492 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. V., No. 123. 



a second journey to China. The Russian papers an- 

 nounce that he recently showed the drawings and 

 paintings, made during his earlier tour, to the em- 

 peror and empress, who expressed themselves much 

 interested in the prospects of his second journey of 

 exploration. Piassetsky owed his escape from sev- 

 eral unpleasant predicaments, during his former 

 travels through the Middle Kingdom, to his skill as 

 a draughtsman; and it is hoped by his compatriots 

 that he will be able to turn this advantage to better 

 account, now that he can follow his own course with- 

 out the interference of a superior officer like Col. 

 Sosnoffsky, with whom, on the last occasion, he 

 continually disagreed. 



— At the annual meeting of the Iron and steel insti- 

 tute in London, Mr. Andrew Carnegie of Pittsburgh 

 contributed a paper on natural gas-fuel and its appli- 

 cation to manufacturing purposes, the information 

 being much the same as that contained in his recent 

 article in Macmillan. In the discussion which fol- 

 lowed, Mr. J. H. Bell said there was a possibility of 

 Cleveland, Eng., competing with Pennsylvania in the 

 matter of natural gas, as in other matters, as the salt- 

 beds evolved a certain quantity of gas, and, if the 

 borings were continued several hundred feet farther, 

 would probably give more. At the last day's meet- 

 ing, Dr. Herman Wedding of Berlin contributed a 

 paper on the properties of malleable iron, in which 

 he said that microscopical investigation had led him 

 to modify the explanation of welding he had given 

 some years ago. He had now come to the conclusion 

 that the strength of a finished piece of iron depends 

 on the sectional area of the mass of iron it contains. 

 From the total sectional area of a piece of weld iron, 

 the slag inclusions, and in the case of ingot iron the 

 blow-holes, must be deducted. This calculation is 

 decidedly in favor of the ingot iron, though he pointed 

 out it can only be superficially effected, even with our 

 present knowledge of microscopy. 



— A valuable illustrated note on the Huron (Da- 

 kota) tornado of Aug. 28, 1884, has just been issued by 

 the signal-service: it is the work of Sergeant S. W. 

 Glenn of the signal-corps. Imagine, the author says, 

 a vast treeless plain, void of hill or dale, and a sultry 

 atmosphere beneath a sky unobscured save by small 

 drifting cumulus clouds and a narrow band of stratus 

 cloud in the north-east. Suddenly a commotion is 

 observed in the cumulus clouds which have piled up 

 in a woolly mass in the north, as though checked 

 by some invisible barrier separating them from the 

 horizon by a strip of clear sky. Then there is a 

 fapid and confused whirling: the centre of the mass 

 drops down bowl-shaped, and appears as if making 

 futile efforts to touch the earth. At the same time, 

 a conical cloud of dust is seen to accumulate on the 

 ground, and acquire a rotary motion. With the 

 swiftness of thought, the upper cloud drops a con- 

 siderable distance downward, and spins out a white, 

 ribbon-like line towards the ground. The connection 

 between the earth and cloud being established, it re- 

 mains stationary for a moment, apparently gathering 

 strength before starting on its career of destruction. 

 Then it moves rapidly over the plain, destroying 



every thing in its path. A number of cattle and 

 horses were taken from a herd, lifted bodily high in 

 the air, and churned together in a living mass ; thirty 

 steers and four horses were killed, and more were 

 wounded ; most of the beasts appeared to have their 

 lower jaws dislocated. The tornado crossed the 

 Dakota River, taking up the water so suddenly as to 

 leave the bottom exposed for an instant: the water 

 was carried to a great height, and was not seen to 

 fall; but heavy rain, with some hail, occurred twelve 

 or more miles to one side of the track. Mr. Glenn 

 is of the opinion that the centre of the tornado was 

 a nearly complete vacuum, and that the governing 

 factor of the storm was electricity ; but he does not 

 state how electricity could produce or maintain the 

 vacuum, and he gives too brief consideration to the 

 dynamic effects of the whirling air at the centre of 

 the tornado funnel. 



— A party of five persons — consisting of Drs. E. 

 G. Gardiner and H. M. Buck of Boston ; Mr. G. H. 

 Barton, assistant at the Massachusetts institute of 

 technology; and Messrs. Bartlett and Burlingham of 

 the junior class of the institute — has just started on 

 a summer's expedition, under Prof. A. Hyatt, to the 

 west coast of Newfoundland for zoological and geo- 

 logical explorations. The party sailed in the Are- 

 thusa, a small schooner belonging to Professor Hyatt, 

 which he has used in connection with the summer 

 school at Annisquam. Professor Hyatt left some 

 weeks ago for St. John, N.F., where he has been 

 visiting the museum, and securing charts and a pilot. 

 He will join the party at Cape Breton. 



— During the years 1870 to 1879, the meridian circle 

 of the Harvard college observatory was largely em- 

 ployed in the revision of the Durchmusterung for the 

 zone between the parallels of declination at +50° and 

 +55°. The star-places employed as points of refer- 

 ence in the work were taken from the list given in 

 publication xiv. of the Astronomische gesellschaft, 

 and various stars were also observed for purposes not 

 connected with the revision proper. In a quarto 

 pamphlet of nearly one hundred pages, and extracted 

 from the forthcoming volume xv. of the annals of 

 the observatory, Prof. W. A. Rogers, who has him- 

 self made nearly all of the observations, and has had 

 charge of their reduction and publication, makes the 

 results of the entire work immediately available in 

 the form of a catalogue of the right ascensions and 

 declinations of 1,213 stars. The catalogue proper is 

 preceded by the annual results for the fundamental 

 stars, while the data of the catalogue itself are 

 derived from a discussion of the results obtained 

 during the whole period covered by the observations. 



— M. K. Olzewski communicated to the French 

 Academie des sciences, on the 6th of April, a paper 

 on the liquefaction and solidification of formine and 

 of nitric acid. Cailletet stated that he had first made 

 known the procedure for the liquefaction of these 

 gases and their use in a condensed form for obtaining 

 the liquefaction of oxygen. Olzewski, by preparing 

 products free from acetone and hydrogen, has suc- 

 ceeded in obtaining a white, snow-like mass. 



