70 



NA TURE 



\_Nov. 20, 1879 



The following is the list of office-bearers to be proposed at the 

 annual meeting of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, on November 

 24 :— President, the Right Hon. Lord Moncreiff ; Vice-presidents, 

 the Right Rev. Bishop Cotterill, Principal Sir Alexander Grant, 

 Bart., David Milne Home, LL.D., Sir C. Wyville Thomson, 

 LL.D., Prof. Douglas Maclagan, M.D., Prof. H. C. Fleeming 

 Jenkin, F.R.S. ; General Secretary, Prof. Tait ; Secretaries to 

 Ordinary Meetings, Prof. Turner, Prof. Crum Brown ; Trea- 

 surer, David Smith ; Curator of Library and Museum, Alexander 

 Buchan, M.A. ; other Members of Council, Prof. Rutherford, 

 Dr. R. M. Ferguson, Rev. W. Lindsay Alexander, D.D., 

 Dr. Thomas A. G. Balfour, J. Y. Buchanan, Rev. Thomas 

 Brown, Robert Gray, Dr. William Robertson, Prof. Campbell 

 Fraser, Prof. Geikie, Rev. Dr. Casenove, David Stevenson, 

 M. Inst.C.E. 



A grand diploma of honour has been granted by the Jury- 

 men of the Champs Elysees Exhibition to the Signal Corps of 

 the United States for its magnificent set of maps. No other 

 public institution has sent anything to compete with so formid- 

 able an opponent. 



About thirty members of the Academy of Sciences have 

 memorialised M. Jules Ferry, the Minister for Public Instruc- 

 tion, in order to obtain a promotion in the Legion d'Honneur on 

 behalf of M. Henry Giffard, the inventor of the injector and the 

 originator of many interesting experiments in aeronautics. M. 

 Gitiard was created a Chevalier about eighteen years ago. 



Professors A. Winnecke (Strassburg) and G. B. Schia- 

 parelli (Milan) have been nominated correspondents of the 

 physico-mathematical class of the Royal Academy of Sciences of 

 Berlin. 



The magnificent series of scientific collections at Dresden have 

 recently been further enlarged by the addition of an ethno- 

 graphical and anthropological museum. Many of the objects 

 now exhibited in the lecture-hall of the "Zwinger" had accu- 

 mulated since the year 1857, and the director, in due recognition 

 of the important position now occupied by ethnography and 

 anthropology in the list of natural science?, has recently made 

 considerable purchases for the opening of the new museum. The 

 director in question is the well-known New Guinea traveller, 

 Dr. A. B. Meyer, under whose able superintendence the Dresden 

 Zoological Museum is also placed. 



We are glad to receive from Mr. E. W. Lewis his "Lectures 

 on the Geology of Leighton Buzzard and its Neighbourhood," 

 which were given to the Working Men's Club of that town. We 

 should like to see lectures of this kind become more and more 

 common ; it is a good method of exciting an interest in science 

 and of encouraging the study of local natural history ; it is 

 certainly much better than giving a rechaufffe of scientific text- 

 books. 



At the meeting of the India Council, last week, a final de- 

 cision was come to regarding the disposal of the India Museum. 

 The Museum will be taken over, as is proper, by the Lord 

 President, and will be administered by the South Kensington 

 authorities ; important collections in illustration of the Indian 

 building art of antiquity, and of the economic, mineral, 

 vegetable, and animal productions of India will, therefore, 

 now be from time to time sent to the great centres of the 

 United Kingdom. The botanical part has been intrusted to 

 the authorities at Kew. A grant of 2,coo/. has been made for 

 the enlargement of the Kew Museum on that account, and 

 a small annual sum w ill be allowed for contingent expenses 

 and to secure the services of an expert cryptogamist in con- 

 nection with the collection. In its economic section the India 

 Museum was little more than a very costly duplicate of Kew, 

 which it could never approach in encyclopedic completeness, 



and it will necessarily be of incalculable benefit to the India 

 Office to keep its economic collections for the future at Kew, 

 where they will be in charge of the first English botanists. 

 In fact, the Indian Secretary will now always have the 

 assurance that the reports on Indian products forwarded by 

 him to the local Governments in India have not only been 

 carefully prepared by his own officers, but are supported by the 

 best scientific advice in this country. The Kew authorities, 

 in continuation of a scheme set on foot by Dr. Forbes Watson, 

 the late Reporter on Products, have undertaken to supply out of 

 their surplus stores samples of Indian articles to any museums in 

 our larger manufacturing and commercial towns which will 

 undertake the cost of suitably exhibiting them to the public. As 

 to the zoological collection, it has always been understood that 

 it would be transferred to the British Museum on the completion 

 by the trustees of their new Natural History Museum at South 

 Kensington. The Buddhistic sculptures will also be taken by 

 the British Museum. 



The Times Naples correspondent, writing under date 

 November 8 and 10, states that Vesuvius, which for some time 

 had been capricious in its action, had for a week previously 

 hoisted its red flag. This arises from a small eruptive cone 

 which has sprang up in the centre of the large crater of 1872, 

 and which now rises a few metres above its border. To com- 

 pare great things with small, the appearance of the summit is 

 that of a small cup in the centre of an immense saucer. The 

 saucer is almost full of lava, which, says the Osser-jatorio 

 Vesuviano, or Prof. Palmieri, has run over the side since 

 October 30, and continues its downward progress on the side of 

 the cone. It is fortunate, says the Osservalorio, that on the side 

 on which they are constructing the funicular railwayfcthere is a 

 considerable cavity which is not yet filled, so that hopes are 

 entertained that some time will elapse before the lava presents 

 itself in that direction. It may happen, too, adds Palmieri, that 

 an eccentric eruption may occur which will prevent the accumu- 

 lation of more material. It is th jught that a crisis in the history 

 of the mountain is approaching ; either there will be a great 

 discharge, such as will terrify the neighbourhood, or, as is more 

 likely, there will be an overflowing of lava, covering the cone 

 with a mantle of fire, and silently inflicting more destruction on 

 property than a grand eruption. Vesuvius has been in an active 

 state now for several years, and Prof. Palmieri has from the 

 first prophesied that the_eruption would consist in the over- 

 flowing of lava. On the 10th Vesuvius was covered with snow 

 down to its middle, a rare thing so early in the year. 



The juvenile lectures of the Society of Arts will be given this 

 year by Mr. W. H. Preece, on "Wonders of Sound" and 

 "Wonders of Light." The dates for his lectures are December 

 30 and January 6. 



The French Minister for Commerce has sent to the Academy 

 of Sciences a request to know whether a diagometer can be 

 relied upon for ascertaining whether olive oil has been adulte- 

 rated by common seed oil, and in what proportion. Prof. 

 Palmieri, the director of the Vesuvian Observatory, sent M. 

 Dumas a pamphlet published at the expense of the Chamber of 

 Commerce of Naples nine years ago, showing that the problem 

 had been solved by this apparatus. The principle is the same 

 as the bifilar magnetometer, also invented and designed by 

 Palmieri. 



We have received programmes of the new session of the 

 numerous societies united together under the name of the Cum- 

 berland Association for the Advancement of Literature and 

 Science. The programmes of lectures and ordinary meetings are 

 fairly divided between the two fields. The continued prosperity 

 of this provincial association for culture is exceedingly gratifying. 



The Pacific Steam Navigation Company have begun to use 



