126 
PHYSICAL NOTES. 
THE ‘DARK LIGHT’ OF M. LE BON. 
Durine the past two years M. Gustav 
Le Bon has brought out a remarkable fact 
regarding the passage of light through 
metals and other so-called opaque sub- 
stances. This fact, so far as it can be esti- 
mated from a study of Le Bon’s and others’ 
published results, without resort to con- 
firmatory experimentation, is either that 
the extreme red or infra-red components 
of sunlight and of gas light pass through 
thick metal plates sufficiently to affect 
sensitive plates after prolonged exposure; 
or that the medium wave-length com- 
ponents of sunlight and of gas light excite 
hyperphosphorescence in such metals as 
copper and lead just as they are known to 
do in case of uranium as shown by Bec- 
querel. It seems that Le Bon in his ex- 
periments has eliminated the effects of 
direct pressure upon the sensitive film, 
the effects of temperature and such ef- 
fects as might be due to chemical action 
between the film and the metal screens. 
In the exposition of his results Le Bon 
is unsatisfyingly fragmentary and vexa- 
tiously notional, and it is amusing, at 
best, to read his claim of a new connect- 
ing region between light and electricity— 
la lwmivre notre. ‘‘ Kile ne se propageait 
peut-ctre plus comme la lumiére et peut- 
étre propageait-elle comme Vélectricité.” 
So far as known, ‘ electricity,’ when it is 
propagated at all, is propagated in a 
manner identically the same as light, 
and a fancied difference is of no use in 
setting forth results. Facts are plain, 
new facts utterly so, and a discoverer 
who would have it appear otherwise is 
either not a discoverer or does not know 
himself to be one. W.S. F. 
SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS. 
THE Weights and Measures (Metric System) 
Bill passed through the Standing Committee on 
SCIENCE. 
(N.S. Von. VI. No. 134, 
Trade of the British House of Commons on 
July 5th, and was ordered to be reported with- 
out amendments. 
A BRONZE monument of Pére Marquette, the 
priest and explorer, was unveiled in Marquette, 
Mich., on July 15th. 
A MONUMENT in honor of Daguerre, erected 
by public subscription, was unveiled at Bry- 
sur-Marne on June 27th. 
THE Paris Academy has elected - Professor 
Virchow as a foreign associate in the room of 
the late M. Tchebitchef. The other nominees 
were Lord Rayleigh, as second choice, and, as 
third choice, Professors Schiaparelli, Stokes and 
Suess. 
THE Right Honorable Leonard H. Courtney, 
M. P., has been elected President of the Royal 
Statistical Society. 
THE Royal Society of Edinburgh has awarded 
the Gunning Victoria Jubilee Prize to Mr. John 
Aitken, the Keith Prize to Dr. Kargill G. Knott, 
the MacDougall-Brisbane Prize to Professor J. 
G. M’Kendrick and the Neill prize to Mr. 
Robert Irvine. 
Ir is stated in the Washington Star that M. 
Zolla has been sent to America by the French 
government to study methods of agriculture. 
THE subject of the essays for the Howard 
Medal and Prize of the Royal Statistical Society 
for 1898 is ‘ The treatment of habitual offenders, 
with special reference to their increase or de- 
crease in various countries.’ 
A MEETING was held on July 2d, at University 
College, London, to inaugurate the memorial 
to the late Sir John Pender, to which we have 
already referred. Remarks were made by the 
chairman, the Marquis of Tweeddale, by Mr. 
Haldane and by Lord Kelvin. A check for 
£5,000 was presented by the chairman to the 
authorities of University College to endow the 
electrical laboratory, and the,bust of Sir John 
Pender was exhibited. Lord Kelvin spoke of 
what Sir John Pender had accomplished. When 
the first experiment was made to lay a cable 
across the Atlantic, Sir John Pender was one 
of the directors of the company. When the 
temporary success was followed so soon by 
