SCIENTIFIC SUMMARY. 
447 
which evolve the oxygen was diminished, the proportion of ozone in the 
gas increased, and its thermic absorption also increased, until it amounted 
to 136 times that of ordinary oxygen ; but even in this experiment the 
quantity of ozone operated with was perfectly unmeasurable by ordinary 
means. He considers, for the present, that ozone is produced by a packing 
of the atoms of ordinary oxygen into oscillating groups, and that heating 
dissolves the bond of union, and allows the atoms to swing singly, and 
thus converts ozone into ordinary oxygen. 
A paper was also recently read by the same author at the Royal Insti- 
tution, “ On Radiation through the Earth’s Atmosphere.” In a former com- 
munication he showed that the aqueous vapour in the air absorbed a vastly 
greater proportion of heat than did the air itself, although the aqueous 
vapour was only in the proportion of 1 to 199 parts of the other ingre- 
dients of the atmosphere. Several objections had been made to this result, 
and he now discussed those objections, and showed, in various ways, that 
watery vapour is opaque in an extraordinarily great degree to such rays of 
obscure heat as are emitted by the earth after it has been warmed by the 
sun, and that more than ten per cent, of the terrestrial radiation of heat 
from the soil of England is stopped within ten feet of the surface of the soil. 
The contents of this paper are similar to that of one by the same author 
recently read before the Royal Society, the object of which was to prove 
to meteorologists that they may apply, without misgiving, the results 
which the author had ' previously announced, regarding the relation of 
aqueous vapour to radiant heat. 
M. Dufour, in the “ Comptes Rendus,” describes some new experiments 
upon the degree of rapidity of combustion of fuses under different pres- 
sures of the atmosphere. His experiments were made in the open air, and 
the difference of pressure was obtained by igniting them at different ele- 
vations on the Alps. His results confirm those of Quartermaster Mitchell 
and Professor Frankland, each of whom found that the rapidity of com- 
bustion increased with the increase of pressure. 
Mr. T. H. Hill has presented to the Royal Institution some specimens of 
woods which had been charred by exposure to a temperature not exceeding 
250° Fahrenheit, the heat being generated by steam pressure of about 10 
or 12 pounds per square inch. 
ZOOLOGY. 
The Controversy concerning the Brains of Man and the Apes. — This has 
assumed a somewhat new aspect, from the appearance of an account of it 
given by Sir Charles Lyell, in his recent work on the “Antiquity of 
Man,” where he states that in 1862 Professor Owen (in his paper before 
the British Association), “ without alluding to the disclaimer of the Dutch 
Anatomists of their defective plates, observes that in the gorilla the cerebrum 
extends over the cerebellum , not beyond it ; correcting the description of the 
same brain given by Professor Owen in 1861, ‘in which a considerable 
part of the cerebellum of the gorilla is represented as uncovered.’ ” Pro- 
fessor Owen takes exception to this statement of the case, as leading to the 
