Jdly i;, 188:?.] 



SCIENCE. 



•27 



ville, Ihroiigb Elm Point, to Grafton, on tlie IllinoU 

 shore of the Mississippi River. 



Hail-storms have occurred as follows : at Big 

 Creek. 10th; Centreville, 9th; eight milos north of 

 Savannah. 3(1 ; Hannibal, 9th; Louisiana, 9th and 10th 

 (andatSpringiicld and Dover church, near Louisiana, 

 large hail fell on the afternoon of the 18th); Lamar, 

 3d; Chamois, 9th, — a violent storm of wind and hail 

 at 7 P..M., for seven to ten minutes, the hail completely 

 covering the ground, some stones weighing six ounces. 

 On the ISth, at o.bt} p.m., a dark cloud in the south- 

 west moved to the west with a heavy roaring noise, 

 appearing to spend its force when due west, rain and 

 small hail following. 



Killing frosts occurred on the nights of the 21st 

 and 22d. .Vt Hig Creek great damage was done to 

 wheat, corn, and fruit. At Centreville, at 9 p.m., on 

 the 21st, the temperature was 32°, and fell later to 

 29.0°, — the latest frost in sixteen years. Fog pre- 

 vented damage in the valleys of the lilack River, but 

 in the dry valleys every thing was killed. Louisiana, 

 32° at sunrise on the 22d; Chamois, destructive frost 

 with ice an eighth of an inch thick in a pan of water; 

 Greenfield, heavy frost, which injured foliage of 

 forest-trees so that they looked as though scorched by 

 fire. 



White frosts occurred at Hannibal, Greenfield, 

 Mexico, Chamois, 5th; Hannibal, Louisiana, Cha- 

 mois, Miami, 11th; Irontou. 16th; over the entire state, 

 21st and 22d, but light in the south-west, where the 

 temperature was about 40°; Mexico, Ironton (33° at 

 5.30 A..M. ), Louisiana, Chamois, Miami, Greenfield, 

 23d; Sedalia, Centreville, Greenfield (heavy), Iron- 

 ton, Chamois, Miami, 31st. 



Addendum to April report. — At Cairo a heavy 

 shock of earthquake was felt at 2.36 .\.M. on the 12th, 

 which lasted thirty seconds. Vibrations, three per 

 second, from south-soulh-west to north-north-east. 

 An old one-story fianie-bullding, which was occupied 

 at the time the shock occurrt^d, was shaken down and 

 collapsed, the inmates receiving slight injuries. 



Iowa weather service, Iowa City. 



Weather bulletin fur May. — May was remarkably 

 cold, very rainy, with late frosts, westerly and north- 

 erly winds prevailing. The mean temper.iture of the 

 air was nearly five degrees below normal. In forty- 

 five years. May has been six times as cold or colder 

 than this year; namely, in 1S82, 1S67, 1S58, 1851, 

 1S50, and 1.S49. The late frosts about the 12th and 

 22il were general. 



The rainfall was much above normal thmughout 

 Iowa, except in middle northern Iowa and down the 

 middle Cedar and Wapsipinicon valleys. The total 

 rainfall was highest along the Mississippi and Missouri 

 rivers, and from Wayne to Polk county: in the re- 

 gions here specified, the rainfall averaged seven 

 inches. The rain frequency was also high: two of 

 every three days were rainy in most parts of the state. 



The principal storm-days were the Sth ami 9th, the 

 13th and 14th, ITth and 27tli. On the 9th a very 

 small tornado did slight damage in Linn county, near 

 Norway stal ion: on the other storm-days, Iowa was 



spared the visitation of tornadoes, which struck, on 

 the 13th, Kansas City; 18th, Racine; 2Stli, southern 

 Indiana. 



While unusually cold and quite wet, the season is 

 much more promising Uian last year, when May was 

 much colder. 



NOTES AND NEWS. 



Stephen Alexander, professor emeritus of as- 

 tronomy at Princeton, died .June 20. He was born 

 at Schenectady, N.T., and was educated .^t Union 

 college, where he graduated in 1824. Since 1840 he 

 has been connected with Princeton, first as professor 

 of astronomy, and later as professor of mechanics as 

 well. As an astronomer he became widely known. 



— Sir Edward Sabine, whose death has been lately 

 announced, was born in Dublin in October, 1788. 

 He studied at the military schools of Marlow and 

 Woolwich, and at the age of fifteen entered the 

 English army. In 1813 he was made captain, and 

 took part in the campaign on the Niagara frontier, 

 commanding the batteries at the siege of Fort Erie, 

 1814. From 1818 to 1825 he made a number of voy- 

 ages from the equator to the arctic regions for the 

 purpose of studying terrestrial magnetism, the figure 

 of the earth, and other questions in terrestrial 

 physics. He was with Ross and Parry on the arctic 

 expedition of 1818, and with Parry the following 

 year. He edited a number of tr.anslations of scien- 

 tific books, and published a large number of papers 

 on his favorite studies, having read more than forty 

 before the Royal society, and having contributed 

 many to the proceedings of the British association. 

 From 1827 to 18:30 he was secretary of the Royal 

 society, and president for the ten years 1861 to 1871, 

 .ind president of the British association in 18.53. In 

 1875 the French academy elected him as a corre- 

 sponding member. 



— A few weeks ago (April 26) Nature gave a sketch 

 of the life of Spottiswoode. In the number for .June 

 14 we find a regret expressed at his absence, on ac- 

 count of sickness, from the Royal society meeting of 

 that week. On June 27 he died. Born in London, 

 Jan. 11, 1825, he began his education in a private 

 school at Laleham, and then at Eton and Harrow; 

 his stay at Eton being short on account of some 

 experiments with detonating mixtures, in which he 

 was found to be interested. In 1842 he entered 

 Balliol college, Oxford, where, in his last year (1845) 

 as undergraduate, he read with the Rev. Bartholomew 

 Rice. After graduation he held university mathe- 

 matical s('holarships for two years, and for a short 

 time lectured on geometry of three dimensions. But 

 he soon took an active part in the management of 

 the large printing-business about this time resigned 

 to him by his father, and which he largely developed. 

 His scientific work was mainly in mathematics, 

 although of late years he has devoted himself to 

 physics, his recent investigations in electricity being 

 well known. Wlien a young man, he travelled 

 widely, and, among others, published a very lively 

 .Account entitled "A Farantasse journey through 



