68 Scientific Intelligence. 



to the conclusion of M. Folly*), that a less amount of oxygen in 

 the atmosphere always coincides with a barometrical maximum, 

 through the descending current which, in anti-cyclones, brings 

 downward air deficient in oxygen from higher elevations. The 

 proposed explanation is not satisfactory, because the descending 

 air in the region of an anti-cyclone does not proceed from those 

 elevations in which a less amount of oxygen may be expected. 

 There is a certain altitude indeed — and this is certainly greater 

 than that at which those atmospheric processes take place, the 

 combined effect of which is called "weather" — up to which the 

 amount of oxygen may be regarded as invariable. The air, found 

 by Mr. Morley to contain less oxygen, proceeds from elevations 

 inferior to those, because that air is not sucked down from strata 

 above that limit, but only takes a circular path induced in a 

 region of disturbed air by the ascending current. In consequence 

 of this circular path, which is easily understood by thinking of a 

 ring on a horizontal plain in the center of which the air ascends 

 and is sucked over the upper edge of the ring down along the 

 outer surface and under the lower edge back to the center of the 

 ring, the air descending on a region of high barometrical pressure 

 proceeds at all events only from those elevations in which the 

 amount of oxygen may be regarded as invariable. 

 Heidelberg, March, 1887. 



II. Geology and Minekalogy. 



1. " On a Seismic Survey made in ToJcio in 1884-85." Read 

 by Professor John Milne, before the Seismological Society of 

 Japan, on January 27, 1886. — This paper makes a pamphlet of 

 36 pages with maps and diagrams, and appears to be from the 

 unpublished tenth volume of the Transactions of the Society; 

 although that is not stated upon it. It is a fuller account of 

 experiments briefly described in his " Fifth Report " to the 

 British Association at the meeting in 1885, and noticed in Nature 

 (xxxii, 526) at that time. A number of similar seismographs 

 were installed at different points in the grounds of the Imperial 

 College of Engineering, one being at the bottom of a pit ten feet 

 deep and another in a house supported on cast iron shot. The 

 instruments were connected and simultaneously put in operation 

 by electricity. During the year of observation, March, 1884, to 

 March, 1885, fifty earthquakes occurred whose automatic records 

 were studied. A map of the grounds is given and copies of some 

 of the record diagrams. In general the results differed very sen- 

 sibly at the various stations, the motion being usually greatest 

 on the low grounds. The greatest amplitude marked at any sta- 

 tion was 2-5 mm , while the same earthquake at another station gave 

 only - 05 mm . The greatest maximum velocity recorded is 19 mm 

 per second. The greatest acceleration recorded was 300 mm or 

 about one foot per second. In the house resting on shot the least 



* In an essay of Mr. Morley in this Journal, III, vol. xxii, p. 429, 1881. 



