224 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XI. No. 275 



cal students, who, after taking the early part of their training in 

 the colonial high schools and colleges, proceed to Edinburgh to 

 complete their course, invariably give a very good account of them- 

 selves. 



In matters of purely scientific interest there is but little to chron- 

 icle at present from the colony. The want of money seems to have 

 paralyzed even much of the available energy of the colonists ; many 

 men who formerly thought themselves in possession of a compe- 

 tency for the rest of their lives, being under the necessity again of 

 commencing the grim battle for bread. It must be borne in mind 

 that there is practically no cultured class in the colony, outside of 

 those who are compelled to work. The scientific research and 

 work which have been put forth from these islands have been 

 done usually in the course of, or in the intervals of, hard profes- 

 sional work, by settlers, surveyors, medical men, lawyers, and 

 teachers. There is only one purely scientific association for the 

 whole colony, — the New Zealand Institute; formed, however, of a 

 number of affiliated societies, each having its own rules, office- 

 bearers, funds, etc. The chief of these are the Auckland Institute, 

 the Wellington Philosophical Society, the Philosophical Institute of 

 Canterbury (meeting in Christchurch), and the Otago Institute 

 (meeting in Dunedin). Besides these, there are smaller branches 

 at Napier, Nelson, Hokitika, and Invercargill. The central body, 

 termed the New Zealand Institute, is practically only an adminis- 

 trative board, partly elected by the affiliated societies, but chiefly 

 nominated by the governor. This body is charged with the publi- 

 cation of the papers on scientific matters, which are read before the 

 various affiliated societies ; and these constitute a bulky octavo vol- 

 ume, containing last year nearly seven hundred pages. The man- 

 agement of the whole is in the hands of Sir James Hector, director 

 of the Geological Survey, who indeed has been the central figure of 

 the institute since its establishment in 1867. A government grant 

 of ;^5oo per annum meets the chief cost of publishing the annual 

 volume of Transactions and Proceedings, but this is occasionally 

 supplemented by small levies on the affiliated bodies. The total 

 number of members of the various branches of the institute is about 

 1,250, — a most creditable number, when the population of the col- 

 ony is considered, and when it is borne in mind that each of these 

 is a voluntary member and subscriber to the e.xtent of at least a guinea 

 a year. The pages of the nineteen volumes of Transactions teem 

 with valuable papers on many branches of natural science, zoology 

 and botany having the largest number of votaries. The isolated posi- 

 tion of the colony makes the study of its groups of plants and animals 

 peculiarly complete from the point of view of geographical distribu- 

 tion. Hence many European specialists have devoted some of their 

 t ime to working out all the New Zealand forms of one or other group. 

 Thus at present Baron Osten-Sacken is engaged on the Dip/era, 

 — a group regarding which very little is known in the colony, but the 

 members of which take a large share in the fertilization of its flowering 

 plants. Mr. E. Meyrick has systematically studied many groups of the 

 Micro-lepidoptera, and is still engaged on others. The New Zea- 

 land Aranece were formerly only known from the Rev. O. Pickard- 

 Cambridge's papers, in the London Zoological Society's Transac- 

 tions. Now, however, they are being taken up by jMessrs. Urqu- 

 hart of Auckland, and Goyen of Dunedin, both of whom are doing 

 very good work. At present, as has mostly been the case in the 

 past, the chief work done in the colony has been systematic ; and 

 even this has been done under great difficulties, the principal one 

 being the impossibility of consulting all the literature of any sub- 

 ject. 



Some two years ago the Royal Society of England made a grant 

 to Prof. T. J. Parker of Dunedin to aid him in working out the 

 embryology of theTuatera lizard (Spheriodon), and also of the Kiwi 

 (Apteryx). Living specimens of the former were obtained and 

 kept in confinement both by Professor Parker and by Professor 

 Thomas of Auckland, but up to the present time no eggs have been 

 laid. But the study of the embryological development of Apteryx 

 has been prosecuted much more successfully, and zoologists may 

 shortly expect a communication on the subject to the Royal Society, 

 which will contain many points of interest. 



Matters geological, especially those relating to mining, bulk much 

 more largely in people's minds here than any other questions of a 

 scientific kind. It is felt that New Zealand must look in the future 



more to her mineral wealth for her prosperity than ever she has 

 done in the past, and it is in this quarter that most of the available 

 capital is being directed — or, one might say, misdirected. A great 

 amount of money is sunk in unscientific ways of mining and of 

 prospecting. The country teems with mineral wealth, but it wants 

 more knowledge, and less blind working. Very many of the min- 

 ing ventures have turned out, as indeed is the case everywhere. 

 unsatisfactorily. Copper-mines have been opened in various parts, 

 but none are now in operation. Antimony occurs abundantly, but 

 has never been profitably worked. The enormous deposits of iron- 

 sand on our sea-beaches are still practically unworked. An attempt 

 is being made to work the oil-bearing beds of the east coast of the 

 North Island, but it is impossible to see how the projectors can 

 successfully compete against the cheap oils of Pennsylvania. The 

 one great stand-by of the colony is gold, and the crying want of 

 the miners is some method of saving the fine gold which at pres- 

 ent is lost. When it is seen that the 'tailings ' of the famous Blue 

 Spur diggings, which have been washed over several times, are still 

 being sluiced by Chinamen who are making from two dollars to 

 three dollars a day, it is clear that the art of gold-saving is still in 

 its infancy. 



Within the last few months a number of Wellman's dredges have 

 been constructed to attack the beaches of auriferous sand and the 

 river-beds. As these come into use, the quantity of gold obtained 

 will be increased, and the available extent of field much enlarged. 



G. M. T. 



Dunedin, Feb. 23. ^ ___^__ 



GRUNWALD'S THEORY OF SPECTRUM ANALYSIS. 



There has lately been advanced by Professor Griinwald of 

 Prague a theory of the change which the spectrum of a substance 

 undergoes when that substance enters into combination with an- 

 other, that is so extremely simple that it is difficult to see how it 

 can possibly be true. But the number and exactness of the coinci- 

 dences that Professor Griinwald has observed are such as to arrest 

 attention, and give some interest to the theory which is based on 

 them. 



The discoverer states, that, by a mathematical investigation of the 

 changes which the spectra of two gases undergo when brought into 

 chemical combination, he has been able to establish a law, as simple 

 as it is important, which maybe the basis of a future mathematico- 

 chemical analysis ; and by the aid of this law he has been able not 

 only to establish a very remarkable relation between the spectra of 

 hydrogen and oxygen on the one hand, and that of water-vapor 

 on the other, but also to discover the chemical composition and 

 structure of hydrogen and oxygen, and bring out the facts of the 

 dissociation of hydrogen in the atmosphere of the sun. 



The fundamental theorem of this new mode of analysis is as fol- 

 lows. Suppose we have a chemical element a, which, when com- 

 bined with some other elements, forms a gaseous substance A. 

 When the gas A unites with some other substance, a chemical 

 compound B is formed, in which the element a is also contained, 

 but in a different condition from that in which it existed in A. Usu- 

 ally the atomic volume of the substance a, reckoned in the ordi- 

 nary way in use among chemists, will be different in the last case 

 from what it was in the first, and the ratio of the atomic volumes in 

 the two cases will be expressed as a ratio of two simple whole num- 

 bers. The above being granted, the theorem asserts that those 

 wave-lengths of light in the spectrum of the substance A that be- 

 long to the element a are to the wave-lengths due to that element 

 in the spectrum of the substance B in the same ratio as the atomic 

 volume of a in A is to its atomic volume in B. 



It follows from the above, that, when the atomic volume is un- 

 changed by the combination, the wave-lengths of the lines due to 

 the substance will be the same in both cases. But great variation 

 between the spectra may exist notwithstanding, because, as Profes- 

 sor Griinwald remarks, the amplitudes of some of its modes of vibra- 

 tion may well be very different in the one case from what they are 

 in the other. This, of course, means that the intensities of lines 

 may be so different in the two cases that stray lines in the one 

 spectrum may be so faint as to seem entirely lacking in the other. 

 Thus, when hydrogen combines with chlorine, bromine, or iodine, 

 the resulting gases, H CI, H Br, and H I, are formed without change 



