320 Notes and Memoranda, 



sun through the transparent metallic film, which diminishes the light, and pre- 

 vents the heat reaching the eye. He has used with success a carefully prepared flat 

 disc of glass, silvered on one side, and placed at the mouth of his silvered mirror 

 reflectors. With such an apparatus, applied to Mr. Barnes' 8^-inch telescope, he 

 observed the eclipse of March 6, and saw the mountains on the dark margin of 

 the moon beautifully projected on the luminous disc behind, the protuberances 

 on the S.E. being most prominent. He also noticed that the minimum tempe- 

 rature was not attained in Mr. Barnes' garden (Camden Road, N.W.) till half an* 

 hour after the maximum of the eclipse. — Monthly Notice-':. 



Beooke on Electric Energy. — An important paper by Mr. Charles Brooke, 

 F.R.S., will be found in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, No. 91, the gist 

 of which is that light, heat, electricity, etc., are modes of motion of the particles 

 of matter, and not of an imponderable ether filling -up the interstices of matter. 

 He supposes that space is filled with a highly attenuated, but still ponderable sub- 

 stance (ether), which transmits light and heat which is not miscible with our 

 atmosphere any more than oil is with water, but floats upon it. Copper will 

 transmit electricity at the rate of 250,000 miles a second, and other appropriate 

 kinds of matter may in like manner transmit light and heat. 



Cassella's Embossing- Self-Recording Anemometer. — One of these 

 instruments has recently been erected at Ivew Observatory. It has the hemisphe- 

 rical cups of Dr. Robinson, but the registering apparatus has been devised by Mr. 

 Cassella and Mr. Beckley. A narrow slip of paper, sufficient to last a month or six 

 weeks, is wrapped round a roller ; this strip is unwound by a clock movement, 

 which marks each hour by embossing an arrow upon it, and figures, expressing 

 the wind's velocity in miles, are embossed on one edge. We are informed that 

 the performance of this ingenious instrument works is highly satisfactory. 



Slow Incubating Silk-Moth Eggs.— M. G-uerin Meneville describes in 

 Compies Rendus a race of silkworms whose moths only produce one generation 

 in two years, and the incubation lasts eighteen months. This variety was raised 

 in South America from eggs sent from Europe, and their peculiar behaviour in 

 this hemisphere was first noticed in Italy. 



Prehistoric Art. — M. Peccadeau de L'Isle exhibited recently to the French 

 Academy specimens of wrought flints, barbed arrows, etc., from Bruniquel, and 

 among them a figure which he said might have been intended as a fantastic 

 creation by its author, or possibly meant for an elephant, sculptured on a piece of 

 reindeer horn. 



The November Meteors. — Professor Adams has communicated to the Rojal 

 Astronomical Society the result of his investigation as to the true orbit of these 

 bodies. Upon calculating the perturbations caused by the action of Venus, 

 Jupiter, and the earth upon the node of the nearly circular orbit, having a period 

 of about 11 days less than that of the earth, in which the meteors have been 

 supposed to travel, he finds that the result is not sufficient to produce one-half 

 of the observed motion. He was therefore driven to the alternative of adopting 

 an elliptical orbit, with a period of 33| years, extending beyond Uranus, and he 

 then found that perturbations caused by' Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus, the only 

 planets now likely to affect the meteors, produced exactly the required amount of 

 motion in the node. He proceeded to ascertain all the elements of the orbit, 

 which were found to be almost identical with those of Tempel's comet, thus cor- 

 roborating the speculation as to the identity of these bodies very remarkably. 



The Vaginicola. Valvata. — Mr. J. G-. Tatem, of Reading, informs us that 

 the valved vaginicola described by Mr. Slack in our last number is common in 

 that neighbourhood. 



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