Fuly 2, 1885] 
Coleman; on sanitary arrangements and house-building in 
towns, by Mr. James Sellars; on Egyptian obelisks, by Mr. 
T. L. Patterson ; on producing cast iron or ingot iron from 
crude or pig iron, by Mr. W. Gorman; on the heat-restoring 
gas furnace and heating by radiation, by Mr. W. Gorman; on 
uncertified deaths, by Dr. Glaister ; on the spread of disease by 
manure poisoning, by Dr. E. Duncan ; and on the form of the 
human skull, by Prof. Cleland. The two maps, prepared by 
Mr. Ravenstein, and presented to the Society by Mr. James 
Stevenson, are specially valuable as showing the most recent 
results of African travel. 
During the session M. Louis Pasteur, Prof. Asa Gray, and 
Rey. John Kerr, LL.D., were elected honorary members, and 
Mr. George Anderson, lately M.P. for Glasgow, and now Master 
of the Mint, Melbourne, was elected a corresponding member, 
The Graham medal was awarded to Mr. E. C, C. Stanford for 
his researches on algin. The Society at present has 18 honorary, 
II corresponding, and 691 ordinary members, and in addition 
to the ordinary meetings, there are sections for architecture, 
chemistry, biology, sanitation and social economy, and geography 
and ethnology. 
AN EARTHQUAKE INVENTION 
E have been requested to publish the following corre- 
spondence :— 
Royal Observatory, Edinburgh, Fune 5, 1885 
My Dear Mr. Davip STEVENSON,—At p. 248 of the new 
British Association volume for 1884 there is a section on ‘‘ Ex- 
periments on a Building to Resist Earthquake Motion,” which 
reads amazingly like your paper of twenty years ago; but yet it 
is not that, for your name does not enter, and they have in a 
way got round the letter of your invention by employing, in 
place of your bronze balls in shallow bronze basins, cast iron 
balls and cast-iron plates, ‘‘ with saucer-like edges” for the 
lower basins; and for the upper basins, ‘‘cast iron plates 
slightly concave, but otherwise similar to those below.” 
Against such men would any patent be safe ? though you may 
not have taken out any patent for your philanthropic invention 
for saving life in earthquake-persecuted countries ; but the whole 
section is the most indubitable approval of your methods and 
principles that could well have been proposed by any one. 
Certainly it transcends anything that could have ever entered 
the mind of Yours ever very sincerely, 
C. PIAzzI SMYTH 
Edinburgh, Fune 11, 1885 
DeAR Sir,—Very many thanks for your letter -to my father 
pointing out the report of the British Association on earthquakes 
for 1884, which I had not seen. My father, from the state of 
his health, is unfortunately unable to take the matter up him- 
self, but if you will permit me to publish your very interesting 
and well-put letter in NATURE it will give the honour of the 
invention to whom the honour is due. My father, who read 
your letter with great interest, begged to be remembered to 
“this old friend.” In order to save you the trouble of writing 
again I shall assume, if I do not hear from you in a few days, 
that you have no objection to your letter being published. ; 
I may mention that the balls for the Japanese aseismatic 
arrangements for the towers were made of cast iron, and those 
for the tables in the light-rooms were of gun-metal. 
Yours very truly, 
D. A, STEVENSON 
Professor Piazzi Smyth, &c., &c. 
Westford House, Droitwich, Fune 13, 1885 
Dear Mr. D. A. STEVENSON,—Yours of the tr1th has 
reached me here ; and, as I left Edinburgh on that day, it was 
a happy thought of yours to say that, if you did not hear from me 
soon you would assume my consent to your making some public 
use of my letter to your worthy father. For, in so far as I 
wrote it al all, I am ready to stand by it before many or few. 
But it was only the beginning of what might have been said 
and that I trust you will have perceived, and will supply some 
of the remaining ofamda, such as the B.A. man praising up 
the system for so decidedly relieving the ball-supported build- 
ing from all the sharp, destructive effects of an earthquake- 
shock, and leaving only a gentle to-and-fro motion on the balls ; 
NATURE 
213 
—because this was so admirably illustrated on your father’s 
experimental model at Milton House—by the ease and safety 
with which the model lighthouse standing on balls in basins was 
knocked all about the yard by men with sledge-hammers, when 
they struck only the lower basins, or what they were fixed on as 
representing solid, yet earthquake-affected, ground; but the 
moment they struck the base of the lighthouse: taken off the 
basins and balls and planted on the ground, down toppled lan- 
tern and lamps with such a fracture, that no more experiments 
could be made that day. 
Then, again, your father had duly allowed that his system 
would not defend from vertical earthquake-shocks, but he hoped 
that they would be far more rare at any one place than horizontal 
shocks spreading all around and far from the places of vertical 
action ; and exactly so says the B.A. man for himself and his 
imitation balls and basins. 
And then he concludes with that he does hope for so much 
alleviation to human suffering in earthquake regions from the 
large amount of safety that balls and basin supports for dwellings 
must give in a gereral way that seismic science will be elevated 
in the eyes of the people, or something to that effect. To all 
which of course you can perfectly agree, both in your own and 
your father’s name. I can mention that the turning-point with 
him as to the practicability of the scheme was when he ascer- 
tained by rigid and calm scientific measures that the amount of 
absolute motion which had done the most mischief in some of 
the worst Italian earthquakes was not more than three inches, 
so that it came legitimately within the compass of the means /e 
first suggested, and R.S.S. Arts duly stamped with its approval 
ten years ago. 
Hereabouts is a different earth effect—viz. the High Street, 
so called, of Droitwich—going down slowly but surely to fill up 
the vacancies occasioned below by the ceaseless bringing up of 
salt-rock dissolved in water pumped by numberless steam- 
engines, and furnishing, it is said, half the human family with 
that one necessary mineral condiment, salt : and so much vapour 
of it is in the air that mere residence here for a time is said to 
cure rheumatism and other complaints, even without taking the 
celebrated brine baths, of ten times the saltness of the ocean 
itself. Yours very truly, 
C. Piazzi SMYTH 
P.S.—The spectroscopic salt line D is preternaturally strong 
in the air here; ‘‘D” might stand for Droitwich. 
SCIENTIFIC SERIALS 
Fournal of the Russian Chemical and Physical Society, vol. 
xvii. fasc. 1.—Annual reports of the Society. —On the isomerism 
of hydrocarbons according to the theory of substitution, by M. 
Menshutkin (analysed in another column).—On the prepara- 
tion of hemines, by M. Schalfeyeff.—On its crystalline 
forms, by A. Lagorion (with plates).—Notes on an apparatus 
for washing precipitates ; on the oxidation of aromatic amines ; 
on the action of alcohol on diazo compounds.—On the isomerism 
of solutions, by W. Alexeyeff.—On the same, by D. Konova- 
loff.—Minutes of proceedings of the physico-chemical section of 
the Moscow Socicty of amateurs of Natural Sciences. —On the 
electrolytic figures of Nobili and Gebhard in the magnetic field, 
by W. Stchegliaeff (with a plate).—On the collision of absolutely 
rigid bodies, by N. Schiller, being a mathematical inquiry, to 
show that the invariability of the ws viva can be established 
by che geometrical determination of the absolute invariability of 
the systems.—On the dilatation of liquids, by K. Jouk. 
Researches at the University of Kieff proved that common ether, 
ethylic alcohol, sulphurous anhydride, diethylamine, and chloric 
ethyl comply with the formula v = a + élog (7 — ¢).—Polemics 
between MM. Kraewitsch, Stoletoff, and Petroff. 
Vol. xvii., fasc.2.—Thermal data for hydrocarbon compound o 
bromide of aluminium, by G. Gustavson. The figures found 
by Berthelot, give for the molecule Al,Brg a heat of disso- 
lution equal to 170,600 units, M. Gustavson has found, from a 
series of six determinations, an average of 180,237 (from 179,926 
to 180,763). When taking AIBr, 3(C,H,), the number of 
calorics received was nearly 168 (from 168,001 to 168,567).— 
On diallyloxalic acid, and on the preparation of oxalic ether, by 
E. Schatzky.—On the formation of carbonates of strontium, 
barium, and calcium, by J. Bevad, being an inquiry into the 
rapidity of reactions.—On the change of colours of coloured 
surfaces under artificial light, by Th. Petrushevsky. 
