March 25, 1887.] 



SCIENGU. 



295 



arctic regions ; March 19, Capt. C. E. Button, 

 U.S.A., Earthquakes; March 23, W. J. McGee, 

 The Charleston earthquake ; March 26, Prof. Otis 

 T. Mason, The natural history of human arts ; 

 April 2, Dr. B. E. Fernow, Our forestr3- problem ; 

 April 6, Thomas Wilson, Prehistoric man in west- 

 ern Europe. 



— Prof. J. R. Dodge, statistician of the agri- 

 cultural department, has been appointed an official 

 delegate to the international statistical institute 

 which is to meet in Rome, April 11. 



— An account of the foundation and work of 

 the Blue Hill meteorological observatory, near 

 Boston, has lately been prepared by its proprie- 

 tor, Mr. A. Lawrence Rotch. Its records were 

 begun the last of January, 1885 ; and especially 

 in the second year of their sequence, when the 

 difficulties and interruptions characteristic of their 

 beginning had decreased, they are remarkably 

 elaborate and complete. Very few stations in the 

 country possess so extensive a set of self-recording 

 apparatus. Local weather-prediction has been 

 successfully attempted, the data being in part 

 local observation, in part general observations of 

 the signal service. For the past month or two, 

 the predictions issued from the Hill have been 

 regularly published in some of the Boston papers. 

 Such an experiment, giving opportunity of com- 

 paring predictions made at a local and at a central 

 (Washington) office, are of value, and should be 

 undertaken and published by observant meteorol- 

 ogists in other parts of the coimtry. The ob- 

 servers at Blue Hill — Mr. W. P. Gerrish for the 

 first year, and Mr. H. H. Clayton for the second — 

 have had some rather severe experience. Per- 

 haps the most severe spell of weather was in the 

 latter days of February, 1886, during a persistent 

 north-west gale. The wind maintained a velocity 

 of seventy-three miles for an hovir on the 28th ; 

 the pressure recorded during short gusts of wind 

 indicated a temporary velocity at the rate of 

 ninety-three miles an hour. The total wind- 

 movement on the 28th was 1,467 miles ; for the 

 last three da^s of February it was 3,735 miles. 

 The ice-storm of the end of January, 1886, incased 

 the hill, trees, building, and external instruments 

 in a heavy sheathing of ice : the telephone-wire 

 had a girth of eight inches. At this time, frost- 

 work, such as characterizes Mount Washington 

 and the Brocken, attained a length of one or two 

 inches. 



— Prof. Ernst Haeckel of Jena has been study- 

 ing the lower forms of aninal life in the Levant 

 this winter. 



— Prof. Alexander Agassiz, director of the mu- 

 seum of zoology at Harvard, has been made a 



D.Sc. by the University of Cambridge. In intro- 

 ducing him, the public orator referred to him as 

 one of whose work it might be said, ' Merses pro- 

 funda, pulchrior evenitJ' The allusion was to Pro- 

 fessor Agassiz' investigations of the mysteries of 

 the ocean. 



— The first comptroller of the treasury has 

 decided that the act establishing agricultural ex- 

 periment-stations in connection with the agricul- 

 tural colleges of the several states and territories 

 makes no appropriation for the purpose of the act, 

 but that such appropriation, according to the 

 terms of the act, must be " specially provided for 

 by congress in the appropriations from year to 

 year." The operation of the act is therefore prac- 

 tically suspended until congress takes some further 

 action. 



— On Feb. 22, 1888, the birthday of Arthur 

 Schopenhauer will be celebrated in Germany with 

 much ceremony by the followers of the pessimis- 

 tic philosophy. 



— The Athenaeum reports that Professer Du- 

 Bois-Reymond will celebrate this year the twen- 

 tieth anniversary of his appointment as secretary 

 of the Academy of sciences of Berlin. He has 

 held the post since 1867, and it has fallen to his 

 lot to introduce into the academy a succession of 

 the famous representatives of the modern sciences ; 

 among others, Helmholtz, Vircliow, and Siemens. 

 On such occasions he has given proof of his great 

 talent as an orator, and Du Bois-Reymond's ' Be- 

 griissungsrede ' has become the feature of the in- 

 troductions. He is the oldest member of the 

 physico-mathematical class of the academy. His 

 patent is dated March 5, 1851. The venerable 

 French chemist, Chevreul, is the only member of 

 older standing. Chevreul was enrolled in 1834. 



— Mr. Lancaster, meteorological inspector at 

 the Royal observatory at Brussels, has prepared a 

 well-planned and compact summary of the climate 

 of Belgium in 1886, including annual and monthly 

 tables, barometric and thermometric curves, and 

 a somewhat detailed account of the months sepa- 

 rately. The winter beginning in December, 1885^ 

 is shown to have been persistently cold, although 

 without extremely low temperatures. February,. 

 1886, was very dry, and, as Lancaster has found 

 usual in such cases, was followed by a drought of 

 several months. Pie quotes seven examples since 

 1833, in which the precipitation for February was 

 less than half the normal mean, all of which were 

 succeeded by dry periods of from two to six 

 months' duration. 



— A curious example of minute observation,, 

 carefully carried out, appears in a note in del et 



