432 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. V., No. 120. 



original etheriform mass of our solar system 

 condensed to cosmical clouds ; the solid par- 

 ticles aggregated, forming large rotating bodies 

 like the earth, which continue to enlarge by the 

 addition of cosmical material from without. 

 It is claimed that many meteorites are simply 

 aggregations of meteroic dust ; and numerous 

 examples of the precipitation of such matter 

 are described. The suggestion that eruptive 

 rocks may be derived from accumulations of 

 this kind is of special interest, since by some 

 authors meteoric and eruptive rocks are classed 

 together. 



NOTES AND NEWS. 



In speaking of the benefit to be expected from 

 the large telescope now building, Professor Asaph 

 Hall recently said that we must not commit the 

 common error of expecting too much from the use of 

 such instruments. Measured by the relative amount 

 of light gathered, the gain seems great; but, when we 

 pass from a fifteen-inch objective to one of thirty 

 inches in diameter, our gain in the visibility of stars 

 is only one and a half magnitudes. It is true that 

 the number of stars brought to view by the larger 

 glass in the shell of our great celestial sphere is very 

 great; but they are of the faintest kind, and the study 

 of these stars is very laborious. And, moreover, all 

 the obvious and striking discoveries of astronomy 

 have been made long since. 



— The fifty-fifth annual meeting of the British 

 association, says Nature, will commence on Wednes- 

 day, Sept. 9, 1885, at Aberdeen. The president-elect 

 is Sir Lyon Playfair. The vice-presidents are the 

 Duke of Kichmond and Gordon, the Earl of Aber- 

 deen, the Earl of Crawford and Balcarres, James 

 Matthews, Professor Sir William Thomson, Alexan- 

 der Bain, the Yery Kev. Principal Pirie, Prof. W. 

 H. Flower; general treasurer, Prof. A. W. William- 

 son; general secretaries, Capt. Douglas Galton, A. 

 G. Vernon Harcourt; secretary, Prof. T. G. Bon- 

 ney; local secretaries, J. W. Crombie, Angus Fra- 

 ser, Prof. G. Pirie; local treasurers, John Findlater, 

 Robert Lumsden. The sectional officers are as fol- 

 lows : — A. Mathematical and physical science : presi- 

 dent, Prof. G. Chrystal; vice-presidents, Prof. C. 

 Niven, Prof. A. Schuster; secretaries, R. E. Baynes, 

 R. T. Glazebrook, Prof. W. M. Hicks (recorder), 

 Prof. W. Ingram. B. Chemical science: president, 

 Prof. H. E. Armstrong; vice-presidents, Prof. A. 

 Crum Brown, Prof. H. McLeod; secretaries, Prof. 

 P. Phillips Bedson (recorder), H. B. Dixon, H. Fors- 

 ter Morley, W. J. Simpson. C. Geology : president, 

 Prof. J. W. Judd ; vice-presidents, John Evans, Prof. 

 W. C. Williamson; secretaries, C. E. De Ranee, J. 

 Home, J. J. H. Teall, W. Topley (recorder). B. 

 Biology : president, Prof. W. C. Mcintosh ; vice- 

 presidents, Prof. I. Bayley Balfour, Prof. J. S. Bur- 

 don Sanderson; secretaries, W. Heape, J. Duncan 

 Matthews, Howard Saunders (recorder), H. Marshall 



Ward. E. Geography : president, Lieut.-Gen. J. T. 

 Walker; vice-presidents, Professor James Donaldson, 

 John Rae; secretaries, J. S. Keltie, J. S. O'Halloran, 

 E. G. Ravenstein (recorder), Rev. G. A. Smith. F. 

 Economic science and statistics : president, Professor 

 Henry Sidgwick; vice-presidents, Prof. R. Adamson, 

 Sir Rawson W. Rawson; secretaries, Rev. W. Cun- 

 ningham, Prof. H. S. Foxwell (recorder), C. Mc- 

 Combie, M.A., J. F. Moss. G. Mechanical science: 

 president, Benjamin Baker; vice-presidents, Prof. 

 W. C. Unwin, Prof. H. C. Fleeming Jenkin; sec- 

 retaries, A. T. Atchison (recorder), F. G. Ogilvie, E. 

 Rigg, H. T. Wood. H. Anthropology: president, 

 Francis Galton; vice-presidents, W. Pengelly, Prof. 

 W. Turner; secretaries, G. W. Bloxam (recorder), 

 J. G. Garson, Walter Hurst, A. MacGregor. The 

 first general meeting will be held on Wednesday, 

 Sept. 9, when Lord Rayleigh will resign the chair, 

 and Sir Lyon Playfair, president-elect, will assume 

 the presidency, and deliver an address. On Thurs- 

 day evening, Sept. 10, there will be a soiree ; on 

 Friday evening, Sept. 11, a discourse by Prof. W. 

 Grylls Adams ; on Monday evening, Sept. 14, a dis- 

 course on ' The great ocean-basins,' by John Murray, 

 director of the Challenger expedition commission; 

 on Tuesday evening, Sept. 15, a soiree. On Wednes- 

 day, Sept. 16, the concluding general meeting will be 

 held. The lecture to workingmen will be on the 

 'Nature of explosions,' by Mr. H. B. Dixon. 



— There has just appeared an index to the first 

 thirty volumes of Pfluger's Archiv filr die gesammte 

 physiologie, the most important physiological periodi- 

 cal of the world. The contributors include a large 

 majority of the well-known professional physiologists 

 of all countries, and number, altogether, in the neigh- 

 borhood of six hundred. Most of the names are 

 German, but a remarkable proportion are Russian. 

 Among those whose articles are most numerous, 

 we find W. Engelmann, Heidenhain, Hermann, 



Luchsinger, Pfluger, Yalentin, and Worm-Miiller. 

 Although the Archiv has been edited with little super- 

 vision as to the real merit of the papers, and contains 

 therefore an undue proportion of inferior essays, it 

 still remains the most important single repository of 

 modern physiological research; and the index will be 

 of constant value in rendering the stores it contains 

 more accessible. We commit, we hope, no breach of 

 confidence in stating that the index is due to the well- 

 applied skill and patience of an able American physi- 

 ologist, who was long associated with Professor 

 Pfluger at Bonn. 



— A botanical congress will be held during the Ant- 

 werp exhibition, dealing principally with the plant 

 kingdom of the Kongo district. With this view, a 

 Belgian savant has drawn up a list of questions, and 

 sent them to be answered at the various cultivation 

 stations of the International society. 



— The University of Nebraska is to have a new 

 chemical laboratory, which will furnish accommoda- 

 tions for eighty students in the general laboratory, 

 and for thirty-two in the laboratory for qualitative 

 analysis, besides lecture-rooms and minor laboratories 

 for quantitative work, gas analysis, and assaying. 



