August 22, 1902.] 



SCIENCE. 



299 



atmosphere, and expressing the hope 

 that, by government aid, the plan might 

 soon be carried out. Professor Koppen sub- 

 mitted a new publication of the Deutsche 

 Seevvarte containing the results of his ex- 

 periments with kites at Hamburg and he 

 announced that, through Franco-Scandina- 

 vian cooperation, kite flights were to be 

 made this summer at Viborg in Jutland, 

 simultaneously with flights at Hamburg 

 and Berlin, so that valuable vertical sec- 

 tions of the barometric depressions travers- 

 ing north Germany would probably be ob- 

 tained. Professor Hergesell mentioned the 

 fact that kites had been flown upon the 

 Vosges mountains. 



General Rykatchef exhibited a new 

 anemometer, invented by Mr. Kusnetzof, 

 and intended to be carried by a kite, which 

 has bridled Robinson cups to record the 

 force of the wind at each instant. Another 

 anemometer, exhibited afterwards by Mr. 

 Gradenwitz, an engineer of Berlin, had a 

 glass cylinder partly filled vnth glycerine, 

 which is rotated by the Robinson cups and 

 the parabolic surface of the liquid shows 

 on a concentric scale the velocity of the 

 wind. M. Teisserenc de Bort urged the im- 

 portance of sounding the atmosphere at fre- 

 quent intervals and showed diagrams of 

 such a series of soundings made with kites 

 and hallons sondes almost daily during 

 thirty-six days at his observatory near 

 Paris, to an extreme height of twelve kilo- 

 meters. The rise and fall of the isotherms 

 during the passage of areas of high and low 

 pressure indicated graphically the compli- 

 cated conditions which still require further 

 investigation. 



The next session was occupied with the 

 topic of high ascents. Professor Cailletet, 

 of Paris, exhibited his apparatus for 

 hreathing oxygen at great elevations. The 

 old method of using the compressed gas 

 required a large and heavy receptacle, but 

 liquid gas can be much more conveniently 



carried and after it is allowed to evaporate 

 and to mix with air, by means of a 

 specially constructed mask the aeronaut is 

 forced always to breathe the mixture. Dr. 

 Siiring, of Berlin, described the physio- 

 logical phenomena attending his record- 

 breaking ascent with Mr. Berson to the 

 height of 10,800 meters on July 31, 1901, 

 and Dr. von Schrotter stated that his own 

 experiments in a pneumatic cabinet, under 

 a pressure of 230 millimeters of mercury, 

 proved that the respiration of oxygen re- 

 stored both the physical and mental power. 

 He also exhibited a breathing mask which 

 was to be tried with the one of M. Cailletet 

 during the next balloon ascent. Count 

 Zeppelin called attention to the well-known 

 fact that birds often soar above high moun- 

 tains as proving that they avail themselves 

 of the rising currents of air, and suggested 

 that ascents of hallons sondes in such 

 places might give interesting results. Lieu- 

 tenant von Lucanus, on the part of the Ger- 

 man Ornithological Society, advocated 

 observations in balloons to determine the 

 various levels at which birds are found. At 

 the close of the session a telegram was sent 

 to James Glaisher, the Nestor of scientific 

 aeronauts, in London, with the greetings of 

 his colleagues assembled from Europe, Asia 

 and America. 



The last session of the Congress was de- 

 voted to a discussion of measurements of 

 atmospheric electricity and terrestrial mag- 

 netism in balloons. Assuming that the 

 electrification of the air occurs through 

 'ions' or 'electrons,' as shown by the dis- 

 persion apparatus of Bister and Geitel, it 

 is of great interest to determine how the 

 constitution of the air, as regards positive 

 and negative ions, varies with height. By 

 using an aspirator to bring a definite quan- 

 tity of air over the apparatus. Professor 

 Ebert, of Munich, said that he had obtained 

 absolute measurements of the quantity of 

 free electricity in a cubic meter of air. In 



