Intelligence and Miscellaneous Articles. 493 



2. " Notes on a ' Dumb Fault ' or ' Wash-out ' found in the 

 Pleasley and Teversall Collieries, Derbyshire." By J. C. B. Hendy, 

 Esq. 



The " Top Hard " Seam of the district is being worked in these 

 collieries at a depth of 500 yards, where it has an average thickness 

 of 5 feet, with a band of cannel in the middle. In the working it was 

 found that the coal began to thicken, until it became double the 

 usual size, the cannel also increasing in the " Top Seam," but in 

 the Lower Seam running out altogether. 



This double thickness of coal continued till the " wash out " 

 was reached, when both coal and shaly roof disappeared, the space 

 being replaced by sandstone similar to that of the beds overlying 

 the shale. The clay floor of the Lower Seam had not been much 

 interfered with, and this was followed for 60 yards, when the 

 doubly thick seam was again met with, and on being followed 

 gradually assumed its normal thickness. 



No fossils have been noted in the "Wash-out" itself, the 

 vertical extension of which is unknown. 



3. " On some Palaeozoic Ostracoda from North America, Wales, 

 and Ireland." By Prof. T. Eupert Jones, F.B.S., F.G.S. 



LX. Intelligence and Miscellaneous Articles. 



ON THE SECOND LAW OF THERMODYNAMICS. 



BY PEOF. EILHAED WIEDEMANN. 



TIN" a paper on the Mechanics of Luminosity {vide antea, p. 152) 

 -*- I have minutely discussed the phenomena of luminescence ; that 

 is, of those processes in which the normal relation between trans- 

 latory and intramolecular motion does not exist, and I have shown 

 that these phenomena are far more widely diffused than is ordinarily 

 assumed. In connexion with the introduction of the idea of the 

 temperature of luminescence I made the following observation : — 

 The assumption which is at the basis of the deduction of the 

 second law of thermodynamics, that heat cannot pass without work 

 from a body of lower to one of higher temperature, must, in accor- 

 dance with the above considerations, be otherwise conceived, since 

 when phenomena of luminescence occur such a transference may 

 very well take place. 



I take upon myself to communicate another conception of the 

 principle of Clausius, which takes into account also the phenomena 

 of luminescence. 



Energy, corresponding to a definite time of vibration, always 

 passes by radiation from one body to another, when in the first 

 body the ratio between emission and absorption is greater for 

 this kind of vibration than in the second case. Energy which 

 corresponds to a definite intramolecular motion passes on contact 

 or mixture from one body to another, if the ratio of the intra- 

 molecular energy, which, on the collision of the molecules, is 

 changed into motion of translation, to the translator)* motion which 

 is converted into intramolecular motion is greater in the first body 

 than in the second. A transference of energy takes place finally 



Phil. Mag. S. 5. Vol. 28. No. 175. Dec. 1889. 2 



