July lo, 1891.] 



SCIENCE. 



2 1 



directions of the wind is that the (reduced) high-level barometric 

 reading exceeds the (reduced) low-level reading when the wind 

 blows at about the rate of 5 miles an hour. The reverse is always 

 true when the speed of the wind exceeds that rate, on the one hand, 

 or is extremely small, on the other. This seems to indicate an 

 increase of pressure in air-currents which ascends the mountain, 

 and so may explain the fact that the top of the mountain is fre- 

 quently clear, while dense cloud is being constantly formed at a 

 short distance above it. 



— On June 27 a scientific expedition, headed by Professor Lee, 

 instructor in biology at Bowdoin College, sailed from Rockland, 

 Me., for Labrador. Of the seventeen members of the party with 

 Professor Lee, nearly all are undergraduates of Bowdoin. The 

 intention is to land four of the party at Hamilton Inlet for a tour 

 of exploration inland, following the inlet and Grand River. The 

 rest of the party will go as far north as Cape C'hudleigh. 



— The formal transfer of the Weather Bureau from the War 

 Department to the Department of Agriculture took place on July 1. 

 The first official act after the transfer was the appointment of the 

 new chief. Professor Mark W. Harrington of Michigan. Pro- 

 fessor Harrington is now and has been for the last twelve years 

 professor of astronomy in the University of Michigan, at Ann 

 Arbor, and e'litor of the American MeteorologicalJournal. He is 

 about 43 years old. Acting Secretary Grant signed an order on 

 the last day of June discharging the 163 employees of the signal 

 service then engaged in the Weather Bureau. The list is headed 

 by Professor Abbe and ends with the first-class sergeants. Under 

 the law the Secretary of Agriculture is bound to give preference 

 to these men in making appointments for the new Weather Bureau, 

 and, with the exception of a few men who elected to remain in 

 what will hereafter be the purely military branch of the signal 

 service, all of the employees who were engaged in the Weather 

 Bureau will be reappointed. 



— According to Professor Elihu Thompson, sa.js Engineering, it 

 is not the extra resistance at the break that gives rise to the heat- 

 ing in electric welding. The imperfect contact there no douht 

 hastens the heating at the joint, but a solid bar placed between the 

 clamps of an electi-ic welding machine can also be raised to the 

 welding temperature, and the bar may be upset there. The real 

 cause of the concentration of the heating between the clamps is 

 the relatively greater conductivity of other portions of the welding 

 cii-cuit, which is usually composed of massive copper conductors 

 kept cool in the case of large vi-ork by the circulation of water. 

 By keeping the conductors cool in this way their resistance is 

 maintained constant, and there follows an accentuation of heat- 

 ing effect at the joint, where the rise in temperature increases the 

 resistance. In large works it has been found that hydraulic power 

 can be advantageously employed both for clamping and making 

 contact with the pieces to be welded or worked. In dealing with 

 metals such as lead, tin, and zinc, the temperature required for 

 welding is so low that the metal never glows, and the progress of 

 the heating cannot be watched with the eye. By jDroperly shap- 

 ing the ends leaden water pipes can easily be welded together end 

 to end. The meeting edges should be thinned so as to reduce the 

 surface of contact below the area of the pipe wall. Joints thus 

 made are very good and sound. Most metals can be welded with- 

 out the use of a flux, but for good work a flux is often desirable. 



— The suijplemeot to the Pilot Chart of the North Atlantic for 

 July illustrates graphically and by means of a tabular statement 

 the drift of every bottle-paper (showing the drift of floating bot- 

 tles) returned to the hydrographic office at Washington since April, 

 1889. A small chart of this kind was published last November, 

 but the present supplement is complete up to date. The number 

 of bottle-papers received was 134, of which 119 were from the 

 North Atlantic. The total number of miles drifted by these 119 

 papers is 103,444, giving an average of 869 miles. There are 113 

 papers that contain the date of commencement and end of jour- 

 ney, from which the total number of days can be calculated. For 

 these 113 papers the total number of days is 16,969, giving an 

 average of 150 days to each paper. Dividing the average drift by 

 the average number of days, it is found that 5.8 miles per day is 

 the average drift. This figure, it should be remembered, is of 



necessity less than the true average rate per day, because every 

 day that a bottle lies undiscovered on the beach counts on its time 

 of drift, the apparent elapsed time being thus too great and the 

 average drift per day too small. It is proposed to continue the 

 publication of bottle papers as often as possible, not only for the 

 Atlantic but for other oceans, and masters of vessels and others 

 interested are urged to co-operate with the hydrographic office in 

 collecting as complete data as possible regarding this general sub- 

 ject. Any reliable reports of long drifts of bottle papers, or any 

 other floating objects, will he of interest in this connection, and 

 the accumulation of such data may add considerable useful infor- 

 mation to our knowledge of the general di'ift of ocean currents. 



— On Thursday, May 31, says the Lancet, the body of an Arab, 

 found dead on one of the ships in the Albert Docks, was taken to 

 the Seamen's Hospital, name unknown. A necropsy was ordered 

 by the coroner, and made by Dr. F. Croucher, house surgeon to 

 the branch hosjjital. There were no signs of disease in the brain 

 or the chest, except a few old adhesions in the left pleural cavity. 

 The gall bladder was very distended and full. Three small ulcers 

 existed on the anterior coat of the stomach. Several patches of 

 inflammation were found in the small intestine. In the csecum 

 were found twenty buttons, three cog-wheels (apparently out of 

 a watch, two of them one inch in diameter, and doubled), one two- 

 inch steel screw bent double, and one one-inch screw, six pieces of 

 a lock (the biggest piece one and a half inch long and one and a 

 half inch broad), a circular piece of brass (one and three-quarter 

 inch in diameter folded into four), several pieces of iron wire 

 (four were one and a half inch in length), brass, and lead, and two 

 key tallies on a ring, one inch in length. In the ascending colon, 

 about five inches from the cagcum, were found a piece of steel wire 

 one eighth of an inch in diameter, and three inches and a half in 

 length, bent double, and one small cog-wheel. The weight of 

 these bodies together amounted almost exactly to half a pound. 

 The body was much emaciated; no subcutaneous fat was present 

 in chest or abdominal walls, or any fat round the kidneys. The 

 deceased was quite unknown ; no particular's could be discovered 

 by the police employed to obtain evidence for the purposes of the 

 inquest. There was no perforation of intestines, nor any sign of 

 disease in the colon. 



— Dr. Roland Thaxter has received an appointment as assistant 

 professor of cryptogamic botany and Mr. J. G. Jack as arboretum 

 lecturer for 1891-93 at Harvard University. 



— Dr. J. F. Williams of the Geological Survey of Arkansas has 

 been appointed assistant professor of geology at Cornell University. 

 He has in press a volume upon the igneous rocks of Arkansas. 



— J. M. Stedman, formerly of Cornell University, now of the 

 United States Department of Agriculture, has just accepted an 

 invitation to the chair of biology in Trinity Univei"sity, Durham, 

 N.C. This institution has been completely reorganized, and will 

 open in September, with the following new departments : medical 

 college; law school; schools of arts, literature, political and social 

 science, and divinity; and a college of the sciences. 



— Mr. John M. Barr, well known as a member of the American 

 Society of Mechanical Engineers, and now professor of mechanical 

 engineering at the University of Minnesota, has resigned his 

 position to accept a call to Sibley College, Cornell Uuiversit.y, 

 where he will have special charge of the whole line of junior work 

 in machine-design lately conducted by Professor A. W. Smith. 

 Professor Smith goes to the University of Wisconsin for the pres- 

 ent, with the expectation that he may go to the Stanford Univer- 

 sity a year later. 



— Mr. C. H. Tyler Townsend some time ago resigned his posi- 

 tion in the Division of Entomology, United States Department 

 of Agriculture, lo accept the post of entomologist to the State ex- 

 periment station of New Mexico. By a competitive civil service 

 examination his place has been filled by Mr. F. H. Chittenden of 

 New York, formerly editor of Entomologica Americana, and cu- 

 rator and corresponding secretary of the Brooklyn Entomological 

 Society. Mr. A. B. Cordley, formerly entomologist of the Agri 

 cultural experiment station of Vermont, has also been appointed 

 lo a position in the division. 



