2l8 



SCIENTIFIC NEWS. 



[Mar. 9, i£ 



who are responsible for the designing, shaping, finishing, 

 colouring, or making up of a fancy article, whether it be 

 in metal work, pottery, furniture, or a woven or printed 

 fabric, have almost invariably received some training 

 in art or science, or have gone through a special technical 

 school. 



In England the majority of persons holding similar 

 positions have received no artistic or scientific training 

 whatever except when, as often happens, those positions 

 are held by foreign designers or chemists, or by Englisli- 

 men who have been trained in foreign countries. This 

 is a plain statement of facts carefully collected by 

 thoroughly competent commissioners, and we agree with 

 Mr. Smith that it is sufficiently humiliating to be com- 

 pelled to acknowledge that, in the industrial contest of 

 to-day, English machinery is being employed to better 

 and more profitable account by some of our rivals than 

 by ourselves ; but it is infinitely more serious and more 

 humiliating to find that in the conditions of training 

 which best tend to promote future efficiency and success, 

 the rising generations of other countries are being far 

 better prepared than those of England. Our saving 

 clause appears to be the testimony of the most competent 

 judges that whether in art, science, or technical skill the 

 Englishman is not surpassed by the foreigner when his 

 faculties have the advantage of equal cultivation. It is 

 evident that something must be done, and that soon, but 

 there is of course no reason why we should act in a 

 panic-stricken way, as some seem inclined to do ; and as 

 Sir Henry Roscoe pointed out, in the discussion which 

 followed the reading of the paper, we must be careful 

 not to imitate exactly Continental methods. We, in 

 England, have certain growths of our own, which we 

 ought to foster and develop, and whilst benefiting by 

 the experience of other countries, it would be the 

 greatest mistake to copy servilely either the French, 

 German, or other Continental models. 



SCIENTIFIC TABLE TALK. 



By W. Mattieu Williams, F.R.A.S., F.C.S. 



Very few of the readers of Scientific News would under- 

 stand me if I referred without explanation to " Murphy's 

 Day." I will therefore premise that Murphy is not one 

 of the saints of the calendar, but the author of an original 

 calendar entitled " Murphy's Weather Almanac," in 

 which he boldly ventured, on the basis of some curious 

 magnetic theory to predict the daily weather of a whole 

 year. His effort attracted but little notice until one very 

 remarkable morning when the thermometer fell below 

 zero of Fahrenheit in Hyde Park and at Greenwich. It 

 was about the coldest morning of the century, and 

 Murphy predicted such weather on that date. An 

 immense excitement followed in London. The publisher's 

 house was besieged daily with crowds of intending 

 buyers, and enormous numbers of the almanac were 

 sold. The comic papers were not then a national 



institution ; their place was still occupied by the street 

 ballad singer. I just remember two lines of one of the 

 Murphy ballads that was very popular. They ran 

 thus — 



' ' Murphy has a weather eye ; 



He can tell whenever he pleases 

 Whether the weather's wet or dry, 



Whether it thunders or whether it freezes." 



Further comparison between the subsequent predic- 

 tions and subsequent facts proved that his pretensions 

 were no greater than those described in the ballad. The 

 lucky hit was an accident. 



Murphy is forgotten, but in the minds of many the 

 American meteorologists have taken his place. Their 

 telegrams are distorted into positive predictions for us, 

 while as a matter of fact the majority of them are mere 

 statements of the fact that a certain cyclone or anti- 

 cyclone is travelling towards us. Their powers are 

 similar to those which were credited by the ballad to 

 Murphy. Mr. H. Scott has lately stated that the track 

 of the depressions is determined by the distribution of 

 pressure over the ocean, and that at the time of the 

 despatch of the American telegrams we are ignorant of 

 this distribution ; therefore such telegrams are of no 

 assistance to the meteorological office in issuing storm 

 warnings. 



It appears to me that there is a simple and intelligible 

 reason why the journey of such depressions across the 

 Atlantic from America to our shores should usually be 

 disturbed. Between the United States and Britain are 

 two great conflicting oceanic currents which must be 

 crossed by the air which travels from New York or 

 Washington to Liverpool or London. They differ greatly in 

 temperature. The cold Arctic current sweeps forcibly 

 along the coast of Labrador, then is deflected outwards 

 by Newfoundland, but still works southwards in a track 

 between the American coast and mid-ocean. Westward 

 of this is the warm tropical current usually styled the 

 Gulf Stream, which sweeps northward along the coast of 

 Florida, and is then deflected westwards and crosses by 

 a N.W. course to our shores. The two currents collide 

 obliquely somewhere about mid-ocean. Thus every 

 atmospheric speciality that starts from America on its 

 way towards us encounters these two contradictory 

 oceanic rivers, which necessarily disturb it, and in 

 doing so dislocate all prediction, however plausible may 

 be its basis. 



One 01 the enigmas that have much exercised the in- 

 genuity of geologists is that presented by the frozen-up 

 mammoths of Siberia. Here are found huge animals 

 that belong to the fossil world, and yet are not mere 

 fossil skeletons, but whole creatures in the flesh, with 

 hair and all intact, preserved in ice like New Zealand 

 mutton, so fresh they may even be cooked and eaten 

 with impunity. How came they there, seeing that, in 

 spite of their hairy sides and back, they are herbivora 

 that must have lived in a climate where vegetation is 

 abundant ? They are, in fact, nearly allied to tropical 

 and sub-tropical elephants ; their bones, found in other 

 places with those of other animals, indicate a habitat in 

 the temperate zones. 



They must somehow have been caught napping by a 

 sudden change of climate, and their fate has suggested 

 many speculations concerning the cause of such sudden 

 change. Has the axis of the earth shifted ? Have they 

 been caught by mighty floods, followed by mysterious 



