SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XII. No. 28; 



ing of the congress will take place on Monday evening, Sept. 17, at 

 8 P.M., when the council will be appointed, and the general order 

 of business for the session will be determined. The ordinary meet- 

 ings of the congress will be held on the mornings of Tuesday, the 

 iSth, and succeeding days, beginning at 10 A.M. In the afternoons 

 there will be visits to museums, or to places of interest in the neigh- 

 borhood of London. Arrangements for the evenings will be made 

 at a later date. The ordinary business of the congress will include 

 the discussion of questions not considered at Berlin, or adjourned 

 thence for fuller discussion at the London meeting. Among these 

 are the geological map of Europe, the classification of the Cam- 

 brian and Silurian rocks and of the Tertiary strata, and some points 

 of nomenclature, etc., referred to the congress by the International 

 Commission. Miscellanesus business will also be considered. In 

 addition to these questions, the organizing committee proposes to 

 devote a special sitting to a discussion on the crystalline schists. 

 An exhibition will be held during the week of the congress, to 

 which geologists are invited to send maps, recent memoirs, rocks, 

 fossils, etc. Foreign members of the congress are invited by the 

 council of the British Association to attend the meeting of that as- 

 sociation at Bath. During the week when the association meets, 

 there will be short excursions in the neighborhood of Bath, and 

 longer excursions will be made after the meeting. At these excur- 

 sions excellent sections of the lower secondary and upper paleozoic 

 rocks will be visited. Excursions will take place in the week after 

 the meeting of the congress (Sept. 24 to 30). The number of these 

 will depend upon the number of members desirous of attending, 

 and upon the districts which they most wish to visit. The excur- 

 sions at present suggested are : (i) The Isle of Wight (visiting the 

 Ordnance Survey Office at Southampton on the way), cretaceous, 

 eocene, oligocene. (2) North Wales, Pre-Cambrian and the older 

 paleozoic rocks; West Yorkshire (Ingleborough, etc.), Silurian and 

 carboniferous limestone. (3) East Yorkshire (Scarborough, Whit- 

 by, etc.), Jurassic and cretaceous. Should the number of members 

 be so large as to make additional excursions necessary, they will 

 probably be : (4) Norfolk and Suffolk, pliocene (crag) and glacial 

 beds. (5) To the Jurassic rocks of central England. The short 

 excursions during the week of the congress will probably be to 

 Windsor and Eton, to St. Albans, to Watford, to Brighton, to the 

 Royal Gardens at Kew, and to other places of interest. Brief de- 

 scriptions of the districts to be visited in these excursions will be 

 prepared (with illustrative sections, etc.), and will, if possible, be 

 sent to members before the meeting. The full report of the London 

 meeting will be issued soon after the close of the session. It will 

 contain, in addition to reports of the ordinary business of the con- 

 _gress, the report of the American committee on nomenclature 

 {about 230 pages) ; the memoirs on the crystalline schists (about 

 150 pages), and reports of discussion on the same; and probably 

 a reprint, with additions, of the report of the Enghsh committee on 

 nomenclature (about 150 pages). 



— An international horticultural exhibition, we learn from Na- 

 ttire, is to be held at Cologne from Aug. 4 to Sept. 19. 



— On the 4th of June, according to Nature, Dr. Maxwell T. 

 Masters was elected a corresponding member of the Institute of 

 France, in the Botanical Section, in place of the late Prof. Asa 

 ■Gray. Besides Dr. Masters, the following names appeared on the 

 list of presentation : M. Treub of Batavia, Mr. Triana of Paris, M. 

 Warming of Lund, M. Wiesener of Vienna. Dr. Masters ob- 

 tained 39 votes; M. Triana, 5 ; M. Treub, i. 



— We are glad to learn (from Naiiire) that a pension of £^0 

 has been granted to Mrs. Balfour Stewart from the civil list. 



— Messrs. Thomas Whitta'ker & Sons, New York, have pub- 

 lished an admirable ' Planisphere showing the Principal Stars visi- 

 ble for Every Hour in the Year.' It is substantially made, and 



convenient for use in our latitude. Outing for July opens with 



' An Irish Outing Awheel,' from the pen of ' Faed ' Wilson. The 

 illustrations of Irish scenery by Harry Fenn are handsomely repro- 

 duced. The number contains plenty of summer matter. Samuel 

 M. Baylis is the author of ' After Trout in Canadian Waters.' 

 Other articles are ' Richfield Springs,' by Mrs. M. B. Hedges ; 

 ' The Angling Tournament,' by Francis Endicott ; etc. The 



July volumes of Ticknor's Paper Series will be as follows : ' Two 

 College Girls,' by Helen Dawes Brown, ready July 7 ; and ' The 



Rise of Silas Lapham,' by William D. Howells, ready July 21. 



Macmillan & Co. are about to publish in two volumes a second se- 

 ries of Carlyle's letters, extending from 1826 to 1835, edited by 



Professor Norton. The J. B. Lippincott Company have in press 



' Stanley to the Rescue : the Relief of Emin Pacha,' by A. Wauters, 

 president of the Royal Geographical Society of Belgium. It will 



contain a map and thirty-four illustrations. G. P. Putnam's 



Sons publish this week ' The Story of Turkey,' by Stanley Lane- 

 Poole, which forms the nineteenth volume of the story of the 

 Nations Series. 



— Mr. Joseph Jastrow has been elected professor of experimental 

 and comparative psychology at the University of Wisconsin. This 

 is very gratifying, as it shows an interest in this country in the sci- 

 entific aspect of mind. 



LETTERS TO THE EDITOR. 



"»* Correspondents are requested to be as brie/ as possible. The writer's nante is 

 in allcases reqiUred as prooj' o/ g^ood faith. 



Tiventy cofiies of the number containing his communication will be fiir7iished 

 free to any correspondent oji request. 



The editor wilt be glad to publisli any queries consonant ivitJi tJie character oj 

 t tie journal. 



The Rainfall at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. 



In 1837 rainfall observations were instituted at Fort Leavenworth 

 under the supervision of the post surgeon, and the record was con- 

 tinued, with but few breaks, until October, 1883. In the latter 

 year, in view of the proximity of the Signal Service station in Leav- 

 enworth City, the authorities at the War Department, or the offi- 

 cers at the fort, suffered this magnificent record to be discontinued. 

 The length of the series, surpassing any other record west of the 

 Mississippi, and antedating by almost twenty years the settlement 

 of Kansas by the white man, has made it of especial value as evi- 

 dence upon the question of a secular change in rainfall over the 

 Western plains. 



The observations up to 1874 were rendered generally available by 

 their publication in the ' Smithsonian Precipitation Tables ' and in 

 the ' Report of the Kansas Board of Agriculture for 1874 ; ' for the 

 years 1S71 to 1880 they were published in ' Professional Paper No. 

 IX.' of the Signal Service; and for 1881 to 1883 they have not been 

 printed, or at least have not become generally accessible. The 

 series subsequent to 1873 seems, moreover, to have been little used, 

 and discussions of secular change in rainfall have generally been 

 made by completing the Fort Leavenvforth series since 1873 with 

 the Signal Service records at Leavenworth City, the entire compar- 

 ability of?the two series being assumed without investigation or 

 proof. 



That this assumption is quite unscientific, and that it is liable to 

 lead to erroneous results, does not need to be argued before the 

 careful meteorologist. The difference in the rules and methods of 

 observation and the spirit of the observers, as well as the difference 

 in the locations and exposures of the gauges and in the gauges 

 themselves, furnish abundant room for systematic discrepancy. 



With the record thus constructed out of the two series of obser- 

 vations, an average increase of seven inches seemed to have oc- 

 curred during the past twenty years, and this result has been wide- 

 ly used to confirm the belief in a permanent increase in the rainfall 

 over the Western plains. For the reasons above stated, this con- 

 clusion seems to me to stand in need of a complete re-examination. 

 In a preliminary survey of the Fort Leavenworth observations as 

 printed, errors were discovered that showed the necessity of a thor- 

 ough scrutiny of the original data (see Scit'iice, xi. No. 272). 



In order to make the desired examination, I have visited Fort 

 Leavenworth, and through the courtesy of Major Alfred A. Wood- 

 hull, Surgeon U.S.A., was enabled to make copies of the original 

 records forthe years not hitherto published, and for the periods need- 

 ing confirmation. I am also indebted to Major WoodhuU for cer- 

 tified copies of a portion of the records that have heretofore been 

 incorrectly printed. 



In view of the error already discovered, — namely, that the meas- 

 ured snowfall in January, 1S71, had not been reduced to inches of 



