April is, 1880] 



NATURE 



563 



manufacture of artificial visualisations ; and the hat feat just 

 narrated falls within the same category. 



In working the rich mine which Mr. Gallon's genius has dis- 

 covered, I hope he will explore the vein of chess without the 

 chessboard. As efforts of memory, such performances are as 

 surprising as the numerical feats of Colburn and Bidder. And 

 they notably differ from them in that the highest development is 

 reached, not by young boys, but by men of malure years, who, 

 as players over the board, have reached the front rank. The 

 writer (in last year's Chess Flayer's Chronicle) attempted to give 

 a rough estimate of the number of moves and po.-itions possible 

 at chess. They are of course practically illimitable ; and with 

 this fact in mind it is easy to form an idea of the difficulty of 

 playing twelve games blindfold against very strong antagonists. 

 This task, however, is often performed by Messrs. Zukertort 

 and Hlackburne, beyond question in England, and probably in 

 the world, the greatest adepts in this branch of chess-play. It 

 would be highly instructive to learn by what process, in so far 

 as it is a conscious and describable one, these feats are achieved. 

 If Mr. Galton takes the matter up, no doubt he will, with his 

 usual skill, throw a flood of light upon the subject. 



Edwyn Anthony 



Riggs's Hotel, Washington, March 29 



\ Meteor 



A LARGE and brilliant meteor was seen here at S. 25 p.m. on 

 the 7th inst. It appeared a little below Zeta Tauri, and travelled 

 very slowly southwards in a line nearly parallel to the horizon, 

 traversing a space of about 50 . 



The meteor rapidly increased in brilliancy, and is described as 

 many times brighter than Venus, until near the end of its course, 

 when it diminished in size. No trail was seen, although the 

 meteor appeared to smoke. Svn. Eversiied 



Wonersh, Guildford, April 12 



Carnivorous Wasps 



A SUMMER or two ago I observed a number of dead flies, 

 blue-bottles, humble-bees, and hive bees on a certain part of one 

 path in my garden ; though the dead insects were removed every 

 day, yet a fresh collection was seen every morning, the cause of 

 death remaining unknown for several days. One morning I was 

 earlier than usual in the garden, and I saw a number of wasps 

 attacking flies and bees in their flight, biting and twisting their 

 wings, and ultimately killing their victims on the ground. 



The garden was at the time full of flowers, and the wasps 

 appeared to be waiting in ambush for the flies and bees as they 

 came over a low wall into the garden. Sometimes the wasps 

 would bite the wings entirely off their victims, and they soon 

 after appeared to be sucking the juices of the flies from the joint 

 between the head and thorax. Worthington G. Smith 



"Who are the Irish?" 



Will you permit a few words of reply to your notice of 

 " Who are the Iris.li ? " 



Grateful to jour oiticfor pointing out some ha'tily-written 

 sentences, I am surprised he failed to see the real object of the 

 little book. This was to show in a popular rather than a scien- 

 tific way the folly of that race hatred, arising from the assump- 

 tion that Irish are Celts and English are Saxons. 



It was not necessary to cite Erench authorises on the Celtic 

 question there, though they appear in the forthcoming pamphlet 

 on "Who are the Scotch?" As for my supposed absurd 

 remarks about Basques and Dark Irish, I only quoted the opinions 

 of the learned Prof. Huxley. My simple and honest desire was 

 to promote peace and goodw ill between two peoples, more closely 

 related than the factious and contentious care to believe. 



James Bonwick, Author of 



Acton, E., March 24 " Who are the Irish " 



A LEAF FROM THE HISTORY OF SWEDISH 



NATURAL SCIENCE 1 



III. 



IN a yet higher degree than fluor spar, phosphorus 

 attracted attention through its property of beiiv; self- 

 luminous in darkness in consequence of a slow combus- 



1 Translated from a paper by Prof. A. E. NordenskjolJ of Stockholm 

 Continued from p. 541. 



tion. This substance was accidentally discovered, as I 

 have already mentioned, at the close of t!ie sixteenth 

 century, at Hamburg in the course of experiments made 

 by the ruined alchemist, Brand, with a view to produce 

 the philosopher's stone by the dry distillation of urine 

 which had been evaporated to dryness. The raw 

 material was not abundant, the process of manufacture 

 uncertain, and phosphorus, which is now sold at about 

 ys. 6d. per kilogram, was worth many times its weight 

 in gold. Soon after the physician Bernard Albinus dis- 

 covered that the same substance could also be produced 

 from the ashes of certain plants, but its general occurrence 

 in nature (in the bones of animals and in the mineral 

 kingdom) was first pointed out by Scheele and Gahn, who, 

 during Scheele's stay in Stockholm (1768-70), are believed 

 to have simultaneously made this important discovery." It 

 forms the proper starting point of our knowledge of this 

 substance, of such extraordinary importance in the econo- 

 my of nature, so indispensable in scientific agriculture, 

 in medicine, and in numberless branches of modern 

 industry. 



In attempting to discover the cause of cold-shortness 

 in iron, Bergman and the German Meyer believed that 

 they had discovered almost simultaneously that it was 

 caused by the iron being alloyed with a brittle and easily 

 fusible metal, for which Meyer proposed the name /yvrVe?- 

 sidcrum. Soon after, however, Meyer himself and 

 Klaproth showed that a metal completely similar was 

 produced by fusing together iron and phosphoric acid — 

 the latter distinguished chemist expressly declaring that 

 the analytical proof of this was difficult to carry out. 

 The year after, however, Scheele succeeded in producing 

 phosphorus in a very ingenious way from cold-short iron. 

 We are thus under a great obligation to him for a very 

 important contribution to scientific metallurgy. 



As I have already slated, Brandt proved, about 1730, 

 that the regulus of arsenic ought to be considered as a 

 peculiar semi-metal, whose proper " kalk " was arsenious 

 acid. If we except Macquer's discovery of arscniate of 

 potash, our knowledge of this important and dangerous 

 substance made little progress during the following de- 

 cades, until Scheele in 1775 published ' n tne Transactions 

 of the Swedish Academy of Sciences his remarkable, 

 and in this field epoch-making work "Cn Arsenic and 

 its Acid." Scheele introduced to our knowledge arsenic 

 acid and a number of its salts, and besides discovered 

 that it gave with zinc a gas previously unknown, which 

 contained "combustible air'' and arsenic. This gas 

 (arseniurctted hydrogen) is exceedingly poisonous, and 

 experiments with it forty years after its discovery cost 

 the German chemist Gehlen his life. It appears to be 

 this gas which is given off in rooms where the paper- 

 hangings contain arsenic. This work of Scheele's came 

 to be of great theoretic importance by his sharp glance 

 immediately noting that the white arsenic and the new 

 arsenic acid were different degrees of oxidation, or as it 

 was then expressed, different " stadia of dephlogistication " 

 of the same metal. Long before Davy's discovery of 

 potassium and sodium, Berzelius' of calcium and silicium, 

 and Wohler's of aluminium, Scheele appear to have had 

 a clear insight into the relationship of the earths to 

 metallic oxides. 2 



1 The first account of this discovery is found in a note of two lines in 

 Scheele's pap?r on fluor spar lo this effect: "That the earth in bone and 

 b.rn is lime saturated with acidum pkospkori is newly discovered/ 1 ( Trans. 

 1) The discovery was ascribed by Bergman in his edition of 

 I Kern stry, at one place to Scheele, and at another [•> l_i:i!m. The 

 factsof ihe case are cleared up in Wilckc's biography.! Scheele He had in 

 of 1 770 mentioned lo Gahn that he had found in bi.rncd hartshorn 

 lime combined with a substance unknown to him. on which Calm examined 

 the " animal earth by means of the blow-pipe, and found it be comp. scd of 

 lime combined with phosphoric acid." Scheele at first d ubtcd Gahn's state- 

 ment, unt.l in the summer of the same year at Upsala he for the first time 

 made phosphorus from bumed bones. 



' All metallic "kalks," indeed all earths are distinct acids, whose difference 



depends ■ n different proportions of phi. gision. In a letter to Hjelm Scheele 



s a ys:— "the discovery of ferric acid is reserved for chemists, lot earlier than 



the coming century, when we labour in the Elysian fields " Ferric acid was 



1 1840 by f'remy. 



