202 Scientific Intelligence. 



of chemistry. It is presented by Dr. Bolton's widow, Mrs. 

 Henrietta Irving Bolton. A considerable number of other gifts 

 are noted, among which may be mentioned the Karow collection 

 of Napoleona gathered by the late Major E. W. Karow of Savan- 

 nah and presented by his widow. It includes 300 volumes, many 

 of them in fine bindings. A notable gift of books, pamphlets, 

 and periodicals, relating to Mexico and Central America, has been 

 presented by the Mexican embassy. The Librarian's report 

 also contains many other facts of interest, particularly to those 

 engaged in similar work. 



5. Bjerknes' Dynamic Meteorology. — "A- prophet is never 

 without honor save in his own country," and possibly this is the 

 reason why the great work on "Dynamic Meteorology" by Victor 

 Bjerknes and his several colaborers had to be published first in 

 America, and at the expense of the abundant funds of the Car- 

 negie Institution of Washington, before it could be accepted in 

 Germany and reprinted by F. Vieweg & Son of Brunswick. It 

 undoubtedly was Bjerkes' hope that American students would be 

 the first to awake to the importance and elegance of his graphic 

 methods, but it seems that the " International Commission on 

 Scientific Ballooning" have already adopted his ideas and have 

 created the demand to which Vieweg is now ministering. In a 

 circular issued by Vieweg we are informed that the German edi- 

 tion will comprise four volumes, of which the first volume with 

 charts is already published, relating to statics. The second vol- 

 ume, relating to kinematics, is in press, while the dynamics and 

 the thermodynamics will be published later. The price of the first 

 German volume, with charts, 36 marks, is slightly in excess of 

 the price advertised by the Carnegie Institution, viz., $5.00, but 

 that is doubtless owing to the expense of the atlas of charts. 



The early publications of Bjerknes were translated and pub- 

 lished in the Monthly Weather Review for 1900, special memoirs 

 by Sandstrom were translated and published in the proceedings 

 of the American Philosophical Society, 1905, vol. xxi, and in the 

 Bulletin of the Mount Weather Observatory, 1910 and 1912, so 

 that the works of these distinguished Norwegians have long been 

 familiar to Americans. Bjerknes' object is to make rational meth- 

 ods of mechanics and physics practically useful in the study of 

 the atmosphere and the ocean. Hitherto meteorology and hydrog- 

 raphy have been empirical sciences in which as yet only very 

 limited use has been made of methods used in mechanics and 

 physics. It is not to be doubted that the great movements of 

 the atmosphere of the ocean are accomplished in accordance with 

 the laws of mechanics; all phenomena that occur in the atmos- 

 phere and ocean connected with these motions are also due to 

 known laws of physics, especially thermodynamics ; therefore we 

 are justified in assuming that a great advance will be realized in 

 the study of the air and the ocean as soon as methods are found 

 to practically apply in these branches of science the knowledge 

 that is already well established in mechanics and physics. The 



