November 20, 1885.] 



SCIENCE. 



459 



adjusted at such distances that, with a sht 1 cm. 

 wide, one letter is always in sight ; if 2 cm. wide, 

 two letters ; and so on. By varying the rate of 

 rotation of the drum and the width of the slit, the 

 time necessary for the reading of a single letter 

 under various chcumstances was obtained. Up to 

 a certain limit, this time is shortened as the slit is 

 ividened. This fact is to be interpreted as follows : 

 In reading these letters, two time elements are 

 involved : 1°, that of recognizing the letter ; and, 

 2°, that of naming it. The association between 

 the sight of the letter and its name is so close, 

 that the latter action is performed automatically : 

 hence, if the letters follow one another with so 

 great a rapidity that the first can be named while 

 the second is being recognized, the average time for 

 reading a single letter will evidently be shortened ; 

 and the experiments show that this power of car- 

 rying over one letter while pronouncing the pre- 

 ceding can be active when three, or in the case 

 of several persons when four or five, letters were 

 present to the eye at once. 



Another series of experiments showed that it 

 takes longer to count letters than to name them ; 

 and if the letters are counted in groups of two, or 

 better still of three, instead of singly, the counting 

 time is reduced. 



The tioie necessary for reading words in different 

 languages was also studied ; and the general result 

 is, that the maximum rapidity with which words 

 forming sentences can be read varies directly with 

 one's acquaintance wdth the language. A German 

 read 100 German words in 18.4 sec. , but 100 English 

 words in 29.1 sec. This method offers a means 

 of objectively testing a person's acquaintance with 

 a foreign language. If the words are read back- 

 wards (thus eliminating the sense of the passage, 

 and reducing the process to mere reading), the 

 time is lengthened ; but the smaller one's acquaint- 

 ance with the language, the less difference in time 

 between reading it forwards and backwards. 



It seems that among those tested, women read 

 faster than men ; and Germans take longer to spell 

 their words than English-speaking persons. 



If small strips of colors are used, instead of 

 letters, it takes almost twice as long to name the 

 true color as it would to name a letter ; and this 

 difference in time is due to the greater difficulty 

 in finding the proper name. In this case the 

 association between the color and its name is a 

 loose one. These studies will be continued in the 

 next number of the Studien. J. J. 



THE LAWS OF TEMPERATURE IN THE 

 AUSTRIAN ALPS. 



Dr. Julius Hann of Vienna, editor of the 

 Austrian meteorological journal and a leader 

 among European meteorologists, has lately com- 

 pleted his detailed studies on ' Die temperaturver- 

 haltnisse der oesterreichischen alpenlSnder,' which 

 are now published in three parts in the Sitzungs- 

 berichte of the Vienna academy of sciences. All 

 available observations are included in the reduc- 

 tions, and the results are stated with great detail. 

 As to method, attention should be emphatically 

 caUed to the reduction to normal means ; that is, 

 to the mean of some definite series of years, in 

 this case the thirty years from 1851 to 1880 : 

 thus, if a station had records from 1855 to 1884, 

 the mean of these thirty years' observations was 

 reduced to what it most probably would be for 

 1851-1880 by the use of a correction determined 

 from neighboring stations where the records 

 covered both periods ; that is, from 1850 to 1884. 

 Wild of Russia, and Buchan of Scotland, have 

 employed this method for low-level stations ; 

 Hann is the first to show its applicability to moun- 

 tain stations also. As to results, one of the most 

 striking is the appearance of the increase of tem- 

 perature upwards in the thirty years' winter mean 

 of valley and mountain stations as a persistent 

 climatic element. Observations of late years have 

 shown that this inversion of temperature — 

 extreme cold in valleys with moderate cold on 

 mountains — was common enough in the winter 

 during anticyclonic or high-pressure weather, but 

 it is here first show^n to be a persistent inversion 

 characteristic of the winter mean. Hann was also 

 the first to explain, several years ago, the pecul- 

 iarities of the warm winter alpine wind known 

 as the fohn, which depends directly on the unduly 

 high temperature of the upper air in winter. 



Next year's exhibition at South Kensington, of 

 the products of India and the colonies, is to be the 

 last of the sort in that locality. Liverpool is to have 

 an exhibition of shipping and means of transport. 



BEN NEVIS METEOROLOGICAL 

 OBSERVATORY. 



The highest of the Scotch mountains, Ben 

 Nevis, reaches an altitude of four thousand four 

 hundred feet ; less than five miles away, the 

 sea stretches a long arm up the submerged portion 

 of the great glen to Fort Wilham. On this well- 

 chosen summit, in the path of many a storm from 

 the Atlantic, the Scottish meteorological society 

 has built an observatory, here figured, for the 

 direct study of the conditions of the upper an-, 

 which observations at their low-lying stations 

 must leave to inference. Most of the few moun- 

 tain observatories of Europe stand at a gTeater 

 height than the summit of the Ben, but none of 



