considered as a Planet, a World, 

 and a Satellite," by James Nasmyth, C.E., and James Carpenter, 

 F. R.A.S. This work will be accompanied by numerous illus- 

 trations produced from drawings made with the aid of powerful 

 telescopes, woodcuts, &c. " The Impending Famine in Bengal : 

 how it will be met, and how to prevent future famines in India," 

 by Sir Eartle Frere, D.C.L., with maps, iStc. "England and 

 Russia in the East," a series of papers on the political and geo- 

 graphical condition of Central Asia, by Major-General Sir Henry 

 Rawlinson, F.R.S., with a map. A new edition of "Metal- 

 lurgy," by Dr. John Percy, F.R.S., Lecturer on Metallurgy at 

 the Government School of Mines, vol. i. containing Fuel, Wood, 

 Coal, Copper, Zinc, &c. A new edition, re-constructed and re- 

 written, of the first volume of Prof Phillips' " Geology of York- 

 shire," comprising the coast of the county. It will contain a 

 large number of additional illustrations and be issued in quarto 

 £ize. 



Anotiter work on the threatened famine in Bengal is an- 

 nounced by Messrs. Triibner & Co. It is by Dr. W. W. Hunter, 

 Director- General of Statistics to the Government of India, and 

 will be entitled " Famine Aspects of Bengal Districts." 



Dr. Schweinfurth's account of his travels and discoveries 

 in Central Africa during the years 1868 to 1871 wUl be published 

 by Messrs. Sampson Low & Co. in the course of a few days. 

 This work will be translated by Ellen E. Newer, and will con- 

 tain an introduction by Winwood Reade, whose work on Africa 

 was reviewed in Nature a few months back. It will be copi- 

 ously illustrated by woodcuts from drawings made by the author, 

 and will be issued in two octavo volumes. 



It is known that the Russian Government have made consider- 

 able preparations in view of the great astronomical event of this 

 year. A General Assembly of the Conmiissiou charged to study 

 the question has finally adopted twenty-seven stations, the 

 list of which (with latitude and longitude, the instruments 

 available at each, and the chances of good weather) may be 

 found in the Rerue Sckntifiqi(e for loth inst. The probable 

 temperatures of the different stations, at the time of olxservation, 

 are also estimated ; they range from — 20° C. at Kiakhta, and 

 — 10° at Omsk, to + 10° at N.aktritchevan and Erivan. At 

 Nerlscliinsk and some other stations in Eastern Siberia, for which 

 calculations are not had, the cold is expected to be still greater. 

 The observers for the different stations have all been appointed, 

 and have been engaged in practismg with their instruments at the ' 

 observatory of Pulkowa. All the telescopes are ^mounted 



equatorially ; and the equatorials are fitted wi'.h a clock-work 

 movement and a micrometric apparatus. The personal equa- 

 tions of the different observers will be determined by means of 

 an apparatus like that of M. Wolf (Paris Observatory), in which 

 an artificial star is observed in its passage across a net-work of 

 wire. The telegraphic determination of the longitudes of the 

 various towns of Siberia is likely to be completed in 1875. 

 Several of the stations chosen for this determination are also 

 stations for the transit observations. The other transit stations 

 will be easily connected with these by chronometric observations, 

 and as for the stations bordering on the Caspian Sea and the 

 Black Sea, these longitudes are already known with sufficient 

 exactness. 



Professor Whittlesley has given a paper on the fluctua- 

 tion of the level of Lake Superior — a subject specially studied 

 by him many years ago, and which has as yet received but slight 

 elucidation. In his present communication he has confined him- 

 self to the consideration of those fluctuations which are not only 

 transient, but also occurring with the regularity of a wave — those 

 low pendulum-like pulsations which are probably common to all 

 the lakes, but are most noticeable in Lake Superior. Until a 

 better theory can be found, he adopts the explanation that these 

 undulations are caused by atmospheric movements. 



The Tower Hill Microscopical Club holds its first Conver- 

 sazione at 3, Great Tower Street, on Tuesday, the 27th inst. 



In a letter to the American yotirnal oj Science and Arts, 

 dated Cordoba, September iS, 1S73, Dr. Gould gives anaccount 

 of a remarkable swarm of large grasshoppers, or locusts, recently 

 ^^■itnessed there. Myriads filled the air, invaded the houses, and 

 covered the ground, from which they rose like thick clouds of 

 dust, on approach of man or beast. These, however, seem to 

 have been merely the stragglers of the main body. Going out 

 to observe the phenomenon more closely, Dr. Gould saw, to the 

 eastward, what looked like a long trail of dense black smoke, 

 extending over 160" of the horizon, and to an altitude of about 5°. 

 A strong field-glass showed that it was no smoke, but a swai'm of 

 locusts. Its width there was no means of determining, but from 

 the position of the focus needed for resolving the cloud at its 

 point of nearest approach, Dr. Gould estimated that none of the 

 swarm passed within less than three or four miles. The insects 

 were evidently transported with the wind, which blew from the 

 north with a velocity of ten miles an hour. This was at 

 10 A.M. (on August 13). The head of the column had passed 

 far out of sight, and certainly twenty miles of its length were 

 visible over the far-stretching pampa. They continued to pass 

 in apparently undiminished numbers till daylight failed. On 

 September i the phenomena were repeated, the insects behig 

 borne back by a south wind ; and they were coming directly on 

 the town when the wind hauled to S.E. and carried them past 

 about six miles off. From measurements made, Dr. Gould 

 stated that the height of the dense nucleus must have been at 

 least 2,000 ft., its width here not more than six or seven miles ; 

 the whole environed by a penumbra of stragglers. At the time 

 of writing, the wind had brought them on in lull force "literally 

 darkening the sun, " and " there is probably not a square inch of 

 our grounds unoccupied by ihem." 



" Cronaco del Vesuvio," by Prof Palmieri (Naples: 

 Detken and Rochall, 1874), contains a brief summary of the 

 principal eruptions from 1840 to 1872, by far the greater, 

 part of the work, however, being occupied with dttails 

 of the outbreak on April 26, 1872, Palmieri's account of which 

 has been already noticed in tl:ese pages. The present work 

 contains several appendices on subjects of chemical and minera- 

 logical interest in connection with eruptions of Vesuvius. 



We learn from the Mtdicnl Record that the Geographical 



