Jan. 15, 1880] 



NATURE 



261 



Alphonse Milne- Edwards, who on some points is the 

 greatest ornithological authority that has ever lived. We 

 are then told of an Oxford undergraduate who " took a 

 walk with his gun in Bagley Wood and brought home 

 fifty different specimens which he carefully stuffed." 

 " He had a museum," it is added, " of several hundreds." 

 We are not told whether this Oxford undergraduate's 

 conduct is worthy of praise or blame, nor would it much 

 signify, for the writer is evidently confused in his notion 

 of "specimens" and "species." To kill specimens of 

 fifty different species in one day and in one wood, though 

 not easy, could no doubt be done in many places, but it 

 wouJd be hard to kill fifty birds that were not different 

 specimens I Would the writer also be surprised to learn 

 that "a museum," or a collection, as people nowadays 

 more humbly style it, " of several hundreds,' ' was some 

 fifty years ago by no means uncommon, and that of late 

 years private collections include not only thousands of 

 specimens, but thousands of species ? 



But now comes the most astonishing assertion of all. 

 We are told that " Mr. Morris describes more than 

 twelve hundred birds," and that there may be no mistake 

 in the writer's meaning, he subsequently repeats the 

 statement in this wise : " Of the twelve hundred British 

 birds, a good many are represented by a single stray 

 specimen," and so on ! The ornithologists of this country 

 have hitherto been deemed by their continental brethren 

 somewhat too hasty in enrolling as "British" every 

 chance waif from foreign lands and seas that has had the 

 ill luck to show itself (and of course be shot) within the 

 limits of the United Kingdom, and we have never under- 

 stood that on the most liberal interpretation of the ex- 

 pression, "British birds," the number has exceeded four 

 hundred. How blind and inefficient have they been 

 when they have omitted more than two-thirds of the 

 species that occur here ! It is really to be hoped that the 

 ■writer of the leading article on English birds in last 

 Thursday's 'limes will bring them to a due sense of their 

 neglected duties by furnishing a list of the Soo species 

 whose rights of citizenship have been so shamefully 

 ignored, and if he will at the same time say in which 

 edition of Mr. Morris's work "more than twelve hundred" 

 British birds are described, he will possibly contribute to 

 a more comfonable understanding of the matter, for Mr. 

 Morris has hitherto been supposed to follow very closely 

 the late Mr. Yarrell in the information he gives, so that 

 when the latter in his last edition included 354 species, 

 the former a few years later made the number 35S ! 



There are many other assertions in the same article 

 which excite a degree of amazement inferior only to the 

 last particularised, and we have heard persons suggest 

 that the writer must have been all the while perpetrating 

 a solemn joke. 



ED/SOX'S ELECTRIC LIGHT 



THE Times New York correspondent gives some 

 interesting details in Monday's paper of Mr. 

 Edison's new torm of electric lighting and the steps by 

 which he was led to its discovery. So far the light has 

 withstood every test that has been tried, and so confident 

 do the public seem that success has been attained at last, 

 that the shares of the Edison Company have risen from 

 20 dollars to 3,500 dollars. 



The Philadelphia correspondent of the same journal gives 

 some further information in yesterday's issue. Probably 

 200 people mr.ke up the population of Menlo Park, we are 

 told, nearly all Edison's ivorsmen and their families. He 

 gets an income of 40,000 dollars to 50,000 dollars a year 

 from his various inventions, and he spends it all, the most 

 of it for machinery and wages, and the balance in charity. 

 The correspondent then gives some interesting details 

 concerning Mr. Edison, his habits, his enthusiasm, and 

 his relations with his numerous employs. There is no 



discipline enforced or any apparent time-table for work, 

 yet with all hands it seems a labour of love, and if you pick 

 out from the crowd the grimiest and most woe- begone of the 

 whole party of overworked alchemists it will be Edison him- 

 self. It appears to have been the system at Menlo Park, as 

 with the alchemists of old, to do most of the work at 

 night, and it seems the regular habit of Edison and his chief 

 subordinates to work straight through the twenty-four 

 hours without stopping, until tired nature compels them 

 to drop down in any handy place and go to sleep. " We 

 went there," the correspondent writes, "hoping that 

 Edison had succeeded, but nevertheless sceptics, and we 

 came away thorough believers. His lamps were burning 

 when we arrived, and they burnt continuously until our 

 departure, excepting from half-past four to half-past five 

 p.m., when about an hour's time was taken in putting in 

 a new generator to do the work, which he had just finished 

 and desired to try. During the daylight we could see the 

 lamps burning, supplied by the first generator, and per- 

 ceived that the little carbon loop or horseshoe giving the 

 light remained intact. After dark, when the second 

 generator went to work, we saw for three hours the lamps 

 successfully burning as a complete substitute for gas for 

 every purpose for which illumination was necessary at 

 Menlo Park. The gas jets were idle, being put out of use 

 by the steadier and more genial glow of the electric light. 

 We ate our supper by it in the little restaurant that has been 

 established at the Park, and I sat down in Edison's office 

 under two of his lamps attached to a gas bracket and 

 wrote the rough draft of the telegram sent to the Times. 

 In this room a telegraph operator worked in a corner with 

 an Edison lamp in a movable table stand illuminating 

 his work. Down stairs his bookkeeper was paying off the 

 hands by the aid of two more electric lights on a gas 

 bracket. Out in the roadway in front of the building two 

 street lamps were set up with the Edison light in full 

 operation. In his workshop the engineer was running his 

 engine and a couple of men watching the operation of the 

 new generator by the light of more Edison's lamps, while 

 in the laboratory some fit teen of them were giving light 

 for various operations, and downstairs a young man sat 

 at the regulator, and, watching another light, by the aid 

 of the galvanometer, kept the flame steady, just as the 

 regulator is worked constantly in the gas-house to adjust 

 the gas pressure, so that it will compensate for turning 

 lights on or off throughout the town. It was between 

 seven and eight o'clock on a dark winter evening, and the 

 electric light had put into disuse both the gas jets and the 

 petroleum lamps that were in profusion around. I visited 

 four dwellings in the village and saw the Edison lamps 

 doing the work of illumination for all household purposes 

 in each of them. In Edison's own house, where he had 

 at least a dozen of them, we remained over half an hour, 

 and I shall never forget the glee with which Edison 

 listened to the reading of a newspaper slip, wherein an 

 ambitious ' expert ' offered to forfeit 100 dollars for every 

 lamp that Edison could keep burning over twenty 

 minutes." 



KOTES 



On Friday, the 9th inst., the St. Andrew's University Court 

 agreed to report to the Queen in Council in favour of an appli- 

 cation by Trof. Swan to be permitted to retire, on the usual 

 retiring allowance, from his Chair of Natural and Experimental 

 Philosophy in the University, on the ground of failing health. 



Mr. E. \V. Cooke, R.A., F.R.S., whose death at the age of 

 sixty-nine year?, took place at Groombridge on the 4th inst., 

 deserves some notice in these pages for his connection in various 

 ways with science. From his boyhood he had the keenest 

 interest in natural history, and was probably one of the first 

 amateur horticulturists. He was connected with most of our 

 scientific societies, and was an early member and constant 



