468 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. IV., No. 94. 



change in the right direction on its cover. 

 Heretofore these valuable summaries, involv- 

 ing a great amount of labor quite apart from 

 the preparation of daily forecasts, have been 

 issued anonymously ; at least, it has been sim- 

 ply announced that they were " prepared under 

 the direction of . . . the chief signal-officer of 

 the army." There is now very properly added 

 to this the name of the officer personally in 

 charge of the work. The more direct the state- 

 ment of individual authorship, the better ; for 

 with it goes individual credit and responsi- 

 bility. The ' Professional papers ' and the 

 4 Notes of the signal-service ' have alwa} T s been 

 thus duly credited to their authors : it would 

 be well if the authorship of the many cir- 

 culars that have been issued on tornadoes, 

 thunder-storms, and other subjects, had been 

 as explicitly published. 



The terminology of storms adopted in these 

 reviews is somewhat open to criticism. After 

 forty years of observation, during which it has 

 always been found that regions of low baro- 

 metric pressure are accompanied by an inward 

 flow of the winds, with a constant direction of 

 spiral turning, it does not seem hasty to use 

 a name for such phenomena, and call them 

 briefly ' cyclones,' as was long ago suggested, 

 so as to avoid the awkward paraphrase, ' area 

 of low barometer,' on the one hand, and the 

 abrupt slangy expression, ' low,' on the other, 

 and do awa}' with so erroneous a description 

 as ' atmospheric depression,' and with so in- 

 definite a term as 'disturbance.' It is an 

 incorrect use of the word that associates C}*- 

 clones onl} T with hurricanes of devastating 

 strength, or with local storms like tornadoes. 

 It was originally proposed, and should still be 

 used, to designate a certain kind of atmos- 

 pheric mechanism, independent of gentleness 

 or violence, and hence perfectly applicable to 

 the 'disturbances' in question. 



or extent of wind which exhibits a turning or 

 revolving motion, without regard to its vary- 

 ing velocity, or to the different names which 

 are often applied to such winds. . . . All hur- 

 ricanes or violent storms ma} T , perhaps, be 

 considered as cyclones or revolving winds ; 

 but it by no means follows that all cyclones 

 are either hurricanes, gales, or storms." He 

 said, further, that the word was not designed to 

 express the degree of activity or force of the 

 wind, and made mention of "the inert and 

 passive cj^clones which seldom gain attention." 

 Similar abstracts could be made from Col. 

 Reid's famous work on the ' Law of storms ; ' 

 and, even in the early numbers of the Weather- 

 review, ' c} T clone ' was used in its original 

 sense. It would be advisable to return to it. 



By means of a most promising local anaes- 

 thetic, Dr. Roller of Vienna has recently been 

 able to render the e}'e quite insensible to pain. 

 Under its influence, almost any operation may 

 be performed upon this delicate organ without 

 causing suffering ; and its use is not followed 

 b} T unpleasant after-effects. A few minutes 

 after putting three or four drops of a four-per- 

 cent solution of lrydrochlorate of cocaine into 

 the eye, no discomfort is felt when the front 

 of the eyeball is rubbed with the finger ; or it 

 may be cut with a knife, for example, to do 

 an operation for cataract, and no pain is occa- 

 sioned. It is not many weeks since this was 

 demonstrated in Germany ; and already many 

 operations have been performed by our own 

 oculists with great success and satisfaction. 

 For some months before its use in the eye, it 

 had been employed by physicians to render the 

 mucous membranes less sensitive, especially 

 that of the throat ; and it will probably be 

 found capable of rendering other valuable ser- 

 vices in medicine. 



Redfielcl was clearly of this opinion. In 

 1854 he wrote that the term ' cyclone ' was 

 proposed "to designate any considerable area 



The alkaloid cocaine, which was isolated 

 about thirty years ago by Gardeke, and is 

 somewhat similar to the one which is found in 

 tea and coffee, is obtained from the leaves of 

 the Erythroxylon coca. This shrub is cul- 

 tivated in the valleys of the eastern slopes of 





