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■WE PROPIWTY OF
^ OF CANAOA.
TORONTO, ONT,
SIMPLY WORDED-EXACTLY DESCRIBED.
Founded by RICHARD A. PROCTOR.
A) u/
"Let Knoirlerlije ijroir from more to more. "
-TKXXVSOX.
VOLUME XXI.
JANUARY TO DECEMBER, i{
KNOWLEDGE OFFICE, 326, HIGH HOLBORN, W.C.
[A// Rights Reserved.]
I
I-/
KNOWLEDGE
INDEX
Abbott, G.. M.R.C.S.—
Letter on ; " Deserts and tbeir Inhabitants "
Acetylene Gas
Note on
Africa and its Animals
By R. Lydekker
Agriculture, A Classic Legacy of
By John Mii,i.> 110
Alexander, Boyd, M.B.O.U.—
A Valley on Siio Nicolau, Cape Verde Islands
Ant, The Gizzard of the —
By Walter Wesche ...
Antarctic Exploration —
Note on...
Antlers, Ancient Red Deer —
By R. Lydekker
Aurora Borealis, The—
Letter on ; by J. MR.
Aurora, Photographic Spectrum of the
By Edward (,'. Pickering
Aurora, The Great Sun spot and the—
By E. W. M.\rNi)ER .
Australasia, Vegetation of
Letter on ; by Fred Whitteron
Battersby, Frances I. —
An Irish Superstition ...
Bee, The Hooks on the Mandible of the Honey
By W.^lter Weschi: ..
Bees, British, I., II., and III.—
By Fred. Knock 50,8
Bees' Mandibles, Hooked Process on—
Letter on ; by V/ alter Wesche
Beet Sugar, The, Industry in England—
By John Mills
Letter on ; by Sigjiund Stein
Besley, W. E.-
Letter on ^'a^iable Stars
Bessemer, Sir Henry —
Obituary Notice of ...
PAGE
IHIJ
254
187
, 118
100
259
275
48
229
134
228
88
256
25!t
2,97
183
241
277
81
80
PAOB
Binary. A New Spectroscopic
By EiiwAHi) C. Pickering ... ... ... 134
Birds. Rare —
Letter on ; by W. H. S. Monck ... .. 17
Bird Song, Repetition and Evolution in —
By C'nARi.E;- .\. Witchell ... .. ... 1116
Letter on ; by W. Alfred Parr ... 277
Books, Reviews of—
Andrcp and hi? Bul'ooii. Bv Heui'i Liicliambri'
and Alexis Maohurou .. .. ... 87
Animals, Wild Traits in Tame. By Louis Robinson 64
Astronomy, a New, for Beginners. By David P.
Todd ... ... .. ... . . 109
Astrononiv, Elements of Descriptive. By Herbert
A. Howe ... ... ... ... ... 233
Astronomy, The Concise Kuowledgo. By Agnes M.
Gierke, A. Fowler, and J. EUard Gort- ... IH
Astronomy, The Klements of. By Charles A. Young Ho
Audubon and liis Journals. Bv Maria E. Audubon 231
Birds in London. By W. H. Hudson ... ... 208
Bond, William Cranch, and )iis son, George Phillips
Bond, Memorials of. By Edward S. Holdcn ... 134
Botany, a Text-Book of. By Dr. E. Strasbm-ger.
and others ... ... ... ... 209
Carpentry and Joinery, Xotes on. By Thomas Jay
Evans . "... ... ... ... S6
Chemistry, a Treatise on (Vol.11. The Metals.).
By Sir Henry Roscoe and C. Schorlemmer ... 85
Chemistry. Text-Book of Physical. By Clarence L.
Speyers ... .. ... ... ... 180
I'arwin, The Method of. By Frank Cramer ... 20
Democracy. The Rise of. By J. Holland Rose .. I'J
Design for Woven Fabrics, Ornamental. By C.
Stephenson and F. Suddards ... ... 19
Eclipses, Recent and Coming. By Sir Xorman
Lockyer ... ... . . ... ... 20
Education, English National. By H. Holman ... 273
Electricity in the Service of Man. By R. Wormell 20
Klectro-Piiysiology. Vol. IL By W. Biedermann 179
Entomology, Text-Book of. By Alpheus S. Packard 256
Ethnological Studiesamong the North- West Central
Queensland Aborigines. By Walter E. Rotli ... 180
Flora of Perthshire, The. Bv Francis Buchanan
W. White .. . "... ... ... 157
Fowling, a History of. By Rev. H. A. Macpherson 110
Geology, an Introduction to. By Wm. B. Scott... 20
Geology for Beginners. By W. W. Watts ... 273
Greece, The First Philosophers of. By Arthur
Fairbanks ... .. ... . ... 157
Gutta-Percha, Cantor Lectures on. By Dr. Eugene
Obaoh ... ... ... ... . 232
Hunter, John : Man of Science and Surgeon. By
Stephen Paget ... ... ... ... 20
Hypnotism, The Elements of. By Ralph Harry
Vincent ... ... ... 86
Jaeger, Gustave, >i.D., Researches and Discoveries
by: Problems of Nature ... ... .. 3!>
Lite, What is 'f By Frederick Hovenden ... 110
Light, Visible and Invisible. By Silvauus P.
Thompson ... ... ... 37
Magnetism and Electricity, a Treatise on. By Prof.
Andrew Grav . 13.j
KNOWLEDGE
Books, Reviews of —
Mammals, Reptiles and Fishes of Easex, The. By
Henry Laver ... ... ... ... 25(>
Mechanics, Applied. By Joliu Perry ... ... 87
MechaniA, Theoretieil. By A. E. H. Jjove .. 157
Memory and its Cultivation. By F. W. Edridge-
G-reen ... ... ... ... ■■• 135
Montaigne and Shakespeare. By John M. Robertson 65 ■
Moon. William, and his Work for the Blind. By
John Eutherford ... ... ... ... 180
' Museums and other subjects connected with Natural
History, Kssays on. By Sir William Henry Flower 232
Natural Causes and Supernatural Seemings. B.v
Henry Maudsley ... ... ... ... f>4
Natural History (A'ertebrates) of the British Islands,
A Sketch of the. By F. G. Aflalo ... ... 207
Naturalist's Directory, The ... ... . ^1
Nature and a Camera, With. By Richard Keartou 18
Nature, Some Unrecognized Laws of. By Ignatius
Singer and Lewis H. Berins ... ... ... 88
Palieontology, OutUnes of Vertebrate, for Students
of Zoology. By A. Smith Woodward ... ... 273
Pare, Ambroise, and his Times. By Stepheu Paget 135
Peary near the Pole, With. By Eivind Astrup ... 232
Photography, Kromscop Colour. By Frederic Ives 272
Plant Life, Glimpses into. By Mrs. Brightwen ... 86 ,
Psychical Research, Studies in. By I' rank Podmore 37
Psychology, The New. By Dr. E. AV. Scripture ... 03
Reliquary and Illustrated Archicologist, The.
A'olum'e for 1897 ... ... ... .-. 38
Roadside aud River, By. By H. Mead Briggs ... 64
Smithsonian Institution, 1846-189G ; the History of
its First Half -Century. Edited by Cxeorge Brown
Good ... .;. ... ... . . 134
Sport, The Encvclopiediaof. By the Earl of Suffolk
and Berkshire, Hedley Peek, and F. G. Aflalo ... 87
Starland, Stories of. By Mary Proctor ... 272
Studio, Tlie 273
iiun's Place in Nature, The. By Sir Norman
Lockyer ... ... ... ... ... 110
Thermo-Geographical Studies. By C. L. Mad.sen 156
Vertebrata, A Classification of. By Hans Gadow... 272
Vertebrates, Elements of the Comparatiye Anatomy
of. By Dr. Robert Wiederscheiiu ... ..". 88
Weltgcbaude, Das: a Popular Treatise on the
Ueavens. By Dr. M. Wilhelm Meyer ... lids
AVhite, The Journals of Walter ... 87
Wonderful Century, The ; its Successes and its
Failures. By Alfred Russell Wallac-c ... ... 232
Zoology, A Student's Text-Book of. By Adam
Sedgwick ... ... ... ... ' ... 15"
Zoology, Text-Book of. By H. G. Wells ., 257
Books and Periodicals, Short Notices of—
Architecture, Muderu. By H. Ileal! icote Statluuii... 135
Astronomy for the Young. By W. T. Lynn ... 257
Astronomy, Observational. By Arthur Mee ... 88
Atoms in Space, The Arrangement of. By J. H.
Van't Hoff ... ... ... ... 18U
Bacteria— The Story of Germ Life. By U. W. Cocn 3S
Barometrical Determination of Heights. By F. J. B.
Curdeirs ... ... ... ..." ... 233
Biolog;. . Scientific Method in. By Dr. Elizabeth
Bluekwell " siS
Birds, Ackworth. By W. B. Arundel . 274
Birds, The, of Montreal. By E. D. Wintle ... 2^4
Botany, Elementary. By Percy Groom ... ... 135
British Columbia, Year-Book of. By R. E. Gosmll 180
Carpentry and Joinery. By 1'". C. Webber 274
PAOB
Centuries, The ... ... ... ... 135
Chemical and Physical Calculations, Reform of. By
C. J. T. Hanssen ... ... ... . . 38
Chemistry, Elementary. By T. A. Cheetham ... 233
Cleitistry, First Year's Course of Experimental
Work in. By Ernest H. Cook .. ... 88
Chemistry, for Photogi-aphers. By C. P. Townsend 65
Coinage, Story of the British. By Gertrude Burford
Rawlings ... ... ... ... ... HI
Comets, Remarkable. By W. T. Lynn ... ... Ill
Creation, The Process of. Discovered. By James
Dunbar ... ... ... ... ... 257
Earth's History, Outlines of the. By N. S. Thaler 274
Electricity, Industrial. Edited by A. &. Elliott ... 233
Fern World, The. By F. G. Heath 274
French .Self -Taught. By C. A. Thimm ... ... 157
Geology, Applied. By J. V. Elsden... ... . 274
Insects, Life-Histories of American. By Clarence
Moores Weed ... ... ... ... 181
Intellect, The Building of the. By Douglas M.
Gaue ... ... ... ... ... 136
Laboratory Arts, On. By Richard Threlfall ... 209
London, Guide to. By Emily Constance Cook ... 136
Machinery of the Uniyci-se, The. By A. E. Dolbear 65
Magnetism and Electricity. By Dr. K. H. Jude ... 233
Mind, The Unconscious. By A. T. Schofield ... 274
Miner's Arithmetic and Mensuration. The. By
Henry Daries ... ... ... ... 157
Nature Studies in Elemcntaiy Schools. By Mrs.
Lucy Wilsou ... ... ... " ... 181
Observations, Notes on. By Sidney Lupton ... 233
Organic Chemical Manipulation. By J. T. Hewitt 88
Photographic Lens, A Simple Guide to the Choice
of a. By T. R. Dallmeyer ... ... ... 209
Photography, The Story of. By Alfred T. Story ... 209
Physics, Elementary, Practical and Theoretical. By
John G.Kerr " HI
Physiography for Advanced Students. By A. T.
Simmons ... ... ... ... IH
Physiology, Practical. By Alfred F. Blaisdell ... 38
Pictorial Instruction Object Lcssous. By G. Colomb 65
Planisphere, Revolving ... ... ... 65
Plant-Life, Studies in. By Eleanor Hughes-Gibb.. 257
Poultry for the Table and Market. By W. B.
Tegetmeier ... ... ... ... ... .. 273
Process Year-Book for 1898 ... ... ... 157
Radiography. By E. T. Bottone 274
Radiography, Practical. By A. AV. Iscnthal and
H. feuowden AVard ... ... ... ... 233
Science, Elementary General. By A. T. Simmons
and L. M. Jones ... ... ... ... 233
Science, General Elementary. Edited by Wm.
Briggs ... ... ... ... ... 209
Science, AA'hat i» Y By the Duke of Argyll ... 257
Scientific Knowledge, First Y'ear of. By Paul Bert 88
Seas, The Story of Life in the. By Stephen J. 209
Hickson ... ... ... ... ... 209
Sun, The Study of the. By George Mackenzie Knight IIJ
Telegraphy, AVii-elcss. By Richard Kerr ... 257
Botanical Studies —
By A. Vaui.han Jennings
1. Yaucheria .. 21
II. Coleochaete .''>4
III. Jungermannia 115
IV. Mnium ,. .. 103
Y. Asplenium . . 211
KNOWLEDGE
Botanical Studies ( continued ,-
By A. \"Ar(;HAx Jenntngs
YI. Selaginella
Yll. Abies
YIII. Lilium
Botany, Economic —
By John R. Jackson ...
25y
•282
2S4
28, 7S, 12t>, 199, 235
• Canterbury Tales," The Astronomy of the —
By E. Wu,TER Maunder 205
Letter on ; by H. J. Lowe . ... 278
Carr-Gregg, Ivo F. H.—
Letter on The Urania Sternwarte . . . 3 '>
Celebes : A Problem in Distribution
By It. Lyi>ekker
Chess Column —
Bv C. I). LococK ... 23, 47, 71, 95, 119,
167, 191, 215, 239, 203,
Clarke, Latimer, F.R.S.—
Obituary Notice of
Gierke, Miss Agnes M. —
Variable Stars in Globular Clusters
Cloud Belts—
By Wm. Shacki-eton . .
Cock, W. H.—
Letter on Dissociation of the Elements
143.
287
27!i
Cole, Grenville A. J., M.R.LA., F.G.S
The Floor of a Continent . . -25
The Structure of Ireland .. 74
The Mourne Mountains 121
An Old World Highland .. 170
An Esker in the Plain 217
Volcanoes of the North 266
Comets and Meteors, Notes on-
By W. F. Denning 10, 46, 70, 94, 118, 142,
166, 189, 213, 237, 262, 285
Continent. A Drowned —
By R. Lydekker . . ... . . 8
Continent, The Floor of a—
By Gren\ille A. .J. Cole ... ... ... 25
Cowries, The Colours of —
By R. Lydekker .. ... 270
Crommelin, A. C. D. —
The New Planet DQ 250
Crypton —
Note on ... ... .. lt;o
Cygni, Herschel Y 37, Photograph of the
Nebulous Region Round —
By Is.\.vc Roberts ... . . 253
Denning, W. F., F.R.A.S.—
Notes on Comets and Meteors 10, 46, 70, 94,
142, 166, 189, 213, 237, 262,
Letter on Mercury
Deserts and their Inhabitants
By R. Lydekker
Letter on ; by G. Abbott
Draper Catalogue, The —
Letter on ; by W. H. S. Mox( k
Earth, The Smell of—
By G. Cl.xrkk NuTT.u,L
Letter on ; by G. B. Longstaff
East, Rev. Arthur —
The Level of Simspots
Artificial Facuire ...
Letter on Photographing through a Fly's Eye
Letter on a Theory of Refraction in Stmspots
Easton, C.
Richard Proctor s Theory of the Universe ...
A New Theory of the MUky ^^'ay
Eclipse, Moon in —
By L. P.\xton ...
Eclipse, The Prismatic Camera at the Recent —
By J . EvERSHZD
Eclipse. The Recent —
Bv E. W.\lter Maunder ... 101
118,
2is5
13G
101
136
• iO
257
•277
89
183
203
204
40
130
, 155
38
Eclipse, Total Solar, January 22nd, 1898
Eclipse, Total Solar, January 22nd, 1898—
]'>y E. Walter Maunder ... ... ... 4!)
Eclipses of the Moon, Errata in Times of^
Letter on ; by Lewis Hensley ... ... (Jl
Eclipses, Total, The Prismatic Camera during —
By Wm. Shai kleton ... . . .. ... '.)
Editorial 26".
Egg Collecting in its Relation to Science —
Letter on ; by -Joseph P. Nunn ... ... 34
Elements, Dissociation of
Letter on : by W. H. Cock ... o5
Enock, Fred, F.L.S.. F.E.S.—
British Bees — 1. 50
British Bees— II. 82
British Bees— III. . 97
Insect Miners 178,209
Esker in the Plain, An —
By GREN^^LLE A. -J. Cole .. .. 217
Ethnology at the British Museum —
By R. Lydekker 223
KNOWLEDGE
Evershed, J., F.R.A.S.—
The Prismatic Camera at the Recent Eclipse 13(i
Faculae, Artificial —
By Rev. Arthur East...
Fishes, Marine Food, Life Histories of the
British —
Letter on; by A. T. M.\sterman
Flanery, David^
Letter on Variable Stars
Letter on Variable Stars
Letter on U Orionis and S and V Coronie . .
Flowers, The Affinities of —
By Felix Osw'ALii
Fluorine, Liquid —
By C. F. TowNSEXD
Letter on; by S. H. Wrii;ht
Fly's Eye, How to Photograph through a—
By Fred. W. Saxj^y
Fly's Eye, Photographing through a —
Letter on ; by Arthur East ...
183
IG
60
81
203
222
31
01
1S7
20H
Fowler, A., F.R.A.S.—
The Face of the Skv 167, IfH, 214, 238, 263, 2h6
Gore, J E , F.R.A.S.—
The Masses and Distances of Biuarv Stars.
62
Graham, A.—
Letter on Testing Multiplication and Division 17
Green, Jos. F. —
Letter on Weasel and Young
Grubb, J. Ernest —
Letter on A Brilliant Meteor ..
Haddy, Thos. J.—
Letter on Artificial Sunspota
Hall, Maxwell —
Letter on The Great Sunspot
Hensley, Lewis-
Letter on Errata in Times of Eclipses of
the Moon
27S
35
27'.)
Ill
HoUoway, George T.Assoc. R.C.S.Lond.,F.LC.—
The Petroleum Industry ... 124, l.")l, 169
Holmes, C. B —
Letter on Mercury ... ... ... ... 114
Holmes, Edwin —
Letter on The Masses and Distances of
the Binary Stars ... ... ... ... 136
Hydrogen, Liquefying—
Note on
Insect Miners—
By Freh. Enock
Ireland. The Structure of—
By Gre.n\ille A. J. Cole
Jackson. John R., A.L.S. —
Economic Botanv
137
178, 209
2s, 73, 126,
lO'.t, 235
Jeffery, H. G —
Letter on The British Trapdoor Spider
Jenkinson, J. H. —
Letter on Sunspots ..
Jennings, A. Yaughan, F.L.S., F.G.S.—
Botanical Studies—
I. Vaucheria ...
II.
III.
IV.
V.
VI.
VII.
VIII.
Jeryis, Lionel —
Coleochaste . . .
Jungermannia
Mnium
Asplenium
Selaginella ...
Abies
Lilium
Serpents and how to recognize them
The Evolution of the Venom-fang .
181
21
54
115
163
211
25!»
282
284
91
Hydrogen Line, A Yariable Bright
By Edwarh C. Pukerixg
134
Karkinokosm, The, or World of Crustacea —
ByKev.T.R. H. Stehiuxg 1,67,104,145, 197,243
Laboratory. Handicraft in the 24!*
Lagerwey. H. W. M., LL.D.—
Letter on The " Quagga " 203
Leigh. M. Cordelia-
Letter on Moon's Halo .. ... ... 278
Locock, C. D., B.A.—
Chess Column .. 23,47,71,9.5,119,143,167,
191, 215, 239, 263, 2H7
Longstaff'. G. B.—
Letter on The Smell of Earth 277
Lowe, H. J. —
Letter on Astronomy of the " Canterbury
Tales" 278
Lydekker, R., B.A., F.R.S.—
A Drowned Continent... ... .. . . 3
Ancient Red Deer Antlers . ... . 43
The Sea-Otter :ind its Extermination 78
Deserts and their Inhabitants ... ... 101
Africa and its Animals 137
Celebes: a Problem in Distribution ... ... 175
Whale Models at the Natural History Museum 193
Ethnology at the British Museum ... ... 223
The Colours of Cowries .' 270
KNOWLEDGE.
MacDowall, Alex. B., M.A.—
Is Weather affected by the Moon ?
Weather Accounts
Sunspots and Life
Markwick, Lieut.-Col. E. E., F.R.A.S.—
On the Ecjipse Theory of N'ariable Stars . . .
Letter on the Eclipse Theory of Variable Stars
Masterraan, A. T. —
Letter on the Life-Histories of the British
Marine Food-Fishes
Maunder, E. Walter, F.R.A.S.—
The Spectra of Bright Stars
The Total Solar Eclipse, January 22nd, 1898
The Recent Eclipse ...
The Objective Prism, the Flash, and the
Reversing Layer
The Astronomy of the " Canterbury Tales"
The Great Sunspot and the Aurora
Medals, Geological Society s—
Note on
Medals, Royal Geographical Society's—
Note on
Mee, Arthur, F.R.A.S.—
In the Moon's Northern Regions
Mental Fatigue —
Note on
Mercury —
Letter on ; by C. B. Hol:mes ...
Letter on ; by W. F. Denxixg
Messier 33 Trianguli, Photograph of the Spiral
Nebula —
By Is-iAc Roberts
Metals, Smell of —
Note on . .
Meteor, A Brilliant —
Letter on ; by J. Ernest Grubb
Letter on ; by G. Northover Stretton
Meteors, The November
Milky Way, A New Theory of the —
By C. E.vstox
128
231
15»
258
40
45)
107
184
205
228
lb7
84
201
114
IHfi
Mills, John —
A Classic Legacy of Agriculture
The Beet- Sugar Industry in England
Mitchell, C. Ainsworth, B.A., F.I.C.—
The Vinegar Eel
The Vinegar Fly and the Vinegar Mite
140,
27G
35
114
2.V2
148
241
Monck, W. H. S. -
Letter on Rare Birds ...
Letter on the Draper Catalogue
Letter on the Sun's Stellar Magnitude
Letter on the Eclipse Theory of Variable Stars
Letter on Variable Stars
Monium —
Note on
Moon's Halo—
Letter on ; by M. Cordelia Leigh
Moon's Northern Regions, In the—
- By Artiu'r Mee
More, Alexander Goodman, Life of—
Review of
Morley, George —
Christmas Customs of Shakespeare's Green-
wood . .
Mourne Mountains, The
By Grenville A. J. Coi.f.
Mudflats, From a Hole in the
By Harry F. Witherby
Multiplication and Division, Testing-
Letter on ; by A. Graham
58
139
Museum, South Kensington —
Notes on ... ... ... 16,
Natures Finer Forces—
By H. Snowden Ward
Nebula and Region Round / Cassiopeise —
By Isaac Rouerts
Northampton Institute, Clerkenwell-
Note on
Notornis Mantelli
Note on
Nunn, Joseph P.—
Letter on Egg Collecting in its relation to
Science
Nuttall, G. Clarke, B.Sc.
" The Mimic Fires of Ocean '
The Smell of Earth
Occultation of 26 Arietis Observed Photo-
graphically—
By Edward C. PicKERi.Nf;
Occulting Bodies, Light Curves of
Letter on ; by C. H. Rockwell
Ocean, The Mimic Fires of —
By G. Cl.\eke Nutt.\ll
17
60
159
182
279
230
278
84
187
2C,x
121
29
17
204
114
lOG
112
254
34
150
257
133
254
150
KNOWLEDGE.
Old-World Highland, An—
By Grenville A. J. Cole
Ornithological Notes, British—
Albino Varieties of Mistle Thrush, Commorj Snipe.
Woodcock, and Curlew — E. 'Williams ...
Avocet in Dublin Bay — E. Williams
Bittern, Little, in County Cork— John J. Wolfe ...
Bustard, Great, A Norfolk — Thomas Southwell ...
Bustard, Little, in Norfolk— E. A. Butler
Buzzard, Bough-legged, in Co. Down— R. Patter.^on
Capercailie and the Pheasant, on Hybrids between —
W. Eagle Clarke ...
Crake, Baillon's, in Caithness— W. Arkwright
Crane in County Tipperary — W. Johnston
Crows. Carrion, capturing a Lark — John Cordcaux
Dipper, Common, at Hillington — Sir W. H. B.
Ffolkes
Dove, Ring-, nesting in Edinburgh — A. Craig
Duck, Ferruginous in West Meath — H. F. W.
Duck, Long-tailed, in Holderness — John Cordeaux
Duck, Long-tailed in Ireland — Robert Warren
Flycatcher, Pied, in Caithness— James Sulherland ..
Flycatcher, Pied, in Shetland— W. E. Clarke
Garefowl, The Orcadian home of the— Alfred
Newton ... ... ... ^...
Guillemot, Variety of the Common — J. Morley . . .
Gull, Glaucous, in Isle of Man— P. Ralfe
Gull, Iceland, in County Sligo in Summer — Robert
Warren
Gull, Mediterranean Herring, A New British Gull-
Thomas Southwell ...
GuU.Sabine's, in Arran — John Paterson
Gulls, Lesser Black-baekcd, on the Ei< — W. S. M.
irrirban ..
Harrier, Slarsh, in Dumfrieshire — R. Service
Harrier, Montagii's, breeding in Ireland (correrlio'i)
John H. Teesdale ...
Hawfinch in Co. Dowu — R. Patterson
Hawfinch in Midlothian— W. E. Clarke ...
Hoopoe in Sussex — Emma L. Turner
.lackdaws having Domed Nests — W. Wells Bladen
•Jackdaw's Nest, Curious — S. L. Mosley ...
Miarants, Spring, Late Arrival of, near Exeter —
W. S. M. D'Urban ...
Moorhen chasing Stoat — B.W.Martin ...
Nesting, Early, of Birds
Nesting, Early, of Starling, Long-tailed Tit and
House Sparrow
Nesting Sites, Change of, of Common Tern and
Ringed Plover — W. Serle
Ortolan in Shetland— W. E. Clarke
Partridge, The Memory of the — J. F. Green
Parus salicarius, " A hitherto overlooked British
bird" — Ernst Hartert
Pastor, Rose-coloured, in West Ross-shire — J. A.
Fowler
Peregrines and Herring Gulls — C. J. Wilson
Phalarope, Grey, in Co. Antrim — R. Patterson
Phalarope, Grey, near Kilkenny — G. E. H. Barrett-
Hamilton ...
Pintail, On the Nesting of the, in the Forth Area-
W. Evans ...
Pipit, W^ater, in Carnarvonshire — G. H. CatoD
170
112
112
G6
J4
Pochard, Red-crested, in Westmoreland — H. A.
Macpherson ... .„
Protection of Birds in Scotland — M. L. Lemon
177
14
80
177
177
177
255
15
SI
177
.•56
1.5
202
2.34
;!6
234
177
255
3fi
203
81
177
112
30
177
Pufffntis atsimilis and P. olscurus
Q uail in Sussex — Edwin A. Pratt
Hedwing, Song of— C. A. Witchell
Robins and Honeysuckle — C. A. Witchell
RockaU, Notes on an Expedition to — R, Lloyd
Praeger
.Sandpiper, Pectoral, in Kent. — N. F. Ticehurst
Sandpiper, Pectoral, in Norfolk— J. L. Newman ..
Sheerwater, The Great, at St. Kilda — Henry Ev ans
Shrike, Red-backed, in Caithness — James" Sutherland
Sparrows, House, and Pigeons — F. G. Aflalo
Squirrels and Birds — C. M. Battersby
.Swallow, Early Arrival of — E. Sillence
Swans, Bewick's, in Suffolk — J. F. Green
Thrush, Hybrid, found in Norway — R. Collett
Thrush. Mistle, swallowing Droppings of Young —
Harry F. Witherby...
Thrush, Mistle, Variation in the Song of — C. A.
Witchell ...
Thrush, White's, in Warwickshire — Fet«rSpicer ...
Tits, Marsh, and Honeysuckle— Mary L. Armitt ...
Wagtail, White, in County Mayo — Robert Warren
W'agtails, Migrating, at Peterhead— W. Serle
Warbler, Barred, in Lincolnshire — G. H. Caton
Haigh
Warblers, Melodious, in South-East Devon — Murray
R. Mathew ...
Waxwings at Scarborough — J. Morley ..
Whinchat in Shetland— W. E. Ckrke
Wigeon Nesting in Yorkshire — W. J. Clarke
Wigeon, Unusually large Numbers of, in Belfast
Lough — R. Lloyd Patterson ...
Woodchat in Susisei— G. W. Bradsliaw
Oswald, Felix, B.A., B.Sc—
The Affinities of Flowers
Parker, Prof. T. Jeffrey-
Obituary Notice of
Parr, W. Alfred—
Letter on Evolution in Bird-Song ...
Patents, Number of Applications for—
Note on
Paxton, L. —
Letter on Is Weather affected by the Moon ?
Moon in Eclipse, .January 7th, 1898
PAGE
162
60
81
1.5
277
177
15
234
162
277
203
81
277
SO
162
234
177
15
177
■ SO
177
222
(57
277
Petroleum Industry, The—
By George T. Holloway
Pickering, Edward C. —
Stars having large Proper Motion
Occultation of 26 Arietis observed Photo
graphically
A Variable Bright Hydrogen Line . .
A New Spectroscopic Binary
Photographic Spectrum of the Aurora
Xariable Stars of Short Period
Planet DQ, The New—
By A. C. D. Ckommelin
Plants, Self-Irrigation in—
By Rev. Alex. S. Wilson
63
33
40
124, 151. 16!)
8; I
133
134
134
134
20r.
250
100, 173, 245
KNOWLEDGE
Playfair, The Lord-
Obituary Notice of
"Quagga; The—
Letter on ; by H. W. M. Lagerwev
Quick, James —
Progress in Kadiography
Radiography, Progress in—
l>y •! AMES QrU'K
Reversing Layer. The Objective Prism, the
Flash, and the —
By E. Walter Maunder
Roberts, Isaac, D.Sc, F.R.S.—
Photograph of the Spiral Nebula Messier
33 Trianguli
Nebula and Region round y Cassiopeise
Photograph of the Nebulous Region round
y V 37 Cygni
Rockwell, Chas. H. —
Letter on Light Curves of Occulting Bodies
158
203
U7
247
181
39
106
253
254
Sadler, Herbert, F.R.A.S.—
The Face of the Sky
Obituary Notice of
28, 47, 71, U.",, Ill), 143
1.".8
100
187
159
Salvin, Osbert, F.R.S.—
obituary Notice of ... 158
Sao Nicolau, Cape Yerde Islands, A Yalley on-
By Boyd Ales.axder ...
Saxby. Fred W. -
How to Photograph through a Fly's Eye
Science Notes 15, 37, 63, 112, 136. 159,
204, 230, 254, 275
Scientific Societies, South -Eastern Union of —
Note on
Sea-Otter, and its Extermination, The—
By E. LVDEKKEK
Sea-Squirt, The—
By E. Stenhouse
Serpents and How to Recognize Them —
By Lionel Jkkvis
Shackleton, Wm. F.R.A.S.—
The Prismatic Camera during Total Eclipses
Cloud Belts
Letter on The Level of Sunspots
Shakespeare's Greenwood, Christmas Customs
of—
r>y Georue Morlev
Sidgreaves, Walter S. J.—
Letter on Spectrum of -.. Ceti
220
9
56
112
268
61
Sky, The Face of the—
By Herbert Sadler 23,47,71,95,119,143
By A. Fowler . 167, 191, 214, 238, 263, 286
Sokotra, Expedition to —
Note on
Spaoe, Movement in —
Letter on ; by Ignoramus
Spectra of Bright Stars, The—
By E. W.vlter Maunder
Ceti and y. Herculis, Photo-
27-i
18
40
Spectra of
graphed —
By E. Walter Mai xDER
Spectra, Prismatic, in Terms of Wave-
Lengths —
Note on
Spectrum of ^ Ceti —
Letter on ; by Walter Sidgreaves
Spider, The British Trap-door^
Letter on ; by H. G. Jefkery
Stars having Large Proper Motion-
By E. C. Pukerix
Stars, Masses and Distances of Binary—
By J. E. Gore ..
Letter on ; by Edwin Holmes
Stars, On the Eclipse Theory of Variable-
By Lieut-Col. E. E. M.arkwick
Letter on ; by W. H. S. Monck
Letter on ; by H.vrold Whichell^ ■
Letter on ; by E. E. Markwick
Stars, Variable —
Letter on ; by David Flanery
Letter on ; by David Flaneky
Letter on ; by W. E. Besley
Letter on; by W. H. S. Monck
Stars, Variable, in Clusters
Stars, Variable, in Globular Clusters—
i By Miss Agnes M. Clerke
! stars. Variable, of Short Period—
\ By Edw.^rd C. Pickering
Stebbing, Rev. Thomas R. R.. M.A., F.R.S.,
F.L.S.—
The Karkinokosm, or World of Crustacea 1, 67,
104, 145, 197, 243
1 Stein, Sigmund —
! Letter on Sugar-Beet Industry in England 277
Stenhouse, E., A.R.C.S., B.Sc—
The Sea-Squirt ... 220
113
160
,61
35
89
62
136
153
182
183
253
60
81
81
279
281
279
205
KNOWLEDGE.
Stern warte, The Urania —
Letter on ; by Ivo F. H. Carb-Gregg
Stretton, G. Northover—
Letter on A Brilliant ^leteor...
Sun's Stellar Magnitude, The—
Letter on ; by W. H. S. Mon( k
Letter on ; by J. E. Gore
Ijetter on ; by William Shackleton . .
Sunspot, The Great —
Letter on ; by Maxwell Hall
Sunspot, The Great, and the Aurora-
By E. W. Maunder
Sunspots—
Letter on; by J. H. Jenkixson
Sunspots, A Theory of Refraction in —
Letter on ; by Arthur East ...
Sunspots and Life —
By Alex. B. MacDowall
Sunspots, Artificial —
Letter on ; by Thos. •!. Haddt
Sunspots, The Level of—
By Kev. Arthur East...
Superstition, An Irish —
By Frances L Battersby
Tetley, William C—
Letter on Weasel and Young
Townsend, C. F., F.C.S.—
Liquid Fluorine
Universe, Richard Proctor's Theory of the—
By C. Easton
U Orionis and S and U Coronse —
Letter on ; by D.^ahb Flanert
Venom-Fang, The Evolution of the —
By Lionel Jervis
Vinegar Eel, The—
By C. AiNswoRTH Mitchell .
114
150 I
150 ^
112
270
228
181
204
234
17
89
256
278
81
12
203
53
Vinegar Fly. The, and the Vinegar Mite—
By C. AiN-woRTH Mitchell ... ... 1.30
Volcanoes of the North —
By Grenville A. J. Cole 2()6
Ward, H. Snowden. F.R.P.S.—
Nature's Finer Forces ... IH
Weather Accounts —
By Ale.\. B. M.u-DowALL 128
Weather, Is, affected by the Moon ?—
By Alex. B. MacDowall ... 5
Letters on ; by L. Paxtox and G. E. E. 33
Weasel and Young —
Letter on ; by C. A. Witchell ... .. 254
Letter on ; by -J. F. Green ... ... ... 278
Letter on ; by W. C. Tetley ... .. 278
Wesche, Walter —
Letter on Hooked Process of Bees' Mandibles 183
The Hooks on the Mandible of the Honey Bee
and the Gizzard of the Ant 259
Whale Models at the Natural History Museum—
By E. Lydekker 193
Wheat and the Laboratory-
Xotc on '230
Whichello, Harold-
Letter on the Eclipse Theory of Variable Stars 183
Whitteron, Fred-
Latter on Vegetation of Australasia ... ... 33
Wilson, Rev. Alex. S., M.A., B.Sc—
Self- Irrigation in Plants 160,173,245
Winnecke, Dr. F. A. T.—
Obituary Notice of ... ... 21
Witchell, Charles A.—
Repetition and Evolution in Bird-Song
19G
254
Letter on Weasel and Young...
Witherby, Harry F.. F.Z.S.. M.B.O.U.-
From a Hole in the Mudflats 20
Wright, S. H.—
Letter on Liquid Fluorine ... til
Zoology, The Fourth International Congress
of 226
KNOWLEDGE
INDEX OF THE PRINCIPAL ILLUSTRATIONS.
Abel Tester for the " Flash Point,'
The
Ant, Gizzard of {Ltisiu.t nif/er)
Antlers, Ancient Red Deer-
Skull and Antlers of Aged Si'ot^ch
Red Deer
Antlers of Red Deer from an Irisli
Bog
Antlers of Ancient German Red
Deer ... ...
Antlers of German Red Deer with
Twenty Points
Antlers of Ancient German Red
Deer w ith T«ent.v-two Points ...
Antlers of French Red Deer with
duplication on the rij;ht siile ...
Arietis (26), Occultation of ... I
Audubon ;
Bee, Hooks on the Mandible of the
Hoaey i dpU nielifra) ... . :
Bees, British —
Colletes Dat'ttsitna
Andrena ftdva ; CiHasn httinor-
rhoidalis : Dast/poda hirtipes ...
y omada succincta ...
Rose leaves cut by MejachiU
The Leaf-cutter Bee
Tnder side and side view of
Abdomen
Head of Leaf -cutter Bee ...
Tunnel of Leaf-cutter Bee
Third pair of Legs, open and shut
Leaf -cutter Bee at work . . . 84,
Tunnel of Leaf-cutter Bee —
Foundation of first cell
First side-piece cut and carried,
and fixed in position
Second, third, and fuurth side-
piece
First gap filled up
Section of first cell, showing
pudding and egg
Three cells
Section of cells and puddings ...
Larvae feeding ...
Pupae
Five cells, two of them vacated
Bladder of Bladderwort 223
Bladderwort Plant in flower .. 2'-l
Botanical Studies —
Vaucheria aver-a 22
Coleocha^te ... ... o5
.limgermannia ... 1)7
Mnium .. ... IfiS
Aspleniuni . .. 212
Selaginella . 261
Abies 283
Lilium ... ... .. 284
Bushman ... .. 224
Calamocichla brevipennis, Nest of,
in a Coffee Tree 101
Camera, Prismatic, used in Brazil ... [>
Campbell's (Professor) Observing
^~^ I Station at Jeur, India
259 Cloud-Belt, The Equatorial
I Colours of Cowries, The (full page
photo;,'raphic plate) ...
Fluorine, Apparatus for Liquefac-
tion of .
32
ns
!»8
9S I
99
99 I
99
911 :
Crustacea, The World of—
A Phyllopod of Palestine (Kstheria
ffihoni) ... ... ... ... 1
A pedunculated Cirripede (Lepan
anaiifera) ... ... ... 2
A Copepod, parasitic on fish (iecnie-
olopkus sultana) ... ... 2
A West Indian Land Crab {Cardi-
soma guanhumi) ... ... ... 3
An Arctic Isopod (Gli/ptonolus
sabini) ... ... ... ... 3
llemiinerut talpoides ; Dipellt-s
carri (from Schuchert) ; Dipelti.t
diplodiscas 67
CriiptoUthodes tiiplcus 68
Swimming foot of Amphipod ... 69
Deep-sea Shrimp taken by the
Alhatross. Life-size ... ... 104
Last uropod of the Urothoe ... 105
Urothoe breiicornis 105
Second antenna of Baustorius
arenariu.1 ... ... ... 105
Platyarthrus Boffmannseggii ... 106
Nebalia bipes (O. Fabricius) ... 146
Lepidurus arcticus (VnXhii) ... 146
Daphnia carinata ... ... ... 147
Ci/clops Sernilafiis Fischer,
Figure of 198
Capilia vitrea (Haeckel) 198
Calocalanus PIumuIosiu (Claus)... 198
xfotopterophonts papilio Hesse,
Figure of 199
Sphyrion Icevigaium ^<}uay and
Gaimard). M A.S. ... ... 243
Notodelph i/s ai/ilis; Thorell. From
Brady ' 243
Lomanoticolii insolem. From A.
Scott 244
Xicothoi asfaci, Milne-Edwards
and Audouin .. 244
Sphoei-onella elegantula, Hansen... 244
Caligus torpedinis. Chondracan-
thus horridus. From Heller ... 245
Diocus gohinus (Fabricius). From
Steenstrup and Liitken ... 245
Eclipse Spectra (full page photo-
graphic [ilate) ... ... ... 132
Eel, The Vinegar (after Pasteur) ... 53
Esker at Balrothery, View from the
road along the 21^
Hills, CO. Dublin,
Esker at Green
Section in the 21'.'
Esker at Green Hills, co. Dublin,
Stratificationof sand at base of the 22i>
Esker at Tymon Castle, The south-
west slope of the 219
Faculae, Artificial and Natural ... 183
Fly's Eye, How to photograph
through a 188,189
Gneiss, Block of, from co. Mayo,
Ireland ... . 26
Godwit, The Bar-tailed ... 30
Guillemots on Cliff 19
Gulls, Lesser Black-backed ... .. IS
Holly Fly, Parasite of 210
Holly Leaf mined by Larva of Phgfo-
mgzu aquifolii ... ... ... 210
Ireland, The Structure of—
Sketch-map of Ireland 76
Section on the east border of
CO. Cork ... ... ... ... 77
.Slievenaman (2364 feet), co.
Tipperary ... 77
Killary Harbour, View of the head
of the fjord of 171
Leo, the Constellation, with Stellar
Standards of Reference ... 252
Light Curves as observed with the
Photometer ... ... 155
Light Curves (Theoreticalj of
different Binary systems 151
Lunar Alps and their neighbourhood.
The ... ,85
Marguerite Fly, The —
Ovipositing in Leaf ... ... 178
Sealing up the Egg ; larva and pupa
of; Egg, part of mine', and pai-a-
site of ; continuation of mine and
pupa, in which parasite is
ovipositing ... ... 179
Marguerite, Golden, affected with
■ the maggot " : Leaves of, showing
Larvae 178
Milky Way, The, according to Celoria 13
MilkyWay,The, according to Proctor 12
Moon in Eclipse, January 7th, 1898,
Photograph of 40
Moon, Path of, through the Earth's
shadow, December 27, 1898 .. 287
Moon, The Rising and Setting of the
Harvest 215
Mourne Granite. Specimen of ... 123
Mourne Mountains. View in the
valley of the Kilkeel River, ... 122
Mudflats, Low Tide on the 29
KNOWLEDGE.
Oilfield of Bradford, Derricks in the
Oil Refinery at Philadelphia
Oil Well after being Torpedoed
Orbits of Mars, DQ, and the Earth,
Relative Disposition of the
Papuan Girl, Head of
Peas grown in Experiments on the
Fixation of Free Nitrogen
Plants, Self-irrigation in-
Centrifugal and Centrij)i-t!il Irri-
gation
Nodding and Aiirieulate Lpares
Rain-conducting Channels
Leaf -cups of Teasel
Irrigation of the Chick-weed;
transverse section of Chickweed
stem ; vertical section of Chick-
^^'eed stem
Rotifer inhabiting the hood of a
Scale-Moss
Animals inliabiting the axils of
leaves
Quarry at Whitehead, Belfast Lough
Rainfall. Curves of
Raspberry Shoot affected with " the
maggot " of Lampronia rvbirlla ...
125
152
126
161
161
162
173
174
246
246
207
130
Raspberry Shoot, showing Larva of
Lampro.nn ivh/flla . ... 211
" Reversing Layer." Photograph
of the I'l
Roberts, Dr. Isaac, Full page photo
graphic Plates by-
Spiral Nebula Messier 35 Trianguli 39
NebidiT- near 7 Cassiopeiie ... 106
Nebula iji V .■H7 Cygni 253
Rocks, Ridge of Ancient, seen from
Church Stretton, Shropshire ... -7
Sea Otter, Upper and Lower Teeth
of the ... . ~'.<
Solar Corona, The, 1898, January 22 1.">C.
Spectra, Comparative
Reduction of
Scale for
100
Spectra of 0 Ceti (1897, December),
and a Herculis (1898. February),
Photographed at Stonyhurst Col-
lege Observatory ... 113
Spectrum of an Eclipse, The ... 185
Spectrum of 0 Ceti 61
Sun's Corona. The Total Eclipse of,
January 22, 1898 ... 50, 108, 109
Sunspot, Ideal Vertical Section of a 113
PAGE
Sunspots, A Group of 181, 182
Sunspots and Life (Diagram of
Curves) ... 23.".
Sunspots, The Great Group of (Sep-
tember 3-15, 1898i 228
Sunspots, The Level of—
Symmetrical Spot, Elevated Pen-
umbra ... ... ... ... 89
Symmetrical Spot, Penumbra with
'Dark Margin 89
I'nsymraetrical Spot, Penumbra
wanting on one side ... ... 90
Spot without Penumbra ... ... 90
Sunspots 90
Empty Vessel, with black bottom
just in view ; the same filled with
water: the same viewed verv
obliquely '90.91
Tasmanian Woman 22.5
Temperature. Curve of Annual ... 129
Temperature, Curve of Daily ... 129
Venom Fang, Evolution of the 92, 93
Vinegar Mite, The 140
Whale Gallery at the Natural His-
tory Museum, View in the ... 195
Wigcon's Nest and Eggs ... 36
January 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE.
Founded in 1881 by RICHARD A. PROCTOR.
LONDOX : JANUARY 1, 1S9S.
CONTENTS.
The Karkinokosm, or World of Crustacea. By the
Eer. Thomas K. R. SxEnicso, m.a., f.b.s., f.l.s.
(lUmtrated)
A Drowned Continent. By K. Ltdekkbb, b.a., f.e.s. ...
Is Weather affected by the Moon ? By Aiex. B. Mac-
Do^yArL, M.A. (Illustrated) ...
Serpents and how to recognize them. By Lioxei .Testis
The Prismatic Camera during Total Eclipses. By
Wm. Shackieion, f.b.a.s. {Illustrated.) (Plate)
Notes on Comets and Meteors. By W. F. DENXiyo,
F.B.A.S. ...
Richard Proctors Theory of the Universe. By C.
Eastox. (Illustrated) ...
British Ornithological Notes. Conducted by Haert F.
WiTHKEBT, F.Z.S., M.B.O.r. ...
Science Notes
Letters : — A. T. Mastebman ; A. Geaham, m.a. ; Thos
J. HaBDT ; W. H. S. MOXCK ; ■ lONOBAMrS '
Notices of Books. (Illustrated)
Books Eeceited
Obituary
Botanical Studies. — I. Vaucheria. By
jEyNIXGS, F.L s., F.G.S. {Illusf rated)
The Face of the Sky for January.
Sadlke, f.r.a.s.
Chess Column. By C. D. Locock, b.a.
A.
By
U
1.5
A. ; Thos.
16
18
21
21
Vacshan
21
23
23
THE KARKINOKOSM, OR WORLD OF
CRUSTACEA.
By the Rev. Thomas E. R. Stebbing, .m.a., f.r.s., f.l.s.,
Autlwr of " A History of Cnistiicen," " The Xaturalist of
Cumbrae," " Report on the Aniphijiodti collected hy H.M..S.
' Chttllenijer,' " etc.
DAN CHAUCER'S well of EngUsh undefiled being
at the disposal of the naturalist, it is often
thought that only out of pedantry or sheer
perverseness he tills his story with names and
terms borrowed from alien tongues, framing
uncouth compounds out of dead Greek and Latin. Instead
of saying that the subject now before us is Carcinolotry
(pronounced Karkinology), or the science of Crustacea, it
may, therefore, be more acceptable to declare that the
discussion will turn on the nature of barnacles, water-fleas,
fish-lice, scuds, hoppers, slaters, hodmandods, shrimps.
prawns, hermits, lobsters, crayfish, crawfish, and crab-
fish. The explanation is not quite so compendious as the
word "Crustacea." It is much longer, and yet does not mean
so much. It tries to be explicit, and yet remains vague.
For, on the one hand, many of the popular names above
given are misleading, since no crustaceans are fishes, and
some water-fleas and fish-Uce are not crustaceans ; and,
on the other hand, there are several important groups
which, because they are seldom seen unless expressly
sought for, and because they make no direct appeal to the
pleasure or convenience of mankind, have been passed
over without receiving any colloquial designation. The
truth is that no branch of natural history can be handled
with any degree of thoroughness to the exclusion of its
own appropriate terms of art ; and, as these are intended
for cosmopoUtan use, there is an advantage in deriving
them from the languages of ancient Greece and Rome,
which can provoke no international jealousies in the breasts
of modem students.
The class Crustacea, omitting one controversial group,
may be conveniently divided into three sub-classes called
Malacostraca, Entomostraca, Thyrostraca. Of these
names the first is primeval, and the second of long
standing. Their meanings have ceased to be of impor-
tance ; it is only the application of them that is important.
No one thinks that General Wolfe was especially ferocious,
or Charles James Fox exceptionally cunning, or that
Bishop Butler had charge of his master's wine-cellar,
whatever the circumstances may have been which in the
past gave rise to their family names. On the same
principle the term Entomostraca {see Fig. 1), meaning
,^^^ ■
X
Fig. 1. — Sstheria gihoni (Baird). A Phyllopod of Palestine.
insects with shells, may well be retained, although the
animals intended are no longer classed among insects,
and many of them are totally devoid of shells. There is
a natural craving for descriptive names in science — for
names that teach something. That this craving is so
seldom gratified is not due to ill nature on the part of
the naturalists. Attempts to indulge it are generally
failures. The most ingeniously constructed name can
scarcely be expected to enshrine more than one striking
characteristic of the group it denominates. Now, research
is provokingly progressive, and in its progress it is quite
fond of showing chat the character specified in the ingenious
name either does not belong to all the members of the
group, or that it belongs also to the members of several
KNOWLEDGE.
[January 1, 1898.
other groups. Thus the intention of the descriptive word
is defeated, and, instead of teaching, it leads the unwary
learner astray. A name like Malaeostraca, signifying
soft-shelled, which at one time may have usefully dis-
tinguished lobsters and prawns from the oyster and the
whelk, is no longer instructive in an enlightened age
which could not dream of confusing a tasteful crustacean
with a succulent mollusc. Moreover, some Malaeostraca
have very hard shells, far surpassing in induration those
of the Entomostraca and of many Mollusca. The name
Thyrostraca, meaning shells with doors or valve-shells,
gives a small item of information about cirripedes, while
the latter more familiar name refers to the
fact that the cirri or legs of a barnacle
have some resemblance to ringlets or
tresses of hair (see Fig. 2). None the less,
some of the group have no shells and no
valves and no cirri.
In this opening chapter it would be
highly proper and methodical to define
the class under discussion in such a way
that any schoolboy, or a poet, or a
journalist, on coming casually across
a Notopteiiipliorus pupilio, for example,
might, under the guidance of the
definition, be able at once to exclaim,
" Lo ! here is a crustacean ! " But nature,
rejoicing in the penumbra and the twilight,
and abhorrent of every hard line, takes a
pleasure in setting definitions at defiance,
varying the characters within a group,
and adding here and subtracting there,
till there is pretty well nothing left which
all the confederated members can claim
to have in common. What if some of the
Crustacea are endowed with a crustaceous
integument : with gills for breathing ;
with a heart ; with eyes and brain ; with
segmented body and limbs ; with bilateral
symmetry and with powers of locomotion .'
There are others which are soft-skinned, without gills, eye-
less, brainless, heartless, shapeless creatures, in a state of
fixation (see Fig. 3). The difficulty of defining natural groups
may be illustrated in this way. Suppose that three sets
of animals have characters so combined that they may be
represented respectively by the letters nli, be, ck, or by the
colours red and yellow, yellow and green, green and red.
The symbols indicate that each set has half its characters
in common with each of the other sets. Yet there are no
characters common to all three sets, so as to be available
for defining a higher group embracing them all. When
in such circumstances a definition has to resort to negative
and alternative characters, it may be logically exact, but
it loses the quality of helpfulness. The beginner, there-
fore— perhaps the resentful beginner — must say what he
pleases, and make what he can of the statement that the
division of the Arthropoda called Crustacea have a seg-
mented body and limbs at some stage of hfe ; that either
they have gills or else they breathe in water through their
skin ; that they have no proper neck ; that they never have
wings ; and that they are born in locomotive freedom.
Like insects, they have an integument composed of a sub-
stance called chitine. This may be extremely flexible, or,
passing through various degrees of tough and brittle, may,
by the copious addition of chalky material, attain the hard-
ness of bone or brick.
Having come to a provisional agreement with ourselves
that an almost indefinable congress of startlingly incon-
gruous-looking creatures are all to be admitted to the
Fio. 2. — Lepas
anatifera (Lin-
DiBus), A pedun-
culated Cirripede.
m
k
honourable title of crustaceans, we are next tempted to
ask what natural bond of union, if any, exists for such an
assemblage. Were they all separately invented just as we
find them, with their striking contrasts and innumerable
gradations and subtle resemblances ; or, have they been
evolved in ramifying lines from a common root ? The
first hypothesis would leave us rather idiotically gaping
at what must seem to be the eiiects of an unfathomable
caprice. Probably, therefore, most thinking men would
now prefer to explain the genesis of the " Karkinokosm,"
as we know it, on the principle of evolution. By this
we mean that all the forms, now so amazingly unlike
one another, are nevertheless descended from common
ancestors. No one denies that animals are capable of
reproducing their kind. No one denies that children are
more or less unlike their parents and unlike one another.
That these unlikenesses can be to some extent accumulated
has been proved. That in the course of nature they are
capable of an accumulation
so extended and so per-
manent as to separate a
man from a mouse, or the
great Cardi'^dma inM»humi,
figured on the next page,
from the worm-like para-
site Leniaoloplnis stdta7ta,iB
yet awaiting proof. To the
principle of evolution it
matters not how the varia-
tions are produced, so long
as some of them can
sometimes be secured
against reversion to the
ancestral pattern. So far
as the principle is con-
cerned, it is indifferent
whether the changes result
in exalting or degrading
the character of a species.
To explain the existing
constitution of the class
Crustacea, it must be sup-
posed that some of its
members have risen, and
that some have, after
rising, fallen. If it cannot
be proved that all have been evolved from a common
stock, something can be said for the probability of it : and
those who are dissatisfied can only be asked to provide
some other explanation that will better fit the phenomena.
For the purposes of a natural classification it is the
history of evolution that is most wanted. We need to
trace back the ancestry of different forms to the point of
junction, just as we foUow the twigs of a tree to the
branch from which they spring, and the branches to the
common stem. Clearly this can only be done by help of
the palaeontologists. What the rocks have as yet revealed
as to the succession in time of crustacean forms has
recently been represented by Dr. Henry Woodward in a
kind of fossil tree. Of the undisputed Crustacea he
recognizes eleven principal branches, and all these he
draws as running parallel down to the Carboniferous
period — a period so ancient that in calculating its age
imagination and arithmetic have to play a drawn game, and
yet so modern that in it the merry cockroach is already
in evidence. The disappointing inference is that any
* See his Presidential Addresses to the Geological Society of
London, 1895, 1896.
Fig. 3. — Lernteolophus sultana
(Xordmann). A Copepod, parasitic
on Fisli.
Jaxoary 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE
3
common starting point for all the Crustacea must lie
indefinitely further back ; and in fact it is not till the pre-
Cambrian period that all the branches are made to join
the central stem, while of the earlier points of junction
between the branches themselves it must be admitted that
till they melt into an undifferentiated original. Some
generalized forms are indeed quoted from the record of
the rocks, but they are few and obscure compared with the
desires and expectations of the evolutionist.
In a future cliapter an attempt will be made to show how
Fig. 4. — Cardisoma r/uanhumi (Latreille). A West Indian Land Crab.
most are highly oonjectural. The true afiSnities of a modern
species are often only discovered by careful dissection, and
such a process is rarely possible with mangled remains in
an obdurate fossil. Sometimes, when the rock specimens
are exceptionally clear, the characters displayed are dis-
tressingly like those familiar to us in living forms. Thus,
according to Dr. Ortmann, a fossil crawfish from the Upper
Chalk is more nearly
related than any
extant species to
the modern Linuparis
tririonits (De Haan) of
Japanese waters. It
is imgracious to find
fault with nature.
Perhaps the re-
searches of geology
are in fault, or per-
haps there are rays,
yet waiting to be
discovered by the
physicist, which will
penetrate the secrets
of an obliterated past.
Properly to attest the
work of evolution in
nature we sorely need
to recover a series of
lost pictures. They
should be a kind of
dissolving views
carrying us back to the dawn of life, with the features of
all existing forms not abruptly but graduaUy fading away,
a belief in the unity of the class Crustacea may be founded
on the internal evidence of extant species. That this is
not, on the face of it, a very simple task, might be inferred
from the few illustrations here brought together. They
represent a decapod, an isopod, a phyllopod, a parasitic
copepod, and a cirripede or cirrhopod, thus ranging from
the highest to the lowest ranks of the crustacean common-
wealth. Since nature has ordained that the writer of
" Hamlet " should have personal identity in common with a
speechless babe, a land crab need not be too proud to own
a barnacle for its distant cousin.
Fio. 5. — Glyptonoliis sabini (Kruyer).
An Arctic Isopod.
A DROWNED CONTINENT-
By K. Lydekkkb, b.a., f.k.s.
AS many of our readers are doubtless aware, deep
boring operations are being undertaken in the
island of Funafuti, in the EUice group of
Polynesia, with the primary object of ascertaining
the depth to which coral rock, or limestone of
coral origin, extends. If it were found that such coral-
made material extended to depths far below the level at
which living coral can exist, there would be evidence that
the island on which the experiment was conducted had
subsided. And if subsidence were thus proved to have
taken place in a single island selected almost at random,
the conclusion could hardly be resisted that the greater
part, if not the whole, of Polynesia must likewise be a
subsiding area, or, in other words, the remnants of a
drowned continent, some of the higher lands of which
are indicated by the atolls and other islands of the Coral
Sea. It is, therefore, a favourable opportunity for a few
KNOWLEDGE
[Jantjaby 1, 1898.
words in regard to the permanence or otherwise of the
great oceanic basins and continental areas of the globe.
This subject, it need scarcely be said, has not only an
intense and absorbing interest of its own — for it is difficult
for anyone except a geologist to fully realize that the solid
ground on which he stands may have been buried fathoms
deep beneath the water — but is also one of the utmost
importance in regard to many puzzling problems connected
with the present and past geographical distribution of
terrestrial animals and plants on the surface of the globe.
Although it might well have been thought that opinion
in matters scientific would be unlikely to veer suddenly
round, and after tending strongly in one direction incline
with equal force in the one immediately opposite, yet
there are few instances where the swing of the pendulum
of opinion to one side has been more swiftly followed by its
oscillation to the other than has been the case in the
problem of the permanency of continents and oceans.
When geology first began to take rank among the exact
sciences, and it was demonstrated that most of the shells
and other fossils found in the solid rock of many of our
continents and islands were of marine origin, it was a
natural, if hasty, conclusion that land and sea had been
perpetually changing places, and that what is now the
centre of a continent might comparatively recently have
been an ocean abyss. Accordingly, when any difficulty
in finding an adequate explanation in regard to the
geographical distribution of the animals or plants of two
or more continents or islands occurred, the aid of an
" Atlantis " or a " Lemuria " was at once invoked without
misgiving, and a path thus indicated across which the
inhabitants of olie isolated area could easily have passed to
another.
This was one swing of the pendulum. But as the
methods of geological observation and investigation became
more exact and critical, it was soon obvious that, in many
areas at least, the alternations between sea and land could
not have been so frequent or so general as had been at
first supposed. It was, indeed, perfectly true that many
portions of some of our present continents had for
long periods been submerged, or had been at intervals
alternately land and sea. But at the same time it began
to be realized that the fossiliferous marine deposits
commonly met with on continents and large islands were
not of such a nature that they could have been laid down
in depths at all comparable to those now existing in certain
parts of the basin of the Atlantic. Even a formation like
our English chalk, which had been supposed to have
analogies with the modern Atlantic deposits, appears to
have been laid down in a sea of much less depth and
extent, and probably more nearly comparable with the
modern Mediterranean. Then, again, it was found that
large tracts in some of our present continents, such as
Africa and India, had existed as dry land throughout a
very considerable portion of geological time. Moreover, it
was asserted that no formations exactly comparable to those
now in course of deposition in the ocean abysses could be
detected in any of our existing continents or islands ; while
it was further urged that in none of the so-called oceanic
islands (that is, those rising [from great depths at long
distances from the continental areas) were there either
fossiliferous or metamorphic rocks similar to those of the
continents and larger continental islands.
This was the second swing of the pendulum, and for a
long period it was confidently asserted that where con-
tinents now exist there had never been any excessive
depth of ocean ; and, conversely, that in the areas now
occupied by the great ocean abysses there had never been
land during any of the later geological epochs. It was,
indeed, practically affiimed that wherever the sounding-
line indicates a Ihcusand fathoms or more of water, there
sea had been practically always, and that no part of the
present continents bad ever been submerged to anything
like that depth.
Almost as soon as the pendulum of opinion bad attained
the full limits of its swing in this direction (and this swing
had been largely due to the influence of geologists and
physicists), there began to be signs of its return to a less
extreme position. It was, in the first place, proved that
a few deposits — and these of comparatively recent date —
analogous to those of the ocean abysses, do occur in
certain areas. And, in the second place, it was shown
that a few oceanic islands do contain rocks like those
of the continents, and are not solely of volcanic or
organic origin. Zoological and palfeontological discoveries
were at the same time making rapid advances ; and the
students of these branches of science, who had been
among the foremost in giving the swing of the pen-
dulum on the side of continental instability its first
impulse, now began to press their views — only in a
more moderate manner — in the same direction. Evidence
had long been accumulating as to the identity of certain
freshwater formations and their included animal and plant
remains occurring in South America, South Africa, India,
and Australia ; and it was urged that during the Secondary
period of geological history not only was Africa connected
with India by way of Madagascar and the Seychelles,
but that laud extended across what is now the South
Atlantic to connect the Cape with South America, and
that probably India was likewise joined to Australia by
way of the Malay archipelago and islands. In fact, there
seems good evidence to indicate that at this early epoch
there was a land girdle in comparatively low latitudes
encircling some three-fourths of the earth's circumference
from Peru to New Zealand and Fiji.
Even taking into account the comparatively early date
of its existence, this girdle of land, the evidence in favour
of which can scarcely be shaken, gave a heavy blow to
the adherents of the absolute permanency of continents
and oceans, as it clearly indicates the comparatively
modern origin of the basin of the South Atlantic. But this
is not all. South America, which there is good evidence
to believe was long cut off from the northern half of the
New World, shows certains indications of affinity in its
fauna with that of Europe in early Tertiary times, and to
a certain extent with that of modern Africa ; and the only
satisfactory way of explaining these relationships is by
assuming either the persistence of the land connection
between the Cape and South America across the South
Atlantic till a comparatively late geological epoch, or that
such connection took place further south by means of the
Antarctic continent. There are several objections, which
need not be considered here, in regard to the latter alter-
native ; and since there is other evidence in favour of the
comparatively recent origin of the South Atlantic depres-
sion, the persistence of a land connection in lower latitudes
seems the more probable explanation.
In addition to all this, there is evidence of a more or
less intimate relationship between the land faunas of
Australasia and South America ; and as similar types are
not met with in Africa, and several of them belong to
groups unlikely to have endured Antai'ctic cold, it has
been suggested that America and Australasia were in
connection at no very remote epoch by way of the Coral
Sea. It is known, for instance, that some of the Australian
marsupials are more or less closely allied to others which
inhabited South America before it was connected with
North America ; and as no kindred types are met with
January 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE.
either in the latter area, in Europe, or in Africa, a land
connection by way of the South Pacific, and that at a
comparatively recent epoch, oilers almost the only satis-
factory explanation of the means of transit, if the Antarctic
theory be rejected. And it may be mentioned in passing
that the acceptance of even the latter would imply a large
modification from the existing distribution of land and
water in the southern hemisphere.
But the evidence for a land connection by way of the
Pacific does not by any means rest on the testimony of
marsupials alone. Passing over certain groups, it may
be mentioned that the earthworms of Australia and New
Zealand are strangely like those of Patagonia, and have
no very near relatives in Africa ; while an almost equally
strong affinity is stated to exist between the Patagonian
and Polynesian land slugs. Neither of these groups of
animals are fitted to withstand the cold of high latitudes,
and it is difficult to see how the members of the second, at
any rate, could have reached the two areas by any other
means than a direct land connection.
Turning now to the brief reports hitherto received as to
the results of the Funafuti boring, it appears that this
has been carried far below the limits of coral life, and is
still in coral limestone. So far, therefore, the advocates
of the theory that Polynesia is the remains of a sunken
continent have scored a great triumph ; and although
there is still the possibility thit some of the atolls in this
vast area may prove to be perched on the denuded
summits of extinct submarine volcanoes, even this would
not interfere with the general conclusion. If deeper
borings should result in touching rooks more or less
similar to ordinary continental sedimentary deposits or
metamorphic crystallines, an even firmer basis would be
afforded to the hypothesis of subsidence which has now
received such strikmg confirmation.
As the result of the boring it appears, then, that there
is a possibility that the community between the South
American and Australasian faunas may admit of being
explained by means of a direct land connection between
the two areas at a comparatively recent geological date.
Even, however, if this explanation receive future support
and acceptation, there are, as in all similar cases,
still many difficulties with which to contend. One of
these is the practical absence of all non-volant mammals
from Polynesia, with the exception of the Solomon group,
where a few cuscuses and rats are found. But the case
of the West Indies— where there is every probability that
there was formerly a large mammalian fauna, the majority
of which were drowned by submergence — may very likely
afford the solution of the difficulty. Worms and slugs
would probably find means of survival in circumstances
where mammalian life would disappear. This explana-
tion will, however, clearly not apply in the case of New
Zealand, where, if mammals had ever existed, their
remains would almost certainly have been discovered. It
must be assumed then that, if Polynesia was the route by
which the faunas of Australia and Patagonia were formerly
connected. New Zealand was at that time isolated. And,
indeed, seeing that the hypothetical land connection between
the areas in question must have existed at a comparatively
late epoch, it is most likely that the ancient Polynesian
land was already broken up to a considerable extent into
islands and archipelagos, so that the main line of con-
nection may have been but narrow, and from time to time
interrupted. Indeed, it must almost of necessity have
been but incomplete and of short duration after the intro-
duction of modem forms of life, as otherwise the types
common to Australia and Patagonia would be much
more numerous than we find to be the case. Hence there
is no improbability in the suggested isolation of New
Zealand during the period in question.
But, putting these interesting speculations aside, the
results of the Funafuti boring indicate almost without
doubt that Polynesia is an area of comparatively recent
subsidence ; and it has already been mentioned that there are
good reasons for regarding a large part of the basin of the
South Atlantic as of no great antiquity, whUe the area of the
Indian Ocean appears to have been considerably enlarged
during the later geological epochs. Apparently, therefore,
the great extent of ocean at present characteristic of the
southern hemisphere is a relatively modern feature.
Hence it is clear that the extreme views prevalent a few
years ago as to the absolute permanency of the existing
continental and oceanic areas clearly stand in need of
some degree of modification. And what we have now to
avoid is that the pendulum should not once more take too
long a swing in the opposite direction.
So far as the great continental masses of the northern
hemisphere are concerned, it would appear that portions
of these have always existed to a greater or lesser extent as
land. But the great extent and homogeneous character of
formations like the Mountain Limestone, the Chalk, and
the Nummulitic Limestone, suggest that sea was much
more prevalent in this area than it is at present, and that,
so far as the Old World is concerned, the continental area
has been growing. The North Atlantic, and probably also
the North Pacific, may apparently be regarded as basins
of great antiquity. On the other hand, in the southern
hemisphere, although Africa, parts of AustraUa, and
at least some portions of South America, are evidently
land surfaces of great antiquity, they, together with the
islands of the Coral Sea, seem to be mere remnants of a
much more extensive southern continent or continents.
Conversely the southern oceans have gained in area by
swallowing up these long-lost lands. Obviously, then,
although true in a degree, continental permanency has
by no means been the only factor in the evolution of the
present surface of the globe.
IS WEATHER AFFECTED BY THE MOON?
By Alex. B. MacDowall, m.a.
THE history of science, in its relation to popular
beliefs, often affords on both sides curious illus-
trations of the old adage, Humanum est errare.
Certain ideas as to the causation of natural phe-
nomena are widely prevalent. Science steps in to
examine them. She tests and measures ; sees them to be
very faulty ; puts them aside as worthless and vain. But
there comes a time when this judgment has to be revised,
and considerable grains of truth are found among the
rubbish.
There are at present signs, if I mistake not, that the
denial of hmar influence on weather has been made too
confidently.
If we ask any working gardener, or fisherman, or sailor,
whether he thinks the moon has anything to do with
weather, he will probably reply with a ready affirmative.
He may enlarge, in his own wise way, on what weather
we have to expect if the change of the moon is at this
hour or that ; if the moon is high or low ; if the new
moon is on her back or standing up, and so on. Popular
weather lore on this subject is, we all know, plentiful ;
and in reading a collection of those sayings we are not
exactly impressed with their harmony or consistency.
The pages of Aratus, of Virgil, of Bacon, witness to the
venerable character of this class of " saws.'' And the
KNOWLEDG E
[Januaby 1, 1898.
North American Indian of to-day considers the position
of the moon's horns with the same practical interest as
the Scottish peasant.
Over all this, it would appear, science shakes her head
doubtfully. Lunar influence may be probable, but it is not
proven. Some would even go further. Let us listen to a
few authoritative utterances on this point.
In 1895 I find the head of the United States weather
service remarking that " Lunar periods [in weather] . . .
have all failed to get a foothold in scientific respect, though
much time has been put upon them, and they appear
theoretically probable."
Prof. W. Morris Davis, author of one of the best recent
books on meteorology, says : " The control of the weather
by the moon has long been a favourite idea, but it has not
been found to bear the test of accurate comparisons of
weather and lunar phases, except in a very faint and
imperfect manner."
Once more, Sir Robert Ball, in his " Story of the
Heavens," says : " Careful comparison between the state
of the weather and phases of the moon has quite dis-
things : a certain definite relation to the moon's phases
(speaking roughly, a barometric wave to each new and
each full moon) appears from time to time, and persists,
perhaps half a year, or more. Then it may disappear
(from some cause or other), to reappear later on.
The half-year closing with November, 1897, is, it so
happens, a very good example. In the accompanying
diagram the curve is that of the daily barometer at
Greenwich from -June to November, smoothed with
averages of five ; that is, each day point of the curve
represents the average of five daily values (»>.(/., that of the
3rd of Jime, the five days, one to five, and so on).
This curve presents, it will be seen, a series of waves
corresponding remarkably with the moon's phases. Are
we prepared to affirm that so many coincidences are merely
fortuitous ?
This correspondence still persists at the date of writing
fDecember 7th), and readers of Knowledge may be
interested to watch further developments. Doubtless, it
will be masked or obscured ere long : and it may, of
course, be argued that those intervening periods of irre-
6 It IB Xt^ 30 6 IX IS ■>h 3o 5 // 17 1.3 %) J^ 10 /<5 22- 2*- V ,o li, 32. 2? J q- /T XI xy
Curre of Daily Barometer, Greenw-icli, June to Norember, 1897 (smoothed witb Fire-Day Arerages).
credited the notion that any connection of the kind really
exists."
Nevertheless, further study is being given, and will
doubtless continue to be given, to this interesting question.
Of recent work upon it, may be mentioned that by
M. Garrigou-Lagrange, described in a series of papers
to the Paris Academy. He attributes to the moon's
influence certain periodical oscillations of the pressure and
gradients between the Pole and the Equator observed in
the meridian of Paris. These are superposed on others
which he considers due to the sim ; and the effect is
different according as the moon is in a northerly or
southerly position.
A simple and direct way of seeking light on the subject
of lunar influence is to plot a number of curves of daily
barometric pressure, and see whether any extensive
correspondence with the moon's phases can be made out.
Having recently done this with the Greenwich data, I
would invite attention to some facts which appear to me
to be highly suggestive. We seem to find this state of
gularity (or, in some cases, a different kind of regularity)
suttice to overthrow the evidence of casual connection in
periods like that here considered.
Going back as far as 1879, curves of the same type as
that here given, and of similar extent, will be found in
1883, 1881, 1889, 1893, and 18ii4. AYhy the corre-
spondence should come out more clearly at these dates I
am unable to say. Perhaps some astronomical cause can
be assigned.
It is easy to see how an experience of long and regular
recurrences in weather like that of the years indicated
may have given rise to a popular conviction that the moon
influences weather ; and, on the other hand, the fact
of irregularity subsisting and alternating with regularity
might account for the negative results often arrived at by
meteorologists when they have superposed the weather
data for a long series of limations.
The presumption of continuance in the type of weather
indicated, which the above facts appear to warrant, in
a measure might afford some useful help in forecasting.
January 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE.
SERPENTS AND HOW TO RECOGNIZE THEM.
By Lionel Jervis.
THE casual visitor to the Zoological Gardens should
have little difficulty aa a rule in identifying a
snake. The name is written underneath in Greek
or Latin, or half in Greek and half in Latin, or in
a latinization of local names, as, for instance, in
the case of the hamadryad, Xaja huniidnis : Najn being,
I take it, an adaptation of " nag," which is the Hindi
for cobra, and Ihoiiikihs, I suppose, originates iu the
bun<i<iriiiii of Russell's " Indian Serpents."
For all that, the scientific names are better than the
local cues. Take, for example, the Lucliesis lanceuhitus.
Perhaps Bothi-o/>s or Ti-iijonocfphatus are more familiar
titles than the comparatively recent Lachesis, but every-
one knows what the La-lnsin, Uothrops, or Triiionocejihaltis
liniceolatus is ; it is, of course, the fer-ile-lance. Com-
bining the nearly related Lachesiti atrox (the difference
between the species is so slight that even specialists are
unable to differentiate offhand), let us see how many local
names we can find. First there is the fer-di'-lance, then
follow the rat-tailed pit-viper, the lance-headed viper,
the deadly snake ("deadly" is a "very vile" prefix,
quite unworthy of the Zoological Society, who, if I am
not mistaken, were guilty of it), the jararaca, the yellow
viper, the whip snake, the Labarri snake, and I dare say
that there are half a doizen other names in Tropical
America for this serpent. Nevertheless it is, I think,
better to leave the local English name alone than to invent
one. Look at the shielded death adder {Xotechis scut'ttm),
till recently known as the short-death adder {tlo/din,--
lihnlun cHitits). The colonists call it, very happily, the
tiger or brown-banded snake — a look at the serpent will
show you why. But here we have " death adder. ' Why
" death adder " '? The death adder of the colonists, the
"unqualified" death adder of Regent's Park — the Ac<iii-
thopis antaicticiis — is about as unlike a tiger snake as
it well can be. The tiger snake has a cylindrical body,
tapering into a respectably proportionate tail ; the body
of the death adder is bloated, and terminates in a short
compressed tail with a spike at the end of it. In both the
head is distinct from the neck : that of the tiger snake,
which resembles a cobra's, very slightly ; that of the death
adder, which resembles a viper's, very markedly. The
prefix " shielded " is good enough, but " short" is not so
happy, considering that the Xotcclns is about twice the
length of the AcantJwpis. Again, why " purplish death
adder" instead of "black snake"? Why not confine
" death adder " to the Acanthopis instead of applying it
aimlessly to almost every poisonous snake in Australia ?
•Just one more warning as to the danger of trusting to
the accuracy or sense of either the English or scientific
title. Everyone has heard of the beautiful and venomous
coral snake of Tropical America. It is very brilliantly
marked with rings of black and red, with thin whitish
edges to the black rings, and from this the Spanish-
speaking inhabitants very happily named it the "corral"'
or " ringed " snake. Some naturalistic genius gets hold
of this, and, forcing the local name into Latin, calls it
Elaps o'l-allinKs, thereby misleading people into the idea
that it is a bright red snake, and called conillinus from its
resemblance to coral.
Nevertheless the descriptive label furnishes the accepted
name, such as it is ; but labels are very little use when
there are two or three different species in one case, as
snakes cannot be expected to remain opposite their
respective descriptions, any more than monkeys. How,
then, are we to identify them V Coloration is not always a
sure guide. Look once again at the TmcIiisis lanceolatus.
It may be of one uniform colour above — grey, brown,
yellow, reddish, or olive, or it may be any of these colours
with regular or irregular dark markings, or almost any
combination of the foregoing.
In a short article, or even in a small pamphlet, it would
be impossible to give a " ready recognizer," even for
snakes which are easily distinguished by specialists. I
shall therefore content myself with giving an object lesson
from the small genus Ancistrodoii,'- of the sub-family
Crotalinm, or pit-vipers.
The first distinguishing feature is the pit in the loreal
region, between the eyes and the nose. This pit charac-
terises a group of poisonous snakes the bite of which is
sure to entail very unpleasant, often fatal, consequences.
This group falls into two main divisions — those which have
rattles on their tails and those which have not. Of course
a snake with a rattle on its tail is a rattlesnake, and when
you see a serpent of this kind you are quite safe in saying :
"That is a poisonous American serpent"; and if it is
described as ' lotalus tenijini.s, you may, if you like to take
a slight risk, add: " That is the only one of the kind found
south of Mexico." But there is a pitfall here, as you are
quite likely to find the South American rattler described
as " mohixsu.s" or " huniiluK," and " trn-iiicn.\" has been
applied to the water-rattle. Oh for an universal classifi-
cation !
The pit-vipers which have no rattle, again, fall into two
subdivisions : those in which the head is covered with scales,
the Ldchfsis, and those in which the head is shielded by
nine symmetrical plates, the Ancistrodon. So, then, if you
find a serpent with a pit between the eyes and the nose
(not with two or more pits in the upper lip shields), with
the head covered with nine shield-like plates, and with no
rattle on its tail, you have an Ancistrodon.
Of course the most satisfactory state in which to examine
a poisonous snake is when it is dead and pickled. If alive,
the best thing to do is to secure its neck in a snake-loop.
Fail'ing this, you must content yourself with looking at it
through glass or wire or from a safe distance. The first
part of the following descriptions will, therefore, apply when
the snake can be examined minutely ; the second when it
can be seen only under comparative difficulties. In some
cases the colour pattern, together with the data already given
as to the pit, etc., will be sufficient to identify the serpent.
First I select the only species of the subdivision in
which the second upper labial forms part of the border of
the loreal pit and the sub-caudal shields are in pairs.
.4. hijpnale.f — By these features you cannot fail to
recognize the snake on close examination ; otherwise it is
not so easy to identify. It is only a little bit of a snake,
with a turned-up nose. The colour is generally dark —
usually greyish or brown — with or without spots, and the
markings on the head are ill-defined. The internasals and
praefrontals, it is true, are broken up into scales, but you
usually require a magnifying glass to make this out. The
local name on the west coast of India and in Ceylon,
where it is found, is the "carawila. " As far as I know,
there is but little danger attending the bite.
A. piscirdrw.] — The first of four species in which the
second upper labial forms part of the border of the pit,
and some of the sub-caudals are single, some in pairs.
Remarkable for being the only one of the Ancktrodonin
which the loreal is absent. The sub-caudals are sometimes
* Greek : ■• fish-hook toothed." f Oreek : " seudiag to sleep."
i Latin ; •' fish-eating."
8
KNOWLEDGE
[Januaey 1, 1898.
all single; the third upper labial is very large, and usually
enters the eye.
You are at once struck by the bluntuess of the muzzle
and the closeness of the eye to the nose, which gives it a
very vicious appearance. The colour is generally sombre —
usually a dark slaty brown — with darker cross markings.
It is said to be of a quarrelsome disposition (some former
naturalists qualified it as pw/na.r), and it will certainly
fight with anything that is put into the same case, be it
rat, snake, or stick. For all that, I have heard that it is
easily tamed, and becomes, for a snake, quite affectionate.
It attains a length of about four feet, and is very heavy
and bulky for its size. It is plentiful in the south-eastern
United States, where, under the names of " cottonmouth,"
" water mocassin," and " water viper," it enjoys a very bad
reputation, which was confirmed in my mind by a sad
story I heard the other day from a trustworthy source.
A certain good sportsman, while fishing in Florida, had
made his camp near the water ; and finding, after supper,
that he had left something in the boat, he desired his
servant to go and fetch it. The servant, who was native
to the country, hesitated, saying that he heard a mocassin
out fishing ; but his master, after listening for some time
and hearing nothing, pooh-pooh'd the idea. The poor
fellow reluctantly obeyed, and on his way to the boat was
struck, and died in a few hours. I gathered from my
informant that these serpents are quick to resent any
trespass on their riparian rights, especially at night.
Second, A. Iiilincatus* — Easily to be identified by the
markings on the head, Eound the canthug (the sharp
upper edge of the snout) is a fine yellow line, which
usually broadens out as it passes behind the eye to its
termination on the neck : immediately above the mouth,
but not actually touching it, a broader yellow line, finely
edged with black, runs along the upper lip from the
nostril to the corner of the mouth ; there is a similar
vertical line on the rostral and symphysial shield, which,
being interpreted, means that a yellow blaok-edged line
runs from the tip of the snout to the chin.
Very little is known of this handsome snake owing to
the detestable climate of its home in Central America.
There is no big gan^ there to attract sportsmen, to whom
our collections are so much indebted ; and he is a bold
naturalist who, in search of rare plants, insects, or reptiles,
ventures into that fever-striken wilderness.
Third, A. (•n«<ort(/.r.t— Easily to be recognized on sight
by its coloration. The ground colour is a bright bur-
nished light copper, with darker cross binds of a rich
reddish brown, which are broad at the base and contract
as they approach the dorsal ridge, thus giving the light
interspaces the appearance of being broad on the back
and narrowing on the sides ; the head is generally lighter
than the ground colour.
This snake, the copperhead, is probably the most
dreaded creature m North America, as well as being one
of the handsomest serpents known — that is, in my opinion ;
the general effect being more pleasing than the varied
hues of other more brilliant snakes. It has been classified
as A. moknscn, and as a good deal of error is connected
with the name "mocassin,"! I will take this opportunity
to endeavour to clear it up. There is the true mocassin,
Tropidnnotus ftixcidtus, a harmless snake of sombre colour;
the water mocassin already described ; and the upland
mocassin or copperhead, which is smaller and more lightly
built than its congener : the two last are often called the
"mocassin" simply.
* Latin: "two-lined." ■(■ Latin: "twisting."
X Mocassin is pronounced "Mokkesin."
The only accident from a copperhead bite which I ever
heard from an eye-witness, terminated fatally in a few
hours, putrefaction setting in almost immediately after
death.
Fourth, A. acutiis.* — The sharp point which projects
horizontally from the tip of the snout makes it impossible
for anyone to mistake this pit-viper. The upper part of
the head is very dark brown — the lower, yellow — the two
colours being sharply divided by a black line which runs
through the eye ; the general hue of the body is a dark or
light brown, with very dark diagonal cross bars which
intersect each other on the dorsal ridge.
Very little is known about this serpent. There are,
I believe, only a few specimens in this country, and for
these we are indebted to the indefatigable Mr. Pratt, who
obtained them in China. Those that I have seen show it
to be a heavy, bulky snake ; and as the biggest of these
specimens is about five feet long, and about as thick as my
arm, I imigine it to b3 considerably the largest of the
group. I have been able to ascertain nothing at all about
the virulence of the poison ; but, I should think, from the
length of the fangs and the size of the poison channel,
that a bite would be very dangerous.
Finally, there are three species in which the upper
labials are separated from the loreal pit, and the sab-
caudals are in pairs.
First, A. }iayh/s\ (with which I combine for the purposes
of this article the A. blomhofi and the A. intenneditis). — The
snout is blunt and turned up ; running from the eye along
the temple is a dark bind with lighter edges, which is a
little broader than the eye ; on the snout is a dark spot, on
the top of the head are two more, and on the bick of the
head are two slanting streaks. Really about the best way
of recognizing this variety that I can suggest, is a
negative one. If it has not the characteristic marks of one
of the other species, then it is a hahfs. It is a smiU, pale,
dirty-looking viper, usually grey or brown, with no very
distinctive features. It is found from the coast of China
to the Caspian Sea, and is the only European pit-viper.
Second, A, lliinaltiyanus.^^ — Somewhat resembles the
halijH, but is much darker in colour. On close examina-
tion it can easily be distinguished by the size of the last
two upper labials, which are very large and are merged
into the lower temporals. I have always found a very
thin black line, with a fine white edge, running from the
eye to the corner of the mouth, surmounted by a band of
a darker shade than the ground colour.
I have not been able to get much information about
this snake, but it is probably not very dingerous. It is
found at even greater heights than its near relation, the
Lavhesis iir)>iticola,i, specimens having been seen at an
elevation of ten thousand feet.
Third, A. ylioihistomn. } — A light band runs from the
eye to the corner of the mouth, below which is a broader
dark streak with a black edging. This black edging
skirts the upper border of the posterior upper labials in
small curves or festoons ; the colour of the lips, from
which the name is derived, is pink or yellowish. The
head, viewed from the side, somewhat resembles that of
the Iiilincatus : but a closer inspection will show that
the resemblance is only apparent, aud an examination
of the snout will clear up all doubts, as the rlwdostoina has
* Latin : " sharp."
t A title formerlv of a group of East Indian pit-vipers.
X Himalayan, latinized.
5 Latin: "living iji the mountains."
: Ori'eek 1 " rosv -mouthed. "
January 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE
no vertical line on the rostral shield. The ground colour
is soft red, brown, or grey, with dark, angular, black-edged
spots, very elegantly arranged.
In brilliancy and harmony of colour it is, perhaps, the
most beautiful of the Ancistiodou, though 1 prefer the
more sober copperhead ; and it is probably the most
venomous. An acquaintance of mine brought a very bad
account of the rhiKliistdmn from -Tava, to which island it
appears to be confined; and Dr. Gunthtr relates that Kubl
saw a man succumb to the bite in a very few minutes, but
I can find no record of any experiments with the venom.
In this respect the liilinniiKx, which also lives under
the line, may be a possible rival ; but, as I have said,
I can get no information — that is, reliable information —
on the point. The peculiar virulence of the venom of
the I liodoxtomK , which is not by any means a large
snake, is rather remarkable, as the majority of the East
Indian pit-vipers do not appear to be very dangerous.
I have only suggested the lines for a rough-and-ready
"recognizer," which might be applied to any family of
serpents. At the same time I can as^sure those who are
interested in ophidians that a more minute study of this
or any other genus, will well reward the student ; and that
during its pursuit they wUl naturally and easily become
acquainted with those more striking featiujes which I have
endeavoured to illustrate.
THE PRISMATIC CAMERA DURING TOTAL
ECLIPSES.
By Wji. Shackleton, f.r.a.s.
NOW that the last eclipse of the century is close
upon us, and at nearly every observing station a
prismatic camera is to be employed, it may be
interesting to give a brief account of some of the
results which the revival of its use during total
eclipses has elicited for us. Just in the same way that
Fraimhofer's method of
observing stellar spectra
has been applied to photo-
graphing the spectra of
stars with amazing results,
so the same method of
placing a prism in front of
the telescope and observ-
ing the sun when totally
eclipsed has, with the aid
of photography, given
equally important infor-
mation.
The prismatic camera
as used during eclipses is
simply an ordinary camera
(with a lens of from two
inches aperture and up-
wards) in front of which
is placed one or more
prisms, so that, instead
of photographing the sun
directly, the light has first
to pass through the prism,
which differentiates the
composite light of corona,
prominences, and chromo-
sphere mto the many
monochromatic images of which it is composed; and if
sutiicient dispersion be used these are so separated as not to
interfere with each other, but are perfectly distinct.
The advantages of using this slilltss spectroscope over
one with a slit during a total eclipse is self-evident, for
by it all the phenomena round the dark moon can be
analyzed at once with a maximum aperture, whilst in the
case of an ordinary spectroscope only the small portion
which the slit crosses can be brought under observation.
That this is a desideratum one may see when it is
remembered that it is only possible by intermittent glances
to observe the eclipsed sun for about two hours in a life-
time. Fortunately, however, the chromosphere and pro-
minences, which were enigmas for nearly two centuries,
have, since the discovery of Lockyer and Janssen in 1868,
been possible to observe and photograph without an eclipse.
\Yhen we come to the corona the story is a sadder
one, for it must have been observed from the time of
primeval man ; indeed, we have hieroglyphical records of
it by the ancient Egyptians and Babylonians, and yet we
know least of all about this the greater bulk of the sun.
Hence the prismatic camera, for giving us a large survey of
its chemical constitution, is again the most advantageous
instrument to employ.
Not only for quantity, however, but for quality also, is
it paramount. When photographs are taken with a sht
spectroscope it is really the slit that is being photographed,
and any Ught, no matter how it reaches there, is what is
being investigated. Generally an image of the particular
part that is required to be studied is focussed on the sht by
a condensing lens, and this gives the principal effect : but
besides this there is a general illumination from all
the other parts, for the light from these is scattered
and reflected by minute dust particles in our atmosphere, so
that in addition we have the integrated light from these
superposed on what we wish to investigate, and, of course,
the brightest of these extraneous sources gives the greatest
additional effect.
In the case of the prismatic camera, however, it is only
the real images of the eclipsed sun that are focussed on the
photographic plate, and the general illumination of the
Prismatic Camera, used in Brazil.
atmosphere, although equally passing into the camera, has
no definite outline, and therefore no image can be formed ;
so it is more scattered still by the prism, and only goes to
10
KNOWLEDGE
[Januaby 1, 1898.
give a slight general fogging of the plate. Evidently,
therefore, if we wish to truly sift out the light of the corona
from that of the prominences the latter instrument must be
employed.
Although the prismatic camera has been used during
eclipses at various times since 1875, it was not until 1893
that sufficient dispersion and accurate focus were secured
in order to make use of the differentiation referred to
above, or it might be that the plates were not sensitive
enough to record the exceedingly delicate monochromatic
rings from the lower parts of the corona, which is the only
part left sufficiently bright after the great deduction that
must be made for the light giving only a continuous
spectrum. During the total eclipse of 1893 photographs
were taken in West Africa by Mr. A. Fowler, and in Brazil
by myself, which showed that the coronal light gave
rise to no H or K radiations of calcium — ^that the
prominences on the sun at that time had no 1474 K light :
and although this line, sometimes seen in eruptive
prominences, might be accounted for by supposing that it
really is the base of the corona which is being observed, or
that coronal matter has got entangled with the great
disturbances taking place, still in one such prominence
during that eclipse no trace of it could be found. Again,
in the eclipse of 1896, more than three years later,
the photographs show the same thing ; so we await with
interest the results of the coming eclipse, to see if in
passing from a maximum to a minimum sunspot period
any change takes place in the constitution of the corona.
If a comparison be made of the K (calcium) and 1474 K
rings with a picture of the eclipsed sun, it is clearly
seen that 1474 K is truly coronal, and that H and K,
which are identical with each other, are solely due to the
prominences.
Had these facts been sufficiently well established in
1893, M. Deslandres might not have tried in vain to
determine the rotation of the corona by photographing
the relative displacement of the II and K lines on opposite
limbs of the sun. In the last number of Knowledge it
was stated that Mr. Newall is going to try to make the
same observation, using a "bright line near (1, of whose
coronal nature there can be no doubt." Let us hope he has
consulted the records of the prismatic camera before doing
this, for although one such line was tabulated at ^ 4232-8
by Schuster in 1886 as being the brightest in the photo-
graphical region, the results of 1893 and 1896 show that
a bright line near H, A 3987, is more intense than this, and
in fact is the next strongest line to the coronal Une
(1474 K) itself. This will be seen on examining the
photograph taken near mid-totality, and reproduced here
in the plate by the kind permission of the Royal Society.
So far we have examined the capabilities of the pris-
matic camera for giving us information about the parts
of the sun comparatively well removed from the photo-
sphere ; let us now turn our attention to see what can
be done with it for the investigation of those vapours
which lie closer in, in order to test Kirchoff's theory
" that the absorption which produces the dark Fraunhofer
lines takes place in a thin stratum, or reversing layer, as it
has often been called, adjacent to the photosphere."
In a total eclipse of the sun, at the moment the
advancing moon just covers the sun's disc, the solar
atmosphere of course projects above the dark edge, and at
that moment the reversing layer will be isolated for only a
very few seconds. If, now, at this precise instant, a photo-
graph be taken with the prismatic camera, we shall have
the spectrum of this shallow layer, chromosphere and
corona ; but from the form of the arcs and their appearance
or non-appearance in later photographs, we shall be able
to separate the integrated effect into its indindual parts.
From the very nature of this layer and the inequalities in
the moon's position, the difficulties in the way of making
the exceedingly fine adjustment of placing a ^/'> upon this
point of disappearance are almost insurmountable; in fact,
so great are they that it was not until the apphcation of
the prismatic camera, which requires no such nicety of
adjustment, that there was any permanent record of this
low-lying stratum.
Except at an eclipse it has not yet been found possible
to observe this bright line spectrum, because it is over-
powered by the aerial illumination of our own atmosphere
so spectroscopists are the more anxious to make the most
of every echpse to settle at least this one point. With
this end in view many prismatic cameras have been
directed to the eclipsed sun, but it was not until 1893
that anything like the base of the sun's atmosphere was
photographed.
The difficulties of placing a slit on a point have been
mentioned previously, but not only is there that to contend
with, but also, no matter what instrument be used, the
exposure must be made at the precise moment the sun's
disc is covered. To do this, Sir Norman Lockyer, during
the eclipse of 1896 in Norway, instituted a " running
plate," which took a series of snapshots just before and
going on till the critical moment had passed — in fact, a
sort of kinematograph arrangement. Unfortunately, how-
ever, the weather was unfavourable to let us see what
results this method would give. Mr. Evershed, also, in
clouded-out Norway, and myself, in Novaya Zemlya, rehed
more on the exact determination of the proper instant,
and then making a short exposure. What such a photo-
graph is Like, and how far it agrees with a reversed solar
spectrum, can be gathered from the plate, which is a repro-
duction of the Novaya Zemlya photograph. Of course
any comparison must be made with a spectrum obtained
by a similar instrument, for it would obviously be fallacious
to compare a spectrum taken with only a moderate-sized
spectroscope, making clear to us only a few hundreds of
lines, with such a spectrum as that taken with a Rowland
grating, which reveals in tin snine sunliiiht as many tens of
thousands of lines. Therefore, the only way of absolutely
proving that every fine dark line is reversed would be to
photograph this layer with a Eowland grating, which, with
our present appliances and the short duration of visibility,
is nearly impossible : but this is to be tried by Prof. Michie
Smith during the forthcoming eclipse. Still, notwith-
standing these difficulties, the investigation of the Imes
in the photograph is proceeding at the Solar Physics
Observatory, South Kensington; but, probably, before it
is finished we shall have many such photographs, with
more powerful instruments, from India, where the sun will
be bombarded, not by one only, but by at least half a
dozen prismatic cameras.
With such possibilities in an eclipse, no wonder during
such times that the sun monopolises the attention of
astronomers, not only for the secrets he has to divulge of
himself, but also for the key he may possibly give to cipher
the constitution of other countless suns more remote.
NOTES ON COMETS AND METEORS.
By W. F. Dennujg, f.k.a.s.
Comets. — 1897 has afl'orded only one new comet — that
discovered by Perrine on October 16th. When first seen,
the comet was placed in the south-east region of Camelo-
pardus and moving north-west ; it has since traversed
Cassiopeia, Cepheus, and Draco. Early in January,
January 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE
11
1808, the comet will be almost stationary at a point
six degrees south by east of y Draoonis, its apparent
displacement beinf? only ten minutes of arc per day.
Its brightness will be 04, as compared with that
(adopted as 10) at discovery. The elements show its
inclination to be sixty-nine degrees, whence we may infer
that its orbit does not deviate much from a parabola. The
physical aspect of the comet has been interesting, for it
presented a nucleus, coma, and tail. On October 25th, as
observed by Mr. F. W. Longbottom, at Chester, with an
eighteen and a half inch Calver, the total length of the
tail was twenty minutes of arc, and the comet was estimated
not quite equivalent in brightness to a ninth magnitude
star. The tail was tapering, not fan-like, and stars showed
brightly through it on October 80th.
Several periodical comets were due in 1897, but only one
of these was observed, viz., D'Arrest's, which was picked
up by Perrine on June 'iSth, more than a month after its
perihelion passage. Spitaler's comet of 1800, and Tempel-
Swift's comet of 1869-80, also returned to perihelion in
the spring, but the conditions were too unfavourable for
them to be observed.
In 1898 five periodical comets are due. Pons-Winnecke's
arrives at perihelion in March, Encke's in May, Swift's
(1880, VI.) and Wolfs in June, and Tempel's (18G7, II.)
in September. The circumstances attending the return of
these several objects are by no means good, and in most
cases they are likely to escape observation unless some of
the large telescopes at present in use are employed in
searching for them.
Mr. C. Hildebrand gives the following ephemeris of
Pons-Winnecke's comet : —
January
2
15 18 24
- 3° 55-3'
6
15 82 53
- 4° 52-3'
10
15 47 58
- 5° 40-8
14
16 8 40
- 6° 46-1
18
16 20 0
- 7° 42-1
22
16 36 59
^ 8° 87-0'
26
16 54 36
- 9° 80-8
80
17 12 49
-10° 21-3
The diurnal motion is therefore about one degree east-
wards, and during the month it carries the comet through
Libra and Opiucbus.
It is remarkable how the stream of cometary discovery
runs continuously on. No sooner do one or two suc-
cessful sweepers leave the field than others step in and
pursue the work. Messier, Mechain, and Caroline
Herschel, in the latter part of the last century, were
succeeded by Pons early in this. He in turn was followed
by Tempel, Winnecke, Borrelly, Coggia, and Swift. Then
Barnard and Brooks almost monopolized the field for
twelve years. To-day Perrine may be regarded as the
comet finder \uir e.vcelh nee. for he has worthily emulated
Barnard's former discoveries at the Lick Observatory,
and has found five new comets within the last three
years.
Meteors. — The November Leonids of 1897 very generally
disappointed expectation. Cloudy weather and moonlight
were certainly responsible in a great measure for this, and,
moreover, there is no doubt that an exaggerated idea as
to the probable intensity of the display was encouraged
by the majority of those who looked for it. On the basis
of reports supplied by eye-witnesses of the phenomena
of 1831 and 1804, it was predicted that the shower might
equal a rich return of the August Perseids, furnishing,
perhaps, one hundred meteors per hour for an observer.
The time of maximum was mentioned as uncertain, but
as sure to be included in the mornings of November 14th
and 15th. As events happened the first of these periods
was partly clear, while the next morning was cloudy
nearly everywhere. Meteors were comparatively rare
during the whole night of the 13th, and clouds hid those
visible during the following night. In France and America,
as well as in England, the experience appears to have been
very similar. At a few places, where the sky was clear
on the morning of November loth, the Leonids were both
numerous and brilliant. At Dumfries, two observers
(ignorant of the expected display) were struck at the
extraordinary prevalence of shooting stars, and estimated
the visible number as ten per minute. Another observer,
at Loughborough, saw a considerable number of meteors,
including five of great brilliancy, and the time of their
maximum frequency seems to have been at about •") a.m.
A third observer at Dumfries had his attention arrested
by the surprising frequency of meteors, and states that
more than five per minute were perceptible. At Derby
meteors were so abundant as to cause special remark.
Eighteen fine ones were noticed between 3h. 30m. and
5h. A.M., and these included two nearly as bright as the
full moon. Prof. Lewis Swift also reports from Echo
Moimtain, California, that " the Leonids made their appear-
ance on the morning of November 15th, ninety-seven
having been counted by one person." From these and
other corroborative accounts it is certain the shower was
quite as abundant as expected, and, at places were the sky
was clear, sufficiently striking to attract particular attention
notwithstanding the moonlight. The idea that the display
failed to present itself is due to a misapprehension. On
the preceding night the experience of observers seems
to have been practically unanimous in describing the
meteors as scarcely more numerous than on an ordinary
November night.
Prof. E. C. Pickering, of Harvard, states that the
observers at the observatory at Cambridge, ilass., counted
only ninety meteors during the night of the 13th, but that
these were nearly all Leonids. Prof. 0. Stone, of Richmond,
Va., says that on November 13th several meteors were
seen from the direction of Leo ; one of them was several
times brighter than Venus, and travelled along an arc of
ninety degrees, leaving a streak forty degrees in length.
The following night was cloudy, and nothing could be seen.
Prof. Barnard, at the Yerkes Observatory, saw nothing
on November 18th and 14th, as clouds and rain prevailed
each night. In England a few meteors were seen on
November 13th, but they caU for no special remark.
Dr. W. J. S. Lockyer, of South Kensington, recorded a
number of paths, and others were registered by Mr.
Salmon, of South Croydon, and Mr. Besley at Westminster.
These materials show that, though the Leonids returned on
the night of November 13th, the shower was very feebly
represented. These and many other observers were
baulked by clouds in their efforts to secure observations
on the night of November 14th. At Bristol the sky was
overcast throughout, though at 5 a. jr. on the 15th the
clouds became thinner, and the moon shone faintly through
them, but no meteors could have been observed unless they
were of great brilliancy.
Observers of meteors will be interested in watching for
the January shower from Quadrans, usually visible on the
2nd of that month. The moon will, however, partly
interfere in the evening, and the best time to observe the
display will be between 3 and 6 a.m. on January 2nd.
The radiant is at 280° + 52°, and the shower is often
a conspicuous one, furnishing rather swift, long-pathed
meteors.
12
KNOWLEDGE
[Jantabt 1, 1898.
RICHARD PROCTOR'S THEORY OF THE
UNIVERSE.
By C. Easton.
RICHARD PKOCTOR, the founder of this magazine,
amongst the other services that he has rendered
to science, deserves the credit of being the first
to offer a sohition of the problem of the structure
of the heavens by studying it from a general
point of view, whilst at the same time basing his theory
on direct observation. Huyghens, Thomas Wright, Kant,
Lambert, and others, had already touched on this great
problem, but they had to content themselves with
reasonings; they misused the arguments per annlofiiuin,
having very few facts to go upon. The two Herschels
collected an enormous quantity of facts and precise data
relating to the problem, but they were reluctant to
draw from them any definite conclusions. Sir William
Herschel himself abandoned a considerable number of his
early ideas pn the structure of the heavens, although he
did not declare in a definite manner what changes must
be made in it. As for his son, he demonstrated the
untenability of the cloven iliac theoni, and of the funda-
mental suppositions made by his illustrious father,
especially in the face of the evidence drawn by Sir John
himself from his telescopic observations of the Milky Way.
Contrary to what has been often said. Sir John Herschel
has stated expressly and exclusively — at least in his books
— the theory generally attributed to him of the galactic
ring, although he seems to have found in this theory the
fewest obstacles to the explanation of the phenomenon.
From the beginning. Proctor insisted, when discussing
the conceptions of Sir John Herschel, that neither the
cloven disc theory nor the theory of a galactic ring could
adequately explain the observed facts. In the case of the
second theory, Proctor only indicates its insufiiciency in a
general manner. Even the principal features of the Galaxy,
he says, offer too great difficulties for the annular theory,
and he boldly sketches a more complicated figure, which, he
says, replaces with advantage Sir John Herschels theory
explaining the principal details of the ililky Way.
Whilst recognizing that the extreme complexity of the
details in the Milky Way may never perhaps allow of a
complete solution, Proctor was convinced that " the bolder
and more striking features of that circle may be studied
with a better hope of their being successfully interpreted."
He has been reproached with too much audacity, and,
indeed, one hesitates to subscribe with Proctor to " the
spiral curve, which [as] depicted seems so satisfactorily
to account for several of the more strikmg features of the
Milky Way as to suggest the idea that it corresponds some-
what closely to the real figure of that star-stream." But it
seems to me that the advantages of his researches are
much superior to the disadvantages. Those who approach
with hesitation and prudence by far other ways will not be
the Galaxy, which .... would come to be
regarded as a Bat ring, or aome other re-entering form of immense
and irregular bi eadth and thickness . . . ." (Sir John Herschel,
" Outlines," § 788.) He prefers to represent the Milky Way as of an
annular form, but he takes care not to pronounce definitely on this.
" • • ■ an impression amounting almost to convietion tliat the
Milty Way is not a mere stratum, but annular ; or at least that our
system is placed within one of tlie poorer or almost vacant parts of
its general mass ..." (Mary Somerville, " The Connexion of the
Physical Sciences," 1846, p. 419.)
In speaking of the lateral offsets which quit the main stream of
tlie Milky Way, and which he regards as the " couTexities of curved
surfaces Tiewod tangcntially, or planes seen edgeways " (" Outlines,"
§ 792), he eridcntly docs not trouble to bring them 'into accord with
the theory of a galactic ring.
led astray by the errors of Proctor's method ; and, on the
other hand, pioneers of science such as he exercise a great
moral influence — their digressions, though sometimes over-
bold, refresh and stimulate the zeal of others.
This gigantic arch of the Milky Way, spreading out before
all eyes the sublime enigma of its starry ramifications, seems
to defy the indefatigable seekers bending over their calcu-
lations. Let others strive to draw some evidence of the
aspect of the Milky Way from its chief outlines.
However, Proctor would doubtless himself recognize
to-day that his theory does not now correspond with the
actual state of science ; and it is strange that in treatises
of astronomy his well-known drawing is reproduced as if
the theory could still be accepted, although more than one
judicious remark of Proctor's preserves his reputation. At
the period when he formulated his theory, Proctor had not
at his disposal, in short, any but the results obtained by
the two Herschels and by F. G. W. Struve : and, besides,
the work of the latter was soon reduced by Encke to its
.just proportions — that is to say, to a negative result, or one
nearly so. Almost all the modern work in this branch of
astronomy has been done since Proctor's time — that of
Heis,Houzeau, Gould, Celoria, Kapteyn, Ristenpart, Plass-
mann, etc. ; and in particular, though basing his researches
on the constitution of the Milky Way, he could not con-
sult either the admirable photographs of Barnard, Wolf,
Roberts, Russell, nor the modern drawings of it — that is
to say, that he possessed scarcely any facts about the whole
northern half of the zone.
Also, the explanation furnished for the figure imagined
by Proctor could not be considered as satisfactory to-day,
(^ oc 4 -i * op.
t^^
4--:^^..^
■•fc s
% "^'Sht^rtoa*'
^- --^^ _,-' <y
d'tw.x
The Milky Way according to Proctor.
even for the main lines of the Galaxy. Many of his obser-
vations, however, are still valuable. When he says that
where the line of sight is directed tangentially to either
loop, the Milky Way may be expected to have greater
width than elsewhere, he furnishes the best explanation
of the curious fan-shaped expansions of the Milky Way on
each side of the no less remarkable gap in Argo. His
explanation of the Coal Sack in Crux — "the apparent inter-
* Sir John Herschel, although he described with iuuch particularitv
the southern half of the Milky Way, treated rather lightly the
northern parts. Thus he says in his "Cape Observations," p. 386,
speaking of the region in the Eagle, which is nevertheless curious :
" After which |^A Aquilae] this main stream runs northward through
Aquila without any fui-ther distinguishing feature. . . ."
January 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE
13
crossing of the two contorted streams which really are at
different distances from the eye " — is possible but not very
probable, I think, after the evidence furnished lately by
Gould and Russell. I do not think it was necessary in
this case to turn aside from Sir John Herschcl's opinion
that the Mility Way in the neighbourhood of tlie Coal Sack
is just " a distant mass of comparatively moderate thick-
ness, simply perforated from side to side," or as an oval
vacuity which is seen " foreshortened in a distant fore-
shortened area." (" Outlines," ; 702.)
There is doubtless much truth in Proctor's supposition
of the branches which are detached from the main stream
of the Mdky Way, and which penetrate into the neighbour-
hood of the sun, and of the less important ramifications
which spring up at different points of the galactic course.
But as regards the general reasoning followed by Proctor
in comparing bis figure with the aspect of the Milky Way,
he is fundamentally in error ; and this is an interesting
point, since Sir John Herschel had already made a similar
mistake. Herschel says that the brilliant and well-defined
part of the Jlilky Way about Argo and Crux " conveys
strongly the impression of a greater proximity"; and he
deduces from this that the sun occupies an excentric
position in the interior of the Milky Way, which is nearer
to the southern than to the northern part of its circuit.
Taking up this argument and amplifying it. Proctor admits
that the stream grows gradually fainter with increase of
distance towards Canis Jlinor and Monoceros ; and in
speaking of the brilliant portions of the Galaxy in Aquila
and Sagittarius he is satisfied that " this part, which is so
very bright, corresponds to the part which my spiral brings
so venj )b ar to the sun."
But we should see precisely the opposite in this case.
Sir John Herschel and Proctor have been too much taken
up with the idea of a stream, of a " distant mass," which
they represent as continuous, like a band of cloth, whose
details are perceived with more clearness the nearer they
are. But the phenomenon of the Galaxy is of quite a
different nature. As long as the brightness of each indi-
vidual star is of great importance, and their mutual
distances which we see projected are insignificant, the
reasoning of Sir John Herschel and of Proctor holds good.
But it is, above all, the closeness. In projection, of the
small stars in the Milky Way which produces the optical
phenomenon of a galactic gleam. The individual brilliancy
matters little. This can be easily demonstrated. From
the gauges of Sir William Herschel and from the star-
counts of G. Celoria, it follows that the number of stars
sufficiently brilliant (seventh to eleventh magnitude) which
take part in the formation of the lacteal light, is much
more considerable in the region of Monoceros than of
Aquila, and in spite of the fact that the Milky Way is,
without gainsay, much more luminous in the latter portion
of the sky than in the former. Then, the abundance of
stars in certain lacteal regions (Scutum, Cygnus, etc.) is
so great that the relatively bright stars form but an insig-
nificant part of it distributed here and there among the
multitudes of small stars. But, whatever may be the
number of stars necessary for this, the stars are snfB-
ciently near each other in perspective for their collective
light to produce a strong enough impression on the
extremity of our optic nerve and give us the impression of
the lacteal gleam— an impression that could not be pro-
duced by stars each much more brilliant than the others
united, but their projections too distant for their images
to fall on the same nerve bundle in the retina.
The same thing is seen when a celestial object is resolved
into stars which had until then appeared nebulous. Thus
the parts of the Milky Way which are nearest to ua would
appear by the same rule vague, large, and rich in stars
relatively bright, whilst the distant portions of the zone
would appear more crowded and better defined — more
luminous in themselves, though numbering fewer brilliant
stars. One could easily represent this appearance by
Qa.'i 3ti
'/-
^^' y'
^"B:!"^^.
b .■'■
1 <>
2 I ■■■'-.' .'=•:- * ■ ■■■■ I «>
\ %%.
\' .■•>'■ >
■-■■ * /
The Milky Way according to Celoria.
imagining oneself within a huge circle of trees, nearer to
one part of the circumference than to the rest. In the
near part the trees do not form a continuous band, whilst
they are confounded in one straight dark line in the
further portions of the circle.
I have written at some length on this point because it
undermines the reasoning of Proctor in more than one
particular, and also demonstrates that one remark of Sir
John Herschel, often quoted, rests on an erroneous argu-
ment, and that to my knowledge these points have been
raised before.
After what I have just said it would be superfluous to
criticise in detail the " spiral " of Proctor. For the rest,
even if they furnished a perfect explanation of all the
principal features which Proctor finds in the Milky Way,
they could no longer serve, now that the principal features
of the galactic zone in the two hemispheres — thanks to
the drawings and to the photographs,* and in despite even
of the dift'erences that may be perceived there — appear to
us under.quite a different form. Must we, then, return to
the theory of a cloven disc or to that of a galactic ring ?
Certainly not. Proctor has, without doubt, been right in
giving up these premisses : that the theory of a stellar
stratum in form could not be defended in these days, and
that the phenomenon of the Galaxy is due to a distribution
of the stars of a much more complicated character than
could be produced by a ring, however irregular.
Without entering into details which would take too
much space here, I hope to give a summary of what has
led up to the result that the most modern researches (after
Proctor) have established with sufficient certainty.
The visible universe, stars and nebulm (with the excep-
tion of nebuliE properly so called/, is extended in a flat
layer irregularly condensed. The stars differ extremely,
not only as regards their volume, but also as regards the
* Drawings of Heis, Houzeau, Davis and Thome (G-ouId), Boed-
dicker, Easton, and otfier.-* ; photographs of Barnard, Wolf, ^nd
Russell. Tlie readers of Knowlkd&e hare often had prints of these
admirable photographs of the Milky Way.
14.
KNOWLEDGE
[Januaey 1, 1898.
intrinsic brightnesa of their surface. The mode of distribu-
tion of the stars is not the same in different regions of the
stellar layer, but the distribution of the great stars is not
independent of that of the small ones. The stars of the
spectral type — named " solar type "—are condensed about
a point which, in comparison with the extent of the whole
system, is not very far removed from the sun/'
Proctor looked upon the Milky Way as " the condensed
part of a spiral of simill stars " amidst the sidereal system.
This theory is incompatible with the results recently
obtained, in particular with those of Kapteyn and of my
own concerning the distribution of stars of differing
magnitudes in some parts of the Milky Way (see Know-
ledge, August, 1895). In the galactic belt the large and
small stars are moat certainly intermingled.
But modern researches have not yet touched upon a new
theory of the Milky Way — a theory which can at least
explain, as Proctor wished to do, the bolder and more
striking features of the Milky Way. Giovanni Celoria
alone, at the Observatory of Brera in Milan, has ventured
as far as could be at his time (187H). From his pains-
taking and most interesting researches! he did not evolve
a complete theory, but the comparison of his star-counts
with the gauges of William Herschel and the " Bonn
Durchmusterung" led Celoria to conclude that the "MOky
Way ia composed of two branches, two distinct rings, of
uninterrupted circumference. One of these rings is re-
presented by the continuous feature of the ]Milky Way,
crossing the sky in Monoceros, Auriga, Sagitta, and Aquila ;
the other begins in the brilliant stars of Orion, passes
through the Hyades, the Pleiades, Perseus, Cygnus, and
ends in Ophiuchus. The two rings cross each other,
and are perhaps confounded in one system in the constel-
lation of Cassiopeia ; and separating, one part passing
through Cygnus and the other through Perseus, they
make an angle of about nineteen degrees."
I do not need to say that the second ring of Celoria,
crossing Orion and Ophiuchus, is identical with the belt
of bright stars of Sir John Herschel and of Gould ; but,
in the course of his research, Celoria found that there
existed in this region a veritable galactic branch, with
many stars relatively brilliant although telescopic, and
few stars of the inferior order of brightness — at least in
the sections studied by the Italian astronomer.
Although there is doubtless much truth in the conclu-
sions drawn from this great work, it is impossible, in the
actual state of our knowledge of the composition of the
Milky Way, to accept the " due anelli distinti, ue mai
iuterrotti nel loro corso " of Celoria. Even if the two rings
are tenable, it must be recognized that there are lacunas,
interruptions, and, in a word, manifest compUcationa.
If one would rest on the solid ground of fact, one cannot
go beyond this conclusion — at least as regards the great
problem of the structure of the heavens ; great irregulari-
ties of detail, traces of at least partial regularity in the
principal features. But I hope in another paper to venture
a little further in this tempting region, without, however,
quitting a firm hold of observed facts.
* For furtlier particulars, see among others— G-ould, Vranometria
Argentina, 1879; Scbiaparelli, Piibbl. del R. Osservatorio di Brera,
XXXIV. ; Celoria. idein. XIII. ; Plassmann, Jahre.ilericht d.
Westfahlia, Pr. Vereinx, 1886; Eistenpart, Ber. Sternw. in Karlsruhe.
1892 ; Kapteyn, Versl. Aiademie v. Wet. Amsterdam, 1892 and 1893 ;
Gore, " Visible Universe," ete. ; Ranvard, Knowibdoe, June, Nor-
ember, 1894; Maunder, Knowledge, February, November, 1895,
February, 189G; Easton. Aslron. Xachr.. 3270. Compare aUo
Knowledge, October, December, 1891; May, 1892; April, 1893;
October, 189-1; January, August, 1895.
t Giovanni Celoria. " Sopra alcuni scandagei del eielo et sulla
distribuziohe geuerale delle stelle nello spazio." Pubhl del S
Osserr. di Brera, XIII.,Milano, 1878.
BRim-tt
'^
ORNITHOLOGICAC*^ .=^
Conducted by Habbt F. Witheeby, f.z.s., m.b.o.u.
A New British Guij:*. — The Mediterranean Herring
Gull (Larus rafhinnans ), — The past autumn has been
exceedingly unproductive of the rare migranta which
usually viait the east coast ; it is therefore especially
gratifying to be able to rescue from oblivion a rare bird
which has been unrecorded since the month of Novem-
ber, 1880. Mr. Cole, the well-known bird preserver, of
Norwich, recently called my attention to a Gull which was
shot on Breydon Water, near Yarmouth, on the above
date, by the noted gunner -John Thomas, and sent to him.
The late Mr. Henry Stevenson examined it in the flesh
and stated his opinion that it waa an example of
the Mediterranean Yellow-legged Herring Gull (Larus
ciu-hinnans) ; but, somehow, it passed out of notice till Mr.
Cole called my attention to it recently, when a careful
examination of the bird convinced me that Mr. Stevenson's
opinion was correct. This has since been confirmed by Mr.
Howard Saunders. The bird is a male by dissection, and
differs from the common Herring Gull in having the mantle
darker, the base ring round the eye deep orange-red, and
the legs lemon-yeUow. The resemblance to the common
Herring GuU is, however, so great that it might easily be
overlooked. The month of November aeems to be a very
unlikely one for the occurrence of this southern species on
our coast, but I find that the weather at that time was
exceptionally mild and pleasant. It is also remarkable
that in the following month another Mediterranean species,
Larus melnnorephalus, was killed in the same locality. —
Thomas Southwell, Norwich.
Ferki'Gi.nots Duck [FuJifjula nyroca) ix West Meath. —
Mrs. Battersby, of Cromlyn, informs me that a bird of
this species was shot by Colonel J. K. Malone, at Barons-
town, Bahnacarghy, West Meath, on January 17th, 1897.
The bird was stuffed by Mr. E. WiUiams, Dame Street,
Dublin, who informs me that it was a mature female.
Thia apecimen does not seem to have been recorded before,
and, as the species haa only been identified four or five
times in Ireland, the occurrence is worthy of record,
although the bird was shot a year ago. — H. F. W.
A Norfolk Great Bustard. — Through the kindness of
Prof. Newton I was enabled a few months ago to purchase
a remarkably fine male example of the old local race of
this magnificent bird. The result of my inquiries amply
established its history, which is briefly as follows : — The
bird was shot on Swaffham Heath about the year 1830 by
a gentleman named Glasae, who then reaided at "\'ere
Lodge, Eaynham, near Fakenham, Norfolk. It remained
in his possession and in that of his daughter until, on
the death of the latter at Bournemouth, early in the
present year, it was sold by auction with the rest of her
effects, and ia now in the collection of Mr. Connop, of
Kollesby Hall, Great Yarmouth. This superb old male
January 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE
15
in magnificent plumage, is even larger than the grand
male in the beautiful group of seven of these birds in
the Norwich Castle Museum ; and from the date of its
death is not unlikely to have been the last male of the
Swaffham drove, the females of which were not finally
exterminated until the year 1838, when the last of the
Norfolk-bred Bustards was killed. — Thomas Soi-thwell,
Norwich.
Waxwincs [Am pel i.^ tjarnihis) at Scari!0R0u<;h. — There
are quite a lot of Waxwings at the present time (November
4th, 1897) in this locality, upwards of half a dozen having
been shot and sent to me for preservation. The birds which
have been captured were found feeding on the berries of
the mountain ash and alder, and were so tame as to allow
their executioners to walk beneath the bush whilst they
sat on the top of it quite undisturbed. — J. Morlev, King
Street, Scarborough.
Variety of the Common Giillemot at SiARnoRorciii. —
A beautiful variety of the common tluillemot was caught
on December 4th, 1897, in Scarborough Harbour. Its
head and entire under parts are white, whilst its back
and wings are of a whitey-brown colour, and its bill, legs,
and feet yellowish white. A bird of this description is
extremely rare ; a similar one was obtained a few years ago
at Filey. The writer has visited Speeton Cliffs for many
years during the breeding season, and amongst the
hundreds of thousands of birds that annually resort there
for breeding purposes, has seen but one creamy coloured
Ciuillemot. — -J. Morley, King Street, Scarborough.
House Sparrows and Pigeons, — That Span-ows should
singly pursue Pigeons — white birds for preference — and
snatch feathers from the breast and sides, is, I imagine,
no news to the majority of your readers, though I have
more than once met with doubt when alluding to the
practice. Never before, however, have I observed this
robbery in mid-air before March ; and it may seem to you
a sufficiently interesting sign of the abnormal state of
things this year — though to-day is cold enough — that I
have this morning seen four feathers taken in this way
from the white Pigeons next door. This haste for warm
lining for the nest points, without doubt, to very forward
domestic arrangements. — F. G. Aflalo, Bournemouth,
December 4th, 1897.
[Sparrows commonly take feathers to their roosting
places during the winter. The fact of their carrying
feathers about at this time of year does not, therefore,
necessarily point to early nesting. — H. F. W.]
Occurrence ok a Colony or Jackdaws having Domed
Nests. — My boys having told me that for several years
they had found in the neighbourhood of Moddershall,
Stafi'ordshire, -Jackdaws with nests like Magpies, on the
14th May Dr. McAldowie (author of " The Birds of Stafford-
shire ") and I went to verify this strange occurrence. On
our arrival at the spot indicated to us — a group of Scotch
firs on a bank rising from a large pool — we found five large
nests, and saw flying roimd overhead four old Jackdaws.
On a later day, accompanied by one of my sons, I paid
another visit to the colony. One nest was placed at a
height of fifty-eight feet, in the highest fork of a tree.
The nest was a very bulky one, two and a half feet in
diameter and of a like depth, constructed of sticks ; the
nest cavity, which was ten inches across, being filled with
cow hair and wool, of which there was a large quantity,
and the whole covered and protected by a strong dome of
thorny sticks, which a hedge at the side of the plantation
had no doubt supplied, it having been recently cut and
the cuttings left on the ground. There was one entrance at
the side of the dome. The nest was empty, and from the
absence of dirt and castings was evidently one of this year.
Two other nests were placed in similar positions in other
trees ; one contained four young birds about a fortnight old,
and the other was an old one. We found some egg shells
under another tree, but did not climb it. I have made
inquiries, but cannot hear of these trees ever having been
occupied by Rooks ; and the absence of earth and clay, with
which Magpies invariably line their nests, makes it im-
probable that these birds were the builders. I am there-
fore compelled to believe that the Jackdaws built these
nests. There are two other colonies of Jackdaws in the
neighbourhood, both in sandstone cliffs, and a mile or so
from the colony I have described. I shall be extremely
obliged if any of the readers of Knowxedue who may
have met with a similar occuiTence will describe it. — W.
Wells Bladen, Stone, Staffs.
[It seems difficult to prove that these nests were not
old Magpies' nests relined and restored by the Jackdaws.
The earth and clay of the Magpies' nests would probably
wash away in the course of time. It would be very
interesting if, during the coming spring, Mr. Bladen should
be able to incontestably prove that these Jackdaws do
build domed nests.— H. F. W.]
yofes OH an Expedition to Sockall. By R. Llojd Pracger, B.E.
(Irish yaturaUst, December, 1897, pp. 309 to 323.)— This is a brief
diarj of ten days spent in twice visiting the oceanic islet of Rockall,
and forms the "day-by-day experiences of the party sent out in June,
1896, by the Royal Irish Academy, to investigate the natural history
of this little knowB and inaccessible rock and of its vicinity." Ln-
fortunatcly the expedition was unsuccessful in attaining its main
object — that of landing upon the rock.
All contrihutioiis to the column, either in the icny of notes
or photoi/raphs, should be forwarded to Haery F. Witherby,
at 1, Eliot Place, Blackhealh, Kent.
Note. — The first issue of Knowleiigk containing British Ornitho-
logical Nott'i was that for October, 1S97.
Mr. Walter Siche, the traveller and florist, has returned
from an expedition to the Cilician and Cappadocian
Taurus with a large number of alpine plants, and ten
thousand examples of various species of the asphodel family,
with varieties of fritillary, galanthus, colchicum, iris, and
many other plants. Mr. Siche has been the means of
introducing many new flowers to the domain of English
horticulture.
Lieutenant Peary, of the United States Navy, in his
recent address before the Koyal Geographical Society, said
that to-day Greenland had no interior — it was simply a
great white snow shield. On that frozen surface the
traveller sees but three things — an infinite expanse of
snow, an infinite expanse of sky, and the stars. One thfng
of interest to glacialists which he mentioned was the
transportation of snow by the wind, which was almost
always blowing there. Referring to his location of the
famous iron mountains of Sir John Ross with their
nuggets of iron, he intimated that the Eskimo legend in
regard to these nuggets was that they were originally an
Eskimo woman and her dog, which were thrown out of
high heaven and landed in that inhospitable region. A
woman six thousand pounds in weight was the source
from which the Eskimo obtained their iron supply for
generations !
Sir John Lubbock, lately lecturing on " Ants," said that
the lives of these creatures were much longer than is
generally supposed. He had kept many for several years,
two queens having reached the age of fifteen years, and
16
KNOWLEDGE
[Januaby 1, 1898.
these were by far the oldest insects on record. Several
species kept aphides which they milked like cows ; and he
had found that in the autumn they collected the eggs o(
the aphides and kept them all through the winter, although
they were of no use, and the young aphides hatched from
them gave none of the sugary fluid till the following
May or June, so that the ants showed more thrift and
forethought than many human beings. Their instincts,
though so wonderful, were very limited ; and yet, when the
ants were watched building their nest, feeding their young,
tending their domestic animals, and, in some cases, their
slaves, it was diilicult to believe that they were unconscious
automata. . , ,
We are pleased to observe that a scheme is shortly
to be submitted to Parliament involving the expenditure
of upwards of three millions for the better housing of
the national collection of art treasures in and about South
Kensington Museum. The Bill for this purpose is to
be brought before Parliament next Session, and there will
shortly commence to be built a series of exhibition rooms
and galleries, to concentrate in one area the many works
of art and objects of interest now scattered in various
extempore structures. It is to be hoped that among the
innovations there will be a replacement of those wooden
huts— called by courtesy an observatory, but bearing a
much closer resemblance to a hen farm — by something
more in keeping with the long purse of a Government with
suchre sources as ours.
A great undertaking, namely, the measurement of a
degree of latitude in the Polar regions, leading to a more
exact knowledge of the form of the earth, appears to
be on the eve of accomplishment. The solution of this
question has long been the chief aim of Swedish Polar
exploration, and Prof. E. .Jaderin has now proposed to
the Government for a preliminary expedition to be sent
to Spitzbergen next summer, and that Russia should be
invited to co-operate in the final measurement of a degree
in 1899 and 1900. The task of the preliminary expedi-
tion—which it is intended should start in May and return
in September— would be to complete the investigations
already made as to the facilities for the necessary triangu-
lation, to reach the summits of hitherto unchmbed moun-
tains, to set up signal posts, and so on.
Dr. Campbell Morfit died last month at South Hamp-
stead. An American by birth, he had for many years
past been a London resident. He was the author of
" Chemical and Pharmaceutical Manipulation," " Arts of
Tanning and Currying," "Oleic Soaps," and, with Dr.
James C. Booth, was joint editor of the American " Ency-
clopsediaof Chemistry "; and in the industrial utilization of
waste products, as well as the chemistry of food substances,
his researches have been of the utmost service to the
general public.
The November Number of the "Archives of the
Roentgen Ray," which is now the organ of the Roentgen
Society of London, contains an excellent report of
the presidential address delivered by Prof. Silvanus
Thompson, i-.r.-;., to the Roentgen Society at St. Martin's
Town Hall, on November 5th, 1897. The number also
contains five large skiagraphic plates and other interesting
matter. A supplement entitled " Radiography in Marine
Zoology," by R. Norris Wolfeuden, m.d., is added. This
supplement treats of the Echinodermata, and is illustrated
with thirty-six excellent skiagraphs and photographs.
* See avticle, " Measurement of the Earth," Enowledge Jime
1897, p. 148. ' '
lUttttxs.
[The Editors do not hold themselveB responsible for the opinions or
statements of correspondents.]
• THK LIFIvHISTORIES OF THK BRITISH MARINE
FOOD-FISHES."
To tlie Editors of Knowledge.
SiKs, — Kindly allow me a few words to conclude the
correspondence on this subject. 1 have not denied, as
your reviewer states, that " the work of St. Andrews is put
more prominently forward than work done elsewhere,"
in our book. Such is, no doubt, the case ; and it is, as he
remarks, " not unnatural," considering that by far the
greater proportion of British "fishery" work has been
done there, or in direct connection therewith. This is a
different matter from "ignoring" the work done elsewhere
Your reviewer's statement that " Mr. Cunningham led
the way " in the subject of the growth-rate of fishes has
no foundation of truth. This worker published his first
paper upon the subject in 1890, and at periods varying
from five to twelve years prior to this the works of Dr.
Mcintosh, Captain Dannevig, and Dr. Meyer had appeared.
Without further instance, your readers may be reminded
that the two latter still stand as the best known authorities
upon the growth-rate of the cod and herring respectively.
" The credit of the discovery of the hermaphroditism oi
Mtj.iiiw" is not "given to Dr. Nansen." A passin;,' reference
to i>r. Nansen's work is mentioned in a quoU'ti'in from
another paper, in connection with which the reasons for
its selection were given.
The life-history of Mi/.i-ine did not fall within the scope
of our work, or, of course, the labours of W. Miiiler,
Cunningham, Weber, etc., would have been referred to.
With regard to Xaturc, my remark was to the effect that
Dr. Lankester was allowed, under pretext of reviewing our
work, to make certain false statements outside the pale of
legitimate criticism, judged by the widest standard ; and
that the editor, in the opinion of a great many of his
readers, showed a partiality in not allowing a contradiction.
Your reviewer considers my remarks " hardly in good
taste" because Mr. Cunningham was similarly denied on a
prior occasion. Surely this fact, which could not have
been known except to Mr. Cunningham himself and his
most intimate friends, merely corroborates my' remark that
your contemporary has been " not unknown " for such
unfair treatment of authors. Mr. Cunningham has reason,
judging from your reviewer's statement, to complain of his
treatment, and still more to complain of the invidious posi-
tion in which your re\iewer has attempted to place his work.
In conclusion, 1 must now leave it with your readers to
judge for themselves how far your reviewer has established
his position that we have ignored the work of others in
our labours.
The University, St. Andrews. A. T. Masterman.
[In my notice of " British Marine Food Fishes," I
remarked : " Between the marine biologists of the North
and South there is something of a spirit of rivalry, the
result being that each school is inclined to ignore, more or
less, the work of the other — or, at any rate, not overburden
it with praise." No impartial critic, familiar with the
facts, could deny that every word of this sentence is true.
It will be noticed that I did wt assert that Dr. Mcintosh
and Mr. Masterman had "ignored the work of others in
their labours " : but surely the first paragraph of Mr.
Masterman's letter justifies my position.
Mr. ]\Iasterman (p. 291) asked for an instance of " Mr.
Cunningham's work which had not been alluded to and
January 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE.
17
freely acknowledged." I gave him the case of fhe work on
the growth of fishes, referred to in a cursory manner which
deprives it of any importance. Of course, Mr. Masterman
may be permitted to have an opinion of his own as to
what work is important, but marine biologists are also at
liberty to challenge it.
With regard to the hermaphroditism of ^fl|.l•ille, the
quotation is from a paper by Mr. Masterman himaelf, and
the words used are ; " We may cite Nansen's observation
of the protandric hermaphrodite cDndition of Mi/xine."
This certainly gives the idea that the hermaphroditism
was discovered by Dr. Nansen.
As to Nature, Mr. Masterman distinctly ascribed "par-
tiality" to the editor in tlie matter of the review of
his book. He knows that Mr. Cunnmgham's work was
treated in exactly the same way that the work of Dr.
Mcintosh atfd himself was treated, and yet he has not the
good grace to withdraw his charge of partiality. I cannot
say that Mr. Canningham sent a reply to the criticism of
his own work, but I know that no reply was published in
Natui-f, any more than was 'Sir. Masterman's reply to
Prof. Lankester's review. It is a pity that there are
authors like Mr. Masterman ever ready to resent fair
criticism and impugn editorial actions. — The Reviewer.]
TESXINO- MULTIPLICATION AND DIVISION.
To the Editors of Knowledge.
SiKs, — The properties of " the mystic numbsr three,"
and its square 0, referred to by your correspondents on
page 292 of your migazine, bring 0113 back to the
earliest recollec lions of one's school days, when the multi-
plication sums were tested by "casting out the nines," as
it was then called. The property that the sum of the
digits of any integer, divided by .9, gives the same
remainder as if the number itself were divided by 9, is a
natural consequence of our decimil notation. Had the
notation been duodecimal, 11 would have possessed the
same property; and, even in the decimal notation, 11
may be used with almost equal ease, and is a safer test.
Beginning with the units, add the alternate figures, and,
carryiug to the tens, add the other alternate figures ; then
add what is over to the units of the sum. If the number
thus obtained be divided by 11, the remainder is the
same as if the whole number were divided by 11.
This can be easily shown from the obvious fact that every
even number of nines is divisible by 11. These pro-
perties are well known, and hardly need illustration.
They are mentioned as introductory to what follows.
Some years since, I had to do with the multiplication
and division of very large numbers, consisting of sixty
figures and upwards. Finding that neither '-) nor 11 was
a sufficiently reliable test, I was led to seek for something
safer. The numbers, for distinctness, were arranged in
periods of five figures each, beginning of course at the
right. My test was to be adapted to tliis arrangement,
and I soon found that 11111, consequently 99999, is
divisible by 41 ; therefore 99999 99999, etc. It follows
that if the sum of the periods, taken as separate numbers
and carrying what is over to the units' place, be divided by
41, the remainder is the same as if the whole number were
divided by 41.
The division by 41 may be abridged thus : —
Let the sum of the periods, found
as above, be 37529
Subtract the largest multiple of
mil contained therein ... 33333
41)4196 remainder 14,
showing that, if the whole number were divided by 41, the
remainder would be 14.
Years afterwards I was requested by the late Prof.
Cayley to verify some results, involving also very large
numbers, but arranged in periods of three figures each.
To this also it was judged expedient to use a test specially
adapted to the arrangement. I saw that 111, therefore
999, is divisible by 37 ; and consequently that if the sum of
the periods of three figures, taken as above, be divided by
37, the remainder is the same as if the whole number were
divided by 37.
Take, for example, any numbar at random, say —
45 286 507 613 941
The sum of the periods is 2 392
and, adding 2, the unit of the second period in the sum, to
the first period, we obtain finally 394
Subtract the largest multiple of 111 therein 333
The number thus obtained 61 divided
by 37, leaves the same remainder, 24, as if the whole
number were divided by 37.
A. Graham.
Cambridge Observatory,
14th December, 1897.
ARTIFICIAL SUNSPOTS.
To the Editors of Knowledge.
Sirs,— With regard to Mr. East's experiments and your
remarks in the Dacember Number of Knowledge, is it
possible that in the sun's surface we have anything similar"?
—that is, are the rice grains really the only partial con-
solidated matter that we see ?— all the interior of the sun
being in a gaseous state, under such conditions of extreme
heat and pressure as to make chemical combination and
luminosity impossible. I should like to see some remarks
in your journal on this head. It seems to me one of
impossibility ; the photosphere would then be the very
first stages of a crust formation on the sun.
December lOih, 1897. Thos. .1. Haddy.
BARE BIRDS.
To the Editors of Knowledge.
Sirs, — Your issue for December contains an account of
the shooting of four rare birds. Most probably each of
these rare birds had mates and would have continued the
race if let alons, but the collector comes with his gun and
endeavours to make the rare bird an extinct bird. Of
course, his specimen would become more valuable if this
species of bird became extinct in this country, while if he
allowed the bird to escape he would have no specimen at
all. But is this a suflicient reason for shooting a bird that
is doing no harm and is not intended to be eaten, and
whose only crime is that very few Uke it are to be found in
this country ? Our object should be to preserve — not to
destroy — such rare specimens. This would be admitted if
they were domestic animals. It is only when an animal
is wild that he is shot because there are few Uke him. If
the shooting goes on there will soon be none.
It is time that we had a society for the preservation of
rare animals and birds — unless, of course, they are mis-
chievous like the wolf, which has now died out in the
British Islands.
Every zoologist will admit that utility is not the only
thing to be looked to as regards the preservation or
destruction of a race of animals; and, if there is no reason
18
KNOWLEDGE.
[January 1, 1898.
for the extirpation of any peculiar species, why should we
seek to extirpate them merely because they appear to be
dying out of their own accord ? I would rather preserve
them as long as possible.
The dying out of a race of animals, when natural, may
often indicate a gradual change of climate or other physical
conditions, the history of which it will be desirable to
trace hereafter. The arrival of a new race may afford
similar indications to the student of science. But if we
ruthlessly shoot down every member of a race that is dying
out and every now arrival on our shores, landmarks of this
description will be lost. The "footprints on the sands of
time " wear out soon enough without intentional oblitera-
tion. W. II. S. MONCK.
[The killing of rare birds has of late formed the subject
of innumerable letters in the daily press. These letters are
invariably written by persons not suliiciently acquainted
with the details of the subject to form an accurate opinion
as to whether the killing of any particular bird is to the
advantage or disadvantage of the study of British birds.
By this we mean that unless certain birds are killed
ornithology will not advance. Glance, for instance, at the
second part of Mr. Howard Saunders's manual (just pub-
lished). There are at least six birds out of the twenty-
four there described which would never have been known
to have visited the British Islands had they not been shot.
With regard to the birds mentioned by Mr. Monck, these
were all stragglers, and we can confidently say that none of
them would ever have bred in Great Britain had they been
allowed to live, and certainly three of them would never
have been identified unless they bad been shot. We do
not wish our readers to infer from the foregoing remarks
that we uphold the killing of every rare bird. Far from
it. We consider it an act of ignorant greed to destroy in
Great Britain a bird such as a Golden Eagle or Osprey,
which were formerly fairly plentiful as breeding species,
but have now become very rare. We would remind Mr.
Monck that the Society for the Protection of Birds, which
has often been referred to in Knowledge, has been estab-
lished some years, and has done and is doing very good
work in the prevention of that very ignorant destruction
to which Mr. Monck so properly objects. — Eds.]
MOVEMENT IX SP.VCK.
To the Editors of Knowledge.
Sirs, — I saw it stated the other day that one of our
astronomers had made a calculation that the rate of
movement of our sun in space was twelve miles a second.
This idea of "movement in space" is to me incom-
prehensible. What we call " movement " is a relative
state of matter, and can only be measured against some-
thing " at rest." For instance, we call an object fixed or
stationary on the earth, when really it participates in the
earth's motion ; so it is quite possible that a fly on the
woodwork of a railway carriage may consider itself " at
rest " when it pauses in its walk, although the train is
travelling at its usual speed.
As it would appear from our limited knowledge of the
universe that a state of absolute rest is impossible, it
would be interesting to know how this movement of the
sun can be measured with anything approaching accuracy.
If you consider this a suitable subject to appear in your
very interesting magazine, you would much oblige,
Ignoramus.
["Ignoramus" is quite right in supposing that motion in
space can only be measured by taking some origin which
we suppose fixed. In deducing the solar motion we
assume that the group of stars which we employ for the
purpose have, as a whole, no tendency to drift in any
direction^or, in other words, that their centre of mean
position is at rest. This centre of mean position is thus
the fixed origin to which the solar motion is referred.
The whole system of stars under discussion, including
our sun, may have a common drift in some direction, but
this we are unable to determine.]
Notices of Boolts.
With y'ature ami a (amern. By Richard Kearton, f.z.s.
Illustrated from Photographs by Cherry Kearton. (Cassell.)
21s. Perhaps we expected too much of Mr. Kearton,
judging from reports which reached us before the publication .
of his book. However that may be, we are disappointed.
There are many good things in the book, but it is our candid
opinion that the author has been too hasty in putting his
work before the public, for it bears unmistakable signs
of " padding." A number of tlie photographs are not
of sutlicient interest for publication, while to others a
great deal too much space has been given, making the
book large, expensive, and annoying to the reader. The
most glaring examples of " padding " are two full-page
illustrations of a rabbit burrow closed and a rabbit burrow
open (pages 178 and 179), a common enough sight to
everyone. If the photographs had been " pictures " we
should, perhaps, have excused the author, since his book
is mainly a " picture book " ; but they are by no means
pictures, and are made additionally hideous by a large
bottle in the foreground. The letterpress also is by no
means free from " padding." A number of the facts- —
some of them here set down as extraordinary— have been
published scores of times before. It is well known that
the song thrush sings occasionally on fine nights : yet the
author, who has had some experience, was " astonished to
hear a thrush commence to sing " one moonlight night,
and considers that in this fact he has " unmistakable
proof" that "birds may, upon occasion, mistake the
rising of the moon for the coming of another day." The
author gives a detailed account of an old shooter and his
favourite " setter " bitch, and on page 161 he gives a
January 1, 1898.
KNOWLEDGE
19
photograph of the two ; but the "setter" is an unmistakable
pointer. Having said so much of what we consider to
be bad judgment and error, we gladly pass on to the good
points in the book. These are chiefly to be found in the
photographs, a great number of which are exceedingly fine.
We would especially draw attention to the following : —
Barn owl, photographed by flashlight (page 24B), kingfisher
(page H57), cormorants and guillemots (page 251), common
gull's nest (page 269) ; and to those which we have been
able, by courtesy of the publisher, to here reproduce. Mr.
Cherry Kearton, who has taken the photographs for his
brother's book, has had many perilous
adventures, as all who climb cliffs — and
especially those who carry a camera with
them — must ; but we cannot help thinking
that Mr. Kearton has often run into un-
necessary dangers. Many of the things he
has photographed in difficult places could
have been found in more accessible situations.
We recommend the book with the (jualification
that if the author has not made " much ado
about nothing," he has certainly made too
much of not a very great deal.
OniKiiieiitdl lk'si(jn fur ll'oren l^'ahrics. By
C. Stephenson and F. Suddards. (Methuen.)
Illustrated. 7s. 6d. We are not by any
means convinced that the authors of this
handsome-looking book have succeeded in
their laudable desire to " bring the necessary
knowledge within a narrower focus, and
thereby make it more easily accessible." In
attempts like this to find the path of least
resistance to a useful knowledge of a science
or an art, there is always a danger of re
tarding progress by, in a manner, increasing
friction — making the pathway too constricted
for one to get through with comfort. For
example, although a knowledge of elementary
geometry is assumed, a single plate is given
showing the construction of the most simple,
and at the same time useful, figures, and
then in a few pages their application to the
design of woven fabrics is dispensed with.
The authors, indeed, exhibit a clear insight
as to the way in which such figures are
utilized in the designer's office ; but a beginner
would be all at sea in practice if only equipped
with such knowledge as is here so over con-
densed as to be nearly, if not quite, indi-
gestible. Coming to the main part of the
work, however, we find a difl'erent state of
affairs. Dealing with the laws of com-
position, plant forms in textile designs,
limitations imposed, drop-pattern, repeats,
and so on, as well as in the arrangement
of the warp-threads and their sequence
in rising and falling in order to attain
any given pattern, all is clear, and in the
highest degree commendable. The book
way handsome, and the illustrations are
quality.
TIk Rise nt Piinocrncy. By -J. Holland Eose, m.a. The
Victorian Era Series. (Blackie i- Sou.) 2s. 6d. This is a
wholly inadequate treatment of a great subject, due in a
large measure to the laudable desire of the author to
compress a vast amount of historical detail into a small
compass. The result is a more or less disjointed catalogue
of names and incidents, often incomplete, and always
lifeless. Admittedly circumscribed in the space at his
disposal, Mr. liose has persistently stood in his own way,
and filled valuable space by recounting his own inter-
pretation of the facts, so that his reader is often unable to
appreciate the picture by reason of the obtrusive nature of
the showman. However interesting the author's opinions
may be to Mr. Rose, he should remember they are of no
value to his reader. Some haste, too, is apparent in the
text, where we find Sir Francis Bm-dett, the famous
member for Westminster, figures as Sir Thomas Burdett,
and Richard Carlile as Carlisle ; while the alleged " toning
down " of -John Stuart MiU is, of course, an entire mis-
Guillemots on Cliff. (From " With Nature and a Cam
13 m every
of first-rate
apprehension of the facts. Then we do not like to find
such phrases as the " immense vogue " of Darwin, or the
" viewy schemes " of Owen, in a book which promised in
the preface to be " scholarly." The index, too, is hasty,
incomplete, and lacking in method. Yet, notwithstanding
these defects, Mr. Rose's little book will be found to be an
interesting sketch of the growth and expansion of repre-
sentative institutions in England, as well as of the patient
doggedness and prescience of our countrymen. But it
leaves the task yet unfulfilled of writing the history of the
rise of democracy.
20
KNOWLEDGE
[Jantjaby 1, 1898.
An Introduction to Geology. By Wm. B. Scott. (Mac-
millan.) lUuatrated. Ss. net. New strata of books, so
to speak, are being continually superposed on pre-existing
books of the same kind, and it too frequently happens that
they contain no fossils, as it were, to invest them with
special characteristics sufficient to differentiate them from
their predecessors. In a sense, Prof. Scott's work is of
this kind — that is to say, the book is not of any particular
value to English students, but rather a class-book for
American students of geology. The principles of the
science are elucidated in a manner closely corresponding
with our own standard works on the same subject. To
those, however, who have advanced beyond the confines
of an acquaLatance with first principles, and are prepared
for fresh fields and pastures new, we may say there is
here much that is worthy of careful study — matter to fill
many a gap, confirm or accentuate doubtful points, and,
above all, a panorama of familiar phenomena in a new and
attractive dress, which will lend a more extensive, more
diversified, and more persuasive view to the mental eye.
Jdhn Hunter : Man of Scienre and Suryenn. By Stephen
Paget. (Unwin.) Portrait. 3s. 6d. Among the greatest
men that England has produced must be reckoned those
who have built up the science of medicine in its broadest
sense, and among savants of this kind Hunter was head
and shoulders above his contemporaries — one of the master
builders of the Temple of Hygiea. The whole secret of
his extraordinary achievements in life can be expressed
Ln a few words: "Don't think — try; be patient — be
accurate." A great deal, it is true, may be learnt by
thinking ; but when experimental facts are brought to
bear upon a certain theory, more exact conclusions can
be deduced than by mere speculative opinion without the
foundation stones of exact observation. As a boy, Hunter
was an observer of nature, and did not care much for his
school books ; and when he came to London to work
with his brother William, he studied hard for three years,
spending his time mainly in the dissecting rooms night
and day. Thus far, Darwin and Hunter, in so many ways
alike, went both of them along the same high road ; here
the road divides at a narrow angle. Hunter went forward
from human anatomy to all anatomy and physiology, and
from these to medicine and surgery, and from all of them
together to a profound study of life, alike Ln health and
disease, in all structures, at all stages. To the medical
student of the present day the correspondence here given
between Hunter and his famous pupil, Jenner, must present
a strange picture. Our museums now supply all the
requisites for study, but in Hunter's time every student
had to cater for himself : find specimens for dissection
where he could ; get his chemical knowledge from one
source, anatomy from another, and so on ; all outside the
hospitals, which were not organized for complete instruc-
tion. The book is one of a series — " Masters of Medi-
cine " — and will include among others : Harvey, Jenner,
Simpson, Helmholtz, Stokes, Bernard, Brodie, and
Sydenham. Provided subsequent volumes are of equal
merit with this one, the series will form a most delightful
record of the development of the healing art.
Recent and Cominij Eclipses. By Sir Norman Lockyer.
(Macmillan.) Illustrated. 6s. net. By this time Sir
Norman Lockyer may be regarded as a veteran eclipser.
During the last quarter of a century he has captained
many expeditions, and anything he has to say on eclipses
will be sure to command the attention of all interested in
such phenomena. In describing what he saw in 1871 the
author gives us some idea of the imposing grandeur of an
eclipse in these words : " There, in the leaden-coloured,
utterly cloudless sky, shone out the eclipsed sun — a worthy
sight for gods and men. There, rigid in the heavens, was
what struck everybody as a decoration— one that emperors
might fight for — a thousand times more brilliant even than
the Star of India, where we then were ; a picture of
surpassing loveliness, and giving one the idea of serenity
among all that was going on below ; shining with a sheen
of silver essence ; built up of rays almost symmetrically
arranged round a bright ring above and below, with a
marked absence of them right and left, the rays being
composed of sharp radial lines, separated by furrows of
markedly less brilliancy." Although the author, according
to the title page, purports to give in his book notes on
the eclipses of 1893, 189G, and 1898, considerable space is
taken up with the subject of eclipses generally. Seeing
that the sun itself is essentially a star, we quite expected
to find ample reference to stellar researches — a sort of
discussion on the comparative anatomy of suns — but we are
of opinion that such allusions as that found on page 105
are quite out of place in a popular book. Sir Norman
says : " I am glad to see that Sir William Huggins, who
appears to be ignorant of my quarter-of-a-century-old work,
has quite recently arrived independently at the same
conclusion." The arm-chair astronomer doesn't want
condiment of that sort. As regards the great diversity of
work to be carried on during the precious moments of
totaUty, we have in this handy book an admirable description
such as could only emanate from one thoroughly conversant
with every aspect of the phenomenon. Difficult as the
subject is, we can readUy follow the master through every
labyrinth. The heterogeneous mass of facts gleaned by a
multitude of observers in all parts of the world during
eclipses spread over half a century, are here put through
the intellectual mill and worked into a shape which one
can appreciate. We see how the sun and stars are, as it
were, comparable to the several orders of animals, aU
more or less alike, and differing from one another only Ln
detail. The large section dealLug with the coming eclipse,
however, appears to us foreign to the general reader, and
fitted only to the wants of the few who actually take part
in eclipse work. It bears a closer resemblance to printed
instructions from a leader to his followers than hterature
on a popular subject for the million. The Ulustraticns are
of very unequal merit.
Electricity in the Service of Man. By E. WormeU, d.sc,
M.A. Eevised and enlarged by Mullineux Walmsley, d.sc.
(CasseU.) Illustrated. 7s. Gd. Perhaps the best evi-
dence of the worth of this work is its continued issue,
time after time, in improved form. Evidently no expense
has been spared Ln making the book a thoroughly reliable
exposition, in popular phraseology, of the principles which
underlie all the practical applications of electricity in every-
day Ufe. The publishers, in this case, certainly give a
maximum of value for a minimum of outlay — a circum-
stance which will be sufficiently apparent when we point
out that there are a thousand printed pages and as many
illustrations.
Tlie Method (if Darwin. By Frank Cramer. (Chicago:
McClurg it Co.) This book is an analysis of the scientific
method of Charles Darwin. Darwin's works have been
chosen as a basis on account of— "(1) the desire to confine
the discussion to the wi-itings of a single author ; (2) the
fact that his works cover a wide range of subjects ; and
(3), above all, the fact that Darwin's Lnvestigations, and the
reasoning based upon them, have furnished the biological
sciences with their dominant principles "—and also
because " Darwin's custom of presenting all sides of a case
very frequently led him to expose the original course of his
thought and the order of his discoveries." The author
has chosen an excellent and certainly a neglected subject.
Januaby 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE.
21
In Darwin's works he has the best foundation possible for
a study of scientific method, and above all he has planned
his book well and written it lucidly.
After a brief explanation of logical processes we have
the following chapters, each one being discussed in
connection with well-chosen examples from Darwin's
works: — Darwin's Views of Method, Starting Points,
Exhaustiveness, Negative Evidence, Classification, Analogy,
Induction, Deduction, Unverified Deductions, Erroneous
Deductions, General Discussions, Logical History of the
Principle of Natural Selection, and Conclusion.
We have given an idea of the scope of the book and
heartily recommend it, especially to those who are starting
out on scientific work of whatever kind. t)ur only com-
plaint is that the book is not larger and more exhaustive.
BOOKS KECEIVED.
Biirenii of American Ethnnloiji/ — Sirtefn/Ji Annual Separf.
(Government Printing OflSc'e, Washington.)
The Sun's Place in Naivre. By Sir Norman Lock ver. (Macmillan.)
Illustrated. 12s.
Bit Soadside and River — Gleanings from Natttre's Tields. Bv
H. iload Briggs. (Elliot Stoek.) Frontispiece. 8s. 6d.
The Journals of Walter White, formerhi Assistant Secretary of
the Sot/al Societi/. With Preface by William White. (Chapman &
Hall.)' Portrait.' fis.
Observational Astronomi/. Xew Edition. Bt Arthur Mee.
{Western Mail, Limited, Cardiff.) Illustrated. 29." 9d. post free.
Modern Architecture. By Heathcote Statham. (Chapman & Hall.)
Illustrated.
The Encyclop(edia of Sport. Edited by the Earl of Suffolk and
Berkshire, Hedley Peek, and F. G. Aflalo. Vol. I. (Lawrence &
BuUer.) Illustrated. 25s.
We regret to record the death of Dr. F. A. T. Winnecke,
at Bonn on the 3rd December, 1807, in the sixty-third
year of bis age. Curiously enough, the comet which bears
his name, and having a period of 5-818 years, is expected
to return to perihelion almost at any time in the early
part of the present year. He was born in Hanover on
5th February, 1835, and received his education at Berlin.
After assisting Encke (Encke's comet, period 3-303 years,
is also expected about May of this year) at the observatory
there, and afterwards Argelander at Bonn, he accepted an
appointment in Russia, and many years of his greatest
scientific activity were spent at Pulkowa. In ISfis Dr.
Winnecke took charge of the observatory at Carlsruhe, and
in 1872 he was nominated Professor of Astronomy at the
newly founded University of Strasburg. He was elected an
Associate of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1863.
Cometary astronomy always had for him great attractions ;
besides the periodic comet which bears his name he found
several others, receiving the prize of the Vienna Academy
of Sciences for his cometary discoveries.
BOTANICAL STUDIES.-I.
VAUCHEEIA.
By A. Vaughan Jennings, f.l.s., f.g.s.
THE study of plants has till recent years occupied a
somewhat different position from that of its sister
sciences. When geology was rousing the interest
of the intellectual world by its conclusions as to
the history of the earth, and while zoology formed,
mainly, the battle-ground of the evolutionists and their
adversaries, botany still remained a science of the
collector and the classifier. Only comparatively lately has
it been able to take its place as a philosophic science on a
level with zoology. Its acquirement of this position has
been due to the increasing number of capable students,
and the improvement of microscopic methods of research.
It is possible that a recognition of the importance of
microscopic study has sometimes led botanical teachers
too far in contrasting their work with that of the earlier
students of the field and the herbarium. There may be
room for a protest against the predominance of micro-
technicality, but the work of the microscope in giving
botany its proper position in the Ufe sciences can never be
seriously exaggerated.
The discovery of the life histories of lower plants, of the
details of the reproductive processes in higher cryptogams,
and the demonstration of the relationship between them
and those of the flowering plants, form one of the most
striking chapters in the history of biological research.
Though these results have been arrived at only by long
labour, by the employment of high magnification and
refined methods of preparation, it is yet by no means
impossible for the amateur microscopist to see for himself
a great number of the more important phenomena in
question in this line of investigation. It is proposed to call
attention to a few important types, which form, as it were,
landmarks in the world of plants.
As a starting point we may select a common and easily
obtainable plant in which the reproductive processes
are simple and readily observed. The species of the
genus Vaucheriii form green velvet-like patches on
damp ground or thick felted masses of threads in ponds
and ditches. With a low-power pocket lens only, the
branched and interlacing threads can be distinctly seen,
and it may be observed that some carry small rounded
excrescences on the side, while others may be darker in
colour and enlarged ai the tip.* If a specimen is
mounted in water and examined with a low power of the
microscope, it will be found that the whole plant consists
of a cylindrical tube of protoplasm enclosed by a dehcate
cell wall ;t but there are no transverse walls crossing
the tubes. If the green colouring matter, or chlorophyll,
is dissolved out by soaking in alcohol, and the specimen
treated with iodine solution, or other suitable stain, it
will be found that the protoplasm contains numerous small
specialized portions or nuclei which are deeply coloured. ;
The plant is thus a protoplasmic body with numerous
nuclei, but the division of these nuclei is not followed by
formation of new cell walls, and the plant remains uni-
cellular.? There is a wrong impression produced if we
speak of the higher plants as aggregations of cells, as if
they were so many brinks ; and the group of algas to which
roKt/icr/rt belongs is of special value in reminding us of
the fact that the cell walls are of secondary importance in
comparison with the protoplasm and nuclei. It is the
great series of the Siphonncia which includes a large number
of marine seaweeds often of considerable size and complex
structure. To it belong such varied types as the green
furry Coiliinn, common on the piles of our sea-coast piers ;
the feathery Bryopsis of our rock pools ; the polymorphic
Caulfrpa and the calcareous coralline-like Halinu'chi of
warmer climes ; and the quaint little umbrella-like
Acetabularia of the Mediterranean. Such variety of form
and wide distribution suggest a great antiquity for the
group, and there is little doubt that in the Eocene Dactylo-
pora and Oralites, and the Triassic GyroporeUa, we have
* Yaucheria plants are often sterile ; and the enlargement of the ends
sliould be looked for after the plant has been some time in darkness.
t By adding a weak (two per cent.) solution of common salt the
protoplasm will contract away from the wall owing to the abstraction
of water. (" Piasmolysis.")
X It is not always easy to demonstrate them by such simple staining,
and special methods may have to be employed.
§ The term "' ccenocyte " for such large multinucleate cells is a
convenient one, and coming into general use.
22
KNOWLEDGE
[Jancaby 1, 1808.
direct evidence of its geological age. These questions are
outside our present object, but indicate how far the green
weed from the garden path might lead ug.
The special feature we want to observe is the mode of
reproduction of the plant, and it will be found that it
propagates itself by two distinct methods.*
In the first case there is an aggregation of the
protoplasm at the ends of certain threads, and in time this
specialized portion makes its way through the terminal
wall and swims about by means of vibrating cilia,
which occur in pairs all over its surface. In time this
liberated mass of protoplasm loses its cilia, settles down,
develops a cellulose wall, and passes into a resting stage.
Later on, it germinates and grows directly into a new
the main axis. Their contents are, however, cut off from
the latter by a transverse wall or septum. The larger
inflated bodies contain each a rounded protoplasm mass
which is the oosphere or egg-cell. The narrower tubular
structures are the antheridia, and at the right stage will be
found full of minute antherozoids formed by repeated sub-
division of the protoplasm and nuclei. These anthero-
zoids or spermatozoids are minute oval bodies each with
a pair of cilia, by means of which they move.
They escape from an aperture at the apex of the
antheridium, which in most species curves round so as
to approach the top of the oogonium.* The wall of the
latter becomes gelatinous at this point, and the antherozoids
pass through and effect the fertilization of the oosphere.
A. — Vaucheria arersa. — Tlie lilameDt in the centre slio«s two Oogonia and two Antheridia. The Antlieridium on the
left is empty, and the fertilized Oosphere in the corresponding Oogonium has developed a thick wall. In the upper filament
the protoplasm is aggregated at the apex, and shut off by a septum prior to the formation of a Zoogonidium. B. — The
Coenoeytie Zoogonidium of Vnncheria passing out from the apex of a filament, c. — The Caenocytie Zoogonidium of Vaucheria,
showing numerous peripheral nuclei, with pairs of Cilia opposite each. D. — An Oogonium, with Antherozoids passing through
the mucilaginous apical area. E. — Antherozoids (or Sperinatuzoids). F. — Germination of an Oospore or Oosperm.
Vaucheria plant. This process of renovation of physio-
logical energy in a special part of the protoplasm is termed
" rejuvenescence."
For the other and more important method of repro-
duction, one must examine the small protuberances which
occur here and there on the sides of the threads. These
will be found to be tubular or oval outgrowths from the
filament enclosed by a cell wall continuous with that of
* It should be noted the type of oogamoas reproduction liere
described occurs in Vaucheria only. In the other genera the process
of reproduction is in some cases still unobserved ; in others it takes
place by conjugation of similar, or slightly dissimilar, free swimming
" gametes."
Subsequently the oosphere surrounds itself with a thick
protective wall, passes through a period of quiescence, and
in time germinates, growing at once into a new plant.
Such is a brief summary of the life history of this
common but no less interesting plant.
The type has been selected as affording a simple
example of oogamous reproduction ; and the important
* The number and distribution of the oogonia and the form of
the antheridia differ in the various species. The one chosen for the
illustration is a fresh-water species, and was collected in a pond near
Croydon. The commoner V. sessilis. on damp earth, has the curved
antheridium ; as also V. hamata, V. racemosa, and others. The type
here shown is the simplest of all, and has not been figured in the
usual text-books.
January 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE
points to note in connection with our present purpose are,
firstly, that the " fruit " is only the fertilized oosphere
without any accessory or surrounding growths ; and,
aecondly, that when this " oospore " germinates it pro-
dudes a new plant like that on which it grew.
THE FACE OF THE SKY FOR JANUARY.
By Hekmert Sadler, f.k.a.s.
A FEW small spots may still be occasionally detected
on the solar surface.
Conveniently observable minima of Algol occur
at llh. lOm. P.M. on the 16th, at 8h. 38m. p.m.
on the 19th, and at 5h. '27m. p.m. on the 22nd.
Mercury is in inferior conjunction with the Sun on the
6th. During the last third of the month he is visible as a
morning star, but under very unfavourable conditions in
these latitudes, owing to his great southern declination.
On the 21st he rises at 6h. 23m. a.m., or about one hour
and a half before the Sun, with a southern declination at
noon of 20° 51', and an apparent diameter of 7 J". On the
31st he rises at 6h. 2.5m. a.m., or about one hour and a
quarter before the Sun, with a southern declination of
21'" 47', and an apparent diameter of 6j". He is at his
greatest western elongation (25 ) on the 29th. U'hile
visible he describes a direct path in Sagittarius without
approaching any conspicuous star.
Venus is too near the Sun to be observed, as is also the
case with Mars.
Ceres is still in an excellent position for observation.
She souths on the 1st at llh. 35m. p.m., with a northern
declination of 28° 4', her stellar magnitude being about
7i". On the 10th she souths at lOh. 40m. p.m., with a
northern declination of 28° 87'. On the 20th she souths
at 9h. 51m. p.m., with a northern declination of 29° 5 .
On the 31st she souths at 9h. 7m. p.m., with a northern
declination of 29° 27', her stellar magnitude being about
7V. During the month she describes a retrograde path
in Auriga.
•Jupiter is now beginning to be fairly well placed, as
regards his times of rising, for the amateur. On the 1st
he rises at two minutes before midnight, with a southern
declination at noon of 2° 82', and an apparent equatorial
diameter of 89 ". On the 11th he rises at llh. 22m. p.m.,
with a southern declination of 2° 43', and an apparent
equatorial diameter of 40 ". On the 21st he rises at
lOh. 44m. P.M., with a southern declination of 2° 47', and
an apparent equatorial diameter of 40|". On the 31st he
rises at lOh. 4m. p.m., with a southern declination of 2° 48',
and an apparent equatorial diameter of 41". During the
greater part of the month he describes a very short direct
path in Virgo, without approaching any conspicuous star.
He is stationary on the 25th.
Both Saturn and Uranus do not rise till long after
midnight during the month, and they are both very badly
placed for observation in these latitudes.
Neptune is very well situated for observation, rising on the
1st at 2h. 28m. p.m., with a northern declination of 21° 44',
and an apparent diameter of 2^". On the 11th he rises
at Ih. 48m. p.m., with a northern declination of 21° 48'.
On the 21st he rises at lb. 2m. p.m., with a northern
declination of 21° 42'. On the 31st he souths at 8h. 32m.
p.m., with a northern declination of 21° 42'. During the
month he describes a short retrograde path in Taurus, in a
region barren of naked-eye stars.
January is a favourable month for shooting stars, the
most noted shower being that of the Quadrantids, the
radiant point being in E.A. 19h. 12m. and 53° north
declination, the greatest display being visible during the
morning hours of January 1st to 3rd.
The Moon is full at Oh. 24m. a.m. on the 8th ; enters
her last quarter at 8h. 44m. p.m. on the 15th ; is new
at 7h. 25m. a.m. on the 22nd ; and enters her first quarter
at 2h. 88m. p.m. on the 29th. Many of the larger stars of
the Pleiades will be occulted on the evening of the 3rd.
There will be a partial eclipse of the Moon on the evening
of the 7th and early morning of the 8th. The first con-
tact with the penumbra takes place at 9h. 11m. on the 7th ;
the first contact with the shadow at lOh. 57m. p.m., at an
angle of 169° from the Moon's limb towards the east
(viewed for direct image). The middle of the eclipse will
occur at llh. 45m. p.m., about iV'o'''^s o' '^^ ^'s<^ being
obscured. The last contact with the shadow takes place
at thirty-two minutes after midnight on the 7th, at an
angle of 143° from the north point of the Moon's limb
towards the west. The last contact with the penumbra
occurs at 2h. 18m. a.m. on the 8th. There will be a total
eclipse of the Sun on the morning of the 22nd, but it will
be invisible in the British Islands.
Ci^css <2Eolttmn,
By C. D. LooooE, b.a.
Communications for this column should be addressed to
C. D. LococK, Burwash, Sussex, and posted on or before
the 10th of each month.
Solutions of December Problems.
(By W. J. Ashdown.)
No. 1.
1. Q to R4, and mates nest move.
No. 2.
1. R to B2, and mates next move.
Correct Solutions of both problems received from
Alpha, J. T. Blakemore, J. M'Eobert, W. de P. Crousaz,
J. E. Gore, G. Coules, E. C. Noton.
Of No. 1 only, from H. H. Thomas, A. H. Doubleday,
Capt. Forde, W. Clugston, G. M. Norman.
Of No. 2 only, from G. G. Beazley.
No less than four solvers gave 1. R to B3 for No. 2,
overlooking the reply 1. ... B to KB. The correct key,
it will be observed, prevents the dual after 1. . . . B xP.
H. H. Thomas.— la No. 2, if 1. B to Kt3, Kt to B5 (!),
and there is no mate. It is a magnificent " try."
G. (t. Bfirdry. — If B X P, Black retaliates (ch).
A. E. WJiitehousr. — In No. 2, BxKt is met by the
Queen moving on to the Rook's file. B x KtP in No. 1
loses a piece.
H. S. Bnindieth. — You will have seen that your solution
of Mr. Challenger's three-mover was correct ; not so that
of Mr. Slater's insidious two-mover.
ir. Cluijston. — Thanks for the problems, which shall be
examined, and if, as we expect, found worthy, receive early
publication.
tr. Couh'n. — Thanks for the three-mover. The only
obvious drawback consists in the two " short mates " after
two of the King's moves, which look as if they should lead
to main variations, and lead, therefore, instead, to dis-
appointment. The problem, we think, could be improved
by abolishing the two Rooks, and, if possible, utilizing the
KB more.
24
KNOWLEDGE
[Jantjary 1, 1898.
PUZZLES.
By C. D. Locock.
No. 1.
Black (3).
White (ti).
White compels Black to mate in t'wo moves.
No. 2.
Buck (I).
White (1).
White, with Black's assistance, is mated in two moves.
(The Black King has not moved).
White (6).
White to play and di-aw.
[The solution of these positions requires what is known
as a " liberal interpretation " of the laws of chess, particu-
larly that relating to Pawn promotions. They are not
serious studies, but possibly not devoid of amusement.]
CHESS INTELLIGENCE.
M. Janowski defeated Herr Walbrodt in their match at
Berlin by five games to three, a very creditable pei-fonnance
considering that the score at one time was three to one iu
favour of Herr Walbrodt, who had only to draw one of the
next two games in order to win the match. When the
score reached three all, the match was prolonged for
another three games according to the conditions arranged,
and M. .Janowski ^^inning the first two of these became
the victor.
The Amateur Championship Meeting will lie held this
year at Belfast. The experiment is a novelty, and the
distance from London may militate against a very repre-
sentative entry. The Irish amateurs, however, will have
a good opportunity of testing their strength.
Under the title of " Pollock Memories, " a selection of
the games of the late W. H. K. Pollock will shortly be
issued. A biography and portrait will be included, and
the games will be annotated. The price to subscribers
will be two shillings and nine pence post free. Address :
Mrs. F. F. Rowland, 6, Rus-in-Urbe, Kingstown, Ireland.
We regret to announce the death of the Rev. E. .1.
HuntEman, president of the Sheffield Chess Association,
and formerly a well-known figure at the meetings of the
Counties' Chess Association.
It is stated that Mr. Lasker, who has abandoned chess
lately in favour of science, will return to England in the
summer aud renew his former pursuit.
In the Championship Tournament of the City of London
Chess Club the best scores so far have been ol)tained by
Dr. Smith, Mr. H. W. Trenchard, and Mr. W. Ward.
A four-handed chess match, played on December l.Sth
between the British Chess Club and the Four-handed
Chess Club, resulted in a draw, each side scoring one
game.
KNOWLEDGE, PUBLISHED MONTHLY.
Contents of No. 146.
The Heart of a
Grenville A. ^
F.o.s. (fllu*tr
v,'ontinent. By
. Cole, U.K.t.A.,
ited)
By W. E.
285
The Total Solar Eclipse of 1896.
(Illustrated) 286
Artificial Smisi>otB. BytUeR«v.
A. East 2SS
British Ornithological Notes,
Conducted by Harry F.
WitherljT, f.z.s., m.b.o.u. ... 290
Letters: — A. T. Mnstenoan ; M.
L. Lemou; A. G. Moncreiif
Grahame ; G. Harconrt Hill ... 291
Science Notes. (Illustrated) ...
Obituary
The Beaver in Norway. By E.
Lydekker, b.a., r.R.s. thhm-
trnted)
Notices of Books
Short Notices
Books Received ...
The British Trap-door Spidcr.-I I.
By Fred. Euock. f.l.s., f.e.s.
{Illustrated)-.
By C. D. Locock,
Plate. — Artificial Sunspots.
NOTICES.
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Ih?
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Editorp, *' Knowledge," tV2S, Hieh Holborn. Uondon W.C.
Februaky 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE.
P^
IlLUSTRATED MAGAZINE
&NCEJL1TERAT
Founded in 1881 by RICHARD A. PROCTOR.
LONDON : FEBRVAEY 1, 1S98.
CONTENTS.
The Floor of a Continent. By Geenvii.le A. .T. Cole,
M.R.I. A., F.a.s. {Illustrated)
Economic Botany. By John E. Jacksox, a.l.s., etc.
From a Hole in the Mudflats. By Habrt F. Withbrby,
F.Z.S., M.B.O.U. (Iltustraled)...
Liquid Fluorine. By C. F. Townsejjd, F.c.s. (Illustrated)
Letters :—L. Paxton; "G. E. E."; Feed. TVniTTERON;
Joseph P. Nttitn; J. Ernest Gbubb; W. H. Cock;
H. U. Jeffert; Ivo F. H. CarrGeegg...
British Ornithological Notes. Conducted by Harry F.
WiTHERBY, F.z.s., M B.o.r. (Illustrated)
Science Notes
Notices of Books
Short Xotices
Books Received
Total Solar Eclipse, January 22nd, 1898.
Photograph of the Spiral Nebula Messier 33 Trian-
guli. By Isaac Roberts, d.sc, f.e.s. (Plate)
Moon in Eclipse. January 7th. 18 By L. Paxton ...
The Spectra of Bright Stars. By E. W. M.\under,
F.R.A.S. ...
Ancient Red Deer Antlers. By R. Ltdekkee, b.a., p.e.s.
{Illi'sfrafed}
Notes on Comets and Meteors. By W. F. Denning,
F.R.A.S. ... ... ... ... ... ...
The Face of the Sky for February. By Heebert
Sadler, f.e.a.s. ...
Chess Column. By C. D. Locock, b.a
THE FLOOR OF A CONTINENT.
By Grenville A. J. Cole, m.r.i.a., f.g.s., Professor of
Geolo'ifi in the Royal ( 'ollege of Science for Ireland.
WHEN we consider the thickness of the sedi-
mentary deposits that lie beneath us at any
point on the surface of the earth, and
compare them with the depth of four
thousand miles that separates us from the
earth's centre, we may come to regard the whole stratified
series as a mere blanket on the true substance of the globe.
Eversincethecrust became solid — ever since theatmosphere
cooled and the rain began to fall — the earth's surface has
been subject to denudation, and the dust and mud of ii
have been carried into the shallow depressions that have
formed in it from time to time. Wrinklings of the crust
have uplifted these layers of earth-dust, and have folded
them, together with more fundamental matter, into
mountains and continental margins. In the sections thus
revealed, the sweepings of the earth— the sedimentary
series — assume to our eyes magnificent proportions ; but
every now and then we have a glimpse of the real body of
the earth (or, rather, of its real skin), cleaned from this
dust of ages. In no spot on the globe have all the strati-
fied rocks that are known to us been piled continuously
one upon another ; but, even if this had been the case, they
would have formed a layer less than twenty-five miles thick.
If we represent the earth's radius by ten inches, this layer
would appear, on the same scale, as less than one-sixteenth
of an inch.
Where, indeed, denudation has long been active, as in
the northern regions of Europe and America, we find
ourselves in the presence of a vast bared surface, in which
there is little to remind us of the sediments of ordinary
geological periods. Here and there, isolated relics, like
the marine .Jurassic beds of the island of Ando, suggest
to us the coating of stratified rocks that once spread over
much of this denuded area ; but the main masses are of
Pre-Cambrian age — that is, they underlie the beds that
contain the oldest clearly recorded fauna on the globe.
Here, then, we seem to be in touch with the true substance
of the crust — with the floor on which our filmy continental
or oceanic accumulations rest.
Without entering into microscopic details, we may see
that there is a remarkable uniformity of character in the
rocks that form this floor. Gneisses, resembling granites,
but with a " streaked out " and even banded arrangement
of their constituents, form the largest portion of the
mass. Their chemical composition* almost always shows
a high percentage of silica, and the alkalies amount to
five or even eight per cent. Their essential structure, the
" foliated " arrangement of their mineral constituents,
may have been induced in them by pressure after they had
become practically solid, or by the flow of the whole mass
while the crystals were still in course of construction.
The larger constituents thus possess a lenticular form, as
if drawn out at their edges ; and these lenses lie in similar
positions throughout considerable masses of the rock.
The smaller constituents seem to have flowed round
about them, streaming on in fairly parallel layers ; and
thus "foliation-planes" have been set up, along which
even coarse-grained gneisses tend to split when struck.
In many gneisses there are distinct rock-bands, some
bands, for instance, resembling mica-schist, while others
resemble fine-grained granite, rich in quartz and felspar
(Fig. 1). In such cases it is quite possible that one type
of rock has intruded into another in fine parallel sheets,!
or that a viscid mass of varied composition has been pressed
out underground, and so has received a gneissic structure.!
Sometimes above the typical gneisses, and sometimes
associated with them, there is usually a series of crystalline
rocks of much finer grain and of greater variety of com-
position. Foliation is present in them, and they are
classed collectively as schists. Mica-schist, a foliated
mixture of quartz and mica (usually muscovite), and
commonly accompanied by red-brown garnet, is the type
most extensively developed. The schists present many
analogies with sedimentary rocks, and many mica-schists
have undoubtedly arisen from the extreme alteration
of sediments under heat and pressure ; but the planes of
foliation only rarely correspond to those of original depo-
sition, and the crystalline character of the constituents
* See, for instance. Roth, " AUgemeine imd chain. Geolo^ie," Bd,
II., p. 397.
t Compare A. C. Lawson, " A Multiple Diabase Dvke," American
Geologist, Vol. XXVI., p. 29(5.
X See Sir A. Geilde and J. J. Teall, " On Banded Structure of
Gabbros in Skye," Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc, Vol. I>., p. 6.57, and Plate
XXVI.
26
KNOWLEDGE
[Febhuaky 1, 1808.
has been, to say the least, intensified during alteration.
Modern observation in this matter has supported the views
of that master geologist, Charles Darwin, who opposed his
opinion to that of Sedgwick, Lyell, and most of the teachers
of his day.*
The present tendency is to regard the ancient schists and
gneisses as a complex mass of formerly molten materials,
which have successively intruded through one another, and
which have been, as a whole, deformed and foliated by subse-
quent pressures. I Sir A. Geikie suggests that the " over-
lying graphite-schists, mica-schists, and limestones of the
Gairloch and Loch Carron may thus be surviving
fragments of the stratified crust into which these deep-
seated masses were intruded," the latter masses now
forming the Lewisian gneiss of Scotland.
In almost every area of ancient gneissic and schistose
rocks, there is found a series of true sediments, deposited
across the worn-down edges of the foliation -planes, but
still earlier than the fauna known as Cambrian. Examples
are the Huronian de-
posits of North America,
and the little - altered
Torridon sandstones
that form the bulwark
of western Sutherland.
The occurrence of frag-
ments of the funda-
mental rocks in this
overlying series shows
that the essential struc-
tures of the old complex
gneissic group had been
impressed upon it long
before Cambrian times.
Prof. Bonney ] is so
struck by this fact that
he regards the banding
of the gneisses as due
to conditions which
have not repeated them-
selves since ordinary
sediments began to be
deposited upon the
globe. Whether we
FiQ. 1.— Block ,,f One
complete passage from sediments into schists, and from
schists into gneisses, and urged that gneiss was the ultimate
stage of the alteration of ordinary sediments.
At other times the fundamental gneissic mass is found
to send ofi' dykes and veins into the overlying rocks, which
we have hitherto regarded as being far younger than the
gneiss. Sometimes these appearances may be due to the
intrusion of a granite through both series, its close
resemblance to the gneisses allowing it to lie among them
undetected. But another solution has been offered, which
presents us with a new aspect of the continental floor.
Mr. .Joseph Nolan, in 1879, suggested that granitic
intrusions might arise from the depression and remelting
of an ancient metamorphic series. This series would
remain for the most part " fundamental" ; but its offshoots
would, of course, be later in age — /.c, in date of consolida-
tion— than the rocks invaded by them. Prof. A. C.
Lawsont has attributed much of the structure of the
Laurentian gneisses of Canada to this second period of
flow, and has provided
us with excellent
photographs of gneiss
including fragments of
the overlying series.
Similar phenomena are
recorded by Dr.Gregory ;
at the junction between
what was regarded as
" fundamental gneiss"
and the schists of the
Western Alps ; and the
conclusion is arrived at
that these central
gneisses of the moun-
tain-chain are as recent
as Miocene and even
Pliocene times. M.
Jlichel-Levy,; as is now
well known, has proved
that the gneiss- granite
of Mont Blanc
wentv centimetres long, from Co. Mayo, showing . • • ., .1 ■ f
(i.) curving upper surface formeil bv fracture along a foliation-plane ; (ii!) dissimilar '•"ll^l^S in tne ScniStS
materials in different bands, the lighter ones consisting of quartz and felspar, and Surrounding it ; SO that
the darker ones being rich in dark mica ; (iii.) a lenticular mass at the righi-hand here again we fail to
adopt his view, or the «'°<*. "'"' t'le darker layers (lowing round it. recognise the true con-
more rigidly iiniformi- tinental floor in its new
tarian one of Sir Archibald Geikie, we must see in the guise of an igneous invader. General McMahon, again,
complex floor of schists and gneisses the oldest rocks sees in the gneissose granite of the Him:ilayas a rock of late
For our present
accessible to us in the earth's crust,
purposes they are " fundamental."
Yet the upper boundary of the fundamental gneiss
presents difficulties when it comes to be surveyed in detail.
At times, subsequent pressures have obliterated the
discordances between the gneissic surface and the over-
lying stratified deposits ; the great earth-mill has rolled
all these rocks out together, and has produced a community
of structure, and even an appearance of continuity.; So
that there is little wonder that the older geologists saw a
* " Geological Observations on South America," Minerva Library
edition, pp. 439 and 440.
t Compare Sir A. Geikie, " Ancient Volcanoes of the British
Isles," Vol. I., p. 117; and C. R. Van Hise, " North American Pre-
Cambrian Geology," SLvteenth Annual Report, U.S. Geol. Survey,
1895, p. 753.
X "The Foundation-Stones of the Earth's Crust," Nature, Vol-
XXXIX. (1888), p. 92. Compare a very interesting paper on crystalline
gneisses, by J. Lomas, P.G.s., Oeol. Magazine, 1897, p. 537.
§ See Van Hise, op. cit., pp. "30 and 752.
Eocene age, and regards its foliation as the result of pressure
acting while it was still a viscid mass. It is doubtful,
indeed, if the gneissic cores of mountain -ranges ever
represent the oldest rocks of the chain. Probably they
have no age but that of the folding of the strata. The
complex arch of stratified rocks was formed, and fused
material (often derived from the continental floor) was
forced into it as it rose.
* " Metamorphic and Intrusive Bocks of Tyrone," Oeol. Mag.,
1879, p. 1.59.
t " Geologv of the Rainv Lake Region," Geot. Snrv. of Canada.
Ami. Report,'lSb7, pp. 130.140.
X " The Waldensian Gneisses and their Place in the Cottian
Sequence," Quart. Jouni. Geol.Soc, Vol. L., 1894, pp. 235, 261, 270,
and 273.
§ Bull, lies Services ile la Carte gi'ol. de la France, No. 9 (1890).
See also Gregory, '' Geologv of Western Alps," Science Progress,
Vol. III., p. 169.
II Proc. Oeol. Assoc, Vol. XIV. (189.5), p. 93, and Geol. Maq, 1897.
p. 304, etc.
February 1, 1808.
KNOWLEDGE
27
If doubt hangs round these masssB, which were once
thought to be ribs of the primordial earth, but which
appear to be often of very modern origin, we may look with
more respect upon the fundamental rocks exposed in broader
areas. Scandinavia and the north of North America have
already been referred to ; but bosses of the continental
floor appear in many places, entirely surrounded by the
deposits of later days. In most of these cases the sur-
roimding areas have subsided, leaving the resisting ribs
and pillars of the old crust standing firmly. As the tloor
of the continent must also have subsided, to allow of the
falling in of the upper layers, it is very likely that some
contrary upward movement was at the same time given to
these bosses and plateaux which now stand above the
general level. While subsidence predominated, owing to
the contraction of the earth's interior, we may conceive a
buckling of the floor, some parts rising as others fell.
The sediments slipped into the new hollows from the flanks
of the masses across which they once had stretched ; so
that a series of dis-
locations (faults) —>
now surrounds the
exposed and ele-
vated portions of
the floor.
Suess* and
Neumayr f have
emphasized most
strongly the part
played by subsi-
dence in bringing
the resisting knots
of the continental
floors to light. The
word " horst," used
by Suess for a ridge
left upstanding be-
tween two adjacent
areas of subsidence,
has become extend-
ed so as to include
any old mass
bounded by faults,
along which
younger strata have
slipped down.
Favourite examples
are found in the
Black Forest and
the Vosges, which are bold highland areas composed mainly
of "fundamental" rocks. The Feldberg in the former
still rises 4901 feet above the sea, and the Hoheneck
near Gerardmer gives us 4580 feet. On the north-east
we have to cross the Danube to the Bavarian forest,
and on the south-west we must reach the central plateau
of France, to find the compeers of these high irregular
masses.
In the uplands of Bohemia we find a wide exposure of
the floor of Europe, giving us a strange undulating
granite land. Every hollow is set with lakelets, beside
which the villages are placed. One may travel day after
day across the plateau, at heights of eleven hundred to
thirteen hundred feet above the sea. Now one ascends
a gentle swelling upland, but the towers of the town
in the next hollow can already be descried across the
ridge. The descent is thus similarly gentle ; and the
* " Dcs AntUtz der Erde," Bd. I. (1883), pp. 167, 265, etc.
t "ErrgescWchte," Bd. I. (1.886), pp. 309, 327, 331, etc
1"IG. 2. — Eidge ot Amicut Ku. L.*, .-ecu iron
prominence in the landscape. (From a
broad surface of the ancient rocks is only occasionally
broken by a valley.
The central plateau of France presents very different
features. It is far more broken, far more cut into; and
portions of it, rising above the general level, are covered
with heather, and seem to form independent moorland
ranges. But, when we enter fairly on it, we soon recognise
the old uniform surface of the plateau, though hundreds
of streams have carved deep hollows, into which we descend
from time to time. Thus, in the western portion of the
plateau, we cross river after river running to the Atlantic,
notably the lordly Menne at Limoges, the Briance among
the mountains of Pierre-BulHere, the Vc'zi-re at the foot of
the steep street of Uzerche, and many other minor streams,
until we drop from the rim of these antique highlands into
the great valley of the Correze. The roads are carried,
however, as far as possible along the ridges between
adjacent valleys ; we catch no gUmpse of the streams until
we actually cross them, lost as they are in the deep brown
cuts that they have
made ; and looking
across country from
one high -perched
village to another,
the upper sturface
seems wonderfully
level — a plateau
undisturbed by
structural lines. It
is as if we covdd
sweep Sutherland
clear of the Torri-
don sandstone and
other stratified
masses, the rubbish
heaps of the early
days of denudation,
and reveal the stUl
older floor of funda-
mental gneiss and
•_,'ranite upon which
these strata were
laid down.
Upstanding
blocks, then, in
some places, vast
denuded areas in
othsrs,reveal tous,
across a continent,
the nature of the floor on which it lies. The British Isles,
as so often happens, serve us as a model of these larger
geological features. If the Outer Hebrides recall to us the
worn-down surface of North America, from the great lakes to
Hudson's Bay, the hills east of Church Stretton (Fig. 2), the
JIalvem range, and the little plateau of Charnwood Forest
are excellent examples of the " horsts." Formerly these
masses were held to be igneous, and later than the rocks
through which they now protrude. The patches of old strata
upon their flanks were not unnaturally regarded as altered
products of the easily recognisable beds on either hand. But
more detailed mapping has shown that the floor of Europe
is here brought to our notice through the covering of strata
that once stretched ttniformly from Wales to the eastern
counties.* Old ridges, which were buried even in Cambrian
times, have reasserted themselves, their horst-like nature
being often evidenced by the great faults that can be traced
* See, for instance, Geologists' Assopiation, Record of Excursions,
. 412. - . -
I i^jnircli Strrttou, Shrop;.liiri',slioHing tliei:
photograph by Mr. J. J. Cole, p.h.a.s.J
28
KNOWLEDGE
[Febbuary 1, 1898.
along tbeir flanks. The fine range of the Malverns — the
backbone of the English Midlands — may thus owe much of
its pre-eminence to the subsidence of the country to the
east, whereby the Trias now forms a lowland which is easily
flooded by the Severn ; while the Carboniferous rocks,
which cause such mountainous country further north, are
safely hidden away far below the reach of denudation.
The floor of a continent is, then, a reality — something
that supports this wrinkled film of scarps and furrows, of
level plains and axial ridges, on which we spend our lives.
If we cross a continent and an ocean, we say that we have
seen something of the world — much as a fly who should
contemplate St. Peter's from the weathered surface of the
dome. The true world lies beneath us ; and as yet the
only certain clue that we possess as to its constitution is
its well-determined mean specific gravity. This figure is
5-6, as against 2-6 or 27 for the mean specific gravity of
the accessible crust. Denser masses than those familiar
to us in the crust thus seem to form the great body of our
planet ; and it is very likely that our continental floors
are really portions of the lightest layer on the globe.
Processes of denudation, acting on the surface, have
separated the constituents of this layer; have collected, for
example, the heavy iron-ores at some points, or have
formed carbonates and sulphates and hydrous compounds,
of various densities, at others ; while heavier materials,
forced up through fissures from below, have added sheets
of basalt or bosses of gabbro to the manifold rocks of the
outer film. Nor must we forget that the remelting of the
old crust has locally enabled it to absorb masses above it,
and has thus increased its mineral complexity. The
general mass of the " floor," however, has remained much
as it was — a series of granites and gneisses and highly
siliceous schists of comparatively low specific gravity.
We must refer in conclusion to Mr. Osmond Fisher's
" Physics of the Earth's Crust " ■ for a discussion of how
this light siliceous layer is probably thicker beneath the
continents and thinner beneath the oceans. Both the plumb-
line and the pendulum tell the same tale. The former should
be drawn out of the perpendicular by the attraction of high
continental land ; and from a survey of the mass of land
that stands, in any case, above the level of the sea,
the theoretical amount of deflection of the plumb-line can
be calculated. But the actual deflection has been found, by
experiments in India, to be less than the calculated amount.
Archdeacon Pratt, after much labour, arrived at this con-
clusion ; and Sir George Airy, in 1855, pointed out its pro-
bable explanation. The attraction of mountain-masses, and
consequently of continents as a whole, is deficient, because
the light crust is actually thickened beneath them ; hence,
for every great anticlinal ridge or bulge upon the surface
a corresponding ridge or bulge seems to be formed down-
wards, displacing the more dense and basic matter below.
Mountains have " roots," therefore, and tablelands are
similarly thickenings of the light outer crust. If there is
even a thin liquid layer — to make the smallest demand —
beneath the consolidated crust, it is easy to see how lateral
pressure in the crust may produce a bulge in two directions,
both upwards and downwards. The continental floor, on
these grounds, becomes still more real to us, and may be
compared to the mass of concrete on which buildings are
floated in equilibrium when foundations have to be laid in
oozy mud or sand. The formation of these knots in the
crust need not be opposed to our view of the instability of
continents and ocean-basins ; for the lower layers of a
continental mass may become melted off, in accordance
with Mr. Fisher's own "theory of the earth," while the
* Second edition (1889), pp. 124, 195, 204, etc.
thinner ocean-floor may become thickened in its turn by
compression. Most of us, however, must be content to
return from these somewhat speculative regions to the
continental floor itself; and in the relations of the rocks
that form it, in their mode of consoUdation, their inter-
penetration, and the deformations sufi'ered by them, we
shall find absorbing problems for a lifetime.
ECONOMIC BOTANY.
By .John R. .Jackson, .\.l.s., etc., Keeper nf the Museums,
Roijal (iardens, Kew.
INTRODUCTOEY.
THE first and by far the most important attempt,
in this and perhaps in any other country, to
elucidate and make popular the economic side of
botanical science was begun by the late Sir W. .1.
Hooker, when in 1847 one room of the building
now known as Museum No. 2 in the Royal Gardens, Kew,
was fitted up for the purpose to which it has ever since
been devoted.
The foundation and progress of the collections now
contained in the three Museum buildings in the Royal
Gardens is certainly remarkable. It was in the year just
mentioned that the building, which had hitherto been
used partly as a storehouse for fruit, " was added by
command of Her Majesty to the Botanic Garden proper."
The nucleus thus formed consisted of the Director's
private collections, presented by himself. To quote from
the official guide to the Museums ; "No sooner was the
establishment and aim of the Museum generally made
known than contributions to it poured in from all quarters
of the globe, until in a few years the ten rooms of the
building, with its passages and corners, were absolutely
crammed with specimens. Application was therefore
made to Parliament by the Chief Commissioner for a
grant to defray the expense of an additional buildini; for
the proper accommodation of the objects, and the house
occupied by Museum No. 1, opened to the public in the
spring of 1857, is the result."
From that time the collections have gone on increasing
in importance and value till at the present time they
stand unrivalled all the world over. Besides this, in
almost every botanic garden at home and abroad, as well
as in most teaching centres and in large towns, museums
on the system of those so well known at Kew have been
established.
The result of all this has been the diffusion of a
knowledge of economic botany, so that at the present
time the subject is taken up even by our elementary
schools, most of which have their own small collections
for teaching purposes. It must be confessed, how-
ever, that until the last ten or twelve years the subject
did not command that attention its great importance
deserved. The structure of plants, their affinities, their
geographical distribution, and similar points attracted the
attention of the scentific worker, who gave no consideration
to their properties and uses. The connection, however,
between the purely scientific and the economic sides is
very apparent upon a moment's consideration. Thus, in
some natural orders there is a distinct property running
through the plants which constitute the order, which may
serve as an indication of their botanical affinities and also
prove them to be of economic value or otherwise. Such, for
instance, we find in the Malriiceie, where the inner barks
for the most part abound in long soft fibres, and the roots
and fruits of many are mucilaginous — the roots of the marsh
Februarv 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE
29
mallow (Althcea oflicincilis] and the fruits of gombo or
ochra (Hihiscus «sc»/ph/ms) being illustrations — while in the
allied order, Sterctiliuccic, the fibrous inner barks are inter-
laced. Again, in (Jcntiaitea- all parts of the plants abound
in a bitter principle, which makes them valuable as tonic or
febrifugal medicines. Further, some natural orders abound
in milky juices, some of which are wholesome while others
are poisonous ; and othtrs, again, upon solidifying become
elastic and form caoutchouc or india - rubber, and in
this connection may be mentioned such orders as Arto-
i-arpetE, F.uphorhiiuca, Apovynmrce, and Asch-piadca. A
knowledge, then, of the properties of the several natural
orders, or of any group or genua of plants, is not only
of assistance in their determination, but is also of
much help in deciding their economic or commercial
value. As a proof of this we may give but one illus-
tration. It not unfrequently happens that new oil
seeds make their appearance in the Liverpool or London
markets, and, being unknown to the brokers, do not find
buyers until their botanical affinity is determined, and
their harmless or poisonous nature thus known. Serious
coDsequenceB might otherwise arise if the seeds were
allowed to be crushed, and the cake sold for feeding
cattle. This is only one example of the importance of a
knowledge of economic botany in connection with trade and
commerce. That it is a great factor in the development
of the resources of the vegetable kingdom all over the
world we hope to show in succeeding articles, in which we
propose to treat of the principal products in this great
kingdom of nature.
FROM A HOLE IN THE MUDFLATS.
By Hakry F. Witherby, k./.s., ji.b.o.u.
IN the months of December, January, and February
the mudflats of our tidal rivers are not nearly
so attractive to the ornithologist as in the autumn.
Then the birds are much more numerous in
species if not in numbers, owing to a great influx
of migrants staying here and there for a brief visit on
their way to the South. Amongst this host of migrants
there may always be the chance of picking up a rare
bird, and it is this chance, and the variety of the birds,
which makes shore-shooting so much more interesting
in autumn than in winter. Then, again, unless there
is a hard and continuous frost, the birds become much
wilder, and therefore much more difficult to obtain as
the season advances. For instance, in August, when
the young knot, godwit, sanderling, and others have just
arrived from the North, they will often allow you to
approach them on the open mudflat to within a few
yards. In December these same birds will not allow
you to come within two hundred or three hundred yards
of them in the open. In the winter, therefore (except,
as has been said, during a frost), the shore-shooter has
to work very hard and resort to many stratagems to
obtain the birds he wants.
There are many ways of getting within gunshot of
these wary birds. They may be stalked if there is suit-
able cover, and the birds are near enough to it. This
method entails careful marking down, generally a large
amount of crawling, absolute silence, and frequent
disappointments. The joy of one success, however, will
compensate for a dozen failures. Another method is to
hide behind a bank or in some suitable place near the
high-water mark, and wait for the tide, which, as it
advances, drives the birds before it and gradually within
range of the hidden gun.
Yet another way, if you know the ground well, and have
studied the flights of the birds over the land at high tide,
is to lie hid in one of these lines of flight and take your
chance of their flying within shot.
It will be easily seen that all these methods are very
uncertain, and that their success or failure is influenced
greatly by the element of luck.
There is no method known to me in shore-shooting that
is certain to be a success, but perhaps the best all-round
way of obtaining shore birds in the winter is to dig a hole
in the mud, sit in it, and wait. This plan certainly
does not appear a very cheerful one at first sight, but to
anyone who is a really keen ornithologist it will soon
prove a most interesting occupation, notwithstanding the
cold, the cramped position, and the slimy mud.
As many of the readers of Knowledge have probably
never either dug or occupied a hole in the mudflats,
a brief description of how it should be done may prove
acceptable. I was taught the art by a Yorkshireman,one
of the best 'longshore-shooters I have ever known.
Carrying our guns, game bags, tieldglasses, a long-handled
wooden spade, and a bundle of straw, we arrived at the
river bank just as the tide was at its lowest ebb. It
would be, I think, impossible to successfully dig a hole
where the mud is a dead flat, because the mud thrown out
of the hole is black, and being scattered about on the
brown surface would scare the birds away for a mile round.
There is, however, usually on every extensive mudflat a
part which is more or less broken up into a wavy sort of
formation.
We made our way to an excellent place of this sort about a
mile from the shore, where long parallel ridges about three
feet wide were separated from each other by troughs full of
water. We selecteil a good wide ridge, flanked on either
side by fairly deep ditches, and commenced operations.
The bundle of straw was put on the mud, and on it were
balanced my friend's gun and game bag, and his coat, lor
digging a hole in the mud is warm work on the coldest
day. First of all a circle was marked out, and then the
digging commenced, and the mud as it came out was
thrown into the troughs at the side. The mud stuck.
every now and then, even to the wooden spade, which had
to be continually lubricated in the water to make it run
* If tlie shoi-e-sliootci- is fucky enougli to be living on the spot, he
may tliink it wortli while to sink a tub in the llats. and thus make
things more eomfortable : but few have the chance of doing this.
30
KNOWLEDGE.
[Febbuaby 1, 1898.
smoothly. Having dug a hole about three feet in diameter
and three feet in depth, half the area was dug out another
two feet in depth. When this was done, and the straw
was put in and arranged round the sides, there was a
capital and snug retreat, if a little dirty, with a good seat
and plenty of room for the legs.
The hole should be dug to such a depth that when
sitting in it the eyes are just above the surface of the
mudflat. Of course the shape of the hole can be varied
to suit its position. The water will not ooze through
the mud, and a well-dug hole will keep quite watertight
until the tide flows into it ; but sometimes the stratum
of mud is not very deep, and when the sand at the
bottom is reached the water will immediately come
through and soon flood the hole. A shallow oblong
hole, of the same depth all over, can easily be made
in this case. The plan then is to sit at the bottom and
stretch the legs
out, but this is
a more cramped
position than the
other, and shoot-
ing is conse-
quently made
more difficult.
Before getting
into the hole,
great care should
be taken in
levelling and
hiding as far as
possible the mud
that has been
thrown out, and
the fewer the
footmarks near
the hole the
better.
Birds, and
especially the
wading birds,
have wonderfully
keen eyes, and
the slightest
elevation or dark
spot can be seen
ata long distance
on a mudflat.
Once seated in
the hole the first
thing is to make
yourself com-
fortable. If the
weather is cold the more straw you have and the thicker
your clothes the better. Little " pockets " can be gouged
out of the sides of your retreat, and filled with straw,
forming convenient receptacles for cartridges and field-
glasses. Cartridges should always be handy, because it is
not easy to get at coat pockets when crouching in a hole.
Nest a few little wisps of straw should be stuck here and
there round the rim of the hole on which to rest the gun.
Great care should be taken over this simple precaution.
In the excitement of the moment — say, when a big flock
of birds is approaching — the muzzle of the gun is apt to be
stuck into the mud, and when the gun is pulled away the
barrels are securely "corked." The result is a damaged
gun and perhaps a great opportunity missed.
When everything is arranged to your satisfaction you
begin to look about you. You have the same view as a
bitd would have when it is sitting upon the mud — and an
extraordinary view it is. Nothing but a flat expanse of
mud stretching for miles all round. There is nothing
to guide the eye — there is no correct idea of size or
distance ; a small stake a mile away looks enormous and
quite near. There is no living thing to be seen — nothing
but miles and miles of mud rolling away to your limited
horizon, where the water can now and again be made out
as it sparkles in the rays of a winter sun. Suddenly there
is a swish of wings behind you, and a little dunlin appears
like magic, and settles down within a few yards. Then
comes another and another, until there is a small flock of
them. Dunlin are silly little birds, and quite unlike the
other birds of the mudflats. They never see danger
until it is too late to escape. So these birds come and
settle down within a few yards of a deadly gun, and, with-
out looking round, immediately begin to feed. Common,
tame, confiding,
inconspicuous,
low - bred httle
birds, they might
appropriately be
termed ihe
sparrows of the
mudflats. Never-
theless, they are
very interesting
to watch when
they are near,
and ignorant of
the presence of a
human being.
They feed very
industriously —
running up and
down the mud,
probing with
their slender biUs
here and there,
and singing in a
soft and pleasing
way all the time.
Now and again a
couple wiU have
a little dispute
about some
dainty morsel,
which results in
all sorts of little
antics. There is
never a stand-up
fight, but just a
little bickering
and pushing and dancing about and the affair is over ; one
of them gets the tit-bit, and the feeding goes on as peaceably
and assiduously as ever. The birds will walk all round
you, but sooner or later one comes within a foot of your
face, and then suddenly his terrible danger dawns upon
him. He is startled out of his life, and flies up with
a "tchurr," uttered as though he had a sudden catch
in the breath. The others follow suit, and you are once
more left in solitude.
Now is the time to use the field-glasses. Ever so far
away there is a huge black mass on the mud — it is a flock
of, perhaps, six or eight thousand knot. Although to the
naked eye it looked like a great black cloth spread out upon
the mud, if you look carefully with the glasses you wUl see
that ii is continually moving. Every moment a bird flies
up to change its ground, and shows its white under-side,
The Bar-tailol G,.ilwit. I'liotograi.lirtl from LiU' l.v R. B. L.nU'e
February 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE,
oL
which looks like a flake of snow against the black mass.
Beyond this flock there are a number of large dark objects
moving about. By their shape and the manner in which
they feed you can tell they are curlew, although they are
too far off for you to see their long curved bills.
Five fair-sized birds have risen from the mud and come
flying towards you. At flrst you cannot make them out,
but as they come nearer their long and slightly upturned
bills and light brown plumage can be seen, and you put
them down as godwit. Now, if you are on the east coast
it is not every day you will see a godwit in the winter, so
you are particularly anxious to get one of these birds. As
ill luck will have it they seem to be passing right out of
range, so you whistle " whee-whaup-whaup, whee-whaup-
whaup." They have heard it and round they come. You
keep on whistling and crouch low, and the silly birds come
right over your head. Bang ! bang ! \'ou have got one but
missed the other, and you consider yourself lucky that
they answered to the call.
Mr. R. B. Lodge, who is well known as a very successful
bird photographer, has very kindly allowed me to here re-
produce a photograph of a living godwit. When the
unapproachable nature of shore birds (on account of their
shyness and the want of cover) is taken into consideration,
this photograph may be regarded as a triumph of skill and
patience. I might here advise j\Ir. Lodge to try photo-
graphing birds from a hole in the mudflats. I feel sure it
would prove a success.
After retrieving the godwit, and when you are once again
settled down, you find that the tide has been slowly but
surely creeping up, and as it comes so it drives in the birds
with it. There are usually dunlin, grey plover, ringed
plover, and a few other birds (according to the time of
year), fairly near the shore even when the tide is right out ;
but the big flocks of knot, the flocks of duck and geese,
the parties of curlew and others, generally feed right at
the edge of the water. When the tide was far out, and
there were a number of square miles of uncovered mud, it
was just a chance if a flock, or a single bird even, came
within the limited range of your gun ; but now, with the
tide well up, the feeding grounds circumscribed, and the
flocks on the move, you will have the best chances of the
day.
Lucky indeed is the man who, as he crouches in his
hole, hears a deafening roar and rush of wings, and looks
up to find one of those vast flocks of knot sweeping along,
forty yards above his head. It is an impressive sound and
a thrilling sight, and neither will be forgotten.
If the hidden gunner is not overpowered by the spectacle,
and has the presence of mind to tire, he will pick up a
score or two of birds than which none are better eatint,';
but the sight and sound alone will be a rich reward for
many hours of cold and dreary waiting.
It is, indeed, rire to be so close to one of these enormous
flocks on the wing, but there are other good things that
will come to the man who perseveres, even in sitting Ln a
hole on the mudflats.
The curlew — one of the wariest of birds — may be
watched at close quarters and brought to bag.
I well remember one winter's day. I had been watching
and waiting without success for four hours in a hole
which had taken some labour to dig, as more than one
blistered finger testified. The tide was rapidly approaching
and all chances of sport would soon be over for the day, when
eighteen curlews suddenly appeared and settled down within
two hundred yards of me. They commenced feeding, and
to my disgust I soon saw that they were slowly walking
further and further away. As a last resource I began to
whistle softly " courlieu cur-cur-courlieu." They heard
me and stopped feeding. I whistled louder and louder.
They did not seem quite satisfied, but nevertheless they
turned and began to slowly walk towards me, feeding as
they came. I continued to whistle, and as they got nearer
I could see them plainly and watch their every action :
the leisurely way they fed — walking along in a stately
fashion, and every now and again looking round or
stepping aside to probe their long curved beaks up to the
very base in the soft mud. Their manner struck me as a
great contrast to that of the dunlin, with his dumpy little
body, his quick run and eager probing here, there, and
everywhere. But I soon began to wish the curlew would
walk a little faster. I was becoming tired of whistling, and
the tide was getting very near and would soon flood me
out. At last one of the curlew was well within range and
several more were fairly near. The water began to trickle
into the hole, so I jumped up and made sure of the bird
nearest to me, but missed with the second barrel. Had I
been an older hand I should have done as a friend of mine
once did. There was a flock of Brent geese walking
towards him. He waited patiently until one of the birds
actually came to the edge of the hole, and was naturally
surprised to see a man there. The man jumped up and
shot a goose a little distance off, and then bowled over the
one which had been so near to him, and had by that time
flown away about forty yards.
One has to be careful when walking off the mudflats at
night. The ridges of mud are slippery and deceptive. I
once fell full length into two feet of water, and drove my
gun into the mud up to the breech. A friend of mine
once stepped into an old hole which was full of water.
Luckily, he went in feet first. Had it been head first, it
is unlikely that he would have got out again.
A carefully dug hole will last two or three days before
it either falls in or becomes silted up. Of course it fills
with water and has to be baled out before it can be
occupied again, and however dry it is baled it is never so
comfortable as a freshly dug one.
In conclusion, let me recommend ornithologists to make
a trial of " holeing in the clays." A close acquaintance
will be made with a number of very wild birds, and many
pleasant hours will be spent studying their ways. More-
over, there is certain to be some sport, and there may be
such a chance as comes to the orinary man but once in
a lifetime.
♦
LIQUID FLUORINE.
By C. F. TowxsENii, y.c.s.
THE alchemists of the middle ages believed that
somewhere in the universe was to be found an
universal solvent, which would dissolve the most
refractory substances as readily as water dissolves
sugar. They named their solvent liquor alkahest,
and what time they could spare from the search after the
elixir of life and the philosopher's stone was spent in the
endeavour to obtain it. Science has yet to prove, by the
way, that there was not more method in the madness of
the alchemists than is generally supposed, for in the
remarkable substance, fluorine, chemists possess a material
that approximates very closely to an universal solvent.
Its chemical energy is so fierce that, except gold and
platinum, nothing can resist it ; and even gold and platinum
succumb to fluorine in time. The mere contact of most
substances with fluorine is sufficient to cause, not mere
solution, but light, flame, and fierce detonations. Dull,
inert flint takes fire when exposed to fluorine vapour and
becomes a brilliant incandescent mass. Lampblack bursts
32
KNOWLEDGE.
[Februaby 1, 1898.
into (lame, whilst charcoal burns with bright scintillations.
Only the diamond is able to resist this powerful solvent, to
which it does not succumb even at high temperatures.
The similar element, silicon, which can be obtained in a
crystalline form closely resembling the diamond, gives
a magnificent display in the presence of fluorine, the
crystals becoming white-hot and throwing showers of fiery
spangles in all directions. The heat is so intense that the
crystals melt, showing that their temperature has reached
one thousand two hundred degrees Centigrade. Phos-
phorus combines fiercely with fluorine. Prussian blue, on
account of the cyanogen it contains, burns with a beautiful
pink flame ; whilst from a crystal of iodine placed in
fluorine vapour a heavy liquid distils with a pale flame.
This liquid— an iodide of fluorine — etches glass, and if
thrown into water hisses like hot iron. The last-named
metal becomes white hot when exposed to fluorine ; even
iron-rust behaves in a similar manner. Nearly all
metals are raised to vivid incandescence in a current
of the gas, many appearing very beautiful, especially
aluminium and zinc. If the latter be slightly warmed
it bursts into a white flame too dazzling to gaze at or
describe.
Although it has been known in various states of com-
bination for many years, having been first discovered by
Schwankhardt, of Nuremburg, in 1670, and rediscovered
by Scheele in 1771, fluorine was not obtained as fluorine
in the free state until about six years ago, when the French
chemist, Moissan, succeeded in isolating it by employing a
current of electricity from twenty-six or twenty-eight
Bunsen batteries. The current was passed through the
compound of fluorine and hydrogen known as hydro-
fluoric acid, which is similar to hydrochloric acid. To
improve the conductivity of the hydrofluoric acid it was
necessary to dissolve another fluorine compound in the
liquid. As will readily be imagined, it is not so difticult
to obtain free fluorine as to keep it when obtained. Every
part of the apparatus used by M. Moissan was made
of platinum, with screw joints and washers of lead,
which swell on contact with fluorine ; all the stoppers
being of fluor-spar. Fluorine has a powerful affinity for
silicon, one of the principal constituents of glass, so that
it was impossible to use glass vessels or tubes to contain
the gas.
As regards the chemical nature of fluorine, it is a gas at
ordinary temperatures, and is the lightest member of the
series of elements containing chlorine, bromine, and
iodine. The attraction of fluorine for hydrogen exceeds
that of chlorine, and is so great that if a slow current of
fluorine gas be passed into a tube of fluor-spar containing
a drop of water, a dark fog is produced, which changes
presently to a blue vapour consisting of ozone— the con-
densed form of oxygen. The last-named substance appears
to be one of the few materials which has no affinity for
fluorine ; nothing is observed to take place between them
even when they are heated up to one thousand degrees
Fahrenheit.
So far all experiments had been conducted with fluorine
gas, which, at the time it was isolated, resisted all attempts
to reduce it to the liquid state. Six years ago, however,
there was no laboratory — such as that at the Royal Insti-
tution— having powerful machinery for producing liquid
air or liquid oxygen, at the command of the investigator ;
in fact, liquid air itself was practically unknown. By the
aid of this weapon. Professors Dewar and Moissan have
succeeded in liquefying fluorine. At the extremely low
temperature of liquid oxygen it was found that fluorine
did not attack glass, and it was possible to use glass
vessels to hold the newly liquefied element. The appa-
ratus consisted of a small glass bulb, E, fused to a
platinum tube. A, which contained another similar smaller
tube, D. Elach of the platinum inlet and outlet tubes,
B and C, was fitted with a screw valve, so arranged that at
any moment communication could be cut ofi', either with
the outer air or with the current of fluorine. The whole
of the little apparatus was placed in a cylindrical glass
vacuum vessel (not shown in the figure) containing liquid
oxygen, and connected with a vacuum pump and a mano-
meter. On entering, the fluorine gas passed into the
annular space and then down the tube, D, into the glass
bulb. At the temperature of boiling liquid oxygen
( - 180° C.) the gas passed right through the apparatus,
but without attacking the glass. As
soon as the air pump was worked and
the liquid oxygen boiled vigorously,
a yellow mobile liquid — fluorine — was
seen condensing in the bulb.
Although at this very low tempera-
ture ( - 185° C.) silicon, boron, carbon,
sulphur, phosphorus, and iron, pre-
viously cooled in liquid oxygen and
placed in the liquid fluorine, remained
unattacked, a fragment of frozen ben-
zene or oil of turpentine was acted
upon with great vigour, accompanied
by incandescence, showing that the
great affinity of fluorine for hydrogen
stUl remained.
Professors Moissan and Dewar
noticed that if the liquid fluorine came
into contact with liquid oxygen two
layers were formed, the fluorine being
at the bottom. If the oxygen was not
quite dry they found that a white
iiocculent precipitate, which they be-
lieve to be an hydrate of fluorine, fell
to the bottom. This could be filtered
oti', and detonated violently as soon as
the temperature rose.
From the experiments it was foimd
that the boiling point of fluorine is very SopieY,,.)
close to —187^0., being identical with
the boiling point of argon. This appears to be the first
example of two gaseous elements boiling at the same
temperature.
By boiling the liquid oxygen surrounding the fluorine
at a very low pressure by the help of an air pump, the
temperature was lowered to -210° C, but the fluorine
showed no signs of solidifying. Nevertheless Moissan and
Dewar hope to produce a still lower temperature by
causing the liquid fluorine itself to boil vigorously at a low
pressure.
The specific gravity of liquid fluorine was determined
by dropping in small pieces of solid bodies, including
wood, caoutchouc, etc., previously cooled in Uquid
oxygen. It was found that amber rose and fell in the
Uquid, so that the specific gravity of the liquid fluorine
must be about the same as that of amber, namely,
1-14. No specific absorption bands were visible in the
spectroscope.
These experiments, which are more than interesting,
seem to show that there is no limit to the knowledge (of
the material universe at all events) that mankind may hope
to secure by patience and increase in mechanical skill, for
the work just described has been carried on within sixty-
three degrees of absolute zero, where, if our present
knowledge is of any worth, the life of the universe itself
would be extinguished.
Apparatui- for Lique-
I'aitioii of Fluorine.
I From the Proceed-
in(/s of the Chemical
February 1, 1898.;
KNOWLEDGE.
33
%ttttxs.
[The Editors do not hold themaelTes reaponsible for the opinions or
statements of correspondents.]
IS WKATHER AFFKCTKD UV THK MOON :-
To the Editors of Knowledge.
Sirs, — I Lave been reading with much interest the
article with the above title by Mr. A. B. MacDowall, M.A.
There is one diliiculty in connecting the barometric curves
with the moon's age and position which he appears to have
overlooked. It is this. His map of the curves is for
London, but taking the meridian of London, and proceeding
north or south, the pressure varies greatly on the same day.
Thus there may be very high readings in London, whilst
very low ones prevail over Scotland and the South of
France, or vice versa, according to the position of anti-
cyclones or storm centres.
The same may be said regarding places having the same
latitude. Storms cross the Atlantic in about a week,
though they vary much in their rate of progress and the
direction in which the centre of the cyclone advances.
May not this be influenced by the increase or decrease of
the moon's declination ? If this is so, it would help to
explain much which is obscure in the way the moon affects
the weather.
Near the Equator one would expect to find evidence of
any change of pressure caused by the moon's attraction,
as twice monthly it passes directly over those regions.
This, however, does not seem to be the case. In Southern
India the barometer readings scarcely vary for months,
excepting the daily tides, and a slight fall during the south-
west monsoon.
The spread of this monsoon and the rainfall which
accompanies it in Northern India has, I believe, been
supposed to be affected by the moon's action, but I do not
know on what data. During the monsoon there are
usually breaks at intervals of about a fortnight, which
would tend to support that theory. L. Paxton.
Lavant, Chichester.
[I did not overlook the point raised as a difficulty by
Colonel Paxton. While I rather think the smoothed
Greenwich curve might be taken as fairly representative
for a considerable region (perhaps the greater part of these
islands), I should not be surprised to find at some more
distant stations either (1) an equally good correspondence,
but with the waves retarded or advanced somewhat, or even
opposite in phase to the Greenwich waves ; or (2) a corre-
spondence imperfect or obscured, or no proper corre-
spondence at all. In the former case the evidence of
lunar influence would, I consider, be strengthened, and
in the latter I do not see that it need be seriously shaken.
In a science so little advanced as meteorology, and dealing
with such a " complex " of natural causes, we should be
extremely chary, I think, about asserting what should or
should not happen in this place or that on the hypothesis
of some influence of astronomical nature. Our business
as students of natural law is primarily with facts, and the
interpretation of facts. And in the weather of any region,
it seems to me, we may find so large an amount of regular
correspondence with some astronomical cycle (that of the
moon, e.f/.), that it becomes more difficult to think all this
agreement purely fortuitous than to believe there is a
causal nexus between the phenomena. I do not assert
it is so in the present case, though I may be inclined to
hold it as a " pious opinion." If we find a good corre-
spondence in one region and not in another, may there
not be something in the peculiar position of the former
region which tends to render the supposed influence
apparent ? And, similarly, if we find a good corre-
spondence in certain years and not in others, may we not
find this due to something special in the relative positions
of the moon and the earth in the former case ? Colonel
Paxton's suggestion that the path of depressions may be
influenced by the moon's declination seems to be well
worth consideration. — Alex. B. MacDow.u.l.1
To the Editors of Knowledge.
Sirs, — With reference to the article in your issue for
January this year, entitled "Is Weather afl'ected by the
Moon ? " may I be permitted to make a few remarks ? As
the writer states, the periods of concurrence between the
barometrical curves and the various phases of the moon
are irregular ; or, to put it otherwise, he sometimes
observes that they coincide. Si post hoc, non enjo prapter
hoc, is an excellent maxim in meteorology, as in other
things. R. A. Proctor, in an essay called " Sunspot,
Storm, and Famine," says as follows : " That for countless
ages the moon should have been regarded as the great
weather-breeder, shows only how prone men are to recog-
nize in apparent changes the true cause of real changes,
and how slight the evidence is upon which they will
base laws of association which have no real foundation m
fact. . . . And as the weather is always changing, even as
the moon is always changing, it must needs happen that
from time to time changes of the weather so closely follow
on changes in the moon as to suggest that the two orders
of changes stand to each other in the relation of cause and
effect. Thus rough rules came to be formed ; and as (to
use Bacon's expression) ' men mark when such rules hit,
and never mark when they miss,' a system of weather-lore
gradually comes into being which, while in one sense
based on facts, has not in reality a particle of true
evidence in its favour — every single fact noted for each
relation having been contradicted by several unnoted facts
opposed to the relation."
Furthermore, I would like to know if pressure alone
constitutes weather ? G. E. E.
January 16th, 1898.
[While it is well to remind ourselves of the tendency
above spoken of, the applicability of Proctor's remarks to
the present case may fairly, I think, be doubted. We
have to account for a barometric rhythm (similar to the
lunar), persisting for the greater part of a year at one time.
I have not represented that " pressure alone constitutes
weather." — Alex. B. MacDow.\ll.1
VEaETATIOiV OP AUSTRALASIA.
To the Editors of Knowledge.
Sirs, — It is with some diffidence that I again venture
to trespass upon your valuable space, but I can hardly
allow Mr. W. B. Hemsley's remarks upon my letter in the
September issue of Knowledge to pass unchallenged. It
seems absurd to me — as it must also to anyone who read
Mr. Hemsley's article in the May issue of this journal —
that he should deny having written the statement I attri-
buted to him, and accuses me of not having read the
opening sentence carefully. In this Mr. Hemsley errs,
for I read and re-read it, as I could scarcely credit my
senses after a first perusal that a botanist of Mr. Hemsley's
world wide reputation could be guilty of such a misstate-
ment. Mr. Hemsley twits me with making a general
statement re the genus Ficus, and characterizes it as mis-
leading ; it would have been an easy matter to have cited
the forty species of this genus, but cui bono ? If I may
make the retort, Mr. Hemsley is still more misleading in
his statements. " The Vegetation of Australasia " is the
subject of his paper. Queensland forms a large part of
34
KNOWLEDGE
[Febbuaky 1, 1898,
Australia, and Mr. Hemsley now acknowledges that it is
much richer in useful plants, and especially in plants
yielding edible fruits, than any other part of Australia.
Mr. Bailey (and who knows better '?) says that Queensland
is especially rich in plants of economic value ; therefore
Mr. Hemsley's general statement that " Australia contains
comparatively few plant.s yielding products ol economic
value" is misleading on the face of it. It is very like
begging the question to say that Queensland contains a
relatively large Asiatic element, as distinguished from the
characteristic Australian vegetation ; this is not the point
at all. The plants are in Australia and form part of its flora ;
their origin in this case matters not. In conclusion I
trust Mr. Ifemsley will not think I am playing the part of
a carping critic, but I must join issue with him once more.
Ilie statement that " the aborigines use the bark thnnm nff"
from gum trees, etc., for shelter (mitr, p. 102), is incorrect.
The bark thus shed or thrown off is utterly useless for
the purpose assigned to it by Mr. Hemsley, being too
brittle, very thin, crumbling almost to the touch, curled
up by the sun, and only shed in pieces absolutely too small
for any practical purpose whatever. The bark used by
the aborigines, and by many colonists at the present time,
is the true cortex, stripped from the tree by human agency —
not nature's. Diagonal cuts are made round the circum-
ference of a tree about a foot or so from its base, and
another series of cuts, also round the circumference, about
six to eight feet from those below ; an incision is then
made down the length oi' the trunk, the bark is tapped
gently with an axe on the severed part, and, if the sap is
well up, the result is a broad strong sheet of bark peeled
right off from round the trunk. Needless to say, this
operation kills the tree. I forgot to mention that Mr.
Bailey is indeed surprised to hear that the produce of the
plants named is known to commerce, and would be pleased
to have more information on the point.
Taringa, viu Brisbane, Fred. Whitteron.
Queensland, 29th October, 1897.
[As Mr. Whitteron has renewed his accusation that I
had stated that " the flora of Australia contains compara-
tively few plants yielding products of economic value," I
will repeat here the opening sentences of my article
(Kno^t:,edge, May, 1897, p. 118), which to my mind convey
a very different meaning from that portion of a sentence
he-quoted in his first letter (September, p. 212) : — " The
popular impression respectmg the Australian flora is that
it contains comparatively few plants yielding products of
economic value, and this is a correct impression so far as
edible fi-uits and vegetables are concerned ; but it should
be remembered that this is true of most countries. Fruits
and vegetables that come to our tables are the result of long
generations of cultivation. Take the crab, carrot, parsnip,
celery, or almost any of our fruits or vegetables in a wild
state, and we should get very little satisfaction out of
them. This, however, is a little digression. Australia is
by no means poor in vegetable products, and other
countries have been greatly enriched by importing and
cultivating some of them."
I maintain that the foregoing sentences fairly express
the actual facts, and that Mr. Whitteron's wild fruits, with
few exceptions, would only be eaten by aborigines or
persons in extremities. Returning to the forty species of
Ficus or fig : Mr. Maiden, in his " Useful Native Plants of
Australia," enumerates only three species, two of which
he says are used as food by the aborigines ; and of the
third he cites a traveller who pronounced the fruit " very
good," and a writer who states that the fruit is not
edible ; adding himself that the appetites of explorers
frequently become voracious and not too discriminating.
I do not pretend that Mr. Maiden's book is complete and
perfect, and I think it is very probable that there are better
figs than he was aware of when he wrote. To give another
example. In Sir Joseph Banks's recently published
" Journal," p. 299, is the following passage : — " AVe had
still fewer fruits ; to the southward was one resembling a
heart cherry {Ewienia), only the stone was soft. It had
nothing but a slight acid to recommend it. To the north
ward we had a kind of very indifferent fig ; a fruit
we called plums, and another much like a damson, both in
appearance and taste. Both these last, however, were so
full of a large stone, that eating them was but an unprofit-
able business. AVild plantains we had also, but so full of
seeds that they had little or no pulp."
Here, again, I do not assume that Sir Joseph Banks and
his party, with all their knowledge and much as they
needed such things, found all or the best the country
yielded ; but who has read the narratives of the many
subsequent explorers in the same and different districts
knows how little they found that served to keep body
and soul together. Therefore I think the general and
qualified manner in which I wrote is fully justified by the
facts. — W. BoTTiNG Hemsley.]
EGG t'OLLKCTING IX IT.S RELATIOX TO SCIEXCE
To the Editors of Knowledge.
Sirs, — In connection with Mr. Field's article in your
December issue under the above title, I beg to ask the
following questions: — (1) Why a light-coloured egg so
persistently appears in the clutches of the eggs of some
birds and very rarely or never in others ? (i) Why are
the eggs of some birds coloured at or around the smaller
end, whilst those of others are scarcely ever so coloured ".'
Never having accepted the theory that when a light-
coloured egg appears in a clutch it is owing to exhaustion
of the pigment, I paid considerable attention to this subject
in the spring of 1889, taking the blackbird into my con-
fidence.
The following observations, I think, clearly demonstrate
that the exhaustion theory cannot be supported by facts: —
Marih 19tli.— Eggs, four ; all light in colour ; first and third the
lightest ; all infertile.
March 25th. — Eggs, four; three dark eggs, one light. This brood
died in the nest, probably from the cold. One infertile egg.
Slareh 25th. — Eggs, three; the first the lightest coloured egg. All
these were fertile.
April 15th. — Eggs, fi^e ; four eggs of the normal colour, one xery
light.
April 15th. — Eggs, five; three dark, two light. In this clutch the
lightest coloured eggs weighed one hundred and twenty grains each,
the dark ones one hundred and eighteen grains each.
April 20th. — Eggs, three; one egg light in colour; all fertile.
April 20th. — Eggs, five ; tliree dark, two very light.
April 20th. — Eggs, four ; three dark, one light.
April 22nd. — Eggs, three .- second egg laid the lightest.
April 24th. — Eggs, four ; first and fourth light eggs. ,
April 28th. — Eggs, four ; first and fourth light eggs.
May 6th. — Eggsj four; the three first laid light in colour, the
fourth darker and very much flecked; this egg infertile.
May 13th. — Eggs, six. In this clutch the fii'st four were typical
eggs of the blackbird; the fifth egg very light in colour; the sixth
egg dark, and very much coloured at the small end. These eggs were
all fertile excepting the fourth, which showed no signs of fertility.
This clutch was laid by the same bird, and iu the same nest, as the
clutch dated March 25th.
The litflit-colmired eggs arc, as a rule, a few grains heavier than
the dark, and a dark egg often followed a warm moist day.
Again, in 1890, 1 watched a nest from day to day and
obtained a clutch of five eggs — which I have before me.
The first four laid are typical eggs of this bird, but the
fifth — the last laid — has a beautiful pale green ground,
with flecks and blotches of rich brown. This clutch would
be considered by the votaries of the exhaustion theory as a
Februaky 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE
35
fine illustration of their theory ; but inasmuch as the flecks
and blotches are numerous on the pale egg, there must be
as much colouring matter on it aa on any of the others.
The smaller end marking of eggs is a physiological
enigma well worthy of the attention of oologists. This
departure from the usual larger end marking is much
more frequent among the eggs of the I'alcuniihi- and the
Corviiiiv than among those of any other birds ; and in
looking through a series of twenty clutches of the sparrow-
hawk — now before me — I see thirty per cent, of the eggs
exhibit this peculiarity. Then, on the other hand, the sis
hundred clutches of the common house sparrow I have
in my cabinet, exhibit less than a dozen examples.
Another question may be asked. Why do two birds of
the same genus, namely, the corn bunting and the
yellow bunting, oppose and support this style of colora-
tion ■' I have a very long series of the clutches of both
birds before me. In the former there are a very few
examples of smaller end marking, whilst in the latter there
is a large percentage ; and in some of the clutches all the
eggs have a circlet of fine lines around the smaller ends,
leaving the crown quite bald.
I dare not trespass further upon your space beyond
expressing a hope that some of the scientific contributors
to your journal may write more fully upon this subject.
Koyston, Herts. Joseph P. Nunn.
A BRILLIANT METEOE.
To the Editors of Knowledge.
Sirs, — It may interest you to know that an unusually
brilliant meteor was observed from here in dnyliijht at
5h. 7m. o'clock, Dublin time, this afternoon. It was seen
by several persons. My companion and I saw it first
about E.S.E., at a low altitude, perhaps twelve or thirteen
degrees above the horizon. It appeared to travel .slowly
across the sky in an almost horizontal line, slightly
inclining earthwards, and disappeared behind a cloud and
the hills to the S.E.
The nucleus was very brilliant and large, and was
surrounded by a glowing greenish colour ; the tail tapered
to a point, and was pink along the margins and glowing
pale green on the central line. My companion describes
the colour as sparkling green. Another observer at a
distance from us (of five hundred yards or so) also observed
the green colour. Our point of observation was about
forty feet above mean sea-level ; our view eastwards down
the valley was unobstructed. Across the river to the S.E.
hills rise about five hundred feet high, and over these
some clouds rested ; otherwise the sky was clear, act! there
was ijiioil daylight. No noise was heard. The wind was
about S.W. and hght ; thermometer 52".
Carrick-on-Suir, J. Ernest Grubb.
Jan. 21, 1898.
DISSOCIATION OF THE ELEMENTS.
To the Editors of Kxowledge.
Sirs, — Dr. Emmens, of New York, has just published a
book in which he says that he has obtained a new
substance from iron and nickel, and the same substance
also from cobalt. He also says that he has converted
silver into a substance that cannot be distinguished from
gold and which appears to he gold. Is not this an
argument in favour of Sir Norman Lockyer's theory
with regard to the pre-nebular condition of matter ? He
describes it as being matter too tine to receive a chemical
name, which curdles and produces H. or something allied
to H. Further curdling goes on and the dust of Mg.,
C, O., Fe., Si., and S. is produced, etc., from which I
infer that he considers all the so-called elements to be
derived from one kind of matter. If the same substance
can be obtained from Fe. and Ni., and also Co., does it
not appear as if these so-called elements are derived from
one and the same kind of matter, or that they are
compounds "? — which latter is improbable.
Again, if one element can be converted into another,
does it not seem probable that each so-called element had
one and the same origin ? Of course, we know that An.
and Ag. belong to the same group of elements, also Co.,
F., and Xi. ; but might not this grouping of the so-called
elements point to the same conclusion that they have been
buUt up from the same kind of matter ? Might it not
also be possible on further investigation to find relations
which have not yet been recognized between the diS"erent
groups of the so-called elements ! It appears to me that
there is a law, as yet not recognized by chemists, having
some connection with temperature, in accordance with
which law these so-called elements are built up from one
and the same kind of matter. W. H. Cook.
THE BRITISH TRAP.DOOR SPIDER.
To the Editors of Knowledge.
SiBs, — In connection with the extremely interesting life
history of Ati/pus piceiis sul:., the so-called trap-door spider
of Britain, by Mr. Fred. Enock, in your November and
December, 1897, issues, it may interest some of your
readers to know that the Hastings colony is no longer
nameless from the want of a mature male. On
October 17th, 1897, I accidentally discovered the colony,
and on the 31st obtained a mature pair, since determined
by the Eev. O. Pickard-Cambridge to be Atypu.s piceu.i
suh., the same unfortunately as all the other known
colonies in Britain. I have since found several strong
colonies in this district, widely distributed, but all
A, picetis.
52, Tackleway, Hastings. H. G. Jefferv.
THE URANIA STERNWARTE.
To the Editors of Knowledge.
Sirs, — I think the following extract wUI be of some in-
terest to those of your readers who desire to see established,
either in the metropolis or in some other large town of
England, a liimilar institution to that now existing at
Berlin, vir.., the Urania Sternwarte, an institution referred
to in Knowledge for September, 1897. I may add that
I came across this extract quite accidentally, shortly
after reading Mr. Lavalette's letter on this subject in
Kno\^xedge for August, 1897.
The following is the extract, which was in the Penny
^[a^|f1zinc for September 25th, 1833.
'•PrBLlc Obsehtatort. — A correspondeut, who signs himself 'A
Man of Kent,' says ; ' Last week, for a shilling, I was able to make
acquaintance with an aquatic world whose existence I, till then, had
never been aware of. The "hydro-oxTgen microscope " convinced me
that a dewdrop may be as full of moving beings as Almack's. But I have
been ail my life, or half my life — that is, all the nights of it — desiring
a nearer acquaintance with the stars ; and I wish that my honest
shiDing C3ultl procure me admission to some observatory, where I
could contemplate those enormous evidences of the Creator's power
with as much ease as I did the minute atoms whose existence I had
never known of before.' The hint appears to us well worthy the
attention of those who have capital and enterprise. We have little
doubt that the prevailing desire for knowledge would render a cheap
observatory one of the most attractive objects in the metropolis."
If, sixty-four years ago, such an opinion was expressed,
bow much more now is there need for such an observatory !
Ivo F. H. Cabr-Gregg.
36
KNOWLEDGE
[Februaet 1, 1898.
BRITISH
,#
ORNITHOLOGICAL
NOTES,
Conducted by Harry F. Witherbt, f.z.s., M.B.o.n.
WiGEON NESTING IN YORKSHIRE. — Od May 12th, 1897,
whilst on a birdnesting expedition in a locality not very
far from Scarborough which is largely frequented by water-
fowl, I flushed a duck from the ground. A short search
sufficed to find the nest — not very carefully concealed
amongst some nettles at the foot of a small birch tree.
The nest consisted of a hollow in the ground, thickly lined
with down from the parent's body, mixed with small pieces
of dead nettle stems and dry grass, these latter materials
being sparingly used, and conveying the impression that
their presence was more or less accidental. The nest con-
tained nine cream - coloured eggs, which I immediately
imagined could be no other than Wigeon's ; but, being under
the impression that this bird did not breed in England, I
dismissed the idea as preposterous. As, however, if not
a Wigeon's, I could not determine the species to which the
nest belonged, I concealed myself, and after a short wait
had the pleasure of seeing the parent return, accompanied
by the male bird, and was able to see, beyond any doubt,
that they were Wigeon. My delight at this unexpected
verification of my surmise only an ardent ornithologist
can conceive, and I lost no time in getting the camera to
work, the result being two pictures — one of which is here
reproduced. On .June 2nd I was fortunate enough to find a
. I ''^■'i.
■»-'
x .^
• *•:•• ■*
' V:
1 * K " "
^^
SViff^PfiA
flfs ^S^ ^ ^ i^^^ft9
WSk
t<-y^T^5|b
p^'^'-^yiRnB
H
Pi
k^^l
■H
K^«
%,„^JS^tmM. ,.«5fci;*
second nest of the same species, containing nine younc
ones, near the same place. As the locality was not far
from the private lake of a gentleman who keeps a large
number of waterfowl of various species, I took the first
opportunity of inquiring if there was any probability of the
parents having strayed from his place ; and was informed
that although his birds were pinioned, frequently their
progeny escaped in the spring, and that, very possibly,
those I had found were some of the home-bred birds. At
the same time, during the winter months, the lake and
adjacent river are %isited by very large numbers of perfectly
wild birds, most of which leave in the spring ; but it is
possible that one or two pairs, attracted by their pinioned
companions, suitable surroundings, freedom from molesta-
tion, and a plentiful food supply, may have stayed to
breed. — Wm. J. Clarke, Scarborough.
[The Wigeon breeds in the North of Scotland, and in a
few places in Ireland, but it has never yet been known to
breed in a wild state in England. Mr. Clarke's note is of
great interest, since it proves that the nest of this bird
may now be looked out for in England, with a fair possi-
bility of success. It is unfortunate that semi-domesticated
birds were in the vicinity ; and taking this into considera-
tion, it is impossible to accept these birds as truly wild
ones, and, on this evidence, to add the Wigeon to the birds
which breed in England. — H. F. W.]
Hoopoe in Sdssex. — An immature female Hoopoe was
shot in the Paternoster Wood, Hartfield, Sussex, on
December 14th. I cannot find that one has ever been
recorded so late in the year before ; and as they have been
known to breed in the southern counties, is it possible the
bird is a native and not a migrant '? — Emma L. Turneb,
December 25th, 1897.
[The Hoopoe occasionally visits us in winter. If the
Hoopoe were not so persistently persecuted it would,
without doubt, become a regular breeding species in
England ; but it is never likely to stay here during the
winter.— H. F. W.]
Early Nesting of Birds. — An interesting effect of the
continued mildness of the weather this season has been the
extraordinary fact that several birds have been observed
with nests and eggs in December. In the FieW we find
records of Wild Ducks with nests and eggs in the middle of
December, and a Robin with a nest and egg on Decem-
ber 16th.
On Si/brids between the Capercailye and the Pheasant. By W.
Eagle Clarke [The Annals of Scottish Xfatural llUtory. .Tanuary,
1898, pp. 17-21 ). — The fourth example of this curious livbrid is here
recorded and described. The bird, which is a male, was obtained in
September last at StronchuUin, Blairmore, south-east Argyllshire,
where it had been observed for eighteen months, and was sent to Mr.
Ilarvie-Brown by Mr. G. H. Black. The author also describes and
ijives the history of the other three examples known to science.
Rose-coloured Pastor in West Soss-shire {Annals of Scottish
Xntiiral Historii, January, 1898, p. 49). — A bird of this species is
ii'corded by J. A. Fowler as having been obtained on August 16th,
1 !S97, at Inverbroom.
Sabine's Oull in Arran (Annals of Scottish Natural Histori/,
•Tanuary, 1898, p. 52). — John Pat.erson records the capture of an
immature specimen of this bird on the shore at Sliddery, Arran, on
September 22nd, 1897.
Montai/u's Harrier breeding in Ireland. — CoEBECTlON. (The
Zoologist, January 15th, 1898, p. 24.)— Mr. John H. Teesdale,
who reported the shooting of a specimen of this bird from a party of
six in County Kerry (see Knowledge, November, 1897, p. 257), now
writes to The Zoolo(,ist that, after further examination, Dr. Sharpe
has pronounced the bird to be a young male of the Hen Harrier.
Pectoral Sandpiper in Norfolk-. {The Zoologist, January, 1898,
p. 25.) — An adult female of this species is recorded by J. L.
Xewiuan as having been procured on Breydon, Norfolk, on August
iNth, 1897.
The Red-crested Pochard (Fuligiila rufina) in Westmoreland {Ibis,
January, 1898, p. 176). — The Rev. H. A. Macpherson wi-itos that an
immature male of this species was shot in a small tarn in the neigh-
bourliood of Haweswater, Westmoreland, on the 9th of October. 1897.
All contribiUions to the column, either in the way of notes
or photographs, should be forwarded to Hakry F. Witelkrby,
at 1, Eliot Place, Blachheath, Kent.
Note. — The first issue of Knowledge containing British Ornitho-
logical Notes was that for October, 1897.
February 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE
37
A PORTION of a roadway, believed to' be of Roman origin,
has recently been discovered at Reigate. The path —
fourteen feet wide, and five feet below the surface — is com-
posed of flints, the edges of which have been trimmed to fit,
and is altogether of a very even character. By some local
arohiEologists the path is considered to be a continuation
of the noted Pilgrims' Way to Canterbury Cathedral, which
passes through the town of Eeigate ; while others contend
that it formed part of the old Roman road from Winchester
to London. — -_ —
The Council of the Royal Astronomical Society have
awarded the Gold Medal of the Society for this year to
Mr. W. F. Denning, " for his meteoric observations, his
cometary discoveries, and other astronomical work." The
medal will be given to Mr. Denning at the annual general
meeting of the Society next month.
Noti»0 of iSooits.
The Geological Society s medals and funds this year are
awarded as follows ; — The Wollaston medal to Prof.
F. Zirkel, the Murchison medal and part of the fund to
Mr. T. F. Jamieson, the Lyell medal and part of the fund
to Dr. W. Waagen, the balance of the Wollaston fund to
Mr. E. J. Garwood, the balance of the Murchison fund to
Miss J. Donald, the balance of the Lyell fund to Mr. Henry
Woods and Mr. W. H. Shrubsole, and a part of the balance
of the Barlow- Jameson fund to Mr. E. Greenly.
The want of an independent water supply has long been
felt at the Zoological Gardens, and recently it was decided
to put down an artesian bored tube well. The results have
been, as was anticipated, the tapping of powerful springs
of pure water in the chalk, at the depth of four hundred
and fifty feet, yielding two hundred and forty thousand
gallons per day. —
Sir William Gowers, f.r.s., is one of a very few who
can trace their success in the world to the accidental
influence of shorthand. It was his skill in this art which
determined that he should stay in London instead of going
into an obscure practice at Bournemouth ; it was shorthand
which gave him the post of secretary to Sir William
Jenner. Those who have been influenced by his books
should know that they owe to shorthand every word of
them — not one of them would have been written had Sir
William been ignorant of shorthand. He contends that
that which is secured by the use of shorthand, even at a
low speed, is this : in a given time there can be twice the
amount of record that is possible with longhand, and yet
twice the time in which to observe ; and thus transient
phenomena can be adequately described which would elude
entirely the slow pursuit of longhand. Without the use of
writing the facts that pass before him will leave only
transient furrows on the sands of unaided memory,
vanishing for the most part when new facts disturb the
surface ; and only immediate record can preserve from these
dangers the personal science on which depends the work
of those who apply their knowledge to the welfare of the
race. It is a prevalent idea that shorthand can be written
but cannot be read. On this head Sir William says :
" The popular error that it is illegible is due to the immense
number of shorthand writers who learn only to write and
to immediately transcribe, and who have taken no pains
to secure the ability to read. Because reading is not a
spontaneous result of writing, it is assumed to be im-
possible. The ability to read shorthand can indeed be
acquired perfectly without any ability to write it, and is
sometimes acquired."
LUjht, Visihle awl Invisible. By Silvanug P. Thompson,
D.sc, k.r.s. Illustrated. (Macmillan & Co.) Gs. net.
There can only be one opinion upon this book, and that
opinion is that the book is excellent in every respect. A
course of Christmas lectures at the Royal Institution has to
fulfil several conditions, chief among which are : language
simple enough to be understood by people who are not en-
gaged in scientific work, experiments numerous and striking,
and attention to recent work of importance. Given these
conditions and a capable lecturer, and you evidently have
the material to construct a work of science at once popular
and authoritative. Prof. Silvanus Thompson's book had
such an origin, and we have no hesitation in saying that
it is one of the best works of its kind ever put before an
intellectual public. The student of optics will learn more
from it than from half a dozen examinational text-books ;
the teacher will find inspiration for many instructive
experiments ; and the general reader whose mind has not
been vitiated by Indulging in a pabulum of scraps of science
will find the whole book a source of mental pleasure. The
general facts and print' iples of the science of liglit are first
described, then the spectrum and the eye, and afterwards
follow in succession chapters on polarization, the invisible
spectrum (ultra-violet and infra-red parts), the invisible
spectrum and Rontgen radiation. The treatment of polari-
zation— a difficult subject to grasp thoroughly — is lucid in
the highest degree. The illustrations rank among the best
specimens of half-tone process work, and the whole volume
is a delightful example of the way in which science should
be presented to intelligent readers.
Studies ill Psycliical Research. By Frank Podmore, m.a.
(Kegan Paul & Co.) Before entering on a brief criticism
of the contents of this book it is only fair to state that
Mr, Podmore deals with his material in what, according
to his Hght, is a perfectly impartial mind. His object
throughout appears to be to get at the bottom of the
subject, and he sifts the evidence on both sides.
Faith — that's the word — and in it lies the explanation
of most spiritualistic phenomena. But it is not given to
all of us to see things with an eye of faith, or to be the
fortunate percipients of any phenomena which cannot be
explained by physical laws or be referred to a derangement
of the mental faculties. Mr. Podmore shows that many
of the 30-caUed spiritualistic manifestations are due to
trickery. Upon a hardened physicist, who has never
seen a ghost or heard noises which could not be accounted
for physically, who has never been worried in a haunted
house or deluded by theosophical revelations, Mr. Pod-
more's narratives do not make the faintest impres-
sion. We learn science through individual experience
nowadays, and the results obtained can be tested by
anyone who so desires. Is it any wonder, then, that
when a set of phenomena which we cannot reproduce at
will is brought before us, we are apt to regard it with
incredulity ?
A number of cases are given of visions received within a
few hours of the death of the persons represented. With
reference to aU of these we say that the evidence is in many
cases very weak, and that the accounts of the visions were
generally written after the event, whereas they should
have been set down before. It is not following a scientific
method to select cases when the visions have come true,
and leave out of consideration those which have not.
Very many people see visions and dream dreams and
forget all about them ; and we venture to assert that the
number of visions and dreams which go ixnfullilled far
outweigh the few which are afterwards found to have
38
KNOWLEDGE.
[Febecaby 1, 1898.
some relation to subsequent events. With regard to cases
of secondary consciousness, when two distinct individu-
alities are represented in one person, they are due to
mental aberration, and furnish subject for inquiry by
students of neurology rather than by psychical researchers.
Hallucinations of various kinds may also often be found to
have their origin in disorders of the optic nerves.
The Reliquary mid lUustrate/l ArchienhMjist. Vol. III.
1897. (Bemrose.) 12s. net. Another annual volume
of this luxurious quarterly has been forwarded to us.
The illustrations, which constitute the principal attrac-
tion, will afford an immense treat to those who delight
in antiquarian research. A noteworthy feature is the
inclusion of a plate depicting a corner of Chancery
Lane as it appeared in the year 1798. We are informed
that Isaac Walton lived in one of these houses from 1627
to 1644. The frontispiece is a plate giving a presentment
of His Satanic Majesty- -the Prince of Darkness — as he
is represented at Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris. Other
features are no less absorbing ; and. of course, the iUustra-
tions are accompanied by articles written by experts on the
several subjects, the whole forming a most artistic book.
Problems of Xiitiire : I!eseiircliis ami Discoveries lii/ (riistar
Jaeger, M.D. Edited and Translated by Henry G.
Schlichter, d.sc. (Williams & Norgate.) This selection
from the papers of Dr. Jaeger — better known by his
hygienic clothinp; than for his scientific work — are worth
publication. The papers cover a variety of subjects in
zoology, physiology, anthropology, etc. ; and though they
were first published between twenty and thirty years ago,
many of the ideas contained in them have been justified
by discoveries made since their appearance. The essays
on Darwinian principles reveal a mind familiar with organic
life in many aspects, and acute enough to solve some of
the problems involved in it. They would have been given
additional value if not only the date of publication, but
the organ of publication, had been given at the head of
each.
SHORT NOTICES.
Practical Physiology. By Alfred F. Blaisdell, M.D. (Ginn& Co.)
Illustrated. 58.* Of all works on physiology that we have perused
none seem to approach nearer to the ideal text-book than this one.
Physiology as a science is usually taviglit in schools as a mere
catalogue of (acts, and very little attention is, as a rule, devoted to its
usefulness from the hygienic point of view. One may learn all about
the heart, brain, and skeleton of the human body, and yet not be a bit
wiser as to the way in wliicli diseases of the human subject may be
combatted or prevented. Dr. Blaisdell steps into this breach, and
supplies abundance of advice for every emergency. Numberless
experiments are given, and chapters on accidents and first aids to
injured persons are included. The illustrations, two hundred in
number, are excellent.
Reform of Chemiral and Physical Calculations. By C. J. T.
Hanssen. (Spon.) Illustrated. One great drawback in the interest
of chemists and physicists for the last hundred years has been the
non-uniformity of the standards of calculations adopted by different
nationalities. An attempt is here made to minimize tliis confusion
by adopting a method of calculation which avoids long rows of
decimal fractions — rliscordaut values attributable to the variation of
the acceleration of gravity in different latitudes. The idea is to
establish a chemical and physical observatory on the west coast of
Italy, and to take as standards the results of observations made
there. The international weight of oxvgen— a cubic metre of which
weighs, at lat. 45°, 1-429U9 k^'., and at lat. 52'', 1-4,3003 kg.— at this
place comes out to a very simple figure ; and as hydrogen is proposed
to be the unit adopted, the exact weight of one cubic metre can be
ascertained. The author calls places of the same latitude the "circle
of international gravity," which will be to chemists and physicists what
Greenwich is to astronomers.
The Story of Germ Life— Bacteria. By H. W. Conn. (Newnes.)
Illustrated. Is. We have already noticed other books in this handy
series, and this one in particular is welcome, as it deals with an im-
portant branch of modem medicine. It aims at imparting a clear
and popular account of these low forms of life, and, as the author
remarks in his preface, to enlighten tlie public as to their power of
doing good and bad service to mankind. For example, it may interest
consumers of the fragrant weed to krow that the different flavours
of the various grades of tobacco are probably due to fermentation set
up in the curing process by different kinds of bacteria. The inclusion
of more illustrations would have enhanced the attractiveness of the
book.
We have received a copy of the Thomton-Pickard 1 898 catalogue.
This issue is in no way inferior to previous ones, either in the way m
which it is " got up," or in the value and novelty of the matter which
it contains. We especially note particulars of a new shutter at a
cheaper i-ate than hitherto, and a five-by-four Amber camera. We
doubt not that these instruments will maintain the high standard of
excellence set up by this firm.
BOOKS RECEIVED.
Photo-aquatint and Photograriire. Bv Tliomas Huson. (Dawbarn
& Ward.) Illustrated.
tStatu-i of Birds in the British Isles and in Devonshire. By
H. M. Evans. (Brendon & Son, Plvmouth.) Is.
An Illustrated Manual of British Birds— Parts II. and III. By
Howard Saunders. (Gurney k Jackson.) Illustrated. Is. each.
A Treatise on Chemistry. By II. E. Roscoe, y.E.S., and C. Schor-
lemmer, f.k.s. A'ol. II., Metals. Revised Edition. (Macntillan.)
Illustrated. 31s. 6d.
First Tear of Scientific Knou-ledge. By Paul Bert. Revised
Edition. (Relfe Brothers.) Illustrated.
Ambroise Part- and his Times : 13101590. Bv Stephen Paget.
(Putnam's Sons.) Illustrated. 10s. 6d.
Views on Some of the Phenomena of Xature. By James Walker.
(Sonnenschcin.) 38. 6d.
John Bright. By C. A. Vince, M.A. (Blackie.) 28. 6d.
Nature Study in Elementary Schools. Bv Mrs. Wilson. (Mac-
millan.) Illustrated. 3s. 6d.
A Triji to Venus. By John Munro. (Jarrold.) Ss. 6d.
Reader's Shakespeare — The Comedies. Bv David Charles Bell.
(Hoddcr & Stoughton.) 3s. (>d.
What is Life ! Bv Frederick Hovendcn. (Chapman &. Hall.)
Illustrated. 6s.
Notes on Carpentry and Joinery. By Thomas Jay Evans.
(Chapman i Hall.) Illustrated. 7s. 6d.
Experimental Work in Chemistrv. By E. H. Cook. (Arnold.)
Illustrated. Is. 6d.
The Tutorial C/iemisiry. Part II.. Metals. By G. H. Bailey,
D. sc. (Clive.) Illustrated. 3s. 6d.
Geometry for Beginners. By George M. Minchin, M.A. (Claren-
don Press.) Illustrated. Is. 6d.
The Observer's Atlas of the Heavens. Bv W. Peck, F.K.A.s.
(Gall & Inglis.) 2l8. net.
TOTAL SOLAR ECLIPSE, JANUARY 22, 1898.
IT is gratifying to learn that those who journeyed
to India to observe the eclipse have enjoyed all
the opportunities which favourable meteorological
conditions can present for the observation of a total
solar eclipse, and there is every encouragement to
believe that the results of the several expeditions will form
a pleasing contrast to the almost universal failure which
attended last year's efforts. The sun was gradually
blotted out, and a corona of pale sUver and blue appeared.
As the eclipse reached its zenith the temperature fell
rapidly and the atmosphere became perceptibly chilly. The
light during the middle of totality was greater than that
from the full moon. The spectacle was magnificent, and
excited a feeling of awe and astonishment among the
beholders — a scene resembling a landscape under a wintry
English sun.
The general shape of the sun's corona was like that
seen in the eclipses of 1886 and 1896 — that is to say,
white, downy blooms winging the dark ball of the moon all
round its circumference, but larger on each side of the
sun's equator than elsewhere. The streamers, the light
of which had a thready aspect, extended into space for an
apparent distance of four and a half diameters of the
moon. The detailed polar structure arranged itself in
lines, as iron filings round the poles of a magnet. The
srii\nu iMCDUL/i lvlc.:3i>ltiK 33 IKIAMUULI
By ISAAC ROBERTS, D.Sc, F.R.S.
February 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE.
39
exposures made with the kinematograph for corona were
successful, but no shadow was observed. The spectrum
of the chromosphere and prominences was successfully
observed with an opera-glass fitted with a direct vision
prism in one of the eyepieces, and the spectrum of the
"flash" was photographed with a prismatic camera and
with a six-iuch telescope. Indeed, all instruments, with
the exception of the integrating spactroacope, appear to
have responded fully to the most sanguine hopes of their
respective manipulators, and we have had what may be
called a record eclipse.
Native astrologers had prophesied all kinds of calamities,
including a tidal wave at Bombay and the downfall of the
British raj. Immense crowds bathed in the waters of the
Ganges at Benares, Calcutta, and other centres during the
eclipse ; the bathers at Back Bay tied Durab grass to their
clothes, and put some of it into pickles and preserves, to
ensure that they should not be affected by the eclipse.
Religious Hindus sat down and counted their beads at the
moment of contact, at the same time reciting mantras
or prayers, and hymns, and there was general fasting. It
is the impression of some of the Ilmdus that when there
was no British raj in India the solar eclipses occurred
once in twelve years, and that they are now more frequent
on account of the increase of sins and misdeeds. Here
and there on the foreshore stood Parsees, zend or avasta
in hand, and with their faces turned towards the sun ;
priests, ever ready to receive alms, ceased their solicita-
tions during the eclipse. Beggars, however, swarmed
nearly everywhere, crying for alms for the recovery of the
sun from the jaws of the dragon Riihn.
Mr. E. Walter ^launder, whose well-equipped party was
favoured with excellent conditions for observing and
photographing, will contribute a detailed account of the
eclipse to the April Number of Knowledge.
PHOTOGRAPH OF THE SPIRAL NEBULA
MESSIER 33 TRIANGULI.
By Is.\Ao Egberts, d.sc, k.r.s.
THE annexed photograph of the nebula was taken
with the twenty-inch reflector on November 14th,
1895, with an exposure of the plate during
2h. 15m., between sidereal time Ih. 18m. and
3h. 83m. A previous photograph of the object
was taken with an exposure of three hours, on 27th
November, 1891.
Scale of the photograph, one millimetre to twenty-four
seconds of arc.
Co-ordinates of the flducial stars marked with dots, for
the epoch 1900.
Star(.)D.M. No. 256 Zone 29' K.A. Ih. 26m. 8-8s. Dec. N. 30° 6-5' Mag.
„ (..) „ 260 „ „ Ih. 2Sm. I'Ss. „ 29=53-6' „ 80
„ (•.•) „ 263 „ „ Ih. 29m. 38-5S. „ 30° 9-3' „ 9-2
„ (::) „ 216 „ 30» „ Ih. -iSm. 49--4S. „ 30° 47-6' „ 8-4
The nebula is referred to in the N.G.C. No. 598, G.C.
352, h 131, and is figured in the PJiilosophkal Transactions,
1850, Plate XXXVI., Fig. 5, and in 1861, Plate XXXVI.,
Fig. 10, and in the " Observations of NebulfB and Clusters
of Stars," p. 20, where Lord Eosse describes its spiral
character, which he was the first to detect.
This nebula is one of the many that cannot be ade-
quately described by words, or delineated by eye and hand-
work, because of its very complicated, tortuous, and ill-
defined structure as seen with a telescope ; but the annexed
photograph, and, better still, the original negative, enable
us to see the remarkable contortions, and the nebulous
and star-like condensations, of which the nebula is
formed. We can also see the relationship of its parts and
their connection in the formation of the object as a whole,
so that much of the mystery concerning it, previously to
the revelation by the photograph, is removed.
It will be seen that there are two large, very prominent,
spiral arms, with their respective external curvatures
facing north and south, and that the curves are approxi-
mately symmetrical from their extremities to their point
of junction at the centre of revolution, where there is a
nebulous star of about tenth magnitude, with dense
nebulosity, elongated in north and south directions sur-
rounding it. Involved in this nebulosity are three bright
and several faint nebulous stars ; the two arms are
crowded with well-defined and with faint nebulous stars,
having nebulosity between them ; and it is to the combined
effect of these that the defined forms of the arms are due.
Besides these two arms there are subsidiary arms, less
well defined, which are constituted of interrupted streams
of faint stars and of nebulosity intermingled together.
Many of these stars are nebulous, and many are well
defined at their margins, but small. The interspaces
between the convolutions of the spiral are more or less
filled with faint nebulosity, having curves, rifts, fields,
and lanes, without apparent nebulosity in them. They
are like the interspaces in clouds of smoke, and cannot be
classified.
There are outliers of nebulosity with many small well-
defined stars as well as nebulous stars involved in them,
and there are also isolated nebulous stars on the extreme
boundaries of the nebula ; the evidence is strong that they
are all related to the nebula.
These descriptions, and more, can be verified by
examination of the photograph and the negatives ; and
they arouse iu us the desire to know the kind of cataclysm
— for such it appears to have been — that produced the
general smash and redistribution of the pre-existing
matter. Was it the collision of two suns (with or without
attendant satellites) in space, moving from opposite
directions, with the high velocities known to exist, and
smashing each other so that the material of which they
were composed was scattered in a thin discoid form of a
mixture of meteorites, meteoric dust, and nebulosity ?
Was it a collision between two swarms of meteorites, or of
two clouds of nebulous matter, or of one of each kind ? —
for we know with certainty that both forms of matter
(meteoric and nebulous) are common in space, and that
they extend over areas of sufficient magnitude to include
this nebula — or is there another more probable cause ?
We may with considerable confidence draw inferences
as to the future development of the nebula, for it is
evidently aggregating into stars ; and those aggregations
are assuming the various lines and curves that we can
trace in the finished stars which are strewn over the sky.
This nebula is not an isolated example of its class which
has been revealed by the aid of photography. There are,
for instance, the great nebula in Andromeda, Messier 101
UrsK Majoris, and 74 Pischim resembling it, though the
two last named are further advanced in symmetrical
development than M 83 ; but it is not a tax on the
imagination, when the respective photographs are com-
pared with each other, to satisfy our sense of sight that
the construction of these four nebuL? has resulted from
similar causes, and that their developments into curves
and lines of stars are proceeding on identically similar
principles.
We have as yet no guide to enable us to form an opinion
concerning the rate of their progressive development, for
the intervals of from four to eight years that have elapsed
since the first and second duplicates of the photographs of
40
KNOWLEDGE
[Februaby 1, 1898.
these objects were taken, are insufficient to show sensible
changes that may have taken place in their structures ;
but ere long such changes will inevitably be perceptible,
and the photographs will with certainty reveal their extent
and character.
Who can say that a catastrophe, such as may have
produced any one of these nebulae, will not occur in our
time, and that we shall not be both eye-witnesses as well
as recorders of the beginning of another new spiral nebula,
in addition to the convincing evidence furnished by those
already published, showing the evolution of new stellar
systems by processes of disintegration and re -aggregation '.'
MOON IN ECLIPSE, JANUARY 7, 1898.
On last Friday night I was watching the eclipse of the
moon, and was struck with the density of the penumbra,
which prevented the outline of the earth's shadow being
distinguished. The penumbra also seemed irregular in
shape. As the night was fairly clear I took a photograph
with a twelve and a-half inch Calver's reflector, with one
of Browning's Kellner eyepieces. Time of exposure, one
and a-half seconds. L. Paxton.
THE SPECTRA OF BRIGHT STARS.*
By E. Walter Maunder, F.K.A.S.
THERE is no branch of spectroscopy without its
charm, but the study of the spectra of stars has
an attraction all its own. Their hkenesses and
their difierences are so suggestive ; they hint at
so much of revelation as to the secrets of world
life ; they have, like an inscription in unfamiliar characters
* "Annals of the Astronomical Obserratory of Harvard College,"
Vol. XXVIII. Part I.— Spectra of Bright Stars photograplied with
the 1 1 -inch Draper Telescope as a part of the Henry Draper Memorial,
and discussed by Antonia C. Maury, under the direction of Edward
C. Pickering, Director of the Observatory, Cambridge, Mass. (John
Wilson & Sons, University Press. 1897.)
and in an unknown tongue, so plainly a message to tell if
we could but interpret them. At such interpretation we
have indeed made our first attempts : the riddle is not all
unread ; we have spelled out a word — it may be even a
sentence — here and there, and, like Cleopatra's soothsayer,
can say :
" In Nature's infinite book of secrecy
A little I can read."
A little as yet ; still our knowledge grows, and the fullest
putting together of the starry hieroglyphs, the completest
alphabet yet formed from them, has just been laid before
us.
This work, like so much in the same department of
astronomy that has preceded it, comes to us from the
Harvard College Observatory, and from that
section of it which the munificence of Mrs. Henry
Draper has enabled Prof. Pickering to develop.
The great Draper Catalogue was the result of
a survey of all stars down to the eighth mag-
nitude, but the dispersion employed was neces-
sarily small, and only the most salient features
of the dill'erent spectra were brought out.
Volume XXVni., Part I., of the " Annals of
the Observatory " continues the photographic
study of stellar spectra, giving, however, but
six hundred and eighty-one stars as compared
with the ten thousand of the Draper Catalogue ;
but these have been photographed on so much
fuller a scale that our advance in the knowledge
of stellar constitution will owe far more to it
— and one cannot, indeed, help regretting that
the more special discussion had not preceded the
more general.
The present survey is based upon examination
of some four thousand eight himdred photo-
graphs, representing the spectra of sis hundred
and eighty-one of the brightest stars north of
— 30^ declination. The instrument used was a
telescope of eleven inches aperture and a focal
length of one hundred and fifty-three inches,
used in connection with objective prisms in
number one to four, each of which had a re-
fracting angle of about 15^. The faintest stars
could, of course, be only photographed with one
prism ; the brighter were therefore photographed not only
with the highest dispersion they would bear, but in a
number of cases with one or two prisms for the sake
of better comparison with the fainter stars. The solar
spectrum was photographed for comparison with the same
telescope, combined with the Draper fifteen-inch reflector
used as a collimator.
The detailed study of these spectra and their classifica-
tion has been the work of one lady. Miss Antonia Maury,
and has occupied her nine years. The most considerable
part of this great work is therefore hers alone, though the
takhig of the photographs, a large part of the determination
of the wave-lengths, and of the preparation of the volume
for publication, fell to other members of the stafif.
A glance at Miss Maury's classification shows how
great an advance we owe to her. Secchi's types gave us
but a view of the most salient differences existing between
the stars. Vogel elaborated these considerably, and intro-
duced the important idea of a connection between the
type and the temperature of a star. His idea therefore
gave us a connected evolution along a single straight line.
Lockyer's classification was more elaborate, and was a
further advance — at least in so far that he introduced the
idea of rising as well as of falling temperature, and gave us
for his line of evolution not a single straight line, but a
February 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE
41
curve, with ascending and descending branches. Miss
Maury's investigation goes further still. Her classification
lies not in one dimension but in two, and she finds it
necessary to divide the spectra she has examined, not only
into "groups," forming a nearly continuous series, from
spectra bearing a close resemblance to those of the bright-
line nebul.B, on to the long-period variables at the extreme
end of the series, but also into " divisions. " in which the
leading idea is not the substances producing the lines but
the character of the lines themselves.
It is, of course, extremely unlikely that in this new
classification we have arrived at finality, any more than in
the classifications which preceded it. But this new factor
which Miss Maury has brought to light in the course of
her most patient study will certainly have to be reckoned
with in the future.
The first division in Miss Maury's scheme — Division " —
is by far the largest, including three hundred and fifty-
five stars out of the total six hundred and eighty one.
In these spectra none of the single lines are relatively wide
except those of hydrogen and calcium, and all the lines
are " clear" — that is, they stand in distinct contrast to the
bright portions of the spectrum. Division '' comprises
stars in the spectra of which all the lines are relatively
wide and hazy. The fainter hnes therefore tend to
disappear, and in consequence those observed arc relatively
few ; but their relative intensity remains much the same as
in Division 'i, so that there does not appear to be a radical
difference of constitution between the two divisions.
Division c is in general distinguished by the strongly
defined character of its lines, by the presence of certain
lines apparently not found in the solar spectrum, by a
difference in the relative intensities of the lines as com-
pared with the solar spectrum ; and, further, the lines of
hydrogen are narrow and well defined but less intense
than in the other divisions, whilst the calcium lines are
more intense. Stars of this division, therefore, would
seem to differ more in constitution from those of Division a
than do those of Division '■.
Besides these three great divisions there are a large
number of intermediate forms, whilst quite one-sixth of
the total number of spectra cannot be assigned with
certainty to any of these divisions, either on account of
the faintness of the star or of the imperfection of the
photograph.
The cross division into " groups " is less novel than the
one just noted into "divisions." Miss Maury's scheme
makes the " groups " twenty-four in number. Of these,
the first five are those in which the Orion lines are specially
prominent — a large number of the Orion lines being now,
of course, known to be those of helium. The sixth group
is intermediate between the Orion type and Secchi's first
type. The full members of this Secchi's first type are
divided into five groups according to the intensity of the
hydrogen lines, which are at their maximum in Group VII.
and decrease later, and to that of the solar and calcium
lines, which increase from group to group. The twelfth
gi-oup comprises spectra between the first and second types,
and the full members of Secchi's second type are divided
into four groups with respect to the increase of the solar and
calcium Lines. The third type is distributed over the next
four groups, bands and flutings replacing lines. As a neces-
sary consequence the divisional differences are no longer
noted ; indeed, no spectra of Division b are noted later than
Group Xn., or of l)ivision c later than (iroup XIV. The
twenty-first and twenty-second groups correspond to
Secchi's fourth type and Pickering's fifth type respectively.
There remain, then, two classes unnumbered : the " com-
posite " stars, which are probably doubles of difi'erent
spectra apparently single from their extreme closeness,
and bright-line stars of the Orion type.
The annexed little table, the eighth in Miss Maury's
Memoir, brings out in a singularly clear fashion the
continuity of the series into which she has thus arranged
the spectra in her hand. It will be observed that it is no
theoretic succession ; it is based upon the actual character
of the spectra as the photographs present them, and is
perfectly independent of any explanation which may be
offered as to the cause of the differences thus scheduled.
The succession may be one of temperature, of stage of
development, or of actual chemical constitution, and it
might be supposed to run in either direction without in the
slightest degree invahdating the classification here given.
On the subject of theory Miss Maury touches lightly, but
points out the close resemblance between Group I. and
that of Pickering's fifth type stars. Group XXII., and that
the latter connect us with the bright-line nebulw. This
consideration, taken in connection with the fact of the
obvious connection of the Orion type stars with the
nebular regions of Orion and the Pleiades, strongly supports
the view that the groups are numbered from I. to XX. in
their true evolutionary order.
Group XXL, however, stands apart from this evolution.
Table VUI. — Relative Ihikssities of Lines.
Intensity
of
Inteusity
Intensity
Inteusity
Hydrogen. Orion Lines. | Solar Lines.
11.
20
14»
I
2
III.
35
162
1
1
IV.
^b
151
2
3
V.
90
51
3
4
VI.
100
36
-13
6
VII.
1(K)
5
99
S
VIII.
95
1
161
13
IX.
95
1
28
X.
90
1
58
XI.
HO
I
83
XI t.
25
1
■132
135
XIII.
2(1
U
160
XIV.
16
0
568
160
XV.
9
(.)
712
200
XVI.
7
u
200?
XVII.
7
0
200?
XVIII.
6
0
!StlD
170?
For Miss Maury finds the difficulty of including the fourth
type stars in any regular progression which others have
found before her, and which Vogel and Lockyer have tried
to meet by such difi'erent expedients : the former placing
the third and fourth type stars as alternative forms for a
late stage in stellar life history, the latter regarding Type
III. as indicating an early stage in a star of rising
temperature, and Type IV. as a late stage in a star of
falling temperature.
It is sufiiciently clear from these very difl'erent classifica-
tions that no very sure foundation for determining the
course of a star's evolution has yet been laid down :
but it seems to me that in placing the long-period
variables at the end of her series Miss Maury has been
guided by a true appreciation of the facts before her, and
that her scheme therein is a vital improvement on that of
Lockyer. And to leave the carbon stars, the fourth type,
unplaced, is probably, in the present state of our know-
ledge, to exercise a wise discretion, though Mr. McClean's
photographs of 1.52 Schjellerup appear to confirm Vogel's
suggestion that both Types III. and IV. succeed Type XL,
but as alternatives to each other.
The connection between the divisions is a more difficult
matter, and except possibly in one point it has to stand
42
KNOWLEDGE
[Febbuabt 1, 1898.
without explanation at present. The facts, too, that these
divisional differences are practically traceable only amongst
the Orion stars and those of Secchi's first type, and that
no stars are found of Division c in Group XIV., whilst
seven are recorded as being intermediate between Divi-
sions a and c, point to the classification in this direction
being neither so perfect, nor so directly the effect of
simple causes, as the cross arrangement into groups.
An interesting relationship, which Miss Maury mentions,
suggests that m the case of Divisions a and /' the differ-
ences between them may possibly be of a mechanical
nature rather than one of temperature or constitution.
She points out that the two spectroscopic binaries X, Ursie
Majoris and /3 Aurigic, though really of Division a, appear
as members of Division b at that particular point of their
orbit when the relative motion in the line of sight of the
two members of the system is sufficient to widen the lines
of their composite spectrum, but not to separate them into
pairs. It is clear, therefore, that the existence of a large
number of close binaries might explain the occurrence of
Division h spectra, provided that these several pairs were
composed of stars not very unequal in magnitude, of the
same type of spectrum, and with relative motion in the
line of sight such that their lines were widened but not
separated.
We already know, by direct observation, of binary systems
in which the periods vary from five and a half years up to
many centuries. The Algol variables and the spectroscopic
doubles have similarly revealed to us the existence of
systems with periods ranging from a few hours to a few
weeks. We may be perfectly assured that there are
other systems with periods of an order intermediate
between these, not of weeks or of years, but of months.
And such, under the special conditions mentioned above,
would give us /' division spectra. In cases where the two
components were of different types we should have a
"composite" spectrum. It is possible, therefore, that
Division h and " composite " stars are but different pre-
sentments of the same relationship — a binary system of
two not unequal stars far too close for optical resolution.
The researches of Darwin on tidal evolution, and of See
on that of double stars, lead us to the conclusion, since
double stars tend to widen with age, that these very close
binaries are yet in an early epoch of their life history.
The fact, therefore, that the Algol stars and those of
Division h are most plentiful in the Orion and first type
groups is a confirmation of Miss Maury's conclusion that
these are early forms of spectra, and seems better to accord
with the facts than Lockyer's view, which places the Sirian
stars midway in the evolution.
The test, of course, of the truth of the suggestion will
be that a prolonged watch of Division h spectra will sooner
or later show in some instances a gradual change into
Division a.
It is worth remembering that there may be a yet earlier
stage of double star evolution : where we have a single
star in rapid rotation, the separation into two distinct
bodies not having as yet taken place. Such rapid rotation
would produce a widening and a haziness of the lines —
a " Division h " spectrum, though differing in character
from that of the close binaries. This would not be
periodic in its character, and so not demonstrate itself by
the test just mentioned.
Division c stands on a different footing, and appears to
point to a real difference of constitution. The stars,
however, of this division are so few in number tliat the
progress of the groups cannot be followed out with anything
like the distinctness of Division a.
Annexed is a copy of Miss Maury's Table I., which
shows at a glance how the stars observed are distributed
amongst the various groups and divisions. The numbers
in the lirst column refer to Secchi's types ; " designating
Orion stars, ' ' composite spectra, /- bright-line stars. The
last column gives the grouping of the Draper Catalogue.
Under the heading " Division " the sub-heads nc and ah
indicate forms intermediate between Divisions a and <•
and a and /• respectively ; the sub-headings c h, and ah,
<(c signify spectra which cannot certainly be assigned
to either division, owing to the faintness of the star or
the imperfections of the photographs. Peculiar spectra
are ranged under the sub-head P.
CLiaSIFICATION OF SrECTBA.
Division.
1
Type.
Group.
Total.
D.C.
,
c.
ac.
a.
a, b. 1 ab.
b.
ab,
ac.
P.
O
I.
7
7
B
O
II.
"i
5
&
"2
16
B
0
III.
i
...
5
7
5
1
19
B
o
IV.
11
22
■'3
14
.")0
B
o
V.
3
9
8
b
_'."i
AB
O-I.
VI.
6
4
9
3
9
:il
AB
I.
Vll.
1
13
13
17
1
45
A
1,
VIII.
1
"i
23
6
3
17
7
58
A
I.
IX.
?
17
3
9
'5
34
AF
I.
X.
2
12
2
3
19
AF
I.
XI.
5
?
11
5
7
1
29
F
I. -11
XII.
2
3
29
1
35
F(x
II.
XIII.
4
1
22
27
G
ir.
XIV.
7
40
3
50
6
II.
XV.
117
1
118
K
11.
XVI.
23
23
K
III.
XVII.
19
19
Ma
III.
XVIII.
...
20
20
Mb
III.
XIX.
10
10
Mb
111.
XX.
...
i
2
6
Md
IV.
XXI.
...
4
Na
V.
XXII.
4
0
c.
—
...
IS
—
L.
-
_
14
-
Totals
18
17
355
110
20
91
12
18
681
Beside the two tables given above, very complete tables
are supplied of the wave-lengths of the lines found In
the different classes of spectra, Fomalhaut being taken as
the representative of the first type stars, and the star
H.P. 1311 for the fifth type. The solar lines are cata-
logued from the D lines of sodium to the line p of hydrogen
far in the ultra-violet, and the lines of Division c stars
from ^ to K of the hydrogen series of lines. The complete
catalogue of the 681 stars arranged in order of E.A. is
supplemented by tables in which they are arranged in
order of spectral group, and copious notes add much
important information as to the details of Individual
spectra, whilst a minute description of the classification,
group by group, occupies the longest chapter in the work.
In view of Prof. Ramsay's striking discovery of helium,
one naturally looks eagerlf to find the place accorded to
that spectrum in this classification. The work was,
however, too far advanced at the time when the helium
spectrum was revealed to us for it to be taken account of
in the actual classification. All that could be done was
to add a supplementary note. In this we are given a table
in which the helium hnes are compared with those of the
Orion stars, and are told that all the series of both helium
and parhelium are represented in them. It appears,
further, that nearly all the lines of the first subordinate
series of both helium and parhelium are very strong in
February 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE
Group III., and reach a maximum in Group IV., and
fall off far more rapidly toward the later f,'roup3 than
toward the earlier. It is important also that they are
more clear and conspicuous in Division c than in Divi-
sion ", and far more persistent — the lines 1-171*65 and
3819-75 being present in Group VIII., Division c.
Complete and thorough as the Memoir is in every other
respect, it is impossible to escape the regret that it was
not accompanied by a well-choseu series of photographs of
typical spectra. \\e I'eel sure that if these could have been
supplied, they would have adiled greatly to the value of
Miss Maury's careful descriptions and to the information
which is to be derived from them.
Great as is the evident value of this Memoir, it may be
taken as certain that we shall not be able to realize how
heavy a debt we owe to Prof. E. C. Pickering and Miss
Maury until it has been made the basis of the many
researches which will inevitably be founded upon it. Nine
years may seem a long time to have devoted to such an
inquiry, but the more the Memoir is studied the more one
will feel surprise, not that it has taken so long to prepare,
but that so much has been so quickly accomplished.
ANCIENT RED DEER ANTLERS.
By E. LrDEKKER, J!.A., F.R.S.
WHATEVER may be the case with regard to its
applicability to the human race, there can be
no question that the phrase, " There were
giants in those days," is perfectly true when
the antlers of modern red deer are compared
with those of animals living a few centuries ago on the
Continent, or with the specimens that are from time to
time dug up from the fens of Lincolnshire and Cambridge-
shire, or from the bogs of Ireland. Not only are such
ancient specimens much larger in respect of length and
girth of beam than any to be met with at the present
day, but they also greatly exceed the latter in respect
to the number of tines or points they carry, as also
in the complexity of the so-called cup in which the crown
or summit of the beam so frequently terminates. At the
time the big antlers of the English fens and Irish bogs
crowned the
heads of
living ani-
mals, both
Britain and
Ireland were
either sti 11
connected
with the Con-
tinen t, or
their separa-
tion there-
from was an
event of com-
paratively re-
cent occur-
rence ; and as
the greater
part of the
country was
still clothed with forest, the deer were able to wander
about as much as they pleased, and there was nothing to
prevent them attaining the maximum development of
which the species was capable. And on the Continent
the conditions of life were, if possible, still more favourable.
Contrast this with the mode of life of the deer of the
Fig. 1.— Skull and Antlers of Ased Scotch
Red Deer.
Scottish highlands at the present day. The so-called
"deer forests" are nothing but open moorland; and as
red deer are naturally forest-dwelling animals, this alone
is sutVicient to account for their relatively small size and
the small development of their antlers. When to this is
added the comparatively small size of the area on which
they are located, coupled with the effects of more or less
continuous in-and-in breeding, it is but small wonder that
the antlers of even the finest of Scotch deer are but poor
things when compared with those of their predecessors.
Some of our readers may perhaps be disposed to say that
this is due to the circumstance of the deer being shot
down at too early an age, before time has been allowed
them to perfect the full growth of their antlers, and that
Fig. 2. — Antlers of Red Deer from an Irish Bog.
if they were allowed to enjoy life a few years longer their
trophies would be fully equal to those of a past age. But,
as a matter of fact, this is not the case. After a certain
age the antlers of deer begin to retrograde or degenerate,
when they develop fewer points than at the prime of the
animal, and not unfrequently display various abnormalities.
And as Scotch red deer are frequently killed with degene-
rating antlers, it is manifest that this is not the cause of
the comparatively small size of these appendages. Such
a degenerating head, showing certain abnormalities, is
represented in our first illustration. Like the other
specimens figured, this example is in the collection of the
Viscount Powerscourt, at Powerscourt, County Wicklow,
and belonged to a very aged animal. Its history is some-
what curious. The stag was killed by poachers in
Ross-shire during the year 1844, and by them given to Mr.
Hay Mackenzie, father of the late Duchess of Sutherland.
By her Grace it was presented to Frederick, fourth
Marquis of Londonderry, by whom, in turn, it was given
to Lord Powerscourt in 18-57.
English park red deer, from their more congenial sm--
roundings and richer pasture, develop finer antlers than
those of their wild Scotch cousins, but even these bear uo
comparison to those of the stags of former ages. Although
larger antlers are still obtained on the Continent, these
are — for the most part, at any rate — inferior to those killed
years ago. It is true that in the Carpathians and Caucasus
magnificent heads are still fairly common. But these
belong to a variety known as the Maral or Caspian red
deer, in which the face is longer than in the typical race
of Western Europe, and the coat more or less distinctly
spotted with white in summer, while, as a rule, the crown
44
KNOWLEDGE
[Febbuarv 1, 1898.
Fig. 3.
-Antlers of Ancient German Ked Uc
inirchascd in Berlin in 1S63.
of the antler is less distinctly cupped and carries fewer
points. Still, it is very difficult in many instances to dis-
tinguish the antlers of the two races, which, in certain
districts of the Austrian Empire, probably pass imper-
ceptibly into one another.
. This inferior development of modern red deer antlers
being then a well-ascertained fact, it is a matter of con-
gratulation that there exist a few collections where the
trophies of the
/f \\ ancient giants
i Ml i \S\. 1 have been
vT/y \^ i ^'Ccumulated
■■"" \ m # ^jj^ preserved
almost from
time i m •
memorial, or
where judici-
ous purchase
has assembled
a series which
it would be
almost, if not
quite, impossi-
ble to rival at
the present
day. Ofcollec-
tioDS of the
former kind,
by far the
finest is the
one belonging
to His Majesty
the King of
Saxony, at the old hunting schloss of Moritzburg, near
Dresden. Of the latter type, so far as the United
Kingdom is concerned, the celebrated collection of Viscount
Powerscourt, already mentioned, is far and away ahead of
all others. By the kindness of the owner, the present
writer has been favoured with photographs of a series of the
finest specimens in this collection, from among which a few
have been selected to illustrate the present article.
From the great individual variation displayed in a large
series, the uninitiated often find considerable difficulty in
distinguishing the antlers of red deer (including under
this term the different races thereof) from those of the
allied species. Nevertheless, after some practice, this is a
comparatively easy matter ; and the subject is one of
considerable interest, on account of showmg, in spite of
great individual variation, the adherence to one distinctive
type of structure. The red deer and its allies form a
small and well-defined group of the genus Cenm^, among
which are included the wapitis of North America and
Central and North-Eastern Asia, the hangul of Kashmir
and Yarkand, and the great shou of the district lying to
the northward of Bhutan. In all these deer the minimum
number of tines to each antler is five, but there may be
as many as twelve, or even more. A very general and
especial peculiarity of the group is the presence of two
tines on each side in close proximity to the forehead. The
presence of these two tines is, indeed, as a normal feature,
limited to the members of this group, and even among
them it is by no means invariably constant. There is,
for instance, a Tibetan species, known as Thorold s stag, in
which the second is wanting, and the so-called brow-tine
alone remains in this part of the antler. The presence of
this second tine in the red deer group is clearly, then,
what naturalists term a specialized feature of comparatively
recent acquisition. And further testimony in favour of this
is afforded by the circumstance that even in well-developed
heads this tine is frequently much smaller on one side than
on the other. This is shown in Fig. 2, where the second tine
on the right side is scarcely more than half the length of its
fellow on the left. Even more significant is the fact that in
heads which are degenerating — or, as sportsmen say," going
back "—this tine is the first to disappear, or to diminish in
size. An excellent example of this is afforded by the head
represented in Fig. 1, where it is completely wanting on
the right side, and is small and rudimentary on the left.
Indeed, among Scotch deer the second tine is very
frequently wanting even during the prime of life, thus
affording further evidence of the decadence of that stock.
It is also wanting in the small island race of Corsica and
Sardinia, as it is very frequently in the larger race
inhabiting the North of Africa and Spain. The red deer
being typically a northern species, the degeneracy in the
latter instance is probably due to the warmer and therefore
less suitable climate.
At some distance above the second is given ofi' a large
third tine, which is quite distinct from those above it. In
fuUy developed heads of the red deer of Western Europe,
as exemplified by Figs. 2 ;',nd 3, the beam of the antler
continues undivided for an interval somewhat exceeding
the one between the second and third tines, after which it
expands to form a more or less distinctly defined cup
whose margins are bordered by a variable number of snags
or tines of different length. In heads of this type it is
scarcely possible to distinguish a separate fotirth tine.
Nevertheless, in heads where the cuppin;.' is less con-
spicuously developed, the fourth tine exists as a separate
portion of the antler, the cuppin;,' being then confined to
the termination of the beam above. This type of antler is
shown by the German head depicted in Fig. i ; and it may
be noted that in the Carpathian race of the species it is
common to find the fourth tine remaining more or less
distinct, as it does in the degenerate modern Scotch deer.
The shape of the cupping varies considerably in different
individuals, as may be seen by comparing the old Ger-
man head represented in Fig. 3 with the one from an
Fig. 1. — Antlers of German Red Deer with Twenty Points.
Irish bog which forms the subject of Fig. 2 ; the former
showing a total of eighteen and the latter of nineteen
points. Considerable individual diversity also exists with
regard to the angle at which the antlers are set on the
forehead. For instance, in Fig. 2 they are directed much
upwardly, and this is still more markedly the case with
Fig. 3 ; but as the latter specimen consists of separate
antlers affixed to an artificial head, the degree of inclina-
tion is not altogether to be depended on. The subject of
Fig. 5, which is also an ancient German head, is, however,
in its original condition, and here it will be noted that the
degree of divergence is very great. This head, too, is
February 1, 1898.
KNOWLEDGE
45
remarkable for the number of its points, which reach a
total of twenty-two ; and the almost complete abaorption
of the fourth tine in the terminal cup-like expansion is
also a feature which can scarcely fail to attract attention.
Two-and-twenty is, however, by no means the maximum
of points, as a pair of antlers from an Irish bog, formerly
Fig. .". — Antlers of Ancient German Ret) Deer with
Twentv-tffo Points.
in the collection of the late Sir Philip Egerton, but now
in the British Museum, carry no less than thirty. And it
must not be supposed that modern Scotch stags never
make an approach to such high numbers, a specimen shot
some years ago by Lord Burton exhibiting a total of
twenty.
Ill spite of the individual variations alluded to, the form
of the fourth tine and the terminal cup alTords an easy
means of distinguishing the red deer antler from that of
the wapiti, whether American or Asiatic. In the latter
the fourth tine always forms a huge forwardly projecting
prong, much larger than either of the three tines below, and
situated in the same fore-and-aft plane as the tines above,
which are normally quite distinct from one another, and
thus do not form a terminal cup. Occasionally, however, such
a cup is formed even in wapiti antlers ; and it is said that
in certain districts of America such cupped antlers are by
no means uncommon, being apparently hereditary. Even
in such instances, however, an experienced eye will have
no difficulty in picking out the wapiti antler, for the great
fourth tine always retains more or less of its characteristic
form and size, and the whole antler is thus quite unlike
that of any red deer.
It has already been said that the red deer of Eastern
Europe usually have the terminal cup less developed than
in the old giant race of the more westerly districts ; and,
as we proceed further to the north-east in Asia, the antlers
of all the nearest relatives of this species tend to become
simpler still. For instance, in the hangul, or Kashmir
stag, the number of points on each side rarely exceeds
six or seven ; while in the still larger shou, of the country
to the north of Bhutan, they are limited to five a side, no
trace of a terminal cup being formed. Clearly, then, the
group attained the culminating complexity of antler
development in the countries of Western Europe : and
whether this complexity would have gone on increasing to
an almost indefinite degree had not man appeared on the
scene, and checked the further evolution of these and most
other animals, may afford an interesting subject of specula-
tion to the curious. Equal room for speculation exists as
to the purpose of the great complexity exhibited by the
antlers of the red deer. As fighting weapons, the huge
but simpler horns of the shou would seem to be at least
equally efficacious ; and to human taste it is by no means
certain that their severer simplicity of form is not more
graceful than the many-branched red deer horn. But it
by no means follows that human and cervine festheticism
run on the same lines ; and if antler development be due
to female preference for the stags with the finest horns, a
i-eni ciiusii may exist in this direction.
All the different variations of red deer antlers alluded to
above are of a more or less strictly normal type, but there
are other variations less commonly met with which come
under the designation of abnormalities, or monstrosities.
And althoui,'h such attract much attention from sportsmen
and amateurs, the scientific naturalist, as a rule, has no
more to do with them than he has with two-headed pigs
or three-legged chickens. Nevertheless, there may be
exceptions even to this general rule, and a case in point
seems to be afforded by a peculiar head of a French red
deer in the Powerscourt collection, which forms the subject
of Fig. (). From this figure it will be seen that the left
antler is of normal form, exhibiting the first, second, and
third tines, and a rather small terminal cup, of which the
fourth tine forms a constituent part. The right antler, on
the contrary, is double from base to summit, and of a
much simpler structure, each portion consisting =;olely of
a long unbranched beam, with a brow-tine at the base, and
a simple four-pointed cup-like expansion at the crown.
Xow at first
sight there
might seem
nothing par-
ticularly note-
worthy in this,
for in all cases
of such dupli-
c ation the
divided antler
is of a simpler
type than the
ordinary un-
divided one.
But the curi-
ous feature in
this instance
is that the
duplicated
antlers are of
the same
general type as
certain peculiar antlers of the Eastern race of the red
deer frequently met with Ln the Crimea and Asia Minor.
And although these latter are undoubtedly to a certain
extent abnormalities, yet from their comparative frequency
in the districts in question they scarcely come under the
designation of monstrosities. Whether the undoubted
resemblance existing between the duplicated French antler
and these abnormal Eastern specimens is anything more
than a coincidence, the facts at our disposal are not
sufficient to admit of determining. At any rate, the
point is of sufficient interest to merit mention. A
similar duplication of one antler — and, curiously enough,
on the same side — has been recorded in the fallow deer ; and
Lord Powerscourt also possesses a second French red deer
head in which the right antler is bifurcated for half its
length. Probably the circumstance that the abnormality
in all these three instances is on the right side is a mere
coincidence. It would, however, be matter of some little
interest if it could be ascertained whether such malfor-
mations are due to any injury received by the animal
previous to the growth of the horns.
Fig. i>. — Antlers of Frencli. Red Deer, with
Duplication on the Right Side.
46
KNOWLEDGE
[Febkuaky 1, 1898.
NOTES ON COMETS AND METEORS.
By W. F. Denning, f.r.a.s.
Comets. — Pons-Winnecke's comet was detected by Mr.
C. D. Perrine at the Lick Observatory on January 1st,
when it was described as very feebly visible. It may well
have appeared faint, seeing that its distance from the
earth was more thau one hundred and sixty million miles.
Presumably the comet was picked up with the thirty-six
inch refractor; but as the object is rapidly approaching the
earth, and gaining in apparent brilliancy, much smaller
telescopes will now have the capacity to reveal it. Hille-
brand's elements for the comet are : —
Epoch March 15th, 1898.
iM 359=^ 3' 52-0'
ir 274' 14' 390'
H 100° 53' 11-5'
I 16° 59' 33-8'
<^ ... 45° 37' 14-1 "
/x ... 608"-5559
Ephemeris for Berlin, midnight.
E.A.
H. M. .5. Dec.
Feb. 10th 18 8 30 ... 12° 29-8'
12th 18 18 35 12° 47-8'
14th 18 28 48 ... 13° 5-1'
IGth 18 39 0 .. 13° 21-0'
18th 18 49 28 ... 13° 35-4'
20th 18 59 56 ... 13° 48-2' •
On February 1st the comet's distance will have decreased
to about one hundred and thirty-three million miles, and
it will be visible before sunrise iu the southern region of
Ophiuchus. The moon sets on the morning of February
1st at 4.15, and the comet may possibly be picked up about
two degrees north of the star 47 Ophiuchi (magnitude 6-3).
Perrine's comet (/) 1897, discovered October lOth) aud
D'Arrest's comet have become too faint to be observable in
ordinary telescopes. The former was seen on November
18th and 23rd, 1897, with a sixteen-inch refractor, at
Northfield, Minn., as a very faint elliptical glow, three
minutes long and one minute wide, without any perceptible
condensation, and so feeble that the slightest illumination
of the micrometer wires overpowered it. Three sets of
elements have been published, as follows : —
Pavue and Young. Perrine. Moller.
T 1897, "Dec. 8-9216 G.M.T. Deo. 8 8471. Dec. 8 6899.
66" 10' 11" 66" 5' 42" 65° 56' 3-1"
a ... 32" 4' 9" 32° 4' .5" 32" 3' 27"
■ . . 69" 37 21" 69" 37' 41" 69° 36' 36"
lug. q. 013186 O13206 0-13242
In Ast. Xacli., 3471, Herr Bidschof gives some compu-
tations with regard to the ensuing return of the comet
(Tempel, 18(56, I.) of the November meteors. He supplies
a sweeping ephemeris, from which it appears the comet
will probably traverse Aries iu March and April, Taurus
in May and June, Gemini in July and August, and enter
Cancer at the middle of September. The great distance
of the comet and the uncertainty attaching to its precise
position, will, however, prevent its being seen. In the
summer and autumn of 1898 the comet aud earth will
rapidly approach each other, and the former may possibly
be rediscovered in the winter followmg.
Meteors. — T'le Leunich of 1S97. — Herr A. A. Nyland,
of Utrecht, reports that on November 13th he watched
the sky from 12h. 51m. to 16h. 7m., and saw twelve
meteors, of which seven were Leonids and three Taurids.
November 14th was cloudy. On November 15th observa-
tions were made between 13h. 8m. and 16h. 45h., and
forty meteors were recorded, including thirty-two Leonids.
There was a well-defined radiant at 152° + 24" and a
secondary position at 150° + 29°; no less than ten very
bright Leonids were observed, five being estimated to equal
first magnitude stars, one equal to Jupiter, and four equal
to A'enus. Fifteen of the Leonids left bright streaks. 'The
larger meteors exhibited an orange colour in five cases, and
a green hue in four cases.
At the Radclifle Observatory, Oxford, Messrs. Wickham
and Robinson maintained a watch on November 13th
from llh. 15m. to 17h. 45m. There were occasional
clouds and moonlight was troublesome, so that during the
night only about forty meteors were seen. The nights of
November 14th and 15th were cloudy.
Prof. A. S. Herschel, at Slough, observed about ten
meteors and no certain Leonids on November 13th, during
an extended watch of about seven hours between 9h. 30m.
and 18h. The sky was overcast on November 14th.
Sir W. J. Herschel and Mr. J. C. W. Herschel, at
Littlemore, near Oxford, on the night of November 13th,
between 12h. 30m. and 16h. 15m., counted twenty-one
meteors, including about seven Leonids.
Herr Franz, at the Observatory at Breslau, on November
13th, saw six meteors (three Leonids) ; and on November
14th before 16h. recorded twenty-one meteors, including
fourteen Leonids, from a radiant at about 145° + 25°.
Herr Rigginbach, at Basel, on November 13th, between
12h. 80m. and 14h. 30m., counted nineteen meteors (ten
Leonids). The following nights were cloudy.
The number of bright Leonids observed by Nyland on
the morning of November 16th indicates that, had the
sky been favourable before sunrise on November 15th, the
shower was, probably, a conspicuous one. Herr Franz's
observations on the morning of November 15 th terminated
at 4h. (= G.M.T. 2h. 62m. a.m.), and before the maximum
occurred.
Two of the meteors seen by Sir W. J. Herschel and
Mr. J. C. W. Herschel, near Oxford, were also recorded by
Jlessrs. Wickham and Robinson, at the Radclifle Obser-
vatory, Oxford, and by Mr. W. E. Besley at Walthamstow.
The meteors were of the first magnitude. One appearing
on November 13th, 15h. 28m., was a Cmicrid, descending
from one hundred and twenty-five to seventy-seven miles
over the North Sea to Halesworth, in Sufi'olk. The other
was a true Leonid, appearing at 15h. 52m., and falling
from one hundred and three to fifty-nine miles over the
Strait of Dover to Cranbrook, in Kent.
Tlie Geminiils. — Moonlight greatly interfered with obser-
vations of this shower. Mr. E. N. CuUum, of Whitby,
reports, however, that meteors were both numerous and
brilliant on the evening of December 12th. He recorded
ten between 8h. and 9h., and many others were seen
afterwards. They were nearly all (ieminids.
During the past autumn an unusually large number oi
fireballs have been observed. In the majority of cases,
however, the observations were not sufiiciently precise and
complete to allow real paths to be computed. Three
splendid meteors, appearing at convenient times in the
evening, were widely observed, and from a large number
of descriptions I worked out the following results :—
Rr.\L P.4THS OF Thbef: Firfuvlls, 1S97.
Date audliour
(1) October 2
fib. 23m
hid.
(2) Dec. 9th.
9h. 47m.
(3) December 12th.
8h. 6m.
Brightness
Height at besrinning.
Position over ...
Heig-ht at ending
Position over
SSiniles
Wooler. North 11 m
berlaiid
S5 miles
Lat.55''10 N.long
76 miles
Aldeburgh
21 miles
Eoyston
. 112 miles
. Lat. 54° N., long.
l'>28 E.
19 miles
. Nortli of Tliirsk
Earth point
Real length of jmth ..
Velocit.v
Radiant point
Inclinationot meteor's
descent
Parent system...
Korth Sea
171 miles
Very slow .
218° -HO" .
80
i' BoStids
Ampthill
90 miles
Rather swift
113° -H 32*
Richmond, Yorks.
151 miles
. 25 miles per second
. 80° + 23«
. 38°
C Tanri.ls
February 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE
17
In February no special showers are due, but large
meteors are often observed on about the 7th and 10th.
At this period there is a well-defined shower from 74''+ l.S",
near a AuriijiB, which needs further watching.
THE FACE OF THE SKY FOR FEBRUARY.
By Herrert Sadler, t.r.a.s.
A FEW, but not many or large, spots are visible on
the Sun's disc.
Conveniently observable minima of Algol occur
at lOh. IHm. p.ji. on the 9th, at 7h. 2m. p.m.
on the 12th, and at 3h. 7m. a.m. on the 27th.
Mercury is a moruing star, but is badly placed for obser-
vation on account of his considerable southern decli-
nation. On the 1st he rises at Gh. 27m. a.m., or about
one hour and a quarter before the Sun, with a southern
decUnation of 21° 18', and an apparent diameter of 6^".
On the 10th he rises at 6h. 36m. a.m., with a southern
declination at noon of 21^ 8', and an apparent diameter
of 5|". On the 20th he rises at 6h. 40m. a.m., with a
southern declination at noon of 18° 2.5', and an apparent
diameter of 5;^". After this he is too near the Sun to be
conveniently observed. He describes a direct path while
visible through a portion of Sagittarius into Capricornus.
He is in conjunction with Mars at 6h. p.m. on the 11th,
but of course both planets will have set.
Venus is in superior conjunction with the Sun on the
15th, and Mars is practically invisible.
Ceres is still fairly well placed for observation, southing
on the 1st at S'h. 5m. p.m., with a northern declination of
29^ 29', and a stellar magnitude of about 7j ". On the
14th she souths at 8h. 10m. p.m., with a northern
declination of 29° 46'. On the 28th she souths at about
7h. 15m. p.m., with a northern declination of 29° 58'.
During the month she describes a short looped path in
Auriga.
•Jupiter is now very well situated for observation, rising
as he does on the 1st at lOh. p.m., with a southern
decUnation at noon of 2° 42', and an apparent equatorial
diameter of 41'. On the 10th he rises at 9h. 22m. p.m.,
with a southern declination of 2° 81', and an apparent
equatorial diameter of 42". On the 20th he rises at
8h. 40m. P.M., with a southern declination of 2° 18', and
an apparent equatorial diameter of 43". On the 28th he
rises at 8h. 2m. p.m., with a southern declination of 1° 55',
and an apparent equatorial diameter of 48V'. During the
month he pursues a retrogi-ade path in Virgo, being about
1|° south of / Virginis towards the middle of the month,
the two objects forming a fine naked-eye double star.
Saturn and Uranus do not rise till some time after
midnight at the end of February.
Neptune is still favourably situated for observation. He
rises on the 1st at 2h. 29m. p.m., with a northern decUnation
of 21° 42', and an apparent diameter of 2^". On the
10th he rises at Ih. 40m. p.m., with a northern decUnation
of 21° 42'. On the 20th he rises at Oh. 54m. p.m., with
a northern decUnation of 21° 42'. On the 28th he rises
at Oh. 28m. p.m., with a northern declination of 21° 48'.
He is nearly stationary in Taurus during the month, in a
region barren of naked-eye stars.
There are no weU-marked showers of shooting stars in
February.
The Moon is full at 6h. 24m. p.m. on the 6th ; enters
her last quarter at Oh. 35m. a.m. on the 14th ; is new
at 7h. 41m. p.m. on the 20th ; and enters her last quarter
at llh. 13m. a.m. on the 28th. No bright star is occulted
at any convenient hour for the amateur observer in
February.
(2E!)tss Column.
By C. D. LocooK, n.A.
Communications for this column should be addressed to
C. D. LococK, Burwash, Sussex, and posted on or before
the lOth of each month.
Solutions of January Puzzles.
No. 1.
1. R to Kt7, dis. ch., K moves. 2. P x B, becoming a
Black Knight, dis. ch., Kt to B2, dis. ch., mate.
No. 2.
1. P X E, becoming a Black Rook, Castles ! (<() 2. R to
QB5, B to Esq, mate.
(a) This is a fresh Rook, and evidently, therefore, has
not moved. The Black King has not moved (by hypothesis),
so that Black is perfectly justified in Castling.
No. 3.
1. P to K8, becoming a Black Knight, ch.
[Both sides being mated simultaneously, the game
seems a fair draw. Any other move, such as R to B8,
would lose. J
We regret that all the above have proved either un-
attractive, or, from their novelty, perhaps, too difficult for
our solvers.
/"'. W. A, (le Tabeck. — The "Chess Intelligence" is in-
tended to be a permanent record of chess events. In a
monthly magazine it is obvious that it cannot usually be
news. The publication of problems has, during the last
nine years, resulted in many hundreds of solutions and
inquiries. For some years an annotated game was printed
regularly in every number. During all this time there
was not one particle of evidence to show that these games
were ever played through. We are glad to hear of the
exception, and shall endeavour in future to consider the
undoubted rights of the minority.
PROBLEMS.
No. 1.
By W. Clugston (Belfast).
Buck (;i).
m $ iEi '
1^1
White (H).
White mates in two moves.
48
KNOWLEDGE
[Febrcary 1, 1898.
White (li).
White mates in three moves.
Game played in the Hastings International Tourney.
(Jueen's (iambit ilerUneit.
White.
Black.
(H. N. Pillsbnrv.)
(A. Burn.)
1. P to Q4
1.
PtoQ4
2. P to QB4
2.
P to K3
3. QKt to B3
3.
KKt to B3
4. B to Kt5 (n)
4.
B to K2 (/<)
5. P to K3
5.
Castles
6. KKt to B3
6.
P to QKtS
7. R to Bsq
7.
B to Kt2
8. P X P [c)
8.
KtxP
9. BxB
9.
QxB
10. KtxKt
10.
BxKt
11. B to Q8
11.
E to Bsq id)
12. P to K4
12.
B to Kt2 (e]
13. Castles
13.
Kt to Q2
14. Q to K2
14.
P to QR3 ( f 1
15. E to QB8
15.
P to QB3
16. KR to QBsq
16.
P to QKt4
17. Q to KB ('/)
17.
E toB2
18. Q to B4
18.
QR to Bsq
19. P to K5
19.
P toQBl(A)
20. BxPch
20.
KxB
21. Kt to Ktoch
21.
K to Ktsq
22. R to R3 (/)
22.
q to Ksq
23. Q to R4
23.
K to Bsq
24. Kt to E7ch
24.
K to Ktsq
25. Kt to B6ch
25.
K to Bsq
26. KtxQ
26.
KxKt
27. Q to Kt5
27.
PxP
28. R to RBch
28.
Eesigns (./)
Notes.
This and the next four
moves constitute Mr.
)ury'3 favourite development
I
t was probably origi-
nated by Mr. Steinitz.
(h) Best ; though there is a well-known trap by 4. . . .
QKt to Q2 ; 5. P X P, P x P ; 6. Kt x P, Kt x Kt ; 7. B x Q.
B to KtSch, etc.
((•) The logical reply to the Queen's Fianchetto. If
Black retakes with the Pawn, White takes the free
diagonal with &. BQ3, retaining command of the QB file,
while the Black QB is blocked. If, as here, he retakes
with the Knight, White gains time afterwards by P to K4.
(d) Obviously, if 11. . . . BxP, 12. P to QKtS, Q to
KtSch, 13. Kt to Q2. The move made is forced, as White
threatens to win a Pawn by Q to B2, unless, indeed, he
can venture on 11. ... Q to KtSch.
{c) If now 12. ... B X P, 13. Q to E4 wins a piece.
Or if 12. ... Q to Kt5ch. 13. K to K2, B x EP, 14. E to
B3, Q x Pch ; 15. R to B2, Q to E6 ; IC. Q to Esq. We
cannot, of course, say for certain if this was Mr. Pillsbury's
idea.
(/) A wasted move. Black is apparently trying to keep
hia majority of Pawns on the Queen's side, when it would
be safer to free his game by P to QB4. Nevertheless, his
plan is suflBciently ingenious and characteristic.
((/) \\ith a view to the direct attack on the King which
follows.
(/i) Completely overlooking Whites intention. He should
play Kt to Bsq.
(/) Threatening R to R8ch. If now 27. . . . Kt to Bsq,
28. Q to E4, Kt to Kt3 ; and White mates in three moves.
(./■) For if 28. . . . Kt to Bsq, R x Ktch, followed by
R X E, wins everything. The whole finish was very pretty
and forcible.
CHESS INTELLIGENCE.
The first-class amateur tourney at Llandudno resulted
in a win for Mr. A. Burn with the fine score of nine out of
ten games played. He lost, only to Mr. Bellingham, who
took the second prize, Mr. -Jones being third. Messrs.
Owen, Sherrard, and Gunston were among the unsncceasful
competitors.
The Hastings Annual Chess Festival is fixed for January
24th-27th. Besides the leading English masters, M.
•Janowski is expected to be present.
A telephone match, played on December I8th between the
City of London Club and the Yorkshire Chess Association,
resulted in a victory for the former team by 5i games to 2^.
On the same day Surrey defeated Kent by 13 games to 7.
The Vienna and St. Petersburg Chess Clubs are playing
a match of two games by correspondence.
KNOWLEDGE, PUBLISHED MONTHLY.
Contents of No. 147.
PAGE
The Kurkinofcosm, or World of
Crustacea. By the Rev. Thomas
Stebbin?.
(/Iln»(rotod)
A Dr(.wiieil Contilieut. By E.
Lydekker, b.a., f.k.s ."?
Is Weather affected by the Moon ?
By Alex. B. SlcUowall, m.a.
(liliisti-akd) 5
Serpents and how to recognize
them. By Lionel Jervis 7
The Prismatic Camera during
Total Eclipses. By Wm.Shackle-
ton, F.K.A.s. [lUvxtrat'i) 9
Notes on Comets and Meteors.
By W. F. Denning, f.h.a.s 10
Ricbard Proctor's Theory of the
Universe. ByC. Easton. (lilus-
(i-afed) 12
Plate.— Photographs showing " Reversmg Layer " and Coronal Bing.
NOTICES.
Bound volumes of Ksowledoe, New Series, can be supplied as follows :—
Vols I.. II., ni., and Vni., 10s. 6d. each ; Vols. VI., VII., IX., X., and XI.
(1896), 8s. 6d. each.
Bindin? Cases, Is. 6d. each : post free, Is. 9d.
Subscribers' numbers bound (includinsr case and Index), 2s. 6d. each volume.
Index of Articles and Illustrations for 1891, 1892, 1894, 1S95, and 1S9« can be
snpplied for ;{d. each.
PAGE
British Ornithological Notes.
Conducted by Harry F.
Witherby, f.z.s., m.b.o.t. 14
Science Notes 15
Letters : — A. T. Masterman ; A.
Graham, m.a. ; Thos. J. Haddy ;
W. H. S. Monck; "I^otamu^" 16
Notices of Books {IHmtyattd) ... 18
Books Beceived 21
Obituary 21
Botanical Studies. — I. Vaucberia.
By A. Vaughan Jenninsrs, p.l.s.,
F.o.s. (nimtraUd) .' 21
The Face of the Sky for January.
By Herbert Sadler, F.s.A.S. . 23
Chess Column. By C. D. Locook,
TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION.
AUSITAL StTBSCBIPTlOS, 8S., PoST FbEE.
Knowledoe as a Monthly Magazine cannot be reristered as a Newspaper
for transmission abroad. The terms of Subscription per annum are therefore
as follows :— To any address in the United Kingdom, the Continent, Canada.
Unit;d States, Egypt, India, and other places in the Post.il Union, the
Subscription is 8 shillings, including postage ; or 2 dollars ; or 8 marks ;
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For all places outside the Postal Union, B shillings in addition to the postage.
Commnnications for the Editors and Books for Review should be addressed
Editors, " Kkowlkdoe," 326, High Holborn, London W.C.
March 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE
49
Founded in i88i by RICHARD A. PROCTOR.
LONDON : MARCH 1, 1898.
CONTENTS.
By
The Total Solar Eclipse, January 22, 1898.
K. Waitbe Maunder, f.r.a.s. {Illustrated)
British Bees.— I. Bv Feed. Enock, f.i.s., s.e.s., etc.
(Ilhistrated) ... '
The Vinegar Eel, By C. Ainswobth Mitchhli, b.a.., f.i.c.
Botanical Studies.— II. Coleochsete. By A. Vaitohan
Je.vninOS, f.l.s., f.G.S, (Illustrated)
Cloud Belts. By Wii, Shacklbtox, f.r.a.s. (Plate)
A New Theory of the Milky Way. By C. Easton
Letters :— David Flanbrt ; W. H. S. Moxck ; W. Sid-
QKEATKS ; L. HeUSLKT ; S. H. WeIOHT
The Masses and Distances of Binary Stars.
J. E. GOEE, F.B.A.S ...
Science Notes
Notices of Books
Short Xoiices
Books Received
Bv
Conducted bv Haebt F.
British Ornithological Notes.
WiTHBEBT, F.Z.S., M B.O.r
Obituary
The Karkinokosm, or World of Crustacea.— II. By
the Eev. Thomas K. R. Stebbixo, M.A., f.e.s., f.l.s.
(Illustrated)
Notes on Comets and Meteors. By W. F. DBNyiNO,
F.B.A.S. ...
The Face of the Sky for March. By Herbert Sadleb,
F.R.A.S. . ... ...
Chess Column. Bv C. D. Locock, b.a
THE TOTAL SOLAR ECLIPSE, JANUARY 22, 1898.
By E. Walter Maunder, f.r.a.s.
THERE could hardly be a greater difference than
between the eclipse of 1896 and 1898. The
shadow track in the former case ran through a
vast extent of country which offered, however, but
few suitable sites. These were clustered together
at two or three main points, and in almost every case the
intending observers were disappointed of the spectacle
which they had come to see. In 1898 the eclipse track
lay chiefly in one single country which offered a large
number of easily accessible sites, nearly all of which were
occupied, and all were favoured with the most perfect
weather. Up to the present time it certainly is the record
eclipse, either as regards the number of observers, the
character of their equipment, or the unchequered favour
which they experienced from the weather.
" A victory all along the line," is what we have to
record. The full significance of that victory and what
results may accrue from it, it will take us many months to
learn.
As a sensation the eclipse did not fulfil the popular
descriptions. Whether, as has been asserted, the corona
was unusually large and bright, or from the special
atmospheric conditions prevailing in India at the time, the
darkness was much less than is usual in any ecUpse of two
minutes' duration, and the general effects in colour, light,
and the appearance of the landscape were very much
those which were brought about more slowly some four
and a half hours later some thirty-five or forty minutes
after the sun had set. At any rate, the light at mid-
totality was certainly greater, considerably greater, thin
we ordinarily get at night at the full of the moon.
The fall of temperature was, however, considerable,
amounting to some twelve degi-ees ; and it was noticed by
some of those who had taken part in the Norway expedition
of 1896 that, whereas on that occasion the darkness of the
eclipse was felt to be a sensible relief from the unceasing
sunlight, so now the coolness of the eclipse was a relief
from the too powerful heat of the sun.
Consistently with the small amount of darkness of the
eclipse the approach of the shadow at the beginning of
totality was less marked than usual, and in some places,
though watched for, escaped notice. The only record
that has yet reached me of its approach having been
distinctly observed is from Dr. Robertson, of Nagpur.
The shadow-bands were also looked for at some stations
without success, though they were caught at both .Jeur
and Nagpur. At the latter place Miss Henderson, m.d.,
describes them as having been faint dusky ripples some
two inches in breadth, and separated from each other by
about the same mterval, and in appearance and speed of
motion resembling the ripples seen on the ceiling of a
cabin in an ocean steamer as they are deflected through
the porthole from the water outside.
Of the stars visible during the eclipse one caught every
attention, and was, indeed, seen after totality had passed.
This was the planet Venus, some six degrees south-west of
the sun at the time. Mars, though very small and further
from the sun, was also glimpsed, and some two or three
other stars were noted.
The shape of the corona recalled at once that of 1896,
and with it the two earlier years 1868 and 188C, which it
had resembled. To the south-west a long ray nearly in
the solar equator was easily traceable for two, if not three,
solar diameters from the dark limb of the moon. On the
east side a pair of broader and less-extended streamers
formed a single connected structure in which the charac-
teristic coronal curves were repeatedly seen.
Bearing in mind that these four years all fell at the time
of small but not of minimum sunspot activity, it appears
clear that we have here brought out a third coronal type as
distinct and definite — perhaps even more so than those
which have been already recognized as appropriate to the
times of actual maximum and minimum ; and it may be
hoped that we have now material enough to enable us to
trace the course of change which the corona undergoes in
its passage from one extreme form to the other.
It may be opportune here to correct a widespread mis-
apprehension, that minimum coronaj are small and faint
except for the two great equatorial rays. The reverse
would seem to be the case, except in the immediate
neighbourhood of the sun's pole. The corona, for instance,
of 1878, so far from being small and faint, was unusually
large and bright ; and the present one, though we have not
yet reached the actual minimum, possessed the same
characteristics.
The feathery structure round the solar poles, which was
so plainly seen in the eclipse of 1878, and which has been
recognized more or less clearly at so many eclipses since —
50
KNOWLEDGE.
[Makch 1, 1808.
especially at or near the time of minimum — was very
apparent on the present occasion.
The photographs of the corona have been unusually
The Sun's Corona, Total Eclipse, January 22nd, 1898.
numerous, and have been taken on every variety of scale,
from a diameter of a single millimt'tre with a hand camera,
up to one a hundred times as great. The latter were
obtained at three stations ; by the Astronomer Royal at
Sahdol, with an aperture of nine inches and an enlarging
lens ; by Dr. Copeland, at Gogra, near Nagpur ; and by
Prof. W. W. Campbell at Jeur, with telescopes of about
forty feet focal length. Next in order to these giant
photographs come the standard instruments of the Joint
Eclipse Committee, with their twin cameras giving images
of an inch and a-half, and of six-tenths of an inch. These
were employed by Prof. Turner at Sahdol, and Captain
Hills at Pulgaon. The cameras taking photographs of one
inch in diameter and smaller were much too numerous
to recount ; but special note should be made of Prof.
Burckhalter's device for obtaining both the inner and
outer corona on the same plate by means of a revolving
screen worked by a spindle passing through a hole in the
centre of the plate, which diminished the exposure given
to the bright central regions of the corona so as to bring
it more in accord with the faint light of the outer
extensions.
At the extreme ends of the line of stations a novel
experiment in coronal photography was attempted. At
Buxar, on the Ganges, and at Viziadrug on the coast,
a kinematograph was employed so as to obtain a con-
tinuous series of photographs of the progress of the
eclipse. The former instrument was supplied by Mr.
Nevil Maskelyne, and was worked by the Rev. J. M.
Bacon, the astronomer in charge of one of the two parties
organized by the British Astronomical Association, and
the other was in the hands of Lord Graham.
Of direct visual spectroscopic observations there were
few. Mr. NewaU and myself endeavoured to trace the
distribution of coronium — that is, of the substance which
shows its presence in the 1474 K line ; but the line was
faint, and it could only be ascertained that it showed a
general conformity to the shape of the brighter part of the
inner corona, without its being possible to ascertain
whether it corresponded in minuteness of structural detail.
No rifts were detected in it.
The photographs of the spectrum claim the highest
interest, and these were of unprecedented number and
value. Captain Hills, at Pulgaon, with two great slit
spectroscopes, obtained records of the "flash," both at
commencement and end of totality, which give a complete
history of the spectroscopic changes seen in the various
strata of the sun, from its ordinary spectrum up to that
of the prominences at Viziadrug on the coast. Mr. Fowler
and Dr. Lockyer were equally successful with prismatic
cameras of six inches and nine inches aperture, whilst
smaller spectrographs of extreme beauty, and ranging from
C in the red far into the ultra-violet, were secured by
Mr. Evershed at Talni.
The examination and interpretation of these photo-
graphs will be the work, not of days and weeks, but of
months, and possibly years ; but we may confidently look
to them for a complete answer to many questions which
are engaging the attention of solar physicists at the
present time, and particularly for information as to the
exact /()('((/(■ of the absorbing vapours which give rise
to the Fraunhofer lines. Sir Norman Lockyer's theories,
in particular of dissociation in solar and stellar atmo-
spheres, will be put to the severest test, and our know-
ledge of solar mechanism can hardly fail to receive a great
advance.
One inquiry which it was hoped the present eclipse
would advance has failed to meet with success. Mr.
NewaU was endeavouring to ascertain if the spectrum of
the corona, as obtained from the two opposite Umbs of the
sun, gave any evidence of relative motion in the line of
sight due to rotation. It will be remembered that in 1893
M. Deslandres came to the conclusion that the corona
rotated in essentially the same period as the photosphere.
Mr. Newall had arranged an exceedingly beautiful instru-
ment for this purpose — a spectroscope, the collimator new
telescope of which was parallel to the polar axis. The
spectroscope was also provided with a double slit, the one
slit tangential to one limb, and the second to the other
limb ; the one slit stretching from the sun's equator
northward, the other from the opposite end of the equator
southward. The experiment, which abundantly deserved
to succeed, was, however, frustrated by the faintness of
the coronal spectrum.
Of other observations it is scarcely possible to speak as
yet. It should, however, be added that the polariscope,
which has been almost forgotten in eclipse work for the
last fourteen or fifteen years, was very successfully used,
both at Sahdol and at Pulgaon, and the clearest indications
were secured of strong radial polarization.
Such is a very brief outline of the principal results (so
far as we yet know them) of this the most completely
successful eclipse on record. We hope to be able, at no
very distant date, to go much further into detail, when
some portion of the photographs obtained have been deci-
phered and discussed.
BRITISH BEES.-I.
By Fred. Exock, f.l.s., f.e.s., etc.
THE number of species of bees in Great Britain is
by no means large — only just over two hundred —
and yet to those people who, " having eyes, see
not," this small number is far too large for insects
which possess stings. Gardeners, too, look upon
them as marauding thieves, and this in spite of the fact
March 1, 1808.]
KNOWLEDGE
51
that fertilization of plants is brought about by the
unceasing industry of the bees.
Ungratefulness in man is so common a characteristic
that we must not be surprised to find that so little interest
is taken in the study of our British bees. It is sufficient
for the majority to know that " bees make honey."
For those who (/" desire to be soothed by the humming-
bee, or to follow out the habits and economy of our British
bees, the choice of books on the subject is by no means
a large one. They are; "Bees of Great Britain," by
Frederick Smith ; Shuckhard's " British Bees " ; and the
most valuable work, " The British Apidffi," by Edward
Saunders. Mr. Saunders is always ready and willing to
help young students in naming their captures. It is one
of our greatest pleasures to look back upon the many
instances of kindness received from the late Frederick
Smith, who was in every sense a true lover of bees — one
who would inspire enthusiasm in the heart of a young
beginner. The collection of British bees at the Natural
History Museum, South Kensington, was under his affec-
tionate care years ago at the British Museum.
The first family, the Anilnn'uhr, is divided into two sub-
families ; the first composed of two genera only, possessing
tongues much like the Vespidie, obtuse and rounded ; that
of Colletes being very beautiful when fully expanded
(Fig. 1, Collcfcs l)avic>i(inii). There used to be a very
large colony of this species at Farnborough, where I have
seen hundreds of the burrows close together in the sand-
banks. In some of the woods near Aldershot there were
also a number of colonies, many of which appear now to
have become deserted. The exceedingly neat looking
species, C. sucfincta, I used to find at Ilampstead Heath,
but, like other things, it has now disappeared from that
neighbourhood. The bees of this genus have exceedingly
sharp and powerful stings, and the legs are clothed with
most beautiful hairs of varied form.
The members of the other obtuse-tongued genus,
Prusopis, are all small in size and more or less black.
They are exceeding-
ly fond of the flowers
of the vetch. The
males are most dili-
gent in their pursuit
of the females.
The second divi-
sion, in which are
classed those bees
possessing tongues
more or less acute,
is composed of a
number of genera.
Like those of the
first part, the mem-
bers of these genera
are solitary in their
habits. The females
burrow into the sand for some considerable depth, and
line the sides of the burrow with an exceedingly fine mem-
brane, resembling goldbeaters' skin — only considerably
thinner.
The bees belonging to the genus Sphecodfs are small,
measuring from three-eighths to half an inch long. They
have black heads and bright, shining red bodies. They
are fond of settling on the bare patches of sand at
Hampstead and in other places where they are tolerably
plentiful, the females being more so than the males.
The sculpture of the thorax is well worth examination.
The next genus, Halutus, is composed of many species,
of some which are very small, but all are exceedingly
Fig. 1. — CoUeles Daviesana.
neat in their appearance. Both sexes of many species
appear in September, when, after impregnation, the females
hybernate, and make an early appearance the following
spring, when they are busily engaged forming burrows in
the sand. Many species are very fond of the flower of the
dandelion, and may frequently be found curled up asleep
in a half-closed flower. A close watch on these and other
flowers during the early hours of the day will often be
rewarded by good captures. The tongues of all the
Halicti are long and lanceolate, and require great care
and patience to expand and set out so that all the exquisite
structure may be revealed.
We next turn to the genus Anihemt, which contains the
greatest number of species both rare and beautiful. In
this genus are the bees which herald the approach of
spring. Many of them visit the opening catkins of
the willow, and, like the Lepidoptera, soon become
intoxicated, and fall an easy prey to the first prowling
naturalist. It is, indeed, a glad time when, after
weeks of cold and foggy weather, the bright sun
breaks out, bringing with its genial warmth these pretty
brown bees, each one arrayed in such a perfectly fitting
costume of plumed hairs, and their delicate wings glinting
in the sunshine — for bees must have bright sunshine to
enjoy their lives to the full. I have often heard the
remark that it is not much or any use going out in search
of bees before nine o'clock in the morning. This was
specially impressed upon me when receiving directions
as to how, when, and where to look for that most extra-
ordinary parasite Stijhips, which is found in the abdomen
of several of the AwlnncE; but having formed some
original ideas concerning Stytops I am afraid I quite
disregarded most of my friend's instructions. Instead
of nine o'clock, I was on the ground before eight —
waiting for the bees — and as they seemed to be rather
behind time I commenced to search for their burrows,
which, after a little experience, I was enabled to detect by
noting the disturbance of a few grains of sand. By
quickly inserting the bent end of my digger (an old half-
round file) a short distance away from the burrow, I was
able to heave out in nine times out of every ten the
Andrena, with the moisture clinging to its still yet untried
wings. Its astonishment at being so unceremoniously
" lifted " appeared to deprive it of the power of sudden
flight, and before it could recover it was under close
examination, and if stung by Stylops it was boxed at
once. I placed many of these " stylopized" Andn-na- in
various parts of Hampstead Heath, hoping to establish
the parasite in parts somewhat remote from the area so
dear to the holiday makers during Easter (the time
when many species of Andn-na are most plentiful), but
Hampstead Heath has, within the past twenty years,
considerably altered its appearance. Where there used to
be rising sandbanks, the head-quarters of endless bees
and sand wasps, there is now an unsightly cinder path
crossing the very spot which was once the citadel of these
beautiful bees, and where, in July, could be seen dozens
of the burrows of the sand wasps, ('erceris (Hiiimia and
ornata. Last year I visited this locality several times,
but not a single Veneris did I find. The beautiful Andremi
fulva, with its bright chestnut-coloured abdomen, has not,
I am rejoiced to say, yet been exterminated, though how
long it will be able to exist time alone will show. Its
bright colour is too tempting to the sharp eyes of Easter
Monday Cockneys. Fig. 2 shows the head and mouth
organs of Andrena fulra, which, together with others of
the genus, burrow deep down into the sand, throwing up
quite large heaps, which frequently are trodden flat to the
ground when the industrious female is out collecting pollen
52
KNOWLEDGE.
[Makch 1, 1898.
Fig. 2.—Amlreitafiiha.
and nectar. On her return there is no sign of her home,
but she, possessing the bump of locahty to a large degree,
sets herself to work to find or make an entrance through
the hardened sand. This she proceeds to do by removing
the sand with her powerful mandibles, which are frequently
worn down until they are made stumpy in her efforts to
reach her burrow — efforts terminating in success.
The male of A.
fulva has its man-
dibles enormously
developed. Some of
these bees, on first
emerging from their
burrow, are exqui-
sitely arranged and
exact in every fringe
of hairs, on head,
abdomen, and legs.
One of the neatest
is Anilreiin fulvimis,
which is markedly
common at High-
gate Cemetery — a
good locality for
many kinds of bees,
where they can live and die in peace. The neighbour-
hood of Highgate Archway, too, used to be a noted spot
for uncommon AnJrfna, such as A. hinijipes : but now it
sounds like mockery to mention such localities as Copen-
hagen " Fields " and Highgate " Fields."
Leaving the Andrence, we now come to a bee, ^^llC)■opix
hihiata, of which, when the late Mr. Fred. Smith wrote his
" Bees of Great Britain," in 1855, only three specimens (all
males) were known to exist. The first captured in this country
found its resting place in the British Museum ; the second
was taken by Mr. Walton in the New Forest ; and Mr.
Samuel Stevens captured a third at Weybridge, on July
4th, 1842 ; and though the surrounding country had been
searched year after year, it did not yield another specimen.
Not until the year 1878 was this rare bee heard of again,
but then the well-known hymenopterist, Mr. Bridgman,
appeared at the right time and right place to find both
males and females. In 1882 I went to Uve at Woking,
which was then a comparatively small place. At that
time I used to wander about without interference, and
I could revel in studying insects, especially bees. Previous
to taking up my abode at Woking a microscopist asked
me what I was going to take when I got there. I
immediately replied, " Oh, Macropis," adding, " 1 will
write and let you know immediately I capture it."
In the following
■July I observed
large quantities of a
flower somewhat
new to me, upon
which I kept con-
stant observation —
having a presenti-
ment that I should
find ]\[(icropis upon
or about it. On
July 27th, 1882, my
valued friend, the
late Sir Sidney
Smith Saunders,
paid me a visit, and
we both went out
" beeing." At noon exactly I noted a bee pass by whose
hum I did not know, so I waited until it should return.
which it did in a few minutes — little suspecting that it was
doomed to be captured, by a rapid stroke from my arm. I
quickly removed it from my net and brought my magnifier
to bear ; I then called to Sir Sidney to come and have a
look at something, asking, as I gave it into bis fingers,
" What's thot :' " when after a few moments' pause Sir
Sidney almost shrieked with excitement, " Why, it's
Macroph ! " I boxed it safely, feeling that my presenti-
ment had indeed come true.
After this piece of fortune Sir Sidney and I were
much excited, and jumped hither and thither like parched
peas ; but all in vain that day — no more Macropis
Fig. Z.-CilU
hcemorrhoidaUs
On the 29th I was found on the spot with eyes and ears
at full cock ; my patience was rewarded by capturing four
more male and one female Maempis. I quickly discovered
the fact that the latter knew how to sting. After my first
capture 1 sent a card to my friend, informing him that " I
had got Macropis."
Sir Sidney S. Saunders and I had several rambles
together in search of this beautiful bee, and each was
rewarded by capturing several males and females. The
following year, 1883, I saw dozens of both sexes, which I
left to be fruitful and multiply. I searched in vain for
their burrows, though I tried all kinds of dodges. Catching
some, I gently tied a delicate piece of fine silk to one of the
legs, then a small piece of white tissue paper, and started
the bee flying. I followed the bees long distances, but all
my efforts were futile. Some of the " rims " ended by my
catching my foot in a twig and falling headlong into a
gorse bush, from which I was glad to retire as soon as
possible. Woking has since increased to five times the
size, and some of the best parts of the common are utterly
ruined.
Another beautiful bee which I used to find occasionally
in the neighbourhood of Woking was ' 'ilissa hcBmorrhoidalU,
which affects the flowers of the harebell — another
flower that is not so plentiful as in years past, but one
absolutely necessary to this bee — one of the most energetic
and businesslike insects with which I am acquainted.
Quick eyes and hands are needed to capture this prize, for
it only appears in the hottest sunshine, when everything
must be ready for
its reception. It
announces itself
without a moment's
hesitation, and does
not tarry long, for it
is no sooner in one
harebell than it is
out again and away
— except, indeed,
when the net follows
up as quickly. Even
when it is in the net
the capture is not
complete, for this
bee does not sham
death as do others,
but bustles about in
a mostvigorous manner in its endeavours to escape, stinging,
too, in the most approved style. I do not think any bee
possesses such an exquisitely beautiful tongue as this one.
In outward appearance this bee is much like a large honey
bee, though much more hairy. Fig. 3 gives an idea of
the head and tongue. Whilst searching for Cilissn I used
occasionally to find a few of that grand bee, Dasypoda
hirtipes — the hairy bee — without doubt the most beautiful
and graceful of all British bees. It has only once been
Fig. 4. — Dasypoda'hirfipes.
Mabch 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE.
53
recorded from the London district — July 18th, 1878 — when
I was fortunate in capturing a fine female specimen as it
hovered about the face of a sandbank on Ilampstead
Heath. Ptixi/iioda Itirti/iis is intensely fond of composite
llowers of the dandelion type, among the petals of which
it buries itself as it rilles the flower of its nectar and yellow
pollen, with which it becomes heavily laden. Its immense
bushy hind legs look like bright yellow bottle brushes.
The shape of the
hairs on the third
pair of legs is unique
among bees, each
tiny little branch
being surmounted
by a knob or club.
This bee is plenti-
ful along the south
coast. I found them
just emerging from
their burrows in the
sand at Littlehamp-
ton. Fig. i shows
the peculiar shape
of the tongue and
maxillae.
Paimrijus is the nest in order. In colour it is a smoky
black. It is fond of making its burrows in hard paths,
and in such situations I have found them at Woking and
Hampstead, besides having swept them up from flowers
of the mouse-ear hawkweed, which used to flourish on
Hampatead Heath.
The genus Nomadii consists of a number of species, more
like wasps than bees, with bright yellow-banded bodies.
All are cuckoo bees, depositing their eggs in the burrows
of AndrenidcB at the time when the rightful owners are
engaged storing up pollen for their progeny, which are
starved out by the stronger larvae of this cuckoo bee. The
tongue is a very neat one, more resembling that of the
honey bee {see Fig. 5).
The prettily marked bee Epeolus raiieijutus is parasitic in
the cells of Colletes Darii'sana. It has a particularly sharp
sting. {To be coHtiinwd,)
FlO. 5. — Namada succincta.
THE VINEGAR EEL.
By C. AiNSWORTH MiTCUELL, B.A,, F.I.C.
IN the " Philosophical Essays " of Eobert Boyle,
published in 1661, there occurs the following
paragraph ; — " We have made mention to you of
a great store of living creatures which we have
observed in vinegar ; of the truth of which observa-
tion we can produce divers and severe witnesses, who
were not to be convinced of it until we had satisfied them
by ocular demonstration ; and yet there are divers parcels
of excellent vinegar wherein you may in vain seek for
these living creatures, and we are now distilling some of
that liquor, wherein we can neither by candle-light nor by
daylight discern any of these little creatures, of which we
have often seen swarms in other vinegars."
This appears to be the earliest reference in scientific
literatiKe to the Leptodcra oxopliihi, which, from its shape
and fondness for vinegar, has long been known as the
"vinegar eel," and which in Schneider's opinion is iden-
tical with the " eels " which may often be observed in
sour paste.
It is of very frequent occurrence in certain vinegar
works, more especially on the Continent, where the
vinegar is manufactured at a lower and (for the eels)
more favourable temperature than is usual in England.
As to its origin, nothmg is definitely known, though
Czernat is inclined to think that it is introduced in the
water used for brewing the vinegar. Occasionally, on
allowing vinegar to stand exposed to the air for several
days in warm weather, it will soon be swarming with
these minute creatures, which have probably developed
from germs already present in the liquid. As wiU be
seen from the figure, which shows a single vinegar eel
under a high power, it is of very simple construction.
The body is cylindrical and ends in a sharp point, and
the skin (which is changed from time to time) is smooth,
structureless, and very strong. According to Czemat's
average measurements, the length of the male's body is
about one twenty-fifth of an inch, that of the female one
sixteenth of an inch, the relative proportion generally being
as 1 : 1-3. In both sexes minute corpuscles may be
observed, which are put in motion by the contraction of
the body. In the female the eggs lie in two tubes which
unite in one opening.
Vinegar eels are capable of moving either backwards or
forwards, and progress by alternately shaping themselves
iiito an S and straightening out again. They appear to be
incessantly darting through the vinegar at the top of their
speed in all directions, but always with a tendency towards
the surface, as they are air-breathing animals. Czernat
states that they never rest day or night, and that their rate
of progress is about one inch in twelve and a-half seconds.
They are capable of living in very dilute alcohol or
acetic acid as well as in vinegar, and can withstand a
The Vinegar Eel (higlily magnified). (After Pasteur.)
great variation of temperature, not being killed until the
temperature reaches one himdred and forty degrees to one
hundred and fifty degrees Fahrenheit in one direction, and
about ten degrees below the freezing point of water in the
other.
Pasteur was the first to point out how harmful the
vinegar eel is in the manufacture of vinegar. Vinegar is
prepared by causing certain micro-organisms (of which there
are several species classified under tbe term of "acetic
bacteria ") to act upon a liquid containing a small percentage
of alcohol, such as beer, fermented malt extract, or cider.
By the action of these bacteria, which are supplied with
the requisite amount of atmospheric oxygen, the alcohol
is gradually converted into acetic acid, the process being
accelerated by maintaining a temperature of about one
hundred degrees Fahrenheit within the "acetifier."
When insufficient- air is supplied, the bacteria form them-
selves into a slimy layer on the surface of the liquid,
popularly known as "mother of vinegar." Should, now,
vinegar eels develop in vinegar iu the course of manufacture,
they multiply rapidly, and a struggle for the air supplied to
the apparatus commences between them and the bacteria.
For some time a working balance may be struck between
54
KNOWLEDGE
[March 1, 1898.
tbem, and the air shared ; but during this struggle, which
may last for weeks, the activity of the bacteria is impaired,
and though the conversion of alcohol into acetic acid still
proceeds, it does so with an increased expenditure of time
and a reduced yield. Should the vinegar eels gradually
obtain the upper hand, they interfere more and more with
the working of the apparatus, and eventually the conversion
of alcohol into acetic acid comes to a standstill. If, on the
other hand, the bacteria get the mastery, they form the
slimy layer, mentioned above, over the surface of the
liquid, as the result of their obtaining insufficient oxygen.
This skin effectually prevents the eels from breathing when
they come to the surface, and so they perish for want of
air, and fall to the bottom of the apparatus, where they
may accumulate and putrefy. In either case the only
remedy is to thoroughly clean and disinfect the apparatus
and commence afresh.
It was only with great difficulty that Pasteur could
convince certain French vinegar manufacturers as to the
advantage of endeavouring to get rid of the vinegar eel, for
so general had it become with them that they had begun
to look upon it as an essential part of the process instead
of a deadly enemy.
Even after vinegar containing eels has been freed from
them by filtration the germs remain, and when placed
under suitable conditions will develop into eels, which will
rapidly multiply and cause the vinegar to become turbid,
although it has been recently proved in (iermany that they
do not aiJect its strength. As Pasteur was the first to point
out the ill effects caused by the vinegar eel in the manu-
facture of vinegar, so, too, he was the first to devise an
effectual means of destroying them, with their germs and
all other forms of life in the finished product, by heating
it to about one hundred and sixty degrees Fahrenheit,
and then rapidly cooling it so as to prevent loss of the acid
by evaporation. And this is only one of the many instances
in which the studies of Pasteur on micro-organisms have
been of practical benefit to mankind.
BOTANICAL STUDIES.-II.
COLEOCH^TE.
By A. Vaughan Jennings, f.l.s., f.g.s.
IN a preliminary study' we examined a common
fresh-water alga which showed in its simplest form
the process of oogamous reproduction ; the develop-
ment of a single egg-cell in a simple protective case,
fertilized by motile antherozoids formed in an
adjoining chamber growing out from the same plant-
filament. Apart from structural details of the plant in
question, attention was specially called to two points in
connection with its reproduction : firstly, that what might
be termed the "fruit" was only the fertilized egg-cell
surrounded by a thickened wall ; and, secondly, that on
germination this " fruit " (or oospore) grew at once into
a new plant, in all respects resembling the parent.
Our next illustration may also be taken from the fresh-
water algip, and from a genus by no means uncommon in
this country, though not, perhaps, easy to find without
some careful observation.
On the stems of water plants such as the water-lily and
the common pond-weed, or on the glass sides of aquaria,
may be found little green discs ranging in size from almost
invisible specks to circles a quarter of an inch or so in
diameter.
* Vaucheria, KxowLEDGB, January, 1898.
These belong to the genus Coleochmte* a well-defined
and widely distributed genus containing in this country
some three species. The plants are, it is true, very
frequently sterile, but the nature of the reproductive
process is of considerable importance in the line of study
we are following.
It will be interesting, however, first to examine the
structure of the plant itself. If the species collected is,
as it most probably will be, either C. scutata or Corhkularit,
it will be noted that the whole plant is just a flat plate of
cells arranged in radial rows ; the cells all in one plane
and never superposed one above another. As the cells
have all a fairly uniform average size, this must mean that at
the growing margin many cells divide in two by radial
walls, and numerous instances of this will readily be found.
In another species — C. sohitu — the rows of cells are, in
fact, separated for a considerable portion of their length :
while in others, such as ' '. pulfinnta, the cells are no longer
in one plane, but grow up straight or obliquely, forming a
sort of cushion.
In other words, we have within the genus t a series of
stages connecting the flat ceU-plate with the tree-like
growth of such types as BuUiochatt, one of the most
beautiful of our fresh-water alg». Among the red sea-
weeds, also, the early stages of some species of the
"coralline" Melulu'sia have a similar structure, and the
delicate discs of cells may often be found on the surface
of the larger weeds. A similar growth-type occurs also
on leaves in tropical countries, constituting the genus
Plii/C(tpeltis,\ but here a yellow colouring matter is present
as well ; and this fact, together with its reproductive
organs, shows it to be allied to the little yellow or red
filamentous algic of the genus ('hroiilepus (or TrenUpuMia)
which occur on rocks and trees all over the world. We
have, that is to say, similar or parallel types of growth in
plants which are otherwise widely separated. Some
writers seem to regard the disc type as derived from the
thread-like form ; but the early stages in development of
such forms as Phycoprltis seem, as I have elsewhere
suggested, i to point to an opposite conclusion. Theoretical
questions such as this are, however, outside our present
purpose.
Coming to the question of the mode of reproduction in
('ohochate, -we find, as in Vuticheria, th&t there are two
distinct methods. In the first case the protoplasm of some
of the cells of the thallus becomes contracted and rounded,
and finally escapes by an opening in the cell wall. When
liberated it appears as a free-swimming ^ovipmiilium with
a pair of long cilia. This, after a period of activity, loses
its cilia, settles down, and subsequently grows into a new
plant. The process is therefore physiologically similar to
the escape of the more complex :oin/o)iiilium of Vaticheria,
and has nothing to do with the formation of a true fruit.
It is again a case of " rejuvenescence " of a protoplasmic
particle without any combination with other elements.
In the second case the contents of certain cells become
enlarged and specialized to form an orisphen, while some
of the other cells divide in four, and from each new cell
* The name refers to the long bristle-like hairs ivitk a sheathing
base whicli occur on the cells of the disc in most species, but are
sometimes altogether absent.
t The closely related genus Aphanochate, which also occurs on
ftesh-water weeds, shows in the same war an intennediate condition
between the discoid and the iilamentous growth.
:J: The Mi/coidea parafitica (Cunningham), which causes disease
on the leaves of the coffee and other plants, is nearly related, but
may consist of more than one cell-layer, and may penetrate the
tissues of the leaf it grows on.
§ Proceediigsofihe Boi/a' IrM Academy, 1895.
Mabch 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE
55
thus produced aet free an antluTozohl. This is a free-
swimming body with two ciha, similar to the zoogonidia,
but smaller, and it reaches and fertilizes the oosphere by
different methods in the various species. In the common
British species it appears that any cell of the disc may
enlarge and become an oogonium ; and, similarly, other
cells may divide and become antheridia, though often on
separate plants. The fertilization of the oospherea by
the antherozoids in these cases apparently takes place by
the passage of the latter through an opening in the cell
wall of the oogonium.
The process has been studied in detail by Pringsheim in
the case of a species which is not found in this country —
Coh'ochat,- /nihinntd (A. Br.) — and in this case the highest
degree of specialization seems to be reached. The species
is one of those already referred to as having a half-fila-
function to the sti/U of a flower, and is a special structure
developed in connection with the process of fertilization.
Its presence in this one type of fresh-water weed is specially
interesting, because it is a characteristic organ in the case
of the red seaweeds, though in these the fertilizing agents
are non-motile bodies or pollinoids.
This similarity between the reproductive process in
Coleochivte and in the red seaweeds is still more marked in
the subsequent stages. After fertilization not only does
the oosphere enlarge and become surrounded by a cellulose
wall (constituting an oospore or oosperm), but some
physiological influence extends to the adjacent cells, causing
them to divide and grow up round it, enclosing it in a
protective cellular layer or perirarp.
The structure thus formed— which has been called by
different authors a ciirpoijonium or spermocarp — is therefore
A — Young plant of Cohochcefe sciifafa (Brcb), magnified about one hundred times. In the upper part some of the
cells are dividing into four previous to the development of antherozoids. B. — A fertile filament of C. puleinafa (A. Br.),
showing the oosphere enclosed in the oogonium with its trichogyne {t). Below are the antheridia {a) and above an
antherozoid (a') . c. — An oogonium in same species after fertilization, showing the surrounding pericarp (p). d, — The
spermocarp liberating its carpospores. E. — Zoospores formed from the earpospores. (b to E, after Pringsheim.)
mentous, tufted growth, and here the oogonia are terminal
on the ends of the threads.
The oogonium is, as before, only an enlarged 'and
specialized cell containing a single oosphere, but its wall
is prolonged into a long tubular projection termed a
" trichogijiu." Antheridia are developed from adjacent
cells in this species, but in some other cases on separate
plants.
There is no doubt that the trichogyne corresponds in
* The species is not uncommon in the lake* of Central Europe.
I am indebted to Prof. Oltmanns for caUing my attention to it on
plants of IsoHes in the Titisee, near Freiburg-in-Baden.
a very mnch higher type of fruit than the simple oospore
of Viiuclieria.
The fruit remains quiescent during the winter, but in
the next spring the oospore divides and forms several cells
or citrpoapoi-es : it does not itself grow into a new Cohochcete
plant. Fm-ther, the carpospores themselves do not grow
mto new vegetative plants. They liberate free-swimming
zoospores, and these in their turn give rise to new (.'oho-
chceif plants which may reproduce themselves again by
either method.
WhUe, then, an ordinary sterile plant of CoL-ochate does
not show us any particular advance in general structure
from many of the lower ThiiUophijta, there are certain well-
56
KNOWLEDGE
[Maboh 1, 1898.
defined features in its life history which mark a great step
in the evolution of plant life. Firstly, there is the
development of the trichogyne. Secondly, there is the
influence of the process of fertilization on cells adjacent to
the egg-cell, resulting in the formation of a fruit. Thirdly,
there is the all- important phenomenon of the division of
the carpospore into a group of cells which do not imme-
diately reproduce the parent plant.
We have here, in fact, a very early indication of that o/icr-
nation of >i, nriKtinns which has played so important a part
in the story of plant life, and a study of which has given us
the clue to the relationship between the lower and higher
members of the vegetable kingdom. It is here that we
see clearly for the first time, in the upward succession of
plant types, the distinction between an oiijihyte or egg-
bearing generation and a sporojihyti or spore-bearing gene-
ration, arising from it and in turn reproducing it again.
Some of the consequences of the increasing differentia-
tion of these alternating stages and the speciahzation of
their accessory tissues will be pointed out in later studies.
CLOUD BELTS.
By Wm. Shackleton, f.r.a.s.
ANYONE who has made a voyage beyond the
Equator will, no doubt, retain a good recollection
of a day or so of disagreeable, oppressive, damp
weather, when moisture seemed to be exuding
from all sides, just as if one had come out of a
dense Scotch mist, and everything was coated with a thick
film of moisture which trickled down in great beads.
This journey through the watery-laden atmosphere and
almost constant rain, is really a passage through the
equatorial cloud belt which girdles the planet on which we
happen to be located ; and although we may admire Jupiter
with his many cloud belts as seen through a telescope, yet
we feel thankful for the invention of steamships which
enable us to leave behind as quickly as possible the most
marked cloud-belt appended to our earth, rather than be
becalmed in these " doldrums " where ships have been
known to drift listlessly about for whole weeks.
A graphic description of the kind of weather which is
usually experienced under the cloud ring of the equatorial
calm belt is found in the journal of Commodore Sinclair,
kept on board the U.S. frigate Congress during a cruise to
South America in 1817-18. He crossed it in the month
of January, 1818, between the parallel of 4- N. and the
Equator. He says :— " This is certainly one of the most
unpleasant regions on our globe. A dense, close atmo-
sphere except for a few hours after a thunderstorm, during
which time torrents of rain faU, when the air becomes a
little refreshed ; but a hot glowing sun soon heats it again,
and but for your awnings and a little air put in circulation
by a continual flapping of the ship's sails it would almost
be insufferable. No person who has not crossed the region
can form an adequate idea of its unpleasant effects.
Except when in actual danger of shipwreck, I never spent
twelve more disagreeable days than in these calm lati-
tudes."
The general appearance of the sky in this " rainy sea,"
as it has been called, is a steamy haze — sometimes growing
into uniform gloom, with or without heavy rain, at other
times gathering into small ill-defined patches of soft
cumulus. After dark there is always a great development
of sheet lightning till about two in the morning.
The Plate shows the appearance at the edge of the cloud
belt on the confines of the south-east trade wind, and is
reproduced by the kind permission of Sir J. Benjamin
Stone, ]\I.P., from a photograph taken by him in 1894, on
his way to South Africa.
Besides this equatorial cloud belt, however, there are
two other rings encircling the earth, where rain falls
perhaps more incessantly even than in the equatorial
belt itself, though by no means in such large quantities.
These latter belts occur near latitude GO in both
hemispheres ; and perhaps more of us have passed through
these than that of the equatorial belt, especially the
one crossing the Shetlands and South Norway about
Bergen, where it rains nearly every day throughout the
year, and which place tourists speak of as especially
relaxing, thus experiencing some of the effects described
by Commodore Sinclair.
It is not necessary to go into detail as to the actual
cause of these cloud belts — that is a matter for text-books ;
sufficient it is to say that in the case of the equatorial belt,
the north-east and south-east trade winds flowing into the
equatorial regions to supply the up-draught caused by the
intense heating of the atmosphere surrounding the Equator,
pass over zones of about twenty degrees in width, from
which all, or nearly aU, the vapour of evaporation is carried
into the comparatively narrow zone of the equatorial calm
belt before it ascends to higher and therefore colder levels.
In these upper reaches condensation takes place, thereby
producing a constant canopy of dense cloud which forms
a nearly continuous cloud girdle. The equatorial calm
belt, therefore, is also a cloud and rain belt.
It has been estimated that the daily amount of evapora-
tion on the ocean within the tropics is about a quarter of
an inch per day. If, then, all this amount of vapour over
zones, say, one thousand miles in width on each side, is
carried into the calm belt, say three hundred mUes in
width, and is there precipitated as rain, the daily rainfall
would be 1-G7 inches; and consequently if this belt
were to remain stationary, we should have an annual
rainfall of about sixty feet for the average of the width.
But since the cloud and rain belt oscillates through a
range generally more than twice as great as its width,
this amount of rain is distributed in the course of the
year over a zone more than three times as wide, and hence
in general less than one-third of this amount falls in any
one place during the year ; aj., at Maranhao at the mouth
of the Amazon, and on the border of the cloud zone, the
rainfaU is two hundred and seventy inches per year, and
is even greater at several places, but this is chiefly due to
local influences.
From certain causes the rain and cloud belt, as it
exists at any given time, is mostly wider than the belt of
calms, but of course neither have very definite hmits ; these,
however, are much better defined over the great oceans,
where the trade winds blow much more steadily than on
the continents, where regularity is very much interfered
with by the various abnormal disturbances of uneven
surfaces and mountain ranges, and likewise by the
monsoons of the Indian and other oceans. The rain
and cloud belt is, however, clearly traceable across the
whole of Africa, wherever observations have been made,
as also across the American isthmus ; but it has greater
width and its Hmits are not so well defined. These cloud
zones, on which large amounts of rain fall, are traced out
naturally for us on the surface of the globe, and it has
been truly said that these regions are the "reservoirs of
the great rivers"; e.ij., those originating from the equatorial
cloud belt being the Amazon, Orinoco, Niger, Nile, and
Congo, whilst the Yenesei, Obi, Mackenzie, and St. Lawrence
largely derive their supplies from the minor belt in the
northern hemisphere.
From certain causes which can be explained, the mean
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March 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE
57
position of the cloud belt ia not coincident with, but lies
a few degrees north of, the Equator, and, as has been
mentioned before, it oscillates over a zone more than
three times its width in a year.
The cause of this annual oscillation of the belt is that
during the winter of each hemisphere the earth's surface
and atmosphere becomes much colder than it is in the
other hemisphere, and consequently the atmospheric
volume is considerably less, and there is a pressure
gradient above by which the air of the higher strata flows
from the warmer hemisphere to the colder, L^lving rise to
a counter flow of air below, from the colder to the warmer
hemisphere. The conse<juence is that the stronger system at
this season encroaches somewhat upon the territory of the
other, causing the middle of the equatorial calm and rain
belt (which is the dividing line between the two systems)
to be displaced from its mean position. There is there-
fore an annual oscillation of the calm and cloud belts, such
that the most northerly position is in midsummer and
the reverse in midwinter of the northern hemisphere, or,
in other words, as the sailors say, " The cloud belt follows
the sun."
Wet and dry seasons are thus produced in districts
which fall within the range of oscillation of the rain-cloud
belt, where it is well defined and not afl'ected by abnormal
disturbances, but is somewhat as in the ocean and on
level countries. Such is the case with the Orinoco and
great Amazonian basin. Humboldt says : " As in the very
North the animals become torpid with cold, so here, under
the influence of the parching drought, the crocodile and
the boa become motionless and fall asleep, deeply buried
in the mud. At length, after the drought, the welcome
season of rain arrives, and then how suddenly is the
scene changed !" In ponds from which, but a week before,
the wind blew clouds of sandy dust, tlie reanimated fish
may be seen swimming about, deciduous trees become
verdant, and scarcely a week elapses before the plants
are covered with the larvre of butterflies, the forest is
murmuring with the hum of insects, and the air is har-
monious with the voice cf birds.
The rain at these periods excites the astonishment of a
European. It descends in almost continuous streams, so
close and dense that the level ground, unable to absorb it
sufficiently fast, is covered with one uniform sheet of
water ; and down the sides of declivities it rushes in a
volume that wears channels in the surface. In the towns
many of the houses are built on raised causeways, so that
the roadway is able to act as a river bed during these
tropical downpours. Perhaps in some subsequent number
of KNowLEDtiE we may reproduce a street scene under
these conditions, with half-submerged carts, floating
barrels, and a rushing stream carrying all before it.
The effects of these alternating seasons can readily be
imagined, and to obviate this — or, rather, to have a supply
of water for irrigation and other purposes during the dry
season — some of the provinces in South America thus
affected are constructing large reservoirs; «.'/., in the
province of Cearfi they are damming up the end of a large
valley at Quixada, thus forming a large artificial lake in
the wet season, which will be distributed gradually over
the parched land throughout the stcn, or dry season.
Space will not here permit me more than to point out
that the most conspicuous features of the members of the
solar system larger than the earth are their dark belts,
whilst in the case of those planets smaller than ours these
bands are scarcely traceable. ^Yhether in this respect the
earth marks a different condition of things existing on the
giant planets to that on the smaller ones (which constitute
less than one-hundredth of the planetary mass) is only ccn-
jacture ; but one would expect that the appearance of the
cloud belts on the earth, as seen from some other planet,
would, on account of the great reflecting power of clouds
and mists, be not in the form of dark but of bands brighter
than the general surface.
Seeing, tjien, that all the large planets are so striated,
should we not expect the central and largest body of our
system — the sun — to exhibit these characteristics :' And,
indeed, it does, for are there not two zones of maximum
" spotted area " on either side of the equator, along which
concentrated portions of cloud belts move across the sun .'
Hence, if we imagine these gregations of umbrae to be
disseminated as penumbraj along the spot zones, we should
have presented to us a phenomenon closely resembling
that of the " cloud belts " of the larger planets. From
these few considerations it may be gathei-ed that " cloud
belts " play an important part in the cosmogony of the
solar system.
A NEW THEORY OF THE MILKY WAY.
By C. Easton.
TOWARDS the end of a previous article on " Richard
A. Proctor's Theory of the Universe " I suggested
that, if we confine ourselves to those facts known
to-day with suHlcient certainty, we can only
attirm, with respect to the structure of the Milky
Way, that we there see marked irregularity of details, and
some traces of a regularity at least partial in the principal
features of the phenomenon. Before venturing to go a
little further 1 must sum up the facts and considerations
on which this opinion is founded. Want of space compels
me in an article of this kind to direct in some cases the
reader to the sources of information.
Now that photographs of the Milky Way are so wide-
spread, there is no need to insist on the great irregularity
that we observe (in projection) in the distribution of
the stars, so long as we confine ourselves to a relatively
small portion of the galactic zone. It follows, moreover,
from the evidence of all the results recently obtained in
the study of the galactic phenomenon, that the manner
of distribution of stars //( spur, varies, even between limits
that are relatively large : in this part of space the stars
are widely scattered, in this other part they are gathered
together into veritable stellar agglomerations. But, a
priori, that does not by any means exclude a fairly marked
regularity of the Milky Way, tdhn as a uhoh-. Suppose
that the Milky Way has the form of the well-known elliptic
nebula in Lyra; unless we admit that its borders are defined
by this figure, and a perfect regularity of distribution
prevails inside this ellipse, we should see — we being situated
near the central portion, relatively void of stars — a " Milky
Way " enclosing the heavens in a fashion similar to the
one we see in reality.
Besides, this theory of a Milky Way roughly annular or
elliptical recommends itself by its simplicity, and appears
to be the one most widely spread at the present day.
Nevertheless, if one studies the phenomenon closely,
there are, in this theory of a galactic ring, several points
that require explanation.
We see, it is true, the Milky Way forming a great circle
round the heavens, but, even apart from the irregularity of
detail, the galactic light is very unequally distributed on
the circumference of this ring. The Aquila part is much
more brilliant than the Monoceros part. This is not
only seen in the studies made with the naked eye,
but also in the star gauges ; and it is the case for the
southern hemisphere as well as for the northern. As for
58
KNOWLEDGE.
[Maboh 1, 1898.
the general naked-eye aspect, two minutes' study on a fine
evening in September is sufficient to establish the great
superiority in brightness of the Milky Way between
Sagittarius and Cepheus over that between Cepheus and the
Twins. As for the counts and stellar gauges, Sir William
Herschel found an average of IGTS stars in his gauges
about Aquila as compared with 82-5 about Monoceros.
Celoria found likewise for all stars down to the eleventh
magnitude in ah equatorial zone of about six degrees
breadth, ")8-8S3 stars in the region containing the Milky
Way about 18h., and 43 82ii in the part that the Milky
Way crosses about Gh.* This is a fact that it is quite easy
to establish, but whose consequences have not received the
attention that they merit.
Unless we admit that we are situated in the centre of
the ring, but that in the body of this irregular ring the
stars increase systematically, so to speak, towards a point
(which is evidently most improbable), we must conclude, as
was said above, that the sun in the interior of this hypo-
thetical ring occupies an excentric position, fairly near the
side where is Monoceros, moderately distant from Aquila.
But why, then, does the lirciuUh of the galactic zone in
Monoceros differ so little from that in Aquila ? Evidently
the Milky Way in general ought to appear larger to us
the nearer we approach the hypothetical ring, for we could
not presuppose (and before such an utterly improbable
thing has been proved independently) that the irregulari-
ties in the breadth of the zone (any more than the irregu-
larities of brightness) increase towards a given point in
the circumference. But at first sight the Milky Way
appears, on the contrary, larger in the region of the Eagle,
because of the two brilliant branches, and that is why
Kant has already placed the sun near to that part of
the Milky Way where this constellation is found. After
studying it, however, more attentively with the naked eye,
and including all the branches, it appears rather broader on
the majority of charts in Monoceros than in Aquila, but
the difference is far less than theory would indicate. Is
this circumstance due to the mode of formation of the
visual Milky Way itself '? (See my preceding paper.) No,
for in the paper of Prof. Celoria we find an easy way of
measuring the breadth of the zone where the stellar density
is greater than the "average" {" jihi/^icul dutaxy" fi;
and it follows from one of his tables — Tavola V — that
for the stars as far as the eleventh magnitude (and
also for the whole of the fainter stars that W. Herschel
saw in his great telescope), the Milky Way is consider-
ably larger in Aquila than in Monoceros, and even
(particularly for the relatively brilliant stars 0 — 11) that
the principal branch in the Eagle alone has almost the
same breadth as the entire Milky Way in Monoceros, where
the galactic light is, moreover, so feeble.
This evidently contradicts the hypothesis of a simple
and continuous ring whose parts are all situated at con-
siderable distances from the sun. ( Situated in the interior
of such a ring, we ought to be able to observe a correlation
between the narrow, brilliant, and well-defined portions on
one hand, and on the other between the feeble, diffused, and
broad portions.) The hypothesis that there is a real
duplication of the Milky Way into two branches at the
same distance from us, over almost exactly the half of its
•Sir John Herschel, Outlines; F. G-. W. Stiure, Etudes ; J. T.
'Enckc, Astroa. Nac/iHchten, XXYL.lSiS.p. 3S6; Houzeau, Urano-
graphie ; Atlas, Mons, 1878; Easton, Voie Lactee, 1893; Astron.
Nachrichten, 3270; Plassmaun, Jahresberichte der I'.A.P., Berlin,
1898; Celoria, Fubbl. del Oss. di Srera, XIII.
t " Le region! in cui le densita stellari sono piu grandi dcUa densita
media si possono chiamare regioni lattec." Celoria, ibid., p. 43.
course, is obviously improbable ; but it is also incompatible
with tlie reality, for the classic representation of the
"simple " Milky Way* in Cygnus, Monoceros, and Crux,
as opposed to the double portion in Crux, Aquila, and
Cygnus, does not exist. + If we hold to an annular Milky
Way we are compelled to accept at least lu-n rings, which
both surround us but at very different distances. The
nearest ring easily explains the very remarkable circum-
stance that the fairly brilliant stars — those found in the
" Bonn Durchmusterung " of about 0 — 0-5 magnitudes —
are, contrary to the others, more numerous in Monoceros
than in Aquila, a phenomenon that is repeated under
another form in the belt of bright stars of Sir John
Herschel and of (Jould.+ Celoria, moreover, does not
hesitate to admit " due uiiiJli distinti, ne inai intermtti nel
loro corso." The stars in the nearest ring are projected on
the sky following the circle ; Cassiopeia, Hyades, Orion,
Crux, Scorpius, Ophiuchus, Cepheus, those in the more
distant ring following Cassiopeia, Auriga, Monoceros,
Crux, Sagittarius, Scutum, Sagitta. The Italian astro-
nomer does not venture an opinion as to whether these
two rings really interlace or are only in projection.
At the time when Celoria's researches were published
(in 1878), this theory of two distinct and uninterrupted rings,
that appeared to explain fairly well the general features
of the galactic phenomenon, did not so much clash as it
does to-day with the objection that, presented in this
form, it is unacceptable because of the structure of the
Milky Way revealed by drawings, and, above all, by photo-
graphs. For this reason a single ring (the principal ring,
for instance, in Sagittarius and Monoceros) cannot be
imagined but by straining probability ; as for two complete
rings, they are quite inadmissible. The phenomenon is
evidently much more complicated even in its principal
features.
But is this a reason for throwing overboard the irhole
of this theory of Celoria's, which rests, moreover, on serious
observations and deductions '? By no means. It is not
admissible in its entirety, but may weD be true in part.
Suppose, for example, that these "rings" of Celoria
are not "unbroken," nor even complete rings, but annular
detached segments roughly disposed in two planes — or,
rather, in a " broken plane " (Strnve) — the grave objection
that we have just raised ceases to exist, and the system is
in accord with the results that Celoria and other astro-
nomers have obtained.
But, first, here are some considerations of a different
nature.
If we imagine the Milky Way to be an assemblage of
stars and of clusters of stars distributed quite by chance,
we ought to find in all regions of the galactic zone the
same characteristics very nearly : these characteristics
depending on the chance of the projection which should
manifest itself sensibly in the same manner in all direc-
tions. The details of the distribution will differ greatly
in one direction from another, but the general character —
the type — will depend only on the general conditions of the
whole ; the limits between which vary the stellar density,
the volume aud brightness of the stars in different parts
of the system, the frequency of nebulosities and of opaque
bodies, etc. — this type will be constant.
In reahty it is not so in the Milky Way. Those who
have studied it best, both in its aspect to the naked eye
* " Theme ' (Cvgnus to Perseus, etc.) " the stream is single."
Proctor, ilont/ilt/ A'otices, XXX., p. 50.
t Boeddicker, The Milky Wai/ ; Easton, La Voie Lactee, etc.
X Celoria, Hid.; Sir John Herschel, Outlines ; U. A. Gould, Urano-
meiria Argentina, 1.
March 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE
59
and on photographs, will recognize, I believe, that the
clun-tiiin- of the Milky Way is not the same iu Sagittarius
and Scorpius, where brilliant and irregular masses — which
rather appear to be individually connected with parts of
the secondary branch (or with its brilliant stars) — alternate
with dark or poor regions ; in the region of Andromeda,
Lacerta, and about = Cygni, where an even stream
runs parallel to the galactic axis ; or in Cassiopeia,
Perseus, and Monoceros, where the tendency to duplica-
tion has been noticed in some cases independently by
Boeddicker, Easton, and Pannekoek ; or in the region
round Aquila to the west of Altair, where there is arranged
a series of fairly bright patches.
A remarkable peculiarity of the general distribution of
the galactic light between a. and ; Aquibi? and (i Cassiopeia;
is that in the principal (following,') branch the brightness
decreases (iradualhj from the interior border to the exterior,
whilst the secondary (preceding) branch is much more
uniform. There is only one exception, but that is a
curious one : between y Sagittic and v Cygni it is the
principal branch that appears dull, whilst a great brilliant
patch stretches between /3 and 7 Cygni, on the interior
border of the secondary (preceding! branch ; it encroaches
a little on the dark interspace. A small, very brilliant
patch, a little distant, between x and 68 A Cygni, is
situated exactly on the galactic axis.
I will only recall here the well-known argument of
Sir John Herschel on the ilark spaces with -well-defined
contours in the midst of a luminous zone (Coal-Sack): a
similar opening, in connection with a dark, large rift,
visible to the naked eye, passing between 68 A and p Cygni,
is found in a dim part of the zone between x Cygni
and a. Cephei — first drawn, I believe, by Heis. These two
are the chief. The probability is, in fact, very great that
we have here veritable holes in a " galactic band or
stream," fairly shallow, and fairly remote from us.
We may add that the dark regions which often stretch
over large spaces, and which sometimes form veritable
intervals between two luminous streams, and occasionally
bear the character of fissures in a bed of luminous
matter (Mr. Kanyard and Mr. Maunder especially have
drawn attention to these curious dark lines in this same
magazine ), indicate that in several regions the Milky
Way is principally formed by a band or layer, relatively
shallow (which does not prevent another band or clusters
of stars being possibly projected upon this layer), but
fairly extensive in longitude and latitude. Sometimes, as
between 74, 68 A, and p Cygni, a large fissure crosses the
greatest part of the Milky Way in all its breadth. All
this does not easily fall in with the theory which only sees
in the Milky Way agglomerations, wholly chaotic, of stars
and clusters.
The very extensive nebulosities, discovered lately by the
aid of photography, which sometimes envelop an entire
constellation (Orion, Scorpius), and which are certainly
related to the stars, furnish also a valuable argument for
the theory that certain extensive parts of the Milky Way
are in reality associated, and form each a more or less
complete whole.
Thus, I believe, we must come back to this considera-
tion. In detail, the real distribution of the stars in the
Milky Way is very irregular. In the grouping of the
stellar agglomerations there is manifested, however, in a
certain degree, a systematic distribution. This organiza-
tion of the stellar matter does not, however, go so far
» See Knowmdob, 1891, October, December; 1892, May ; 1S93,
April ; 1894, October ; 1895, January, Februarv, August, Norember ;
1896, February.
as to produce a geometrical figure of any regularity what-
ever—ring, ellipse, or one or more rings, concentric or
interlaced.
The undoubted connection between certain stars, nebu-
losities, and parts of the Milky Way, overthrows the theory
that the Milky Way is infinitely more distant from us than
the bright stars. Certain regions of the Milky Way may
be relatively near us. It follows from the researches of
Celoria that in all probability the Milky Way in Orion is
much nearer us than the opposite parts of it. But the
same conclusion is arrived at for other portions of the
Galaxy. I believe that " Holden's ellipses " * — stars ranged
in chaplets. etc. — are not, at least In certain cases, the
result of optical illusion (see the magnificent photo-
graphs published in Knowledge, 1891, October and
December — the region between a, f, and /' Cygni), and
that the dark fissures sometimes bordered by long ranges
of stars, and other phenomena of the same nature, are
undoubtedly real. Whatever may be the reason of these
strange peculiarities of distribution, it is indeed too difficult
to imagine that the regions where they are produced are
at incommensurable distances.
Sir .John Herschel has already pointed out that the
"long lateral offsets which at so many places quit the
main stream of the Galaxy, and run out to great distances,
are either planes seen edgeways, or the convexities of
curved surfaces viewed tangent iaJli/, rather than cylindrical
or columnar excrescences, bristling up obliquely from the
general level." (" Outlines," j 792.)
There is nothing, indeed, inadmissible in such trains of
stars — veritable branches of the Milky Way — lying across
the interior of our stellar system, and, in some cases, coming
near our sun. Combining this supposition (which gives a
plausible explanation of more than one question) with the
theorv of " segments of a ring," to which Celoria's theory
might be reduced, we find a system of spirals the most
simple figure that we can imagine the Milky Way to
assume according to this train of thought.
As an analogy from what we see in the heavens, I will
take, not the nebula of Lyra, but rather the nebula Mess.
101 Ursae Maj. (Eoberts, " A Selection of Photogi-aphs,"
1894, p. 32 ; also Knowledge, February, 1897, p. 54, Fig. 2),
or else the celebrated spiral nebula in Cines Venatici,
Mess. 51 Can. Venat. (Roberts, ihid., p. 30 ; and Know-
ledge, February, I8I17, p. 54, Fig. 4).
This analogy also leads us to seek for a central nucleus
towards which the spirals may be directed. Now there
is one region in the Milky Way which, it indeed appears,
may occupy such a position.
In discussing Celoria's theory we have seen that, to
explain the more general traits of the galactic problem,
we might place the sun excentrically in one great ring
(nearer to the Monoceros border), and inside a smaller
ring. As the points of intersection of these two hypo-
thetical rings, inclmed to each other at about nineteen
degrees, are distant from each other in the heavens about
one hundred and eighty degrees (Crux — Cassiopeia), it was
better to imagine the inner ring as fairly small. On the
other hand, the sun ought to be near that part of this
small ring which is iu the direction of Monoceros, since
this region is fairly well resolved into separate stars (see
my preceding article). If Celoria had made his counts,
not along the equator, but at about thirty-five degrees, he
would have found that this secondary " ring," very dim in
general, has one brilliant portion in Cygnu3 ; and this por-
tion, opposite to that region to which our sun is nearest, is
situated (in the smaller ring) at the middlf of the sysfim.
* Holden, Puhlicafions Washburrt Observatori/ , II.
60
KNOWLEDGE
[Mabch 1, 1898.
Besides, the part of the Milky Way in Cygnus is remark-
able from more than one point of view. The luminous spot
p— y Cygui is the ciili/ luminous patch situated in the
" secondary branch,'' but near the dark space. It is an
exception to the manner of distribution of brightness over
the breadth of the Milky Way, between the Eagle and
Cassiopeia. It is evidently connected with several other
very brilliant regions (the spots a. — A, p— tt Cygni, etc., i
perhaps to the series of spots west of Altair). There are -
in the Milky Way other more luminous spots, but they I
are much smaller. Sir William Herschel here found his '
maximum gauge (5<S8 stars in a telescopic field of 15'-4).
Not far from here, Kapteyn placed the centre of the
agglomeration of bright stars in the neighbourhood of the
sun. ^\ ithout wishing to dogmatize, it is here that I
would place the central condensation of a galactic spiral ;
the sun is thus found between this central nucleus and the
spirals directed towards Monoceros, in a region relatively
sparse . As to giving a rather more definite form to such
a spiral, it is a research that I have sometimes attempted,
Dut it would be premature to give the result here ; more-
over, many kinds of spirals are in accord with the theory.
For want of space many considerations could not be
presented or only glanced at. In concluding, I wish to
insist that this theory does not pretend to give an explana-
tion of all the facts that are grouped about a phenomenon
so complicated as the Milky ^Vay, but that it is to be taken
above all as a " working hypothesis."
Errata. — In my article in the .lanuary Number, 1898,
of Knowledge, p. 12, line 21, read : " Sir John Herschel
has not stated," etc. ; p. 13, line 15, read : " these points
have not been raised," etc.
It would be just to add that the admirable photographs
of the Milky Way by Pickering have appeared after my
first article was written.
^tttttU.
[The Editors do not hold themselTes responsible for the opinions or
statements of correspondents.]
TAKIABLE STARS.
To the Editors of Knowledge.
Sias, — Since my note of .July 28th, Knowledge, October,
1897, I have seventy-five observations of R Scuti, making
in all one hundred and forty-eight up to the close of the
season, when the star passed westwards. Each of these
observations is the mean of two to five views.
As heretofore stated, neither Chandler or "The Com-
panion " gave data for this star in 1897, but, following their
computations of previous years, the computed and observed
dates of the extreme phases of the star are as follows ; —
Vlaxima
Minima.
C.
0.
Mtiu'.
c.
0.
G
Mag'.
1896. May
(i
„
10
June
—
11
5 1
11
29
6-2
July
Irt
17
r,-i
—
31
62
August
—
13
5-S
21
—
—
September
25
—
21
8-5
October
—
—
— 1
31
—
—
November ) . .
—
7
56
—
17
5-8
December
■"'
—
—
—
—
From July 31st to September 21st the fall (excepting
some small fluctuations) was steady, and was followed by
a rise of similar character until November 0th, when it
began to fall again, making probably another reversal like
those of May 6th and September 21st. The latest obser-
vation of the star was November 17th.
From 1890, December 29th — the computed date of
maximum of R Ijeonis that year, as given by " The Com-
panion— another maximum was due in 1897, November 7th ;
but the same authority, and Chandler, give the date as
October Hth, which is apparently a correction of thirty
days : but the star, on its last rise, appeared so near
daybreak that observations were inconvenient. It fell in
with my habits, however, and as soon as it rose above the
horizon before day, I gave it attention, and submit the
following data, which covers the means of twenty obser-
vations, but only the changes are given : —
Milgr. Mair.
1897. October 4 67 1897. November 3 7 1
6 e-4 ., 4 7-2
,. 12 6 3 „ C, 7-3
13 6a .. 11 7-4
17 61 „ 15 7-5
21 60 .. 23 76
2J. 6 3 „ 29 80
26 6-6 December 6 8-3
.30 6-9
A maximum on October 20th is indicated, but some
other observers may be able to show that one occurred
earlier. It is to be hoped that someone has seen the star
in September.
0 Ceti (Mirai has been at a stand for some days, nearly
on a level with 60 and 70, or at 5-5 magnitude.
1 found S S Cygni at a maximum January 17th, at
8'5 magnitude, unchanged on 22nd, and a step or two
fainter on 25th. On 26th, the seeing being very poor, the
star was hardly visible. The period on this appearance
was forty-three days, the previous one being sixty days,
and it seems to have remained at maximom longer this
time than heretofore.
Cloudiness has been the rule throughout the States at
nights for some time ; the mornings are more favourable,
but are hazy and damp ^^^_^^ Flanery.
Memphis, Tenn., L js.A.,
28th January, 1898.
* Kapteyn, Verslaijen Koii. Akadcmie i\ WeU iscli. te Amstji-dam
1892, 1893.
THE DRAPER CATALOaUE.
To the Editors of Knowledge.
Sirs, — Mr. Maunder has made a mistake in his article
in your February Number in describing the Draper Cata-
logue as a complete catalogue of the spectra of stars
down to the eighth magnitude. This is certainly incorrect.
But one drawback to this catalogue (as well as to many
other catalogues) is that we do not know the point down
to which it is complete, and are, consequently, liable to
err in applying its results to star distribution generally.
The Draper Catalogue is not complete up to the fifth magni-
tude. For instance, it does not contain the star 3 Aquarii,
measured 4-62 in the llanard Phutometri/, and 4-84 at
Oxford. Between the fifth and sixth magnitudes the
omissions are pretty numerous ; for example, 36 Aquilse,
measured 5-23 in both the Oxford and Harvard Catalogues.
The Harrard Ph^toiiietn/ contains some stars lying farther
south than any in the Draper Catalogue, but the latter
does not contain thirty or forty of those measured at
Oxford as under the sixth magnitude. 50 Pegasi is another
instance in which the omitted star is brighter than the
fifth magnitude. I am not writing for the purpose of
March 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE.
61
discrediting the catalogue, but in the hope that Prof.
Pickeriug may publish a supplement correcting any errors
in it that have since been detected, and making it complete
up to, say, magnitude G-5. According to his present views,
moreover, the kinds of spectra enumerated would, I believe,
be less numerous, E and 1 F practically disappearing. In
his late list of the spectra of bright southern stars in
the Aatrophi/xical .lournul the varieties of spectra are
indicated (when not exactly corresponding with a given
type) by the two types between which they lie, with
a figure indicating the position between them. Thus
ASF indicates a spectrum just halfway between A and F
(the estimate being made in tenths), while A 4 F indicates
that it is somewhat nearer to A than to F, and A 1 F is
very nearly equivalent to A. This kind of designation
will be found more convenient to those who are well
acquainted with the Draper Catalogue than the more
elaborate classification of Miss Maury.
W. H. S. MoNCK.
SPECTRUM OF o CETI.
To the Eilitors of Knowledge.
Sirs, — The reproduction of the spectrum of o Ceti is a
ninefold enlargement from a negative obtained on Novem-
ber 29th, on an Edwards isochromatic plate, with a small
direct compound prism near the focal plane of the fifteen-
inch objective. l\xtra breadth has been given to the
enlargement by a cylindrical lens. All the fine lines in the
picture have been verified by comparison with the negative,
which shows also many details lost in the enlargement.
Some of the lines and edges of bands are numbered for
reference to the following table of wave lengths : —
which, by the kindness of the Eev. Espin, is in the
possession of the observatory ; but probably the lines S
and 7 are much brighter now, while ^ cannot be compared,
this region not being included in the copy of the Harvard
photograph.
There appears to have been a progressive change during
the last seven weeks in the relative intensities of parts of
the continuous spectrum. The maximum brightness in
the accompanying photograph is between the numbers
three and four. On December 11th the brightest parts
are the two columns near No. 9, and on December 19th
this change is stiU more pronounced.
Wax,ter Sidgreaves, S.J.
Stonyhurst College Obsel•^'atory,
8th January, 1898.
1 4227
4 4757
7 5162
2 4421
5 4842
8 5237
3 4580
G 4950
9 5445
10 5755
The banded spectrum
is the same,
in general, as that of
X Herculis and stars of this class, the minor differences
of which are under examination at present.
The characteristic of the spectrum of o Ceti is its hydro-
gen radiation. The two brilliant lines Hj and H^ have
lost nothing during the last seven weeks. The missing
lines Hf and H^ would both be well marked on the plate
if their radiations arrived. Of the former there is no trace
on any of the plates. Of the latter there may be a feeble
representative : there is a weak division of the absorption
baud on the red side of No. 5, at the position of H^,
and this may be a remnant of H^ light unabsorbed by
the superposed origin of the dark band.
Smaller photographs of the spectrum, by a half prism
and short focus camera lens, show the bright hydrogen
lines y, 5, 4, and'r^, with the dark calcium bands at H and K.
The hydrogen spectrum is therefore substantially the same
now as it appears on a copy of a Harvard College photo-
graph taken some time previous to the spring of 1892,
ERRATA IX TIMES OF ECL1P8K3 OF THE MOON.
To the Editors of Knowledge.
Sirs, — I expected you would have noticed in February
Number the erroneous times given for the moon's eclipse
in .January Number, but I do not observe any correction.
Any great mistake in the XKutical Almanac is so unusual
that it is not wonderful it should appear in other publi-
cations ; but as all the eclipses of the moon for this year
are wrong in the Nuutical Almanar for 1898, it is of impor-
tance that it should be known. The errata are given in
Xiiutical Almanac for 1899, and the true values are given
in W'hitaln'i's Aliiianaclc, the nearest second ; but so many
almanacks have been more or less caught that you will
pardon me for sending you a line. Lewis Hensley.
Hitchin Vicarage,
February 22nd, 1898.
' LIQUID FLUORIXE."
To the Editors of Knowledge.
Sirs, — In the article on "Fluorine" there is an ex-
_ ^ „ , , pression made use of which, I
think, requires some explanation.
It is — " absolute zero, where, if
our present knowledge is of any
worth, the life of the universe itself
would be extinguished."
What is the life here meant '?
Of course a much less minus
temperature than —210° would ex-
tinguish all animal life on any
planet ; the " life of the universe "
must be something else.
3, Cator Road, ^- ^- ^«''^=^-
Sydenham, S.E.,
2nd February, 1898.
[In writing of a particle of matter, its energy of motion
— that is to say, its heat — may be considered as the vitality
of the particle. When we speak of " live steam," for
mstance, we mean steam at a high temperature and
pressure. Now, a gas expands by ^^lard of its volume (at
0' C. and 760 min. bar. pressure) for every degree
Centigrade through which the temperature is raised, and if
the temperature be lowered by one degree it contracts by
that amount ; so that " absolute zero " is the point where
the gas has contracted theoretically to nothing, namely,
— 273° C. At this point a gas has no volume and no
pressure, and may be considered as dead. This is what I
meant when I said that at absolute zero the life of the
universe itself would be extinguished. — C. F. Townsend.]
-i^L J
62
KNOWLEDGE
[March 1, 1898.
THE MASSES AND DISTANCES OF BINARY
STARS.
By J. E. Gore, f.r.a.s.
IN a valuable and interesting volume recently published
by Doctor See, of the Lowell Observatory, Mexico,
he gives a recomputation of the orbits of forty ol
the best known binary systems. Some of his results
— all of which are based on a careful consideration
of the best recorded measures — do not differ widely from
those of other computors. In other cases, however, his
orbits diiler considerably from those previously published ;
and as he has included very recent measures in his dis-
cussions, his results are probably more accurate than any
hitherto published. In the following table I give the period
(P) and the semi-axis major (a) of the orbits found by
Dr. See. From these I have computed the hypothetical
parallax, /i= "i, or the parallax of the star on the assump-
tion that the mass of the system is equal to the sun's mass.
To these I have added the magnitudes of the stars which
have been photometrically determined at Harvard, and the
character of the star's spectrum, 1. being the Sirian and
II. the solar type.
star.
Period.
Tears.
Semi-
Aiis ,
Major.
Hypo-
thetical
Parallax.
Mag.
Spec-
triun.
Remarks.
Sees.
~Secs.~'
StTOTe3062...
104-61
1.3712
0-061
II.
■1) CassiopeitD
195-76
8-2128
0-243
3-64
II.
V Aiidromedffi
54-0
0-3705
0026
(5)
...
Magnitude esti-
mated.
Sirius
52-20
8-0316
0-575
-H-43
I.
» Ai-gfls
22-00
0-6548
0-083
5-49
^ Cancri
60-0
0-8579
0-056
4-72
II.
StrnveSm...
34-00
0-6692
0-06;J
II.
w Leonis
116-20
0-88241
0037
5-55
II.
A Urate Maj.
i tJrsse Mai.
97-0
0-3440
0-016
1-43
I.
60-00
2-508
0-163
3-80
11.
0 £ 2M
77-0
0-3467
0-019
11.
0 S 235
80-0
0-8690
0-047
5-56
II.
y Centauri ...
88-0
1-0232
0-051
2-36
I.
y Virginia ...
194-0
3-989
0119
2-84
II.
•42 Coma; ..
25-556
0-6416
0-074
4-38
II.
0 2 269
48-8
0-3248
0024
25 Can. Venat.
184-0
1-1307
0-035
5-00
l.
a Centauri ...
81-10
17-70
0-944
0-20
II.
0 2 285
76-67
0-3975
0022
( BoiitJa ..
1-28-0
5-5578
0-218
4-60
li!
7j Cor. Bor. ...
41-60
0-9165
0076
4-98
11.
^' Boritis ...
219-42
12679
0-034
(6-5)
I.
Magnitude esti-
mated.
0 2 298
52-0
0-7989
0-057
II.
V Cor. Bor. ...
73 0
0-7357
0-042
4-18
I.
^ Scorpii
104-0
1-3612
0-061
4-10
II.
a- Cor. Bor....
3700
3-8187
0-074
5-:!9
II.
f Herculis ...
35-00
1-4321
0-134
309
II.
p 416
33-0
1-2212
0-118
5-85
2 217:!
46-0
1-14-28
0-089
li.
n' Herculis...
45-0
1-390
0-110
(9-4)
Estimated Magni-
tude.
T Ophiuchi ...
230-0
1-2495
0-033
4-93
II.
70 Ophiuchi ..
88-3954
4-548
0-229
4-11
11.
Computed mass of
system equals
6-368 times suns
99 Herculis...
54-5
1-014
0-070
5-30
II.
Mass of system
equals sun's
mass.
S Sagittarii...
18-85
0-686
0-097
2-K)
1.
Star 1-75 magni-
tude brighter
than sun.
V Cor. Aust,
152-7
2-450
0-085
4-28
II.
/3 Delphini ...
27-66
0-6724
0073
3-74
1.
4 Aquarii ...
1-290
0-732
0028
II.
& Equulii
11-45
0-452
0089
4-'60
II.
K Pegasi
11-42
0-4'216
0083
4-21
II.
.'W Pegasi ...
24-0
0-8904
0-107
5-83
u.
;3 883
5-5
0-621
01993
(7-8)
Estimated magni-
tude.
Now, if we take the sun's stellar magnitude as —27:
that is, twenty-seven magnitudes below the zero magnitude
(see my paper in KNo-nxEixiE for June, 1895) : and compute
what its magnitude would be if removed to the distance
indicated by the " hypothetical parallax," we find that in
most cases the binary star is brighter than the sun would
be if placed at this distance. It follows that to make the
sun of equal brightness with the star it should be placed
at a less distance than that indicated by the " hypothetical
parallax " — that is, tho parallax of the binary star should
be increased. This would have the effect of diminishing
the mass of the system, as I showed in a former paper.
(Knowledge, December, 1894.) Now if B represents the
number of times which the star exceeds the sun in bright-
ness when both are placed at the distance indicated by
the "hypothetical parallax," and s represents the increased
parallax, we have .s =;)^^B = -"^ f Again, if w and »»,
represent the masses of the components of the binary
system, and //' + /», -«M, where M is the mass of
the sun, we have, taking M=:l, )(=^„ and for the
parallax, s, ?i ^^jt;., or, substituting the value of i found
above, and reducing, we have ?^ ^= ~. To find B we have
(sun's mag. — star's mag.) xO'4 log. B.
Let us now consider some of the most remarkable cases
in the above list which have spectra of the solar type.
I omit those in which the difference of magnitude between
the sun and star does not exceed one and a half magnitude,
or about four times.
t liootis. In this case the sun would be reduced to a
star of 2 88 magnitude, which gives a difference of 1'72
magnitude in favour of the sim. This would make the
sun 4-H7.J times brighter than the star at equal distances.
The parallax must therefore be diminished, and hence the
mass of the system would be B|=10-77 times the mass of
the sun.
0 Scorpii. Here the sun would be reduced to magnitude
.5-64, giving a difference of 1'54 magnitude in favour
of the star. Hence the mass of the .system would be
^. I.i5 of the sun's mass. The spectrum is a doubtful one
of the second type (F '?).
T Ophiuchi. In this case the sun would be reduced to
magnitude 6-98, if placed at the distance indicated by the
" hypothetical parallax," and, the star's photometrical
magnitude being 4-93, there is a difference of 2 OH
magnitudes in favour of the star. Hence B = 6-607, and
n = iV> °^ '■^^ mass of the system would be one-seventeenth
of the sun's mass, and the star's parallax about 0-085".
The spectrum is of the solar type.
In the case of 99 Herculis the sun would be reduced to
magnitude ."cSI, or almost exactly equal to the star in
brightness, and, the spectrum being of the solar type, the
mass of the system is probably equal to the mass of the
sun. The companion is very faint and of a purple colour,
and may possibly be approaching the planetary stage of
its history.
a Centauri is a very interesting case. Here the sun
would be reduced to a star of magnitude -0-31, or 0-31
magnitude brighter than a star of zero magnitude ; and as
the star's photometric magnitude is 0-20, we have a
difference of 0'.51 magnitude in favour of the sun, or
B = ]-:^;. Hence the parallax would be reduced to J
=0-746", and the mass of the system would be 2-023
times the sun's mass. As Dr. GiU found a parallax of
0-75", and Dr. See computes from his orbit a mass of 2 00,
the mass of the sun, it would seem that the orbit, parallax,
and photometric magnitude of this remarkable star have
been correctly determined.
With reference to the binary stars having the Sirian
type of spectrum, let us consider the case of Sirius itself.
If the spectrum of Sirius were of the solar type and strictly
comparable with the sun, I find that its parallax would be
about 1-58", and its mass about one twenty-first part of
Makch 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE,
63
the sun's mass. But Dr. Gill found a parallax of 0'38",
and ])r. See computes from bis own orbit and this
parallax that the mass of the system is 3'473 times the
mass of the sun. ■ Now I lind that if the sun were placed
at the distance indicated by Dr. Ci ill's parallax it would be
reduced to a star of I'tiT magnitude, or 3-10 magnitudes
fainter than Sirius. This implies that Sirius is 17'38
times brighter than the sim would be at the same distance.
But if Sirius were of the same density and intrinsic
brightness as the sun, its mass would imply that it should
be only 1-773 (2-3G)' ■ brighter than the sun. Hence
we see that Sirius is nearly ten times brighter than
it would be had it the same density and brightness of
surface as the sun has. Hence, as Dr. See says, "there
is some reason to suppose that sirius is very much
expanded, more nearly resembling a nebula than the sun."
i{> Ursse Majoris is a very brilliant star. Here we have
the sun reduced to a star of 8'55 magnitude, or a
difference of i-V2 magnitudes in favour of the star. Hence
B=-14-47 and h = .,.\j. The spectrum is of the Sirian
type. For y Cor.'JBor., I find B = 8-091 and n = ..\^.
y Centauri is another brilliant star. Here B = 29-38 and
There are two remarkable cases in which the sun, if
placed at the distance indicated by the " hypothetical
parallax," would be considerably hriijhtir than the binary
star. One of these, |x' Herculis, is referred to in a former
paper (Knowledge, December, 1894). Here, the sun
would be reduced to 1-36 magnitude, and, taking the star's
magnitude as 9-4, we have a difference of about five
magnitudes in favour of the mn. This would nduce the
star's parallax to 0011', and would make its mass no less
than one thousand times the mass of the sun ! The star
being so faint its spectrum has not been determined, but
it forms a distant companion to ix.- Herculis, the magnitude
of which was measured 3-49 at Harvard, or nearly one
magnitude brighter than the sun would be if placed at the
" hypothetical " distance. If we increase its distance ten
times, as indicated by the above calculation, we must
conclude that ju.- Herculis is no less than two hundred
and twenty-three times the brightness of the sun !
According to the Draper Catalogue the brighter star has a
doubtful spectrum of the solar type (Class II. :'). As both
stars have a common proper motion, they probably lie at
practically the same distance from the earth, and the only
explanation of the above startling results seems to be that
the binary star has — like the companion to Sirius — cooled
down, and is, therefore, not comparable in its physical
constitution with the sim.
Another remarkable case is that of p 883— a binary of
very short period, whose rapidity of motion has recently
been discovered by Dr. See. Here the difl'erence of bright-
ness is about four magnitudes in favour of the sun, which
would make the mass of the system about two hundred
and fifty-one times the sun's mass ! But here again we do
not know the character of its spectrum, so cannot say
whether the star is really comparable with the sun in
brightness.
.^
^YE understand that Mr. Thomas H. Blakesley, m.a., c.e.,
the weU-knowD instructor in physics and mathematics at
the Royal ^aval College, Greenwich, has resigned his seat
at the Coimcil Board of the Physical Society of London.
Mr. Blakesley is, therefore, no longer Honorary Secretary
of that learned body.
* The mass of the bright star is 2 36 times the mass of the
sun. The mass of the companion, which is very faint (and does not
aifect the brightness of the primary), is, according to Dr. See, 1-113
times the sun's mass.
H.R.H. the Prince of Wales has graciously consented
to open the International Photographic Exhibition at
the Crystal Palace. Intending exhibitors are asked to
note that the date of opening of the Exhibition by His
Royal Highness has been fixed by him for Monday,
April 25th, and not Wednesday, April 27th, as originally
announced. The latest date for the reception of exhibits
in each section will therefore be two days earlier than
that first stated on the prospectus.
The number of applications for patents during the year
1897 was thirty thousand nine hundred and thirty-six, as
compared with thirty thousand one hundred and ninety-four
in 1896 and twenty-five thousand and sixty-five in 1895.
Although the number of patents applied for illustrates the
progress of inventive activity, it does not atfjrd any reliable
criterion as to the number which arrive at maturity. Out
of the thirty thousand one hundred and ninety-four in
1896, for example, only thirteen thousand three hundred
and sixty were completed, the rest being allowed to lapse
after the nine months' protection. Not a few of the
applicants for patents are women, of whom there were
about seven hundred in 1896 ; some hundred and fifty of
these inventions relating to dress.
A new bibliography of great value to scientists is now
being prepared of ah the technical works in that unique
and most easily accessible collection, the Patent Oflice
Library, and will be completed in two volumes. In the
first volume the books and pamphlets, etc., will be indexed
under the names of authors, and the second volume wiU
be a subject-matter index. A proof, including the letters
.\, B, C, D, consisting of two hundred and forty pages of
the first volume, has been placed in the Library for the use
of the public.
Notitfs of Boolts.
Tlw New Psychology. By Dr. E. W. Scripture. Illus-
trated. (Walter Scott.) 63. By such a book as this,
belonging to the Contemporary Science Series, psychology is
lifted out of the arena of abstract philosophy and established
upon the sound basis of experimental science. The develop-
ment of the new or experimental psychology within the
last few years has produced a large amount of remarkable
material which has remained almost unknown except to
speciahsts. Most of this work has been done in Germany
and the United States, and Dr. Scripture is one of the
foremost of the workers. What a vast amount of material
has been accumulated may be seen by reference to the
" Psychological Index," or those two excellent journals the
Psychdoijicid Review and the Journal of Psychology — the
like of which do not exist in this covmtry. Perhaps, now
that a psychological department has been established
at University College, we may also be able to give similar
hostages to fortune. The fact is that many men of science
in this country are disinclined to give psychology a locus
standi : the chemist and physicist look upon it as akin to
metaphysics, and the physiologist regards it as a pre-
sumptuous sub-department of his branch of natural
knowledge. It is not clear why physiologists generally do
not look with eyes of favour upon this younger science, for
surely it is immaterial what designation is given to any
department of scientific work so long as facts are being
accumulated. Moreover, the barriers between the various
sciences are being broken down daily. The methods and
64
KNOWLEDGE.
[Mabch 1, 1898.
results of physical science (using the term in its widest
sense) are being used to assist the progress of the natural
sciences ; and the new psj'chology is a valuable product of
this combination.
Dr. Scripture's volume contains a clear statement of the
chief work that has been done on what may be termed the
connection between thought and action. It is not con-
cerned with the academic distinctions between sensation and
perception, and similar discussions of ideas, but treats of
mental life in relation to time, energy, and space, and shows
how physical Lnstruments may be used to measure these
relationships. The book is in itself a justification of the
claims of psychology to a place among experimental
sciences.
Natural Causes and Supernatural Secminffs. By Henry
Maudsley, m.d. Third Edition. (Kegan Paul.) Dr.
Maudsley's book is neatly, if not completely, epitomized
in its title. Presentiments, imprecations, magic incanta-
tions, predictions of witchcraft, omens, hallucinations,
and all phenomena usually ascribed to the supernatural,
are here sternly confronted with the unsympathetic con-
clusions drawn by cool reason from cause and effect. The
multitude will always take its opinions from custom and
tradition, and on the authority of others ; but there are
not a few who agree with Voltaire when he said that
" magic words are capable of destroying a whole flock
of sheep — if the incantation be accompanied with a
sufiicient dose of arsenic." The author looks upon life
as an intensely real thing, and apparently regards the
whole of our existence as a sort of complex mosaic, the
intrinsic beauty of which is masked by the creations
of unbridled imagination. It is plausible but quite false
presumption that mankind in general act on rational
principles : the masses, being mainly foolish, have always
held to the wrong opinion until dragged out of it by the
labours of the few who differed ; and there is probably
much truth in Dr. Maudsley's assertion that " the
extinction of a few hundred persons in a generation, who
keep the torch of knowledge burning in Christendom,
would bring progress to a standstill, and might throw the
world back into intellectual barbarism in the com-se of two
or three generations ; all the more easily because, besides
the passive resistance of a dead weight of ignorance, there
is a vast and powerful organization of hostile superstition
watching and working to stop intellectual progress." In
short, the volume affords us a glimpse into the mighty
edifice of error built on the basis of defective observation ;
and, abandoning the preposterous plane of speculative
intuitions, we have presented before us images in the
unassuming habiliments of sense and reason. Still, as the
senses are only so many narrow chinks of experience
between two unknown infinities — the infinitely great and
the infinitely small— there is a danger of oscillatLng from
the warm equatorial regions of imagination to the extreme
polar climes of frigid logical deduction.
By Roatlsidc and River. By H. Mead Briggs. (Elliot
Stock.) 3s. 6d. Richard Jefferies has had of late many
imitators. For some years past the public has been
liberally supplied with a class of book of which " By Road-
side and River " is an example. The authors, without
laying claim to scientific accuracy, display, as a rule, some
powers of observation, and Mr. Mead Briggs is no exception.
The one thing necessary to make such a book readable,
however, is a fair command of literary English, and the
power of recording the author's observations and meditations
(if we must have these meditations) in language which is
intelligible. But it is in those very points that Mr. Mead
Briggs comes lamentably to grief. It is scarcely an
exaggeration to say that in every page of " By Roadside
and River " the reader is irritated and perplexed by some
atrocious solecism, some wanton dislocation of a trite
expression, even if he escape the puerile essays in metre
with which the book is plentifully studded. Passing by
with a shudder such combinations as "child and bland-
like " (applied to a bird which "ventures to speak in a
shrilly voice "), we are pulled up short by the following
reflection : " But accident and misfortune appearing
suddenly upon our best bright days, comes [s/c] as a thief
in the night to take our happiness, and leaves our senses
numbed." The swallow is depicted as " reflecting her
dainty form in the mirrored stream. " 'When Jlr. Briggs
descends from reminiscence and moralization to a record
of facts, he has much that is interesting, if little that is
new, to tell us. His observations of nature are, in the
main, just, though we believe naturalists are agreed that
the cuckoo's method of depositing her egg in the nests of
other birds is by the beak, and not by thtf claw ; and also
that the eyes of the mole are practically useless, and that
this creature cannot " see with ease in the dark caverns
of the earth. "
WiM Traits in Tame Animals, being some Familiar Studies
in Erolution. By Louis Robinson, m.d. (Blackwood.)
Illustrated. 10s. (id. net. This is a very readable book
for several reasons. It is well written ; it deals with
simple everyday matters. The theories and suggestions it
contains are plausible, and, above all, it teaches the reader
to think. The plan of the book is to discuss familiar traits
in tame animals such as dogs, horses, cats, etc., to compare
these traits with those of wild animals, and to seek to trace
their origin and explain their significance. The author
succeeds fairly well, but, as would be expected, he occasion-
ally pushes an analogy or a theory too far, and there is a
paucity of facts throughout. Some of the suggestions and
hints for study and research are valuable. If there is not
much that is actually new in the book, there are many
things which are put in a new and generally attractive
light. Altogether, it is a book which should be read by
every naturalist, and parts of it could, with profit, be read
more than once. It will prove very valuable to the young
student, providing he reads it slowly, and, thinking for
himself, sifts the evidence, takes nothing for granted, and,
above all, compares it with the greatest book of all — the
book of nature.
Montai^/ne mid Shiih2jere. By John M. Robertson.
(The University Press, Limited.) 5s. net. The debt of
genius to its forbears must always be considerable, for
human experience is so " cabin'd, cribb'd, confin'd,"
that even Shakspere could only write upon what he had
himself observed, heard, or read. That he was familiar
with Florio's rendering of Montaigne has long been un-
questioned, but the precise degree in which he was
influenced by the great essayist will always form material
for interesting if not altogether profitable inquiry. In
this handsomely printed and elegantly mounted volume,
Mr. John M. Robertson has brought his critical acumen
to bear upon the problem, which he discusses throughout
with a refreshing freedom from that venomous antipathy
which so often disfigures these analytical examinations of
the work of the immortals. " We are embarked, " he says,
" not on a quest for plagiarisms, but on a study of the
growth of a wonderful mind. And in the idea that much
of the growth is traceable to the fertilizing contact of a
foreign intelligence, there can be nothing but interest and
attraction for those who have mastered the primary
sociological truth that such contacts of cultures are the
very life of civilization."
In this eminently fair introduction to the study of the
comparisons will hs found the key to ^Ir. Robertson's
Iaboh 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE.
65
work ; and if he has claimed more for his thesis than the
occasional identity of thought and similarity of expression
will fairly carry, still he has not for an instant wavered in
his allegiance to the study on which he set out. But he
appears to contradict himself upon the important question
as to whether Shakspere had seen parts of Fiorio's
translation earlier than 160;{ — the year of its publication —
" or even that he might have read Montaigne in the
original" (page 12); for later on in the essay (page 50)
Mr. Robertson says : " That Shakspere read Montaigne in
the original once seemed probable to me, as to others ; but
on closer study I consider it unlikely, were it only because
the Montaigne influence begins in Hamlet." In that case,
of course, at least one of Mr. Eabertson's parallelisms
falls to the ground.
That Montaigne lighted a lamp in Shakspere which
shone through all his after work is clear, but the quaint
old French philosopher's searching criticisms of life were
given an immortal setting by the poetic genius of the
English dramatist. " The influence," says Mr. Robertson,
" is from the very start of that high sort in which he that
takes becomes co-thinker with him that gives, Shakspere's
absorption of Montaigne being as vital as Montaigne's own
assimilation of the thoughts of his classics. The process
is one not of surface reflection, but of kindling by contact ;
and we seem to see even the vibration of the style passing
from one intelligence to the other, the nervous and copious
speech of Montaigne awakening Shakspere to a new sense
of power over rhythm and poignant phrase, at the same
time that the stimulus of the thought gives him a new
confidence in the validity of his own reflections."
The subject is a fascinating one indeed, and not alone
to the student of Shakspere, for Mr. Robertson's critical
method is so unemotional and impassive, and yet so
scrupulously just and many sided, as to afl:ord in itself an
interesting and instructive study, quite apart from the
special interest of its subject.
The Elfinentx of Astionoimj. By Chas. A. Young, Ph.D.
(Ginn & Co.) Illustrated. This edition of Prof. Young's
book has been revised and brought up to date. The
author is well known by his larger work — " General
Astronomy " ; but it is asserted that the volume under
notice is not a mere compilation from the more pretentious
work. Its purpose is to teach astronomical science to
scholars in middle-class schools, and more especially those
who have not much mathematical knowledge beyond the
limits of simple algebraic and trigonometrical fmictions.
Indeed, the science of astronomy may be made interesting
without any knowledge at all of formula. The book, we
think, fiUs the requirements of the class of students
specified. All the latest researches are mentioned, includ-
ing the eclipse of the sun in August, 1896, and genuine
additions to oxvc knowledge are incorporated. Clear de-
scriptions are given of the planets, stars, nebuls, etc. — and
by clear, we mean that the author here exhibits the happy
knack of conveying information, even on intricate sub-
jects, in language shorn of all pedantry : an acquisition, or
a gift — it is diflicult to say which — not by any means
common among scientific men of the first rank. A little
pamphlet, called a uranography, is tacked on, which was
at first intended to be issued separately ; it is meant as an
open-air guide to a study of the principal stars, and
is accompanied by charts representing the chief constella-
tions. A good feature of the whole book consists in the
free distribution of a large number of first-rate diagrams,
which add not a little to the general attractiveness of the
volume — a great desideratum in text-books. A synopsis
and questions are added for the benefit of those who read
the book for examination purposes.
SHORT NOTICES.
The Machinery of the Univerae. " Romance of Science " Series.
By A. E. Dolbcar. (Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.)
Illustrated. An ambitious title, truly ! and also misleading. " The
machinery of the universe " turns out to bo that mysterious ether
which, if occasion rei(uires, can perform either the functions of a
Uuid or a solid, or do duty for both at one and the same time.
Writing of the number of molecules in the visible universe, the
author says (page 29) : " The point is that there is a definite, computable
number." A definite number there may be, but computiihle, never.
As well might one say that all the thoughts which have ever entered
the myria<ls of human heads are computable. Although the author
displays much eruditio'n, he has not yet learnt to take off his shoes,
and to cover himself with sackcloth and ashes, when entering the
inner court of the great unknown.
Chemisfri/ for Photographers. By C. F. Townsend. (Dawbarn
<fe Ward.) Illustrated. Is. net. There is much in this baok of use
to the practical amateur photographer who wishes to understand the
nature of the various thomicals he has to use. There arc brief but
ample explanations of such mysteries as the salts of silver and
development; also useful chapters on the different printing processes,
impurities in acids and alkalis, and a number of hints on miscellaneous
subjects connected with the art of photography.
Pictorial Instruction Object Lesaoiis. By Or. Colomb. Adapted
into English by Seymour J. Gubb, u A. (Rclfe Bros.) Illustrated.
Is. (id. Akin to that popular French scientilic book of Paul Bert's,-
the idea of M. Colomb is to combine in his book pictorial illustration
with instruction in a manner siutablc to be put into the hands of the
younger generation. It is, in fact, a kind of child's picture book, but
of a more edifying sort : pictures of everyday life, including manu-
faotures, domestic operations, natural history, chemistry, physics,
mineralogy, and so on. A short — very short — description is placed
underneath each figure. On the whole the book has a very lively
appearance about it and deserves to be widely known.
Revolving Planisphere. (George Philip&Son.) 2s. An oval opening
in the disc of this apparatus represents the horizon for which the
planisphere is constructod, and the part of the heavens visible at any
stated time may be found by adjusting the movable disc till the day
of the month marked upon its edge corresponds with the time of day
or night figured upon a superposed disc. An auxiliary disc, adjust-
able once a week, serves the jjurpose of a perpetual calendar. The
apparatus is ingenious in construction and extremely attractive in
appearance.
We have received from Mr. L. CascUa a catalogue of automatic
recording instruments of various types, described as well as figured,
among which is a pyrometer, recording results up to -ioOO" F.,
the automatic rain gauge, bai'Ograph, thermograph, electrograph,
anemograph, and many others; also the actinometcr for measuring
the heat and light of the sun. A new photo-theodolite here figured
is of considerable value for detennining the dimensions of olijects
accurately by means of photographs whicli give true perspective
pictures, and obviate the use of a large number of note-books in
surveying operations.
BOOKS RECEIVED.
Aiidree and his Salloon. B}' Hem-i Lachambre and Alexis
Machuron. (Constable.) Illustrated. 63.
Glass Blowing and Glass Working . By Thomas Bolas. (Dawbarn
& Ward.) Illustrated. 23. net.
On Laboratory Arts. By Richard Threlfall, M.A. (Macmillan.)
Illustrated. 6s.
The Arrangement of Atoms in Space. By J. H. Tan't Hoff.
Translated by Arnold Eiloart. (Longmans.) 6s. 6d.
The Moon. By Richard A. Proctor. Fourth Edition. (Long-
mans.) Illustrated. 3s. 6d.
T/ie Tfar of the Worlds. By H. G. Wells. (Heinemann.) 6s.
Elementary Physics. By John G. Kerr, sr.A. (Blackie.)
Illustrated. Is. 6d.
The Story of the British Coinage. By Gertrude B. Rawlings.
(Newnes.) Illustrated. Is.
Calendar, History, and General Summary of Eegulations, Science
and Art Department. (Eyre & Spottiswoode.) Is. 7d.
The Science of the Ideal. By F. J. Linford- Wilson. (Reeves.)
Illustrated. 2s. 6d.
Storm and Sunshine in the Dales. By P. H. Lockwood. (EUiot
Stock.) Illustrated.
Bemarkable Comets. Ev W. T. Lynn. Sixth Edition. (Stan-
ford.) 6d.
Elementary Botany. By Percy Groom, M A. (Bell.) Illustrated.
3s. 6d.
Charles Dickens. By George Gissing. (Blackie.) 23. 6d.
Terje Viken. From the Xorse of Henrik Ibsen. By Alfred
Lishuian. (The Author : Fockerby, Goole.)
66
KNOWLEDGE
[Maboh 1, 1898.
BKiTISH
a>i^Kf
ORNITHOLOGICA
NOTES
Conducted by Habby F. Witherby, f.z.s., m.b.o.u.
MisTLE Thrush swallowing Droppings of Young. —
Last spring I was much interested in watching a pair of
Mistle Thrushes which had their nest on a branch of a tree
some twenty feet from the house. From an upper window
one could get an uninterrupted view down into the nest.
When the young were hatched I watched the nest very
carefully, and with a pair of field glasses, which revealed
every detail of the birds and the nest, I made the
following observations. As soon as one of the parent
birds appeared in the tree the four young ones stretched
up their necks and opened their gaping yellow mouths.
The old bird cautiously made its way to the edge of the
nest, and put a piece of a worm first into one mouth, then
into another (generally only two at a feeding), seeming by
its actions to discriminate which young ones to feed.
Immediately it had emptied its mouth the parent put its
head down to the nest, and one of the young turned round
and voided its white droppings into the open beak of the
parent bird, which then swallowed the droppings and flew
away. In two minutes the other parent appeared, and
went through exactly the same process. For a fortnight
I watched this extraordinary method of sanitation many
times a day. On no occasion did either parent leave the
nest after feeding the young without swallowing the
droppings of one young bird and only one. Moreover, on
several occasions the old bird, after having waited a few
seconds without result, gave a gentle peck to one of the
young, which immediately turned round and voided its
droppings into the parent's mouth. At about every fourth
visit to the nest one of the parents covered the young for
a quarter of an hour after having fed them and swallowed
the droppings, and on several occasions I kept my eyes
upon the parent during the whole time, but never saw it
attempt to disgorge. During the last week in which the
young ones were in the nest the droppings were, apparently,
sometimes too large to swallow, and consequently they
were often carried away in the beak ; but every now and
then they were swallowed.
I have set these facts out in detail because, although
it is well known that birds carry away the droppings of the
young, the fact that they are usually swallowed by certain
birds seems to have been overlooked. In the second
volume of Macgillivi-ay's " British Birds," that excellent
naturalist, the late J. Jenner Weir, in communications to
the author concerning the habits of the Blackbird, Song
Thrush, and Mistle Thrush (the nests of which he had
watched most carefully), mentions the fact that in each
of these species he observed that the old birds " swallowed
nearly all the droppings of their brood " during the day ;
moreover, he shot one of the birds and found the
droppings in its stomach. In the fourth edition of
Yarrell's " British Birds " we are merely told that Song
Thrushes "have been observed to swallow the ficces of their
offspring."
In no other book can I find the fact mentioned. It
^eems to me that either the habit has been overlooked or
else it requires confirmation, and I have therefore ventured
to publish this note.
It is evident that the droppings go into the stomach,
ind it is also evident that they are sometimes retained for
at least a quarter of an hour. It is questionable if the
l)ird would be able to disgorge them after they had
been in the stomach for fifteen minutes. It is con-
ceivable that the droppings are taken by the parent bird
as food, for it would be able to digest what the young
bird had, perhaps, been unable to assimilate, and would
thus save a great deal of time in procuring nourishment
for itself.
It seems to me that for those well situated for observing
birds it would be most profitable to ascertain during the
coming spring what species do swallow the droppings
of the young, if they do this regularly, and if there is
sufficient nutriment in them to induce the birds to swallow
them for the sake of nourishment. If the droppings are
swallowed for this purpose it may be that they are only
swallowed when food is scarce. I shall be very glad of
any further information on this interesting subject. — H-vbry
F. Witherby.
Quail in Sussex. — We have had brought us to-day for
preservation a Quail (C. communis), caught in the lark
nets near here yesterday. We suppose that the mildness
of the winter is the cause of its remaininf,' in this country.
— Edwin A. Pratt, Brighton, January "iSth, 1898.
Curious Jackdaws Nest. — Last season but one, while
looking over the grounds at Bretton Hall, near Barnsley,
I saw sticks protruding from the top of the old chimney
formerly belonging to the greenhouses. I suspected it to
be a nest. On making inquiries from the gardener he
told me it was the nest of a pair of Jackdaws, which had
filled the chimney with sticks and made their nest on the
top. On looking in at a doorway at the bottom of the
chimney I saw it was quite filled from the base, and the
man told me he had cleared it out several times, but they
always filled it again. — S. L. Mosley, Educational Museum,
Huddersfield.
Early Nesting of the Starling, the Long-tailed Tit,
AND the House Sparrow.— The Kev. Francis C. E.
Jourdain writes from Asburne, Derbyshire, that a Starling's
nest, with nearly fledged young, was found at Bradley at
the end of January. Mr. W. Dunn, of Exmouth, writes
that on February 7th he watched a pair of Long-tailed Tits
collecting moss, evidently for a nest. A brood of House
Sparrows is also reported from Blackheath, Kent, as having
been hatched on February loth.
Cranr- in CouhIi/ Ti/ipefciry (Irish Xafuralisf, February, 1898,
p. 51), ^A specimen of Qnis communis is reported bv Jlr. W.
Johnston, of Thurles, to have been shot at Seskin in September, 1896.
Li/tle Sittern in Cotinti) Cork (Irish Ifuliiralvif, February, 1898,
p. 51). — Mr. .Tohu .T. Wolfe records that a bird of this species was
shot on November 8th, 1897, by Mr. W. Sweetman. of Schul), and
sent to him.
Liftle Bustard in Norfolk (The Field, February 19th, 1898,
p. 285). — Licut.-Col. E. A. Butler records that a specimen of the
Little Bustard (Otis tefrax) was shot on January 25th by Mr. Godwin
at Fcltwell, ue:ir Dowuliam Market, Norfolk.
All contributions to the column, either in tlie way of notes
or photoi/raphs, should be forwarded to Habry F. Witherby,
at 1, Eliot Place, Blacklieath, Kent.
Note. — The first issue of Knowikdgk containing British Ornitho-
logical Notes was that for October, 1897.
March 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE
67
Wb regret to record the death of Prof. T. Jeffrey Parker,
F.R.S., whose decease occurred on the 7th November last.
He was the eldest son of the well-known osteologist,
William Kitchen Parker, and was born in London in the
year 1850. Obtaining the associateship of the Royal
School of Mines in 1871, he, after a short appointment as
science master in Yorkshire, returned to London and
became demonstrator under Prof. Huxley, at the latter's
invitation, at the Royal School of Mines. In 1880 he left
England for New Zealand, to take up the duties of
Professor of Biology in the University of Otago, which
post he retained till his death. Prof. Parker was the
author of a great number of original scientific memoirs,
some of which are of far-reaching importance. He also
wrote some valuable text-books on natural science, one
of which, to wit, "Lessons in Elementary Biology," has
been translated into German. In conjunction with Prof.
Haswell, of Sydney University, he attempted the laborious
task of writing a large text-book of zoology, which he was
not destined to see in circulation. Prof. Parker was
entrusted with the task of forming a museum of biology at
the Royal School of Mines, on the type system. He
advocated the study of the lower organisms first in pre-
ference to the vertebrates, as inculcated by Huxley, and in
due course secured a triumph over his great teacher on
this point. As a worker, Prof. Parker was of the first
rank, and also a luminous teacher. He was a kind,
considerate, and lovable man, and the biological world is
the poorer by his untimely death.
THE KARKINOKOSM, OR WORLD OF
CRUSTACEA.-II.
By the Rev. Thomas R. R. Stebbing, ji.a., f.r.s., f.l.s.
IN the previous chapter examples were given to show
the extreme divergence of form and structure to be
found in the Crustacea at large. The difl'erences
are scarcely less striking that may be seen within
the limits of the Malacostraca. Yet that group, by
the close interweaving of affinities, is as inseparably com-
pacted together as any in the animal kingdom. Especially
notable is one character which may be traced through all
its divisions. The somites, or segments of the body, are
in a numerical bondage ; they are never allowed to exceed
twenty-one. That might not seem wonderful were it not
that, in the segmented appendages of these same animals,
there is frequently shown the most contemptuous in-
difference to arithmetical restraints.
As to the mystic number twenty-one, though it is never
transgressed, the chance spectator will never find it fully
developed for straightforward counting and ocular demon-
stration. It is only discoverable by inferences and
comparisons. Always some of the segments are in more
or less complete coalescence. This fusion might lead to
confusion, did not the following rule provide a guiding
light. Wherever a segment can be definitely proved to be
single, it never bears more than a single pair of appendages ;
elsewhere, then, the presence of two or more pairs of
appendages in apparent attachment to a single segment
may safely be taken to imply that such a segment is in
reality composite. Moreover, composite segments which
have lost their appendages present no great difficulty,
because they can be compared with corresponding segments
which in other genera and species have retained their
Often, in a male crab, the pleon or tail-
part has such an unfurnished compounded segment, which
plamly tallies with separate appendage-bearing segments
in the other sex. When, therefore, we read of a genus in
A. Jlemimerus lalpoides%.
B. Hem
D. Dipeltis carri (from Srliuchert).
■nerus talpoides ? .
which the male pleon has five segments and the female
seven, it does not mean that nature has been more stingy
to one sex than to the other, but only that in the mascuUne
tail three segments have been soldered into one. With
regard to the last segment, or telsou, there is this
difficulty : it never has distinct appendages. Consequently
its character has been aspersed, as though it were not a
segment at all, but only a caudal excrescence— Uke the
child which fancied itself a first-class carriage, whUe its
playmates regarded it as nothing but a truck. The first
segment, like the last, has had its ,
claim disputed. It is rarely free
and independent. It carries the
eyes, which some naturalists do not
consider to be true appendages.
Often, indeed, the eyes are "sessile"
— that is, seated under the skin of
the head, with nothing limb-like
about them. On the other hand,
the "ocular segment" is some-
times movably articulated, and
often the eyes are placed on jointed
stalks, freely movable, and some-
times of great length. Between the
two debatable points there lie
nineteen undisputed segments,
verified by nineteen pairs of un-
doubted appendages. These begin with two pairs of
antennii3 and a pair of mandibles. It is a matter of
convenience that throughout the Malacostraca every seg-
ment should have its constant number, from the first to
the twenty-first. Consequently, although in the sessUe-eyed
division the first is always either wanting or undecipherable,
that need not interfere with our reckoning the mandibular
segment uniformly as the fourth.
Here it should not be entirely overlooked that, though
insects have no stalked eyes and have only one pair of
c. Dipeliis diplodiscus.
68
KNOWLEDGE
[Mabch 1, 1898.
antennip, there are some among them, as H. J. Hansen*
has shown, in which nineteen segments may be inferred
exactly comparable to the last nineteen of the Crustacea
Malacostraca. With the living forms of the male and
female Hdinmcnoi talprAites (Walker) (a and b), regarded by
Hansen as a wingless orthopterous insect, it can scarcely
be uninteresting to compare the species THpeltis tUjilodisrns
(Packard) (c) and Dipeltis rum' (Schuchert) (d\I fossils
derived from the lower Carboniferous system, and placed by
those authors among the entomostracan Apodidae. The
entomologists now, with some reason, claim these fossils
for their own, so that the common ancestors of insects and
Crustacea remain as heretofore the phantoms of an un-
discovered past.
Reverting to our more immediate subject, a remark must
be made on the mandibular segment. Owing apparently
to that predominance which the jaw so often asserts in the
affairs of life, this segment, not content with its nineteenth
or other fractional share of the back, has spread itself in
an obtrusive and in what might be called an overbearing
manner. It assumes the title of carapace, or cephalotho-
racic buckler. It is no doubt a valuable shield, but, like
other saviours of society whose natural motto is " L'etnt,
cent moi," the carapace of the crab sometimes takes leave
to pose as if it were the whole animal. Of this an extreme
example is afJ'orded by the Californian Ciyptolitlmhs ti//ncu3,
of which a portrait by
. ^'. Stimpson is here pre-
.'^ ' ' , sented. As will be
perceived, the great
shield, in dorsal view,
completely hides all
the working members
of the organism except
the little twinkling
eyes.
The ten pairs of ap-
pendages which follow
the mandibles are objects of study of almost inexhaustible
interest, not only because of the variety of form and function
they exhibit in any one specimen, but because of the sur-
prising variety of that variety as we pass from group to group.
CnipioUlhudifS tiipiriis. (Dorsal vi
tion. It will be easily understood that this diversity of
function is matched by some diversity of form, and the use
of distinctive names, such as maxills, maxillipeds, and
trunk-legs, becomes indispensable. Some, in fact, are a
kind of jaws — organs of the mouth — while others are a kind
of arms or legs — organs of the trunk ; but the curious thing
is that the middle pairs may be either one thing or the
other, according to the group which owns them. The
term "maxillipeds," or jaw-legs, enshrines the idea that
these appendages, though used as jaws, are nothing but
modified legs ; and the corresponding term " gnathopods,"
with the same meaning, hints at legs which are longing
to be jaws. The hypothesis we have to consider is that
all the appendages, including, with those already mentioned,
the six pairs belonging to the pleon, are modifications of
one original pattern. Between the primitive simplicity
to be expected of such a pattern and the complicated
structure observable in a crab's maxill*, it might at first
sight seem hopeless to find the requisite connecting links.
But extended comparison of features difficult to interpret
with those that are common and commonplace has long
ago brought out a sort of ground-plan of a crustacean appen-
dage. According to this it principally consists of a stem
and two branches. Three joints are perhaps the normal
number for the stem, but it often displays only two, and
occasionally only one. The joints of the branches are
indefinitely variable in number. But, limiting ourselves
for the present to the Malacostraca, it may be said that, in
the organs of the mouth and in the limbs of the trunk,
the inner or main branch of an appendage shows a
preference for not exceeding five in the number of its
joints. Add these to two in the stem, and entrust the
seven to the plasticity of nature, and then see what will
follow. A man has only to look at the noses and chins
of his friends and neighbours to know what may be
expected from modifications of shape and size.
Imagine, then, a primitive limb of seven approximately
uniform joints. In all but the last of these room must be
found for the retractor and extensor muscles. For
firmness of attachment to the trunk it may generally be
convenient that the first joint should be short. The last,
which does not require muscles, may be thinner than the
a. Talifnis. b. Porcellio. c. Crangoii. d. Primiio. e. Aura. f. Phronima. g. Sphi/rapus. h. Potamohius. i. Ati/a.
Among the functions more or less generally allotted to
them may be reckoned those of tastmg and pasting, biting
and fighting, grasping and clasping, walking and a kind of
inarticulate talking, swimming, burrowing, house building,
besides the automatic services which they render to the
eggs in the brood pouch and to the animal's own respira-
* " Contributions to the Knowledge of tlie Insect Fauna of
Camerun." Eiitomol. Tidsk-er., PI. II., Figs. 1, 2, 1894.
t Proceedings U.S. JSational Museum, Vol. XIX., PI. LVIII ,
Figs. 4, 6, 1897.
rest. Being in frequent contact with external surfaces, it
may acquire a hardened apex and become claw-like, or,
for purposes of navigation, it may assume a broad, flat,
blade-Hke appearance. The other joints will certainly
not for ever maintain uniformity of length, and those
which are longer will at least sometimes have a pro-
portionate increase in breadth. By the course thus indicated
we arrive at the ordinary leg of an ordinary amphipod,
such as a sandhopper {see Fig. a), or that of an ordinary
isopod, such as a woodlouse {see Fig. i), or that of a
March 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE.
69
Ci-ani/on, an ordinary shrimp (sec Fig. c). But besides
being lengthened and widened, the joints may be variously
sculptured, as in the fifth joint of the next specimen,
which represents the uncommon leg of an uncommon
amphipod (vci Fig. dt ; or one joint maybe outdrawn at its
apex to overlap the next, thus producing various forms of
what is known as a chela or claw. In Fig. < the fourth
joint is prolonged ; in Fig. / the fifth joint. These are
two pecuUar forms among the Amphipoda. The next
example shows the quaintly shaped leg of a deep-sea
isopod, where the so-called " thumb " is on the sixth joint,
though, owing to coalescence, it looks like the fifth. The
the legs which come next to them, and the same may
be said of the third maxillipeds in the Decapoda. But
whether the appendage be adapted for eating, grasping,
digging, or walking, its form can easily be referred to a
simple linear original, and this applies also to the maxillfe
and the mandibles, although in them the leg-like or linear
pattern has become strangely disguised.
The typical appendage was spoken of as consisting
principally of a stem and two branches. Other appur-
tenances of the stem must be left for future notice, but
the second or outer branch claims more immediate atten-
tion. As we have seen, it may remain entirely undeveloped.
/. Swimming Foot of Amphipod. Jc. First Antenna, Liljelorgio. I. Tail-Foot, Apseude-i. m. Maxallipeds, 3, 4, Feneius.
n. o. p. Slaxillipeds, 2, 3, and following limb, Sorialla. q. Le^ of Lepas.
following figure shows the same thing in the more familiar
leg of the river crayfish. Sometimes the joints are attached
to one another, not end to end, but at various angles, as in
the leg of a tropical prawn (st- I'ig. /), which has thumb and
finger furnished each with a brush of long hairs, in nature
as useful as they are beautiful. Of the limbs here shown
none have the outer branch developed ; seme have over
the first joint an expansion called a side-plate ; some have
gills or breathing organs attached to them ; most have
some sort of garniture of hairs and spines ; but these
details are omitted as foreign to our present purpose.
Most of the figures are considerably magnified portraits ;
that from the crayfish is much reduced.
Crayfishes, lobsters, prawns, and shrimps, all belong to
the Ik'capoihi marrura, the ten-footed long-tailed tribe.
In these the muscular pleon or tail part, through its
strong development, possesses a commercial value and
cannot escape observation. The crabs, on the other hand,
which have no meat to boast of in the flexed and flattened
pleon, are often erroneously supposed to be devoid of tails.
That they are not open to this reproach is obvious, since they
form the ten-footed short-tailed tribe, Iknipoda brachi/iini.
But be the tail short or be the tail long, all these stalk-
eyed creatures agree in having, after the mandibles, two
pairs of maxillie and three pairs of maxillipeds and five
pairs of peds, pods, feet or legs. In this respect one of the
sessile-eyed groups— the highly curious Cumacea — agrees
with them. But the sessile-eyed isopods and amphipods
have, instead of three pairs of maxillipeds and five of legs,
one pair of maxillipeds and seven pairs of legs. Upon com-
parison, then, it becomes perfectly clear that the appendages
of the eighth and ninth segments are strictly homologous
throughout the Malacostraca. We may call them maxilli-
peds or gnathopods or trunk-legs, according to their difi'er-
ences of form and function, but they are none the less
essentially equivalent structures. In some of the Amphi-
poda and Isopoda the maxillipeds are more leg-like than
At other times it invites observation, as in the shrimp-
like Schizopoda, which bear this name of " cleft-legs "
because their trunk-limbs display both branches. But
really there are very few crustaceans which do not, in one
appendage or another, display them both. Throughout
the Amphipoda the first three pairs of appendages of the
pleon have a very uniform character. They almost in-
variably consist of a two-jointed stem and two subequal
lash-like branches. The lashes are constituted of a great
many small similar joints, each furnished with a couple of
long hairs, and they are generally efl'ective swimming
organs {sef Fig. j). In these pleopods, or legs of the
pleon, one may imagine that one sees a pattern of
crustacean appendage more primitive than the leg-like
one before suggested. Both pairs of antennae usually end
in lashes. The first pair often has two (see Fig. A-).
Occasionally, as in the isopod Ajisfwhs, there are two
such lashes at the opposite extremity of the animal, in the
last pair of tail-feet {.'^et- Fig. /). Kepeatedly in the
triple maxillipeds of the Decapoda, while one branch is
pediform, the other has a terminal lash (see Fig. m). In
the Schizopoda this structure is to be found not only in
the two pairs of limbs which are equivalent to the second
and third maxillipeds {^ee Figs. «, o, p), but in all the
five pairs which follow {see Fig. q), these being succeeded
by five pairs of pleopods, each with two lash-like branches.
One abnormal case is often quoted, in which the eye-stalk
of a crayfish developed into an antenna-like lash. This
has recently been matched by an equally abnormal case in
which a " trunk-leg" has been developed on the pleon of
a crab.
From a wide-reaching subject enough has perhaps been
culled to lead the indastrious beginner into an engaging
path of inquiry — the comparative anatomy of Crustacea. It
will be strange if he can avoid drawing the conclusion that
at least all the Malacostraca are of a common origin. It
will be strange, too, if the cirri, or legs of the barnacle,
70
KNOWLEDGE
[March 1, 1898.
with their stem and two lash-like branches {see Fig. q), do
not awake in him at least a suspicion that the crustacean
family is not only not confined to a few articles of domestic
consumption, but may have ramifications even beyond the
bounds of the Malacostraca.
NOTES ON COMETS AND METEORS.
By W. F. Denning, f.r.a.s.
Comets. — Pons-Winnecke's comet at the beginning of
March will enter the head of Capricornus and pass between
the bright stars a and /3 of that constellation ; but as these
objects will be only forty degrees west of the sun, and rise
about two hours before him, there will be but a slender
prospect of observing the comet. The distance of this
object from the earth is now increasing, and it is not likely
to be seen again in ordinary telescopes until the early part
of 1904.
Comet II. 1892 (Denning).— In Ast. Nac/i. 3472, Dr.
Steiner, of O'Gyalla, Hungary, gives a definite orbit which
he has derived for this object from a discussion of one
hundred and eighty-six observations. Though a very
small, faint comet, it was visible for a long period, and its
positions were secured during the ten months from 1892,
March 19th, to 1893, January 12th. Dr. Steiner con-
cludes that the orbit is hyberbolic, for, with the excentricity
at 1-000345, the sum of the squares of the residuals is
103-2" for an hyperbola, and 279-5" for the parabola.
The observations near the middle of the series, in the
summer of 1892, exhibit rather large residuals, and Dr.
Scheiner regards this as unsatisfactory. But the comet
was difficult to observe at that time owing to the twilight,
and to its faintness, due to great distance from the earth ;
for at the middle of June the comet was separated from us
by an interval of two hundred and seventy millions of
miles. The path of the comet was nearly vertical to the
ecliptic, the inclination being eighty-nine and three-quarter
degrees. Dr. Scheiner's definitive elements are : —
T 1892, May 11-201935 M.T. Berlin.
ir 22° 45' 42-40"
n 253° 25' 50-92"
I 89° iV 54-10"
log. ,]. ... 0-2946197
e 1-000345
Meteors. — Though the shower of Leonids in 1897 was
not very brilliant, and completely obscured by clouds at
the majority of stations on the mornings of November
15th and 16th, it returned with fair activity on those dates.
There is little doubt, however, that the earth did not
encounter the really dense portion of the stream, but it is
difficult to specify what strength is fairly representative of
the main swarm, and a certain standard (or rate of appari-
tion) will have to be adopted to express it. The richest
part of the current is probably not a sudden development,
but due to gradually increasing abundance along a con-
siderable stretch of the orbit. It is important to ascertain
the time when the earth encounters that section of the
stream in which the meteors begin to be thickly congre-
gated. In 1833 there were one thousand meteors per
minute, while at about the period of maximum frequency
on November 13th, 18G6, there were one hundred per
minute for one observer. What, therefore, will be the
rate of appearance assumed for the fore region of the
main swarm ? Perhaps ten meteors per minute might
satisfactorily represent it, for this would give six hundred
per hour, it being understood that the figures are for one
observer watching a clear, moonless sky with the radiant
at a fair altitude. It is certain from the conditions of the
case that the relative intensity of the stream at different
parts can only be ascertained after many cyclical returns
of the swarm, for the earth is only involved in it for a
short time once a year, and in the interim of successive
encounters a vast range of the current passes the node
without recognition.
Now that the efi'ort is being made to photograph the
group of Leonid meteors in space, it might be as well to
endeavour to get an impression of the parent comet. On
March 10th the comet will be certainly less than two
liundred millions of miles distant, and possibly less than
one hundred and fifty millions, whereas the meteoric
swarm will be about five hundred and sixty-eight millions
distant on the same date. In view of the fact that the
comet is more highly condensed and probably far more
luminous than its accompanying meteoric stream, the pro-
spect of detecting it is much more favourable. Towards the
close of the present year, however, the comet will approach
much nearer to the earth than it is at present, and no
doubt some special efforts will then be made to redetect it.
Fireball of 1898, January 21st. — In the twilight of
Friday evening, January '21st, at 5h. 32m., one of those
large fireballs which occasionally burst out and illuminate
sky and landscape with startling brilliancy, was observed
at a great many places in the South of England, and in
some parts of Ireland and Wales. A considerable number
of descriptions of the object were published in the news-
papers, and if, as usual, the writers failed to record the
exact position of the meteor's path and its duration of
flight, they one and all testified to the astonishing brilliancy
of the phenomenon. Not many stars were visible at the
moment of the meteor's descent, so it was diflScult to fix
its apparent course with the necessary precision. But
several of the observers were fortunate enough to obtain a
good \aew of it, and recorded the path as accurately as
circumstances permitted. From thirty-three accounts
which I have compared together, it appears certain that
the fireball traversed a very long path from east to west
over the south coast of Enijland. Observers in London
and that district say that the object first appeared at a
great altitude in south-east or south, and disappeared in
south west ; while spectators in the western counties
describe the motion as from east or east by south to south-
west, or south-west by south. The flaming nucleus was
not so large as the moon, but was, according to several
reports, about twelve or fifteen minutes of arc in diameter,
but its brightness exceeded that of the full moon. The
colour appears to have varied, and observers are by no
means agreed in their estimations, but the head seems to
have been yellowish and the train bright green and purple.
The meteor burst before vanishing ; and it travelled, not
with that very slow, sailing flight which is often charac-
teristic of the largest fireballs, but with moderate velocity,
and its entire visible course probably occupied seven seconds.
One person, however, says it lasted thirty seconds ; another
estimated the duration as nearly five minutes ! The best
estimates vary from three to seven seconds, but most of
the observers only caught the meteor after it had akeady
traversed a part of its course, and when it was descending
at a low altitude in the south-west.
The fireball when first seen appears to have been
eighty-two miles above a point five miles south of Croydon
in Surrey. Moving to the south-west by west it passed
over Peterstield, Lymington, and St. Alban's Head, and
disappeared at a height of twenty-five miles over the
English Channel some thirty-five miles south of Eddystone
Lighthouse. Its length of path was two hundred and
thirty-five miles, and velocity about thirty-four miles per
second. The radiant point was in the north-east region
March 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE.
71
of Cancer at 180° f 30°, in azimuth about 31^ north of
east, and altitude 14' at the time of apparition. The
fireball was probably a member of a meteoric shower seen
at Bristol in 18s7-!l, January 25th to February 1st, at
131° + 32°. A fireball seen in 1877, -January 19th, may
also have been derived from the same system, for its real
path, computed by Prof. Herschel, presents a striking
resemblance to that of the recent meteor, as follows : —
Ueierlit Height „ .. „^| ,.
at first, at end. ^''*^- Velocity. Position of
Miles. Miles. Miles. Miles. «»«■»»»• Path.
82 25 2:« M Vlff + Sff Smith of Enfluiul.
75 W 230 :« lM«+27>' | ^'0?'!?.^.,^"""'
Two large and brilliant meteors were observed on the
night of Simday, February 20th, 18!)s, at 8h. 54m., and
lOh. 20m., and particulars ofthesewill be given next month.
Jttn.21,lS98
Jan. 19, 1877
THE FACE OF THE SKY FOR MARCH.
By HERnERT Sadler, f.r.a.s.
SUNSPOTS may occasionally be observed on the
solar disc.
Conveniently observable minima of Algol occur
at midnight on the 1st, at 8h. 50m. p..m. on the
4th, and at lOh. 32m. p.m. on the 24th.
Mercury is too near the Sun to be observed this month,
being in superior conjunction with the Sun on the 16th.
Venus is too near the Sun for the observer's purposes,
and Mars is also practically invisible.
Jupiter is an evening star, and is excellently situated
for observation, being in opposition to the Sun on the
25th. On the 1st he rises at about 8h. p.m., with a
southern declination at noon of 1° 52', and an apparent
equatorial diameter of 43i ". On the 12th he rises at
7b. 9m. p.m., with a southern declination of 1° 22', and an
apparent diameter of 44". On the 22nd he rises at
6h. 24m. P.M., with a southern declination of 0° 51', and
an apparent diameter of 44[". On the 31st he rises at
5h. 44m. P.M., with a southern declination of 0° 24', and
an apparent diameter of 44 j". During the month he
describes a retrograde path in Virgo.
Saturn does not rise till just before midnight on the 1st,
so we defer an ephemeris of him till April, and an
ephemeris of Uranus is omitted for similar reasons.
Neptune is an evening star, being in quadrature with the
Sim on the 10th. On the 1st he souths at (ih. 37m.,
with a northern declination of 21° 48', and an apparent
diameter of 2V'. On the 31st he souths at 4h. 40m. p.m.,
with a northern declination of 21° 45'. He is almost
stationary in Taurus during the month.
There are no very well marked showers of shooting stars
in March.
The Moon is full at 9h. 29m. a.m. on the 8th ; enters
her last quarter at 7h. 48m. p.m. on the 15th ; is new
at 8h. 37m. a.m. on the 22nd ; and enters her first quaiter
at 7h. 40m. a.m. on the 30th. Some of the small stars in
the Pleiades will be occulted on the evening of the 26th.
C!)tss Column.
By C. D. LocooK, b.a.
Communications for this oolnmn should be addressed to
C. D. LococK, Burwash, Sussex, and posted on or before
the 10th of each month.
Solutions of February Problems.
No. 1.
(W. Clugston.)
1. Kt to B4, and mates next move.
No. 2.
(S. Loyd.)
1. P X B (becoming a Knight), K x Kt.
2. Kt to QKtG, anything.
3. P to R8, mate.
White gets a Knight in order to be able to place it
between his RP and the Black Bishop on his next move.
No correct solutions have been sent, but the problem was
well worth solviuL,', as all Mr. Loyd's are.
Correct Solutions of No. 1 received from G. G. Beazley,
II. Worsley Wood, W. de P. Crousaz, J. MRobert,
A. E. Whitehouse, H. W. Elcum, Mrs. C. F. Giddings.
Capt. Forde.—U 1. Kt to B8, K to B4, dis. ch.
F. A. Curtis.— 1. B to K6 is met by Kt to K7. In
No. 2, after 1. Kt to B4, BxP; 2. Kt to K2, the King
moves and escapes mate.
//. TC. Elcum. — Your solution of No. 2 fails as above.
.T. n. (York).— See above. In No. 2, if 1. P to Kt8
(Queens),. B to Kt2, and the Queen cannot play to KtG.
But the Bishop may also safely play to Q4 or K5, though
not elsewhere. A note appended to the January puzzles
gave warning that a " liberal interpretation " of the laws
of the ,1,'ame was required for their solution. As a matter
of fact, the law says nothing as to the colour of the piece
to be chosen. If, therefore, White selects a Black Rook,
lilack has a perfect right to use it for Castling purposes.
We are glad to hear that you appreciate the February
Number.
H. Worxh'i/ Wiind and A. E. Whitehouse. — In answer to
1. P to Kt8 (becoming a Queen), Black moves his Bishop
to Kt2 or Q4 or Ko, and there is no forced mate in two
more moves. If he move elsewhere there is.
F. ir. A. de Tabeck (Rome). — Many thanks for your
appreciative card.
/'. U. Fotheringham. — The massacre suggested is too
terrible to think of. Could you not be contented with
3. PQR3, and less bloodshed ?
PROBLEM.
From the SUmdard.
Black (2).
wmi
,?.. '^m»- ^m Ml
White (4).
White mates in three moves.
We propose this month and next to try the effect on our
readers of some very full analysis. For this purpose we
have selected a short game of nineteen moves, played on
Board No. 1 in the Kent c. Sussex correspondence match
last year. Our analysis is compiled from notes made at
the time.
72
KNOWLEDGE.
[March 1, 1898.
Part I.-
Whitb.
1. P to K4
2. KKt to B3
3. B to Kt5
4. P to Q4
5. P to K5
6. Castles
7. B to E4 (h)
8. BxKt
9. KtxP
10. Kt X Kt (d)
11. Q to K2
12. Q to K3 (/)
13. Q to E7 (h)
-The Opening.
Black.
1. P to K4
2. QKt to B8
3. Kt to B3
4. PxP
5. Kt to K5
6. P to QR3 (/()
7. Kt to B4
8. QPxB
9. Kt to K3 (<■)
10. BxKt
11. Q to R5 («>)
12. Castles {;i)
Notes.
(a) Not to be found at this particular stage in any book
on the openings. The time-honoured move is 6 . . .
B to K2.
(/)) This loses a move. 7. BQ3, or B to B4, would be
answered by 7. . . . P to Q4. But the best course seems
to be 7. B x Kt, QP x B ; 8. Kt x P (or a, b), B to K2 ;
!). B to K3, Q to Q4 !
(a) 8. (.' to K:.', QB to B4 (or (i.) ) [not 8. ... Q to Q4,
on account of P to QB4, now or later] ; 9. B to K3, Q to
Q2 (9. Kt X P, Q X Kt !) ; 10. Kt x P, Castles (QR) ; 11. P
to KB8, etc.
(i.) 8. . . . Kt to B4 ; 9. R to Qsq, B to Kt5 ; 10. B
to K3, Kt to K3 (or 10. . . . Q to Q4) ; 11. P to B3,
Q to Q4, or KB to B4, etc.
(b) 8. R to Ksq, Kt to B4 ; 9. Q x P (or 9. Kt x P, Kt to
K3), Q X Q ; 10. Kt x Q, Kt to K3, etc.
(c) By a transposition of moves the position in a match
game, Morphy r. Lowenthal, has been reached. Lowenthal
played this move, which is much better than 9. . . . B to
K2, as recommended by Morphy, Salvioli, and Steinitz.
The two latter authorities give 9. ... B to K2 ; 10. QKt
to B3, Castles ; 11. B to K3, P to KB8 ; apparently over-
looking the powerful reply, 12. Q to K2, threatening Kt x P.
(d) This and his nest move were played by Morphy
against Lowenthal. If, instead, 10. B to KB, Kt x Kt ;
11. B X Kt, QB to B4 ; 12. P to QB3, Q to H5, with a good
game. But, on account of Black's 11th move in the actual
game, we are inclined to prefer 10. KKt to B3, Q x Q ;
11. E X Q, BK2 ; though Black can develop afterwards by
Kt to KBsq, and B to KB4.
(<■) Much stronger than either 11. ... B to QB4, as
played by Lowenthal, or 11. . . . B to K2, as recom-
mended by him. The Black Queen is never dislodged from
this powerful position. Black now threatens B to B5.
(/) Evidently intended to prevent Castling (QR), and in
a minor degree, perhaps, to support the entry of a Knight
at QB5. But in other respects it loses time.
((/) A bold course, but 12. ... B to K2, followed by
Castles (KE), andQR to Qsq, would leave the Queens side
pawns unprotected. 12. ... Q to QB5 ; 13. Kt to E3
(best), B X Kt ; 14. Q x B, leads to a draw, as Black cannot
take the BP on account of B to Kt5. Another plan would
be 12 E to Qsq ; 1 3. Q to E7 (?), B to Bsq ; 14. Q to
Kt8, Q to K2.
(h) This su))jects him to a strong attack. Another
course would be— 13. Kt to Q2, B to Q4 ; 14. Q to E7
(or a), P to QB4 ; 15. Kt to B3 (if 15. E to Qsq, Q to
05!), BxKt; 16. PxB,QtoE4!
(a) 14. P to QB4, B X P ; 15. P to KKtH, Q to Kt5 ;
16. KtxB, QxKt; 17. Q to R7, B to B4 ; 18. Q to
R8ch, K to Q2 ; 19. Q x KtP, Q to Kt4 [or, perhaps,
19. ... B to Kt3 ; 20. E to Qsqch, K to K3 ; 21. E x R,
E X R ; 22. B to K3, B x B ; 23. P x B, Q to K5 ; with
some advantage] .
We reserve the rapid and interesting finish for next
month.
CHESS INTELLIGENCE.
The following team has been chosen to represent the
British Isles in the Cable Match '■. the United States, on
March 18th and 19th : — Messrs, Atkins, Bellingham,
Blackburne, Bum, Caro, Jackson, Jacobs, Locock, MUls,
and Trenchard. Reserves : Messrs. Cole and Wainwright.
Messrs. Caro and Trenchard are new to the match, while
Messrs. Blake, Cole, and Lawrence, who were in last
year's winning team, are not playing on the present
occasion.
The order of the team is not yet decided on, but it is
fairly safe to predict that the first three letters of the
alphabet will be well to the fore.
The Hastings Chess Festival last month met with its
usual success. Messrs. Blackburne, Bird, (lunsberg, and
Janowski gave simultaneous exhibitions, and took part in
consultation games against each other with amateur
partners.
Messrs. Pillsbury and Showalter have begun their second
match for the championship of the United States. It will
be remembered that their former encounter last year
resulted in a hard-earned victory for Mr. Pillsbury by
10 games to 8.
On January 24th the British Chess Club defeated the
St. George's Chess Club rather decisively by 8 games to 2,
the latter score being made up of 4 drawn games.
KNOWLEDGE, PUBLISHED MONTHLY.
Contents of No. 147 (January).
The Karkinokosm, or World ot
Crustacea. By the Her. Tbomos
E. E. Stehbing, M.A., F.B.S.,
F.L.S. (!lliis(rntcd) 1
A Drowned Continent. By E.
Lrdekker, b.a., f.b.s 3
Is Weatherufiected by the Moon ?
Bv Alex. B. McDowall, m.a.
(Illustrofed) 5
Serpents and bow to recognize
them. By Lionel Jervis 7
The I'risumtic Camera daring
Total Echpses. By Wni.Shackle-
ton, F.B.A.S. aihiHtrated} 9
Notes on Comets and Meteors.
Bv W. F. Uenninp, k.k.a.s 10
Richard Proctor's Theory of the
Universe. ByC.Easton. (niiis-
traUd) 12
British Oi-nithological Notes 14-
Science Notes 15
Lettere 16
Notices of Books (Illustrated) ... 18
Books Received 21
Obituary 21
Bobinical Studies.— I. Vaucheria.
By A. Vanffhan Jennings. F.L.S. ,
F.G.S. {UUshnled) 21
The Face of the Sky for January.
By Herbert Sadler, f.r.a.s 2X
Chess Column. By C. D. Locock 23
PuTE.— Photographs of "Reversing
Laver" »nd Coronal Ring.
Contents of No. 14B (February).
PAGE
The Floor of a Continent. By
Grenville A. J. Cole, h.k.i.a.,
F.G.S. (filusfrofcd) 25
Economic Botany. By John B,
Jackson, a.l.s., etc 28
From a Hole in the Mndflats. By
Harry F. Witherby, F.Z.S.,
M.B.o.r. (IU«str<i(«d) 29
Liqnid Fluorine. By C. F.
Townsend, F.c.s. (Illustrated) 31
Letters 33
British Ornithological Notes 36
Science Notes 37
Notices of Boobs 37
Total Solar Eclipse, January 22nd,
189S 38
Photograph of the Spiral Nebula
Messier .33 Trianguli. By Isaac
Roberts, D.sc, f.r.s 39
Moon in EcUpse, January 7th,
1898. ByL. PaJrton 40
The Spectra of Bright Stars. By
E. W. Maunder, F.B.A.S -W
Ancient Bed Deer Antlers. B.v
B.Lydekker.B.A., F.B.S. (filus.) «
Notes on Comets and Meteors.
By W. F. Denning, F.B.A.S 4C
The Face of the Sky for Febnuiry.
By Herbert Sadler, f.r.a.s. 47
Chess Column. By C. D. Locock 47
Plate. — Spiral Nebula Messier
33 Trianguli.
The vearly bound volumes of Kkowledoe, cloth gilt, 8s. 6d., post free.
Bin<fine Cases, Is. 6d. each ; post free. Is. 9d.
Subscribers' numbers bound (including case and Index), .is. 6d. each volume.
Index of Articles and Illustrations for 1891, 1892, 1894, 1895, 1896, and 1897
an' be supplied for 3d. each.
"Knowledge' Annual Subscription, throughout the world,
8s., post free.
Communications for the Editors and Books for Review should be addressed
Editors, " Knowledge," 336, High Holbom, London, W.C.
April 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE.
73
Founded in i88i by RICHARD A. PROCTOR.
LONDON: APRIL 1, 1898.
CONTENTS.
Economic Botany. B_v John E. Jackson, a.i.s., etc.
The Structure of Ireland. Bv Grentille A. J. Cole,
il.B.I.A., F.G.S. (Illustrated)
The Sea-Otter and its Extermination. By R. LyuEEKEit,
B.A., F.R.S. {Illustrated)
British Ornithological Notes. Conducted by Habet F.
WiTHEEBT, F.Z.3., M.B.O.U
Letters :— David Flanert ; "W. E. Beslet
British Bees. — II. By Feed. Exoce, f.l.s., f.b.s., etc.
[Illustrated) ... "
In the Moon s Northern Regions. By Arthur Mee,
F.B.A.s. (Plate) '
Notices of Books
Short Notices
Books Ebceited
Stars having Large Proper Motion. By E. C. Pickebing
The Level of Sunspots. By the Rev. Abthue East.
(Illustrated)
The Evolution of the Venom-Fang. By Lioxel Jeetis.
(Illustrated) '
Notes on Comets and Meteors. By W. F. Denkino,
F.E.A.S. ...
The Face of the Sky for April. By Hekbeet Sadlbb,
F.B.A.s
Chess Column. By C. D. Locock, b.a
PAGS
73
ECONOMIC BOTANY.
By John R. .Jackson, a.l.s., etc., Ka'per af the Museums,
Roi/al (i aniens, Keiv.
IN our introductory remarks on this subject (Knowledge,
February, 1898) we drew attention to the fact that
the Kew Museums from their foundation were
unique in their character, and at the present time
are far and away the most important institutions of
the kind throughout the world. It will be best, therefore,
to take these collections as the basis of our remarks in
succeeding papers, following the arrangement of the natural
orders as there adopted, which is based on the system of
the Geiiern I'lantarum of Bentham and Hooker. By this
means we shall be able to prove what we said in our intro-
ductory remarks on the distinct economic character of
certain natural orders and their importance over others in
supplying the wants of man. In treating our subject in a
scientific rather than a commercial manner, the advantages
will be that those of our readers to whom the Kew Museums
are available will have object lessons before them which
they will find no difficulty in applying to their own indi-
vidual requirements, and occurring in the same sequence
as here set down. Other advantages will be that the habits
of the plants constituting each natural order will be briefly
stated, as well as their geographical distribution. Of
necessity these descriptions must be brief, and only the
principal products can receive treatment ; more attention,
of course, being given to those of greater than those of
lesser commercial value.
Ranunculace.e. — The type of this order is the buttercup.
The plants which form the group are herbaceous. Very
few have woody stems. They have a wide geographical
range, but are more abundant in cool climates. Their
general properties are acrid and poisonous, which is well
exemplified in the common aconite or monkshood(.^co)ij(M»i
iKipellus L.). The order is chiefly valued for its medicinal
products, the principal of which is the aconite just referred
to. It is a perennial plant found in sub-Alpine pastures,
and damp, shady places in hilly districts, particularly in
the Alpine chains of Europe, as well as in the Himalayan
range, where it extends from ten thousand feet elevation
up to the limit of vegetation. Though it occurs in some
counties of England and Wales, it is scarcely considered
a native.
The aconite is valued economically both for the rhizome,
or rootstock, and for the leaves, both of which contain the
alkaloid neon i tine, though the rhizomes are said to be six
times stronger than the leaves. The rootstock is moat
active in the winter and early spring, and for medicinal
purposes should be collected at those periods. The fresh
rhizome varies in size from three to sis inches long, broad
at one end, and tapering to a fine point. It descends
perpendicularly into the ground, and gives off numerous
rootlets. It has an earthy odour, and a taste which is
slightly bitter at first, but which is succeeded in a few
minutes by a burning sensation, and a tim,'ling or numb-
ness in the lips, cheeks, or tongue. The market is mostly
supplied with aconite root from the wild plants, but some
of the dried root is imported from Germany. Though
aconitine is one of the most virulent poisons known, it is
an extremely valuable medicine. Tincture of aconite
is much used for outward application to allay pain in
rheumatic and similar affections. The accidents that
sometimes occur from mistaking aconite root for horse-
radish can only happen at the time when the plants are
leafless, as the foliage of the two plants is very distinct ;
and even then the tapering and dark-coloured root of
the aconite is quite different in appearance to the long,
cylindrical light-coloured root of the horseradish. Several
other plants belonging to this order, natives chiefly
of America and India, furnish useful medicines. The
small black seeds known as fennel-flower seeds are also
the produce of a ranunculaceous plant — Xinilla satira, an
annual of the South of Europe. Levant, Egypt, etc. The
common name is derived from the fennel-like odour the
seeds have when fresh. In the East they are used as a
carminative medicine and for flavouring curries, as well as
to keep insects from woollen cloths. In France they are
used as a spice.
Magnoliace.e. — Trees or shrubs, many of them with
handsome and fragrant flowers, found in North America,
India, China, and .Japan. They possess bitter tonic and
aromatic properties. The woods are of a light colour, even
grained and easily cut. The two most important economic
plants of the order are the star anise and the American
tulip tree or white wood. The first, lUicium eerum, is a
tree about twenty feet high, the fruits of which are com-
posed of several carpels, and when fully ripe and dry they
open and expand in the form of a star ; hence the common
name. The whole fruit has a most agreeable aromatic
V4
KNOWLEDGE
[Apbh, 1, 1898.
odour and yields an equally aromatic oil. They are
imported in considerable quantities from China into
Europe, America, and India for flavouring liqueurs and
spirits. The tree grows to a height of about twenty feet.
The tulip tree or white wood, JArioihntlron tuiijiifeni,
grows in its native country of America to a height of over
one hundred feet. It grows well in England, and is a
favourite tree in consequence of its peculiar-shaped foliage
and tulip-like flowers. The wood is fine and even grained,
very white, and free from knots, so that it is in very great
demand both in America and in England for cabinet work,
door panels, etc. In some trunks, however, the wood is of
an even yellowish tint, and is known as canary wood.
Most of the species of ^fnipiolin 3deld white and even-
grained wood, which is much used for various purposes in
the countries where the trees grow.
Anonace.t.. — This is an important natural order of
tropical trees and shrubs, noted for the aromatic and even
pungent properties of some of its species. They are chiefly
natives of tropical countries, and are perhaps best known
for their edible fruits, such, for instance, as the sour-sop,
Anonii muricata, a West Indian tree producing a fruit
sometimes weighing upwards of two pounds. It is some-
what oval in shape, of a greenish colour externally, and
covered with prickles ; internally the pulp is white and
has an agreeable slightly acid flavour. The sweet-sop, A.
squamosa, is a native of the Malay Islands, but is cultivated
both in the East and West Indies. The fruit is nearly
globular, somewhat larger than a cricket ball, and is
covered with projecting scales, or mammilhe, over which
is a thick rind. The central portion is filled with whitish
pulp, in which are embedded the numerous black shining
seeds. The custard apple, or bullock's heart, Anona reticu-
lata, is smaller than the preceding, and is somewhat
irregularly heart shaped. It is a native of the West Indies,
but is cultivated also in the East. The yellowish pulp is
not generally so much liked as that of the preceding. The
cherimoyer [Anona cJierimolia) is said to be the most deli-
cious fruit of the order. It is a native of Peru, but is
cultivated in the West Indies and other countries exclu-
sively for the sake of its fruit. Like those of the other
species the fruit is somewhat heart shaped, the outside
covered with scales and the inside pulp of a yellowish pink
colour. The aromatic character of the order is well illus-
trated in the seeds of many of the species, as in Monodora
i/ii/ristica, the numerous seeds of which are borne in large
globular fruits. These seeds are remarkable for their
distinct rumination, which, indeed, is a character of the
order generally. What is known as negro or Ethiopian
pepper is the fruit of X;/lopia (Kthiopica, a large tree of
the West Coast of Africa. When ripe and dry, as they appear
in the West African markets, the fruits are black and quill-
like, arranged in bunches or clusters around a central axis.
They are aromatic and strongly pungent, and are used by
the natives for seasoning their food. Attempts have been
made to introduce them into English commerce, but as
they have no advantage over pepper or other condiments
they have not succeeded.
Menispermace.f,. — This is a group of climbing tropical
shrubby plants, abundant in woods of Asia and America.
In cross section the stems and roots show a very large
development of the medullary rays, and the structure is so
open or porous that the more slender stems are often so
pliable as to be used for ropes. Another distinct character
is the bright yellow, or greenish yellow, colour shown
when the wood is freshly cut. Their properties are bitter
and narcotic, and, in some cases, poisonous. The order is
essentially a medicinal one, several of the species yielding
valuable remedies, such as the )mrnra brave (Chondvo-
demhiin tomentosum), a woody climber of Brazil and Peru,
having a bitter taste but no smell, and it is used as a mild
tonic and diuretic. Calumba root is another bitter tonic.
It is the product of Jatecrrln'za laluwlia, a perennial
climber of the forests of Mozambique and Quillimane.
It appears in commerce in this country usually in dried,
yellow-coloured, transverse slices, which have been cut
when fresh, and are consequently shrivelled. Under
the name of Cocculw Induus the berry-like fruits of
Aniimirta jianiculata are sent in very large quantities
to this country from India. They are poisonous, and
the only use to which they are known to be put is in the
preparation of ointments, chiefly for killing pediculi ; but
it is said that they are also used in giving a bitter flavour
to beer. The plant is a large woody climber, and the
fruits are about the size of a large pea.
Other medicinal plants in this order that may be men-
tioned as more or less useful are the spurious jiareira
bravd {Cisxiim/ii'lds pari'ira), a, slender woody climber found
in tropical regions of both hemispheres, which has bitter
and tonic properties ; and false calumba {Coscinium fenes-
tratum), also a climber of Ceylon, Southern India, and
Malacca, the wood of which is of a greenish yellow colour.
It is a bitter tonic.
Pjerberidacek. — This order consists of shrubs and
herbaceous plants, mostly natives of temperate climates.
The common barberry (Berlnris vulgaris) is the only British
species of the order, the properties of which are acid and
astringent ; a yellow colouring matter is also found in the
woods. The most important economic plant is Po'loplnjUum
pAtatum, a perennial of the United States and Canada, the
rootstocks of which contain an active principle known as
podophyUin, and much valued in medicine.
THE STRUCTURE OF IRELAND.
By Grenville a. J. Cole, m.r.i.a., f.g.s., Professor or
Geolof/i/ in the Royal College of Science for Ireland.
OWING to the isolation of Ireland, as compared with
Scotland, its geological features have remained
comparatively unknown, except to the oflicers of
Government Surveys and the authors of certain
careful and conscientious text-books. Headers of
the latter are still apt, however, to skip the pages dealing
with so remote an island, and to devote their earnest
attention to the minuter details of purely English strati-
graphy.
Even now, when the finest line of channel steamers on
our coasts runs between Holyhead and Kingstown, the
visitors who throng these boats at certain seasons aim at
little more than Killarney or the Giant's Causeway. The
associations of the former place in summer are scarcely
suited for philosophic speculation ; while the speculation at
the latter place is mainly confined to the syndicate which
has recently enclosed it, and which, after the manner of
the enterprising Swiss, charges an entrance-fee for the
inspection of its natural beauties.
But no one who approaches Ireland can fail to be struck
by certain of its physical features, notably the picturesque
and even mountainous character of its coast. Ofl' Dublin,
the clift's and the rugged little moor of Howth may remind
us of Holyhead or Cornwall ; but on the south side of the
bay the eye is caught by the still bolder promontory of
Bray Head, the graceful cones of the Little and Great
Sugarloaves, and the long range of the Dublin and Wicklow
mountains, stretching sixty miles into the south, and rising
two to three thousand feet above the sea.
Or at Greenore we may enter on a sunny morning, to
April 1, 1898.]
KNO^A/•LEDGE
75
see the mists clearing from the granite peaks of Mourne,
and the saw- edge of the Carlingford range already black
against the sky. And we look farther up the sea-lough
towards Newry, where the ground rises inland to form the
plateau of Armagh, bearing on its back the volcano of
Slieve GuUion and other giants of the moorland.
To reach Belfast, again, we pass up the lough between
the hills of Down and the far bolder and terraced masses
of the Antrim coast, and rest at last against the quay,
where the smoke of a busy commercial centre cannot blot
out the great black crags that rise almost sheer above the
town.
Or, again, near Cork, where the foreground is lower, and
something in the pleasant Falmouth style, glimpses are
seen of those fine red-sandstone ranges that run from
Waterford to Kerry, and form a backbone to all the
southern coast ; while an approach from the Atlantic
side, to Bantry, Cialway, or Donegal, would impress still
more firmly on the traveller the mountainous nature of
the country.
Yet, start this traveller by rail from Gal way to Dublin,
or from Cork to the sea again at Drogheda, and he will
report that Ireland is a Hat country, with occasional
bands of mountains on its margins. In the former case
he will cross the Shannon in a broad prairie at Athlone,
and will hail even the little gravel-ridges as welcome
features in the plain. In the latter case he will pass the
lordly range of the Galtees, and will have visions of the
long chain of the Leinster granite between him and the
eastern sea ; but his course will lie through a pleasant
cultivated lowland, with white farms and foursquare
mansions, and anon stretches of brown bogland, margined
by wind-swept belts of firs. The structure of Ireland
seems, then, fairly simple — a shallow basin, bordered for
the most part by a rim of higher ground.
The details of its structure have been put before
geological readers in two well-known works ; and, in a
more popular setting, by von Lasaulx,^ who visited the
country in 1876. Gne of the most charming accounts of
Ireland, and the most fully illustrated, is to be found
in the work of another foreign author, M. Martel ; ; and
the geological matter in this book is unfamiliar to most
of us, dealing as it does with the underground water-
ways of the Carboniferous Limestone area. In this and
succeeding papers, I propose to regard Ireland from a
broad standpoint, as a part of Europe, as a mass set
upon the continental edge — that is, upon one of the most
interesting structural lines of Europe at the present day.
Bertrand and Suess, the authors of our more recent
generalisations respecting European structure, have not
overlooked Ireland as the visible western termination of
their systems of earth-folding ; and the latter writer may
be said to show an intimate acquaintance with the geology
of the island. M. Bertrand; has recited to us the four
principal epochs of mountain-making, and has somewhat
daringly pictured the folds as successively extending south-
ward, banked one against the other, from the Polar Circle to
the Mediterranean. Certainly, the bared Arch:pan masses
of the north, and the growing limb of the Italian region in
the south,;; go far to support his generalisation.
* Gr. U. Kinahan, " Manual of the G-eology of Ireland," 1878 ; and
Prof. E. Hull, " Physical Geology and Geography of Ireland," Second
Edition, 1891. "
t "Aus Irland : Keisestizzen und Studien," Bonn, 1878.
'X "Irlande et Cavernes anglaises," Paris, 1897.
§ " Sur la Distribution geographiques des Roches eruptires en
Europe." Jiull. Soc. giol. de France, Troisieme Serie, Tome XVI.
(1887-8), p. 576.
i; See Knowledge, Vol. XX. (1897), p. 2S5.
Ireland, as an epitome, retains traces of these four great
epochs. In the mountain-rim of the north and west, the
oldest system of folds, the Ihironiaii chain of Bertrand,
comes to light. Complex as the older rocks of Donegal
may be, few will deny that their fundamental series is of
equal antiquity to the Hebridean gneiss of Scotland ; while
an interesting inland exposure in the east of the county of
Tyrone shows that ribs of the pre-Cambrian chain are not
far distant beneath any part of the north of Ireland. The
handsome gneisses of this latter area, north of Pomeroy,
form a broken moorland, to which echoes of the outer
world travel slowly even in our own time — a region in
which the old language, and the lirightness of the old
costumes, linger almost witliin sound of the clanging ship-
yards of Belfast. Flanking this core of antique rocks, come
interpenetrating masses of igneous origin, and an extensive
series of schists that form mountain-ridges of their own.
In the counties of Mayo and Gal way, again, the strati-
fied but metamorphosed series that underlies the first
fossiliferous horizons is now known to be at least of
Cambrian age ; and its general relationships would
carry it down even further. The quartzite masses of
the Twelve Bens of Connemara may even represent the
Torridon series of Sutherland : and somewhere beneath
them must lie the gnarled and twisted gneiss, forming
part of the continent of " Huronian " times. South of
this point the old rocks are cut off by the Atlantic, and
play no further part in the structure of our modern
Ireland.
The ('al<-tl<mian epoch of mountain-building set in at the
close of the Silurian period, and gave us the Grampian
folds, and the great thrust-planes that have wrought such
havoc with the true order of things in north-west Suther-
land.f It gave strength and compactness to a great part
of Wales ; and its first throes are seen in the break that
occurs between the Ordovician and the Silurian beds in
Shropshire. On the Welsh border, iu fact, the Caledonian
movements made a start a whole geological period in
advance of the main upheaval of the chains.
Evidence of something of the kind is now reported from
the west of Ireland; but the principal folding in that
country certainly included Silurian beds as well as Ordo-
vician. Along the east coast, from the neighbourhood of
Belfast to the south of the county of Waterford, the
Caledonian pressures have thrust up these two systems of
beds on end, and have contorted or even inverted them.
From the mountains and plateaux then raised, pebbles
were copiously rolled down, to form the first deposits in
Devonian lakes, or, later, in Carboniferous seas. In fact,
a continent then arose across all the northern European
area, on which room was found for the fresh-water basins
of the Old Red Sandstone, and on the mobile edge of
which the volcanoes of the Cheviots fumed.
The surface of this continent is, then, exposed to us
by denudation whenever the Devonian conglomerates are
removed ; and certain portions of it must have stood up
as barriers between the lake-basins, and were never sub-
merged until the great subsidence, which readmitted the
sea in early Carboniferous times.
The great thickness of the Old Bed Sandstone implies
that the floors of the lakes in which it was deposited,
or of the estuaries that may have served in certain
oases as the gathering-ground, were steadily sinking as
* This, at least, may be safely concluded from the most recent
results of the Geolog"ical Survey in that district. fAnn. Report
GeoL Surrey of United Eini/dom. 1897, pp. 50 and 51.)
t See the sections in the Survey. Report published in Quart. Joiirn.
Geol. Soc, London, Vol. XLIV. (18SS\ p. 378.
76
KNOWLEDGE
[Apeil 1, 1898.
layer after layer was laid down. Between the parallel
ranges of the "Caledonian" chain, long valleys of
subsidence may have existed like that in which the East
African lakes have arisen at the present day. By an
opposite movement, along the planes of gradual faulting,
the intervening ridges may have prolonged their existence,
and may have maintained the level of the continent. By
i^j^^^~
Fig. 1. — Sketch-map of Ireland, showing the direction of the
principal axes of folding. The lines represent the trend of both
anticlinal and synclinal axes. Lines with dots represent the
" Caledonian " folding ; thick lines, the " llercynian " folding.
our own times, a succession of later earth-movements has
complicated the relations between the Devonian sandstones
and the land-surface that gave them birth ; but we may
still see in the great chain of Leinster one of the real
highlands of "Caledonian" times.
The marine Carboniferous beds abut directly on a great
part of this chain, with no exposure of Old Eed Sandstone
round their margins ; hence the ridge stood out as a long
island even in the Carboniferous sea. To this day it
forms the most continuous portion of the mountain-rim of
Ireland, though shorn of its former schistose peaks by
whole eras of denudation, and though the round back of
the granite-core is now laid bare to view.
The "Caledonian" uplift was characterised by a feature
common in true mountain - chains — the intrusion of
granite along the more important lines of elevation. As
the long arch formed, the igneous mass rose with it,
melting off its lower layers, sending ofif veins into higher
ones, and inducing crystallisation and foliation in the
argillaceous beds along the contact-zone. Hence the back-
bone of Leinster became strengthened from below ; and its
double structure is seen clearly in any traverse of the
range.
Bound Newry, again, granite forms a hard ridge inti-
mately connected with the "Caledonian" folds; and at
Castlewellan, a little further north, the igneous invader
has been caught, as it were, in the act, and is seen to be
stuck full of fragments of Ordovician or Silurian strata,
which present every stage of alteration, from mere baking
to almost complete absorption. It is very reasonable to
suppose that the characters that distinguish the Newry
granite from that of Leinster are induced by the amount of
foreign material absorbed by it in the portion now exposed.
Further evidence of the support given to the "Cale-
donian " folds by the intrusion of granite is seen in the
exposures in the county of Cavan. At and near Crossdoney,
a granite of very various grain and character comes to the
surface among the Ordovician shales. It is a miniature
picture of the structure of the Leinster chain, and suggests
the vast extent of similar features hidden throughout
Ireland beneath the blanket of Carboniferous rocks.
When we go north or west, we are confronted with the
schistose ranges, which may be of any age between the
date of the " Huronian " uplift and the Devonian period.
Unconformities show that there were movements, unclassi-
fied in the broad scheme of Bertrand, before Ordovician
times; but the great folding of the country, like that of
the Scotch Highlands, clearly occurred about the close
of the Silurian period. To this we owe the green and
romantic range of the Sperrins, a highland scarcely
visited, even by the dwellers on its flanks ; also the
whole present structure of wilder Donegal, with its
ridges and valleys running north-east and south-west, still
preserving the general trend of the Caledonian folds ;
and, again, the superb coast-scenery of Slieve Liaga
and Achil Island, where cliffs of two thousand feet
remind us of the mass of " Caledonian " land that has
become lost in the Atlantic. The uplift of Mweelrea,
with its fossiliferous Wenlock zones, and of the Wenlock
and Ludlow beds of the Dingle promontory, dates from
the same period of unrest. In the latter spot one of the
fractures reached the surface, and our unique volcano of
Wenlock age threw its bombs briskly in the air, as a sign
that the Silurian gulfs were about to pass into dry land,
A great part, then, of the mountain-rim of Ireland is of
extreme antiquity ; and in other places the pre-Devonian
surface has been, as it were, restored to us after many
strange vicissitudes. The Carboniferous subsidence con-
verted the region of the British Isles into an archipelago ;
and in Ireland the separate islands can sometimes be
traced out by the conglomerates formed in the Carbon-
iferous beds upon their flanks. This invasion of the sea
left its mark upon the whole centre of the present Ireland,
through the uniform deposition of the blue-grey Carbon-
iferous Limestone. The denudation, and the actual solu-
tion, of this rock have given us the landscapes of the
great plain ; these become often impressive in their very
breadth, and are never monotonous to those who love to
watch the cloud-shadows move across the bogland or the
lake, in a picture that takes half its life and colour from
the changing temper of the sky.
The great limestone-sea was thrust out, very gradually
at first, by what is known in Europe as the Hercynian
uplift, named after the forest-ranges of Central Germany.
The sandy beaches that were formed as the sea shaDowed
give us ledges of hard rock at the present day, such as that
on the crest of C'uilcagh, where the Shannon first forms
into a stream. The trend of the Hercynian folds was no
doubt diverted locally by the surviving knots of the
Caledonian chains ; but in many places the pre-Devonian
land gave way. It was thus worked up again, and was
brought into new prominence, and into a new scheme of
arrangement, in the cores of the Hercynian folds."
From the west of Kerry to Waterford, away on across
Pembrokeshire and the South Welsh coalfield, under
Oxfordshire and London, and through Belgium and Central
* Compare W. J. Sollas, " Gteology of Dublin and its Neighbour-
hood," Proc Geo!. Assoc, Tol. XIl'l. (1893), p. 113.
Apbil 1, 1898,]
KNOWLEDGE,
81
Cabrion Crows capturing a Lark. — A labourer told me
he recently saw two Carrion Crows capture a Lark by
seizing it on the wing. It was not a wounded bird, but in
strong flight down some stubbles with many others. The
Crows acted very cunningly, working together, one keeping
above and the other below, with the Lark between them,
and the upper repeatedly making swoops and at last
seizing the Lark in its beak, when both Crows descended
and commenced (not without a quarrel between themselves)
to tear their quarry to pieces. — John Cobdeaux, Great
Cotes House, R.S.O., Lincoln.
Glaucous Gull (Laius gltiucus), — Mr. Geo. Adams, of
Douglas, taxidermist, has shown me a Gull of this species
recently received by him for preservation, and obtained on
the island. It is an immature bird, in the whitish and
pale brown plumage well described in Mr. Macpherson'a
manual. This is, so far as I am aware, the second record
of this Gull in the Isle of Man, though it has doubtless
occurred much oftener. — P. Ralfe, Castletown, Isle of
Man.
Variation in the Song of the Mistle Thrush. — It seems
to rne that the Mistle Thrushes near Eltham sing longer
strains than are heard from those of Gloucestershire, and
that the latter birds more frequently utter a few high
broken notes after the strain, in the manner of a Blackbird.
It would be interesting to leam whether anyone has heard
the Mistle Thrush sing a long strain such as one hears
from the Blackbird. This point appears to me important
in connection with the fact that the young Blackbird, when
commencing his fuU- toned song, utters short strains like a
Mistle Thrush. — Charles A. Witchell.
Song of the Redwing. — On the 6th of March I heard
the song of a wild Redwing. The morning was very fine,
and the bird sang earnestly. The strains were continuous,
composed of a very rapid repetition of metallic but not
loud notes, and lasted throughout the space of half a
minute. Each strain contained a few short full-whistled
notes. The whole song reminded one much of the
twittering of a young Thrush in September, or the high
sharp notes emitted by fighting Thrushes. I listened to
the bird for some minutes. — Charles A. Witchell.
Grei/ Phalarope near Kilk-enni/, Ireland (Irish yati<ralis/, March,
1898, p. 88).— Mr. G. E. H. Barrett-Hamilton reports that a speci-
men of this bird was shot by Mr. John O'Connell, jun., near Kilkenny,
in October, 1897.
Parus snlicarius (Brehm). — "A Hitheeto Oveelooked British
Bird," by Ernst Hartert (Zoologist, March, 1S98, p. 116).— TTnder this
title Mr. Hartert claims to add a new resident species to the British
list. The bird in question is a Marsh Tit, called " Parus salicariiis,"
which is allied to the northern form, P. borealis. Mr. Hartert sars
that P. salicariiis has been recently " re-discovered " and brought to
his notice by two Continental ornithologists — Kleinsehmidt and
Prazak. He himself has since then procured three specimens from
Finchley. With no intention of shghting the authority of so well-
known an ornithologist as Mr. Hartert, we feel disposed to await
further evidence as regards the habits, the habitats, and the specific
distinctness of this bird, before we venture to add it as a new species
to the British list.
All contribritions to the column, either in tJie way of notes
or photographs, should be foncarded to Harry F. Withebby,
at 1, Eliot Pluce, Blackheath, Kent.
Note. — The first issue of Knowledge containing British Ornitho-
logical Not^s was that for October, 1897.
The British Museum has, we understand, acquired by
purchase the valuable collection of fossil insects formed
by the late Rev. P. B. Brodie, of Rowington Vicarage.
The collection is the result of the labour of fifty years, and
contains many historical and valuable specimens, including
several types figured in various monographs and memoirs.
[The Editors do not hold themselves responsible for the opinions or
statements of correspondents.]
VARIABLE STARS.
To the F^ditors of Knowledge.
Sirs, — A maximum of -j Ceti (Mira), following previous
computed maxima, was due October Ist, 1897. The star
rose in September at such late hours and under such
unfavourable conditions of position, moonhght, and atmo-
sphere, that, although it was looked for diligently, no satis-
factory observations were obtained until the first week in
October. Since then my observations are as follows : —
Ma^. Mag".
1S97. October
8
15
5-8
5-6
1897.
November
25
27
3-4
3-3
17
5-4
30
3-2
18
o2
December
4
3-4
19
50
5
3-3
,.
23
49
12
3-5
„
24
4-7
22
3-8
„
27
4-6
2B
3-9
November 2
4-2
27
3-8
,,
3
41
28
41
4
40
31
4-5
5
37
1898.
Januarv
1
41
6
35
6
4-4
7
3-4
7
46
11
35
16
51
12
37
22
5-3
14
3-6
26
5-4
17
35
27
5-5
18
34
28
5-6
„
21
33
29
60
There were many observations between these dates, but
as no change of as much as a step 01 was seen, they are
omitted.
In the first week of October the star rose rapidly, and I
am not unwilling to believe in a rise of a fuU magnitude
on a single night.
The maximum was reached on November 30th, which,
after reviewing previous computed maxima, shows the star,
0 Ceti, to have been sixty days late in 1H97.
Comparison stars used were as formerly : 71, 6'55 ;
75, 5-75 ; 70, 5-62 ; 66. 5-65 ; v, 5-2 ; f', 4-75 ; £-, 4-50;
8, 4-2 ; a Piscium, 3-90 ; y Ceti, 3-5 magnitudes.
The star was less than the sixth magnitude last night,
changing slowly.
Memphis, Tenn., U.S.A., DA\aD Flan'ery.
12th February, 1898.
To the Editors of Knowledge.
SiRs.^At the last apparition this variable star has been
brighter than at the two immediately preceding. There
does not seem to have been much change in its magnitude
between November 13th and December 3rd. From the
observations given below I conclude that the maximum
occurred between November loth and 23rd.
Masr. Mag.
5-2 1897. November 19th ... 3-3
5-2 December 3rd . 3-4
4-6 ' „ 12th ... 3-7
3-8 „ 24th . 3-9
3-4 „ 28th 4-1
3-3
Mira has not been seen since the last-mentioned date,
owing to the almost continuous obscuration of the sky.
Westminster, W. E. Beslet.
February 14th, 189S.
We regret that the Photograph of the Spectrum of Mira Ceti,
appearing in the March Number, was printed without the guidelines,
and with the reference numbers out of position. We propose to
reproduce the photograph in our next issue.— Eds.
1897. October
20th
21st
29tli
November 5th
13th
15th
82
KNOWLEDGE.
[Apeil 1, 1898.
BRITISH BEES.-II.
By Fred. Enock, f.l.s., f.e.s., etc.
IT is a well-known fact that many people are remem-
bered by their "impressive manner"; so also are
certain kinds of bees by their most impressive sting.
The name Ccelioxys is quite suflRcient to recall to my
mind the capture of my first specimen, which I saw
flying very quietly past a prickly bramble, and then, being
met somewhat unceremoniously by my net, it commenced
to act on the defensive in a most vigorous way. Laying
back its antennas and opening its mandibles, it twisted about
its very sharply shaped abdomen in such an active manner
that I found it an impossibility to avoid its long and
powerful sting ; but I preferred the sting to injuring the
delicate pubescence, which, if roughly handled, robs this
bee of its beauty. Like the bloodthirsty " clegg " or grey
gad-fly, this bee is almost silent in its flight. It is
parasitic, and may frequently be caught hovering near the
burrows of Megiicliile and Sampmhi. The males have a
peculiar bifurcate appendage on the apical segment. I
have often swept these bees up from meadows, and in days
gone by it was possible to obtain specimens of C^. simplex at
Hampstead ; but those days, like the sandbanks there, have
passed away.
Of the next genus, Stdia, I have had no personal
experience, though frequently directed to its quarters by
the late Fred. Smith, who adx-ised me to collect all the
pierced bramble stems I came across.
The genus Melecta contains but two species, both most
beautifully marked, the abdomen of M. luctuosu being
ikA^
^^^^[ jffT/^
}
^^n(^UrT^%k A
1^
^« ,
Fig. 1. — Rose Leaves cut by Megachile.
adorned on each side with tufts of silvery white hairs on a
shining black ground. The flight of this bee is slow and
gentle, and so far as my experience goes, it seldom wanders
far from the burrows of Aiithophorn, in whose cells it is
parasitic. Last year I was delighted to find that a small
colony had not been quite turned out from Hampstead
Heath, though more than half the bank had been cut
through for " improvements." M. Iwtuosa was then
enjoying a sluggish flight in the bright sunshine, and,
quietly alighting on the sandy ground close to an Antho-
phora's burrow, sat pluming itself, patiently waiting for its
mate. It is very easy to capture when so basking, but
painful and powerful and far-reaching is its sting.
The bees forming the genus (Jsmin exhibit an immense
amount of intelligence in the selection of situations for
their burrows. Some of these are made in sandy banks
or in the decaying trunk of an old willow tree, and in such
situations the boring of a deep hole is comparatively an
easy matter to these
busy insects, which
are such patterns of
industry. A short
time ago a brother
entom ologist showed
to me a number of
cells which some bee
had made in the
space between two
section boxes in a
hive. These I
quickly recognized
as those of an (ismia.
Many times have I
watched ( >smia rufa
gomg in and out at
a small bolt-hole in
one of the tombs at Highgate Cemetery. No doubt this
had become the family mansion of these beautiful bees,
which have a great love of locality.
We now pass on to the genus Meffarhile, the leaf-cutting
bees, which are without doubt the most intelligent insects.
All the species (some nine in number) cut pieces from
various kinds of leaves, with which they build their cells in
burrows formed in sandbanks, old decaying trees, as well
as in the crumbling mortar of old walls, and under old tiles.
Several species are quite common in London gardens
during June and July. There is a considerable amount of
businesslike bustle about them, which is most attractive
to the naturalist, who is quite willing to allow them to cut
Fig. 2.— The Leaf-cutter Bee.
Fig. 3. — Under Side and Side View of Abdomen, showing
PoUen-polIeeting Hairs.
up the leaves of his rose bushes so that he may have the
opportunity of studying their habits. Though certain
species prefer the green leaves of the rose (Fig. 1), they do
not hesitate to cut circles and oblongs from almost any good
sound leaf. I have watched them attack those of laburnum,
rhododendron, laurel, sweet pea, nasturtium, geranium,
laurustinus, etc., etc. Two years ago I saw M. centun-
cuhnis cut dozens of pieces from the soft leaves of an
edible pea in a London garden which did not possess a
April 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE,
83
Fio. 4.— Heiid of Loaf. cutter Be
Mandibles ready for cutting.
rose bush. These bees are remarkable for their strength
of flight and mtiscular mandibles, legs, and stings, while in
general build they are much heavier than the honey bee.
(Fig. 2.) The pollen-
gathering hairs are
spiral in shape,
arranged in rows on
the under side of the
abdomen (Fig. 3),
and are of a chestnut
colour. The males
of iV. WUluijhhiAh,
are very beautifully
clothed with hairs of
wonderful form.
This is especially
noticeable in the
tarsal joints of the
anterior legs, which
have long fringes
of curled hairs.
These hairs are
spread wide open and the legs kept forward when the
bee is on the wing following in the wake of the female.
I'pon her he waits in the most attentive manner, flying
after her wherever she goes, though sometimes his atten-
tions do not appear to be altogether appreciated. As
soon as the courting and nuptials are over, the female goes
in search of a suitable sandbank in which to drive her
tunnel. This she makes about half an inch in diameter,
and excavates to a
depth of eight or
nine Inches in a
horizontal direction
(Fig. 6). The sand
is at first removed
with her powerful
jaws (Figs. 4 and 5),
but as she goes
deeper and deeper
the legs are used for
cleaning it away by
scratching and
shooting it out at
the entrance. When
the required depth
has been reached,
and the burrow
cleared and swept
of all loose sand, the bee carefully lines it with a
delicate membrane laid on in a fluid state from its
mouth. When this operation is finished, the burrow
Fig.
-Head of Leaf-cutte
showing Ch'peus.
Fig. 6. — Tunnel of the Leaf-cutter Bee, driven into a
Sandbank.
is ready for the reception of the building materials
forming the cells. In the case of WilluffhbieUa these
are made entirely of pieces of green rose leaves, taken
Fit
-Third Pair of Le
preferably from a Marechal Niel. The building up of
these cells, were they constructed by human hands, would
no doubt be looked upon as a wonderful performance ; but
where could be found a workman clever enough to attempt
such a task, even supposing he were allowed to make the
habitation on a much larger scale '? Let us examine the
structure in detail. We find a hole ten inches deep
and half an inch in
diameter, containing
from nine to a dozen
cylindrical cells fit-
ting one on top of each
other somewhat like
a pile of thimbles.
They are all of one
size, and are com-
posed of pieces of
leaves, cut to certain
shapes, each piece
being accurately fitted
and placed in order in
its right position.
It is only after years
and years of the most
careful observations,
aided by a number of
small contrivances for
watching these creatures at work, that we are able to give
every detail as we have seen it. But such observations
are not to be completed in one season. The links com-
posing the life-history of any common insect often remain
hidden, and evade the most untiring search for years, or
the greater part of one's life. Some writers state that this
bee, after cutting ten or twelve pieces of leaves, "enters
the tunnel, and begins to twist and fold the leaves, making
them fit together into a sort of funnel-shaped cone,
something like a
thimble." A human
being does occasion-
ally do things in a
rough, jumbling
fashion, but a leaf-
cutter bee, never ! I
speak positively on
this subject, as I have
watched the bee make
its burrow and then
commence its cell,
besides having fre-
quently unearthed
burrows containing
cells in all stages.
Now let us go back
to plain facts, leaving
theories for " the
armchair naturalist."
The tools with which this wonderful leaf-cutter bee cuts
out most accurate circular pieces of leaves are her two
powerful jaws (Figs. 4 and 5). These are beautifully
chiselled out, so that the exceedingly hard edges of the
teeth are perfectly sharp, working one over the other like
a pair of gardener's shears. Another valuable and in-
dispensable set of tools is to be found in the six legs,
each one containing several brushes and combs of the
finest quality and each one adapted for a certain purpose,
while the whole set of legs form a perfect vice (Figs. 7
and 8), in which the leaf to be cut is held in a firm
grasp, and in such a position that the jaws and head
can work round freely — so freely, indeed, that in less than
Fig. 8.— Third Pair of Legs, siuf.
84
KNOWLEDGE.
[Apeil 1, 1898.
twenty seconds the bee has cut out an exactly circular
piece of leaf, just the size for her purpose.
To watch these bees at work on a bright sunshiny
FiO. 9. — Leaf-cutter Bee cutting circular piece from leaf.
morning (and they get up and to work very early) is to
me one of the most fascinating sights. Two years ago I
spent several days in succession watching M. cetitunatlaris
cut dozens of pieces from a soft-leaved sweet pea growing
up my summer arbour, which backed against a wall eleven
feet high (not too countrified). My busy visitor arrived
on June 14th, pitched down upon a leaf, and before I could
Fig. 10. — Leaf -cutter Bee flying away with circular piece.
take out my pencil and note-book it had flown over the
wall, carrying with it a piece of the leaf. I quickly
obtained my field-glasses, and returned to find that during
my absence the bee had again visited the pea, and departed
with another piece of leaf. I had not long to wait for its
return, and now, being armed with note-book, I settled
down to steady work. The bee pitched upon the top edge
of a leaf, with its head towards the base (Fig. 9), and,
placing three legs on one side and three on the other, it
took hold of the edge with its jaws. Then the jaws began
opening and closing rapidly, and the head was moved down
and round. So quickly were these operations performed
that in just fifteen seconds the bee had cut a circular piece
from out of the leaf (Fig. 10). The insect then dropped
down slightly, but recovered itself, and flew up towards the
wall. I watched it with my glasses, and saw it fly over the
wall to an old outhouse covered with tiles, under one of
which it quickly disappeared. In less than a minute it
reappeared, and flew straight for my boundary wall and
down on to the pea. Taking hold of the lower edge of the
leaf from which it had cut the circular piece, it commenced
Fig. 11. — Leaf-cutter Bee, cutting ao oblong piece from leaf.
operations this time by making a much larger arc ( Fig. 11),
which was finished off just before the midrib of the leaf
was reached. The bee then continued to cut almost
parallel to the midrib for a distance of over half an inch,
and then, turning, it completed its task in the form of a
segment of a circle. Once more it dropped towards the
ground, and, recovering as before, flew off over the wall
to the tiled outhouse. It laboured thus for between three
and four hours, during which time I noted down the
following particulars. Fifteen seconds were occupied in
cutting out a circular and twenty-seven seconds an oblong
piece of leaf. The journey to and from the tiles, including
arranging the piece of leaf, was performed in less than
one minute. When the leaf was almost cut through the
bee poised itself by gently vibrating its wings, and so
prevented the weight of its body from tearing the leaf.
Day after day the industrious bee visited my garden, until
there was scarcely a perfect leaf left on the clump of sweet
peas. From 1870 to 1874, each June, I observed numbers
of Megachile centuncularis visiting a clump of everlasting
peas, the flowers of which they are exceedingly fond of, but
I did not observe that they cut the leaves. They are
particularly fond of the leaves of the garden fuchsia.
(To be continued.)
IN
THE MOON'S NORTHERN REGIONS.
By Arthur Mee, f.r.a.s.
ALTHOUGH the northern regions of the moon
cannot compare for one moment with the glorious
and bewildering complexity of the southern, still
they contain a number of interesting objects that
never fail to delight the observer. Take, for in-
stance, the fine picture which illustrates these notes. It
NORTH.
THE LUNAR ALPS AND THEIR NEIGHBOURHOOD.
April 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE,
85
is a reproduction of plate No. 6 in the Observatory Atlas of
the Moon in course of publication by the Mount Hamilton
Observatory, the original negative of which was secured
April 9th, 1897 ; moon's age, eight days.
The reader will hardly need to be reminded, ere we
proceed with our brief description, that the Lick and Paris
Observatories are each publishing atlases in which the
original photogpraphs taken at the respective institutions
are moderately enlarged. A third publication is that of
Prof. Dr. Weinek, in which the magnification is pushed
a good deal farther in the able hands of this most
skilful selenographer. Last comes the atlas of Herr
Krieger, who has deftly inserted details at the telescope,
using existing photographs as a guide. A comparison of
these various methods and results is deeply interesting and
instructive, and these atlases between them must immensely
advance our knowledge of the moon.
The scale of the accompanying photograph is not large
enough to bring out those minutiie which have such interest
for selenographers, and which at times give rise to lively
and even acrimonious discussion. But though detail be
wanting, the picture shows — very nearly as well as though
the reader were actually peering through the eyepiece — the
broad lines of lunar landscape, which are perhaps as
important in the framing of hypotheses as the minute
objects amongst which the wielder of high powers is always
so happy to revel.
Our key-chart will render easy the identification of the
various objects in the photograph. The sun is just rising
0/
-
'' r.
1 /
M7
^
/r O
o
^ , o
0 O
^9 CS-
05^
<^
^(^r^~\,.=^
X /
r^ '
Mare Frigoris
'■"•J
^. ^ ~^rtA,™.
"\
Bona '^-^
^^^^^^-^^-^
JC
' "
on the western ramparts of Plato, and is throwing the
Alps, Caucasus, and Apennines into splendid relief, all the
more marked because of the sombre plain from which they
rear their crests. Let us look for an instant at the great
craters which the photograph includes.
The largest is Aristoteles, and somewhat to the south
the smaller but still immense Eudoxus. Aristoteles is no
less than sixty miles in diameter, and its walls rise to a
maximum height of eleven thousand feet above the floor.
It is, however, but imperfectly seen in the illustration, for
the camera cannot be prevailed on to show objects exactly
as they appear to the eye, introducing a glare here and a
blackness there which detract somewhat from its inestim-
able value.
The splendid ring of Archimedes is described by Elger
as " next to Plato the finest object on the Mare Imbrinm."
It is fifty miles in diameter, but the walls are less lofty
than those of Aristoteles. Still, the shadows show out
splendidly as sunrise progresses, whilst about the lunar
noon a curious system of craterlets and light streaks is
revealed, reminding one of the interior of Plato.
To the north-west of Archimedes lie Autolycus and
Aristillus • — stately names aU three ! Both the latter
are the centres of minor ray systems, and Aristillus is
" flanked on all sides " (as Webb tells us) " by radiating
banks resembling lava streams, or currents of ejected
blocks or scorin}," of which there is just a faint trace in
the illustration. On its eastern side Aristillus is eleven
thousand feet deep.
To the north, between the Alps and Caucasus, is the
interesting crater plain Cassini, which will afiford the lunar
draughtsman many hours of pleasant work ; and he may
afterwards compare advantageously his drawings with the
photographs in Knowi,ei>(;e and elsewhere.
Towards the north pole of the moon we have quite a
crowd of craters, confused by foresbortenin;,', but forming
a very poor second to the tremendous display near the
southern extremity of the axis.
Most of these objects have but feeble terrestrial analo-
gies, but when we turn to the lunar mountain ranges we
seem on more familiar ground. And what a glorious
spectacle would stretch before the observer could he but
stand on one of these lofty peaks — on Mont Blanc (twelve
thousand feet). Mount Wolf (eighteen thousand feet), or
Caucasus (nineteen thousand feet) ! What a bewildering
panorama would it not be — a " nightmare vision," as one
writer calls it, only to be imagined in our dreams !
Perhaps the great mountain ranges are the most satis-
factorily depicted of any objects on the photograph before
us. They will bear long looking at, but must of course be
seen in the telescope to appreciate their full magnificence.
The eye will not be long before it rests on that very re-
markable object, the great valley of the Alps. This mighty
gash, as though the work of some gigantic axe, is above
eighty miles long, and to be distinctly seen in all but the
feeblest telescopes. Only from four to six miles broad, its
walls tower up for well-nigh twelve thousand feet. At its
southern end it opens out into a noble amphitheatre. Webb,
Elger, and others have studied and drawn this wonderful
valley, and two of Mr. Elger's drawings enrich the Jouninl
of the Lirt-r/iool Astinwrnical Societi/. The lunar members
of the British Astronomical and other Associations might
well turn to the great Alpine valley as a change from the
bewildering spots, craterlets, and streaks of more frequently
delineated objects.
^-
Notftgg of ISooitg.
A Treatise on Chemistry. By Sir Henry Koscoe and
C. Schorlemmer, f.r.s. Vol. II. — " The Metals." (Mac-
mUlan.) Illustrated. 31s. 6d. Nineteen years have now
elapsed since the publication of the first edition of this
treatise, and in consequence of the many innovations in
the chemistry of the metals during that period, the
present edition (the third) may be regarded as a new
86
KNOWLEDGE.
[ApBn, 1, 1898.
work. Drs. Colman and Harden have taken part in the
sweeping changes which have been necessary to bring the
work into harmony with the present condition of chemical
science, the systematic description of the metallic elements
and their derivatives having been re-arranged in accord-
ance with Mendeleeff's — the Eussian chemist — natural
classification, which resolves the elements into eight
groups, the members of each group showing in most
cases a close connection with each other. By thus taking
advantage of the hint aiibrded by the natural gamut of
the elements, so to speak, the study of chemistry becomes,
in a way, comparable to the study of botany or zoology,
the eight groups of elements being the equivalents of the
chief representatives of the great groups of plants and
animals, while the individual members of each group may
be likened to the different species — all bearing certain
characters in common, but with specific differences. Such
a relation between the organic and inorganic is not incon-
sistent with the unity which science has shown to exist in
the universe, and the sooner this method of conveying a
knowledge of the chemical elements becomes general the
better it will be for all concerned. Chemistry, however,
has in recent years grown to such gigantic proportions
in both its main branches, organic and inorganic,
as well as in its theoretical and practical aspects,
that a book, in order to be of maximum value to
a student, must be consistent throughout. If it is a
book purporting to deal with the principles of the science
it must steer clear of the technical or industrial applica-
tions, otherwise there is sure to be a too apparent deficiency
somewhere. Special treatises are required, and exist,
nowadays, for such purposes as soap and alkali making,
the metallurgy of iron, copper, etc., and the extraction of
gold and silver from their ores. In the article on gold
mining, for example, in this work much space is occupied
on such subjects as the capital and labour required in the
working of auriferous deposits, which are certainly outside
the domain of theory, and yet not full enough to be of
practical value to the actual miner. The same remarks
would apply in the case of the section on iron smelting
and the Bessemer steel process, as well as several other
chapters, such as the manufacture of glass, bleaching
powder, and so on. A proper division of labour in matters
literary as well as industrial has its advantages. In the
case under consideration, had the authors confined them-
selves to the pure principles of chemistry, and reserved
the technical portions for books professedly practical, the
book need not have swollen to its present dimensions, and
might then, at a lower figure, have been accessible to
students in general ; whereas it is now almost entirely con-
fined to libraries, where it can only be casually consulted,
and its many excellencies are thus buried as far as the
great majority of chemical students are concerned.
Nates on Carpentry and .Joiner ij. By Thomas Jay Evans.
Elementary Course. (Chapman ct Hall.) Illustrated.
7s. 6d. Students preparing for the technical examinations
of the City and GuOds of London Institute, the Technical
Education Board of the London County Council, and
other examining bodies, will find here a reliable guide.
The subjects included are practical geometry, graphic
arithmetic and statics, elementary carpentry and joinery,
and mensuration — a course of instruction well adapted for
apprentices who desire to acquire a thorough knowledge
of the principles underlying their craft. The text is lucid,
the diagrams large and well drawn, and, where necessary,
in the geometrical portion of the book, practical methods of
solving problems are given such as the workman would be
required to use in the shop. The section dealing with
graphic statics and mechanical contrivances is particularly
good. Drawing, of course, takes the place of calculation
in this section, and Mr. Evans has, we think, succeeded in
presenting an intelligible exposition of the principles
involved in this useful method of computing strains and
stresses. Isometric projection, in both its theoretical and
practical aspects, comes in here for a fuller and more
luminous treatment than we have ever seen before in a
book of this kind ; and, considering its value in practice, we
are of opinion that the author has acted wisely in making
this departure, although it has been somewhat at the
expense of other important sections — the resolution of
forces for example, the treatment of which is rather meagre,
and yet the subject is one difficult to comprehend, espe-
cially by students whose groundwork in mathematics is
circumscribed — a condition of things which nearly always
obtains among the artizan classes. On the whole, how-
ever, we have nothing but praise for Mr. Evans's work.
He has so subordinated and dovetailed the subjects
forming the groundwork of an artizan's education that we
venture to think there is no better book available for such
a purpose.
Glimpses into Plant Life. By Mrs. Brightwen, f.e.s.
(Fisher Unwin.) Illustrated. Mrs. Brightwen is well
known for her writings for young people, and this book is
executed in her usual clear and pleasant style. It is written
with the intention of preparing the " minds of young
people for the study of botany by explaining in the simplest
language some of the elementary phenomena of plant
life." For this purpose we are sure it will be successful.
Some of the many subjects dealt with are roots, tree
stems, leaves, flowers, fertilization, fruit, and habit of
growth in plants. The illustrations are good and adequate,
and a useful glossary of scientific terms is provided. We
have no hesitation in heartily recommending the book to
young botanists, or, indeed, would-be botanists of any age.
The Eh'itients of Hypnotism. By Ralph Harry Vincent.
Second Edition. (Kegan Paul.) 5s. If the amount of
literature published on a subject is a measure of its worth,
then hypnotism is insinuating itself more and more into
popular favour in spite of the ignominy heaped upon it by
the practices of the professional entertainer, the charlatan,
the juggler, and the trickster, who have laid their hands
on the much-suffering science, for the number of books
on the subject is now not only large but also rapidly
increasing. The public, which in the main is entirely
ignorant of the nature of hypnotism, has always regarded
the subject as something akin to the supernatural, and
quacks have made their fortunes by availing themselves of
this weakness and mesmerising human beings in the
presence of large assembUes ; hence, mesmerism has long
been a sort of byword for all that is low and contemptible.
Hypnotism has also antiquity to recommend it — if age be
a virtue in matters intellectual — for it dates back as far as
the year 15.52 b.c, when it was practised in Egypt. The
early kings of France were credited with curing people by
the " royal touch "; and even in Queen Anne's time faith in
this mode of cure was still in vogue. Aa to the ultimate
value of hypnotic science it is difficult, at this stage,
to form any clear notion ; but Mr. Vincent has certainly
made the subject attractive, and, by numerous footnotes of
reference to literature of this kind, has invested his work
with a fund of information which will be specially accept-
able to those who wish to pursue their studies further than
is possible by the aid of a single volume. A chapter
on the use of hypnotism in detecting crime, and the
medical treatment of patients by mesmerism, concludes the
book — a chapter, by the way, which we think might with
advantage be amplified in a subsequent edition. Some
noteworthy remarks are advanced on the way in which
Apbil 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE
87
hypnotism has been abused and misrepresented in modern
fictiou, and it is certainly remarkable that all such writers
should have failed to convey " any true idea of the
hypnotic state or the dangers which may attend its use."
Aivln'f and hi.H lialloon. By Henri Lachambre and
Alexis Machuron. (Constable.) Illustrated. Os. There
is little of importance in this book that was not generally
known before its publication. In the introduction a very
brief history of the life of Andrt'e is followed by a detailed
account of the construction of the famous balloon. The
rest of the book deals at great length, and in a highly
emotional style, with the two expeditions to Spitzbergen,
and the work done there in connection with the inflation
of the balloon, to which is added an account of its final
departure with the three explorers on July 11th, 1897.
As everyone knows, the first of these expeditions was a
failure. Owing to the prevalence of northerly winds the
balloon was unable to start, and the whole expedition had
to return. M. Lachambre accompanied this expedition to
superintend the inflation and general preparation of the
balloon. M. Machuron accompanied the second and suc-
cessful expedition in the same capacity as his collaborator.
The whole story would have formed a fitting subject for a
couple of magazine articles, but there is nothing in it to
warrant its publication in book form.
The Xaturalixt's Directory, L'^ft.'i. (Upcott Gill.) Is.
The idea of this book is good, and if it were conscientiously
and exhaustively carried out the work would have con-
siderable value. As it is, the inconsistent omission of the
names of a number of well-known naturalists makes the
book utterly worthless. This is now the fourth year of its
publication, and we almost cease to hope that it will ever
have any value. Perhaps the editor, whose name is not
disclosed, will some day be aroused by his critics and wake
up to his responsibilities.
The Jdiinuih of Walter White. With a Preface by his
Brother, William White. (Chapman \ Hall.) Gs. Walter
White was for thirty years the assistant secretary of the
Royal Society, having been appointed to that office after
serving ten years as sub-librarian. In his later capacity
he came into intimate contact with many of the men
whose names are now famous throughout the world. The
diary, which he seems to have very carefully kept, con-
tains all sorts of interesting facts — many of them trivial,
it is true — about notables, as well as quaint expressions of
his views of things in general. Some of his reflections on
the characters of various men of science might, we think,
have been rather more carefully edited. Men of science,
like other mortals, are not without their faults and eccen-
tricities, but no good purpose is served by exhibiting them
to the public. We did not anticipate finding that Prof.
Dewar, when he was younger than he is now, remarked to
the diarist that " he was shocked when in London by the
self-seeking of scientific men ; no man caring to work for
love of the work." Much water has, however, passed
under the bridges since then. If any of our readers find
themselves with an hour which they can spare, they will
be able to pleasantly occupy it with these journals of
Walter White.
The Knciiclo}ixdi(i of Sport. Edited by the Earl of
Suffolk and Berkshire, Hedley Peek, and F. G. Aflalo.
Vol. I. (Laurence i Bullen.) Illustrated. This work,
which iy to be completed in two volumes (the first of which
is now under review), is being issued in parts. There is
no doubt that such a work is needed, since it will take the
place of " Blaine's Encyclopwdia of Kural Sports," which
is now quite out of date. The scope of the present volume
is very wide and embraces every sort of sport, from
amateur athletics to leopard spearing, besides describing a
great many beasts, birds, and fishes, and dealing with such
a subject even as "first aid." The articles are for the
most part written by authorities on the several subjects
treated of, and the matter is therefore generally accurate
and up to date. A bibliography is provided at the end of
each important subject, and this forms a very valuable
adjunct. Mr. Millais' statement, on page 118, that blaek-
game are practically extinct in the New Forest is not
warranted by the fact. There are still a fair number of
blackgame in the New Forest, as, indeed, the Marquis of
Granby correctly states on page 487, in the article on
grouse. In dealing with the use of brass cases for wild-
fowl guns {page 49ii), some mention should have been
made of the pegamoid waterproof cases. The book is
provided with a large number of illustrations, many of
them very fine. Amongst these are a number of drawings
by Mr. Thorbum, whose only weak point seems to be a
lack of accurate proportion. We would draw attention
to the picture of the capercailzie, facing page 178. The
male and female birds are here made about the same
size, notwithstanding the very marked difference in size
of the two sexes. If the second volume proves equal in
accuracy and completeness to the first, this encyclopaedia
will form an indispensable book of reference to sportsmen
of every order.
Applied Mechanics. By John Perry, ii.e., d sc, f.r.s.
(Cassell & Co.) 93. It is not too much to say that the
publication of this book was awaited with the greatest
interest by all teachers of applied mechanics in those
technical schools and science classes where the subject is
taught under the regulations of the Science and Art
Department. Prof. Perry was quite recently appointed
the examiner in applied mechanics for the central authority
at South Kensington ; consequently, there are upwards of
eight thousand students, in nearly three hundred classes,
interested in learning how he thinks this subject should be
taught and learnt. At the outset we venture to say that,
under the conditions which obtain in the ordinary evening
classes, applied mechanics cannot be taught in the way
Prof. Perry lays down as the only proper method. The
first chapter opens with the statement : " The student of
applied mechanics is supposed to have some acquaintance
already with the principles of mechanics ; to be able to
multiply and divide numbers, and to use logarithms ; to
have done a little practical geometry ; to know a little
algebra, and the definitions of sine, cosine, and tangent of
an angle ; and to have used squared paper. He is supposed
to be working many numerical and graphical exercises ; to
be spending four hours a week at least in a mechanical
laboratory ; to be learning about materials and tools in an
iron and wood workshop ; and to be getting acquainted with
gearing and engineering apphances in a drawing office and
elsewhere." This reads well enough, but we wonder how
many of the students who present themselves for instruc-
tion at the first meeting of an elementary class in applied
mechanics in connection with the Department of Science
and Art are able to do half the things enumerated in the
paragraph we have quoted ? The book will have been a
disappointment to the teacher who has to be examined by
its author, for it is evidently addressed to a different class
of student altogether. Of the volume as a treatise on applied
mechanics it is unnecessary to say anything. Prof. Perry's
name is evidence enough that the book is accurate, modem,
clear, and practical. It is svritten in a style which imme-
diately arrests the reader, but soon makes him angry with
the frequency of the outbursts against " academic "
methods, and the free use of the first person singular.
Certainly every teacher of the subject should read the book
from cover to cover, and then, if possible, re-read it.
88
KNOWLEDGE
[Apbil 1, 1898,
Some Unri'coiinized Laus of Xalure. By Ig^natius Singer
and Lewis H. Berins. Illustrated. (John Murray.) 18s.
There are a few pages in this book worth reading ; the
remainder produces vexation of spirit. To criticize the
book in detail would take up far more space than we can
spare, and though it is the duty of a scientific periodical
to prick the bubbles of paradoxers, life is too short to
explain fully why their destruction is desirable. The best
way to deal with a work of this kind is perhaps to leave it
alone, when it will die of inanition. We will, however,
state briefly some of the reasons why this book is unworthy
of the attention of students engaged in the realities of
science, selecting our instances from many marked in
the course of reading the book. " The current assump-
tion is of two kinds of electricities ; but though the two-
fluid theory has its rival in what is called the single-fluid
theory, it is still the dominant conception." This state-
ment is not correct ; the two-fluid theory of electricity is
as dead as Queen Anne, so far as scientific men are
concerned, yet the authors spend page upon page in
killing it. They do not seem to be at all familiar with
modern conceptions of electrical phenomena. Bodies
weigh less at the Equator than in Polar regions, the
reason being that they are further from the centre of
mass, and that there is a greater tendency for them to be
thrown ofi", on account of the earth's rotational velocity.
The authors endeavour to show that the argument
derived from considerations of the earth's mass is not
admissible, but they entii-ely neglect to consider the
levity given to bodies at the Equator in consequence of the
earth's rotation. They make erroneous statements as to
the periods of vibrations of pendulums, and their theory
of the cause of the earth's axial motion is ludicrous.
They hold that "no contradiction is involved in as-
suming the axis of the earth to be at right angles to
its circumsolar path ; and that the obliquity of the
ecliptic can be explained by the 'up and down' motions
of the earth on its axis." Sunspots are believed to be
" planets but a comparatively short distance from the sun,
and revolving round it," which absurd theory is enough
to put any observer of solar phenomena completely ont of
patience. We need not give any further instances of the
kind of mistaken ideas with which the volume bristles.
No volume that has come before us during the last two
or three years more fully justifies the expression that
" what is new in it is not true, and what is true ia not
new."
Elrments of the ('oinpardtive Anatomy of Vertehrates,
Adapted from the German of Dr. Kobert Wiedersheim by
Dr. W. N. Parker. (Macmillan.) This second edition of
Prof. Parker's work is based upon the third edition of Dr.
Wiedersheim's standard treatise. Faithful translation of a
German scientific work is always diftioult and generally
undesirable. A much better method is to use the original
freely, and to aim at presenting ideas accurately, rather
than slavishly following the text. This is the principle
which Prof. Parker, with Dr. Wiedersheim's permission, has
adopted. As a result we have a book in readable English,
and admirably adapted for English students of comparative
anatomy. Considerable condensation of the third German
edition has taken place in some sections, but new material
has been added to others. Prof. Parker's object has been
to prepare a short textbook, which, while retaining the
original descriptions and arrangement as far as possible,
should deal with the more essential and well -ascertained
facts of comparative anatomy. He has carried out his plan
most successfully, and the only criticism we have to offer
is that the treatment is a little unequal, the skeleton being
dealt with much more fully than some of the other organ-
Probably Prof. Parker has his reasons for
this, though it will not find favour with all students of
morphology. The organ-systems described in order in the
book are as follows : (1) the outer covering of the body, or
integument ; (2) the skeleton ; (3) the muscles, together
with electric organs ; (4) the nervous system and sense
organs ; (5) the organs of nutrition, respiration, circulation,
excretion, and reproduction. By dealing with the facts in
this way the student is led to see clearly that there has been
an evolution of organs as well as of animals, and this ia
the right aim of the study of comparative anatomy. The
remarkably fine illustrations — there are three hundred and
thirty-three in all — assist the text in showing the various
phases of development of the organs of vertebrates. A
valuable bibliogpraphy concludes this excellent work, which
will be of great service to medical students as well as to
students of comparative anatomy.
SHOET NOTICES.
A First Year's Course of Experimental Work in Chemistry. By
Ernest H. Cook, D.8C. (Arnold.) Illustrated. l8. 6d. ])r. Cook's
book contains the usual instructions for conducting an elementary
class in practical chemistry. The experiments are well chosen for
emphasizing fundamental principles, but the illustrations are rather
sparsely distributed. " Very brief accounts are given in the text," in
order to judge the better of the student's honesty and care in
<ibsr'rvation. Indeed, brevity is here carried to such an extreme, one
may safely predict that the student will do little work by following
the text unless the teacher is always at his elbow.
Organic Chemical Manipulation. By J. T. Hewitt, D.8C. (Whit-
taker.) Illustrated. 7s. 6d. Books on practical organic chemistry
are comparatively rare, and there is room for a good, handy, and
cheap treatise on the subject. Dr. Hewitt has, in a measure, met
this deficiency, but he has spoiled his chance by a prohibitive price —
a price out of all proportion with the dimensions of the book and
the cost of first production. Accurately and concisely written, the
work is of more than ordinary value to students of organic chemistry.
A large section is devoted to quantitative analysis, which the author
lorrectly states in the preface has not heretofore been treated as fully
as it ought to be. A goodly number of preparations is given, including
the fatty and aromatic series, together with a number of rare com-
pounds, and the synthesis of organic substances — a new feature in
books of this class. Besides the mere preparation of the compounds
suitable explanations are advanced of the theory of the reactions
which take place ; and, where necessary, diagrams are shown of the
apparatus employed, as well as full directions as to quantities of
materials to be used in each experiment.
Observational Astronomi/. By Arthur Mee, F.B.A.8. Second
Edition. (Western Mail, Limited.) lUustrated. 28. 9d. A new
edition of this admirable work was, of course, to be expected. It has
been greatly enlarged, and most of the illustrations are new. Numerous
representations of the planets, etc., are shown, as well as thumb-
nail sketches of eminent astronomers ; features which impart to the
book an interest which is peculiar to itself. In the plate forming the
frontispiece is given a drawing of Saturn, by Antoniadi, as it appeared
on July 16th, 1S97. A photograph of the great nebula in Orion,
by Dr. Roberts, also enhances the value of the work. We have not
seen a popular book on astronomy for many a day whicli possesses so
raanv and diverse attractions as this one ; and we hope that its
circulation may increase in a ratio commensurate with its improved
condition.
The First Book of Scientific Knowledge. By Paul Bert. (Relfe
Bros.) Illustrated. 2s. 6d. We are pleased to observe that a new
and improved edition of this admirable introduction to the sciences
has just been issued. It is sufficient to say of so successful a work,
both in France and in our own country, that the publishers have done
all that seemed needful to make the volume a solid foundation for
more advanced study.
BOOKS RECEIVED.
Poultry fur the Table and Market versus Fancy Fowls. By W.
B. Tegetmeier, y.z.s. (Cox.) Illustrated. 28. 6d.
A New Astronomy. By David P. Todd, pa.D. (American Book
Company.) Illustrated. Sl-30.
The Story of Life in the Seas. By Sidney J. Hickson, P.B.s.
(Newnes.) Dlustrated. Is.
April 1, 1898.]
KlSrOWLEDGE.
89
The British Colonies : 188R.1S'J7. By Bev. Win. Parr Creswell, M.A.
(Blackic) 28. 6d.
Audubon and his Journals. Two Vols. By Maria R. Audubon.
(John C. Ximmo.) Portraits and Illustrations.
Ethnological Studies among the North- West-Central Queensland
Aborigines. Bv AValtor K. Roth. (Queensland Agent-G-eneral's
Office!) Illustrated.
The Year-Book- of British Columbia (1897J. (Victoria, B.C.)
The Natural ffisfori/ of the British Isles : Vertebrates. By F. d.
Allalo, p R O.S., F.z.s. (Blackwood.) Illustrated. 63.net.
The Miner s Arithmetic and Mensuration. By Henry Daries.
(Chapman & Hall.) 48. net.
TFho's If'ho a.syS). (A. & C. Black.) Ss. 6d. net.
General Elementarg Science. Bv \ViUiamBrigg3,M.A. (Clive.) 3s. (id.
The Smithsonian Institution: is4G-lS'J(>. (Washington.)
Sixteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American TSthnoloyu.
(Washington.)
Das Weltgebiiude. Von Dr. M. Wilhelm Meyer. (Leipzig.)
A Treatise on Magnetism and Elecfricifif. By Andrew Gray,
LL.D., F.E.s. Vol. I. (Macmillan.) 14s.
STARS HAVING LARGE PROPER MOTION.
A RECENT announcement has been made by Prof. Kapteyn
that the star Cordoba Z. C. 5h 243 has an annual proper
motion of 7'5 ", which is larger than that so far found
for any other star (Astronomische Nachriehten, Vol. CXLV.,
p. 159).
The effect of this motion is shown in the accompanying
illustration, which is enlarged nine times from two photo-
graphs taken with the eight-inch Bache telescope, at the
Arequipa Station of the Harvard College Observatory.
■. ^
Proper Motion of Cordoba Z. C. oh 243.
The scale of the original photographs is 180"=01 cm.
The plates were superposed so that the images of the stars
on one should be a short distance below those on the other.
The motion of Z. C. 5h 243, which is indicated by an
arrow, is at once apparent from the displacement of the
line connecting the two photographic images of this object.
The southern of each pair of images, and the right-hand
image of 5h 243, are reproduced from a photograph taken
October 8th, 1889, with an exposure of fourteen minutes.
The northern images are reproduced from a photograph
taken November 10th, 189G, with an exposure of twelve
minutes. E. C. Pickering.
THE LEVEL OF SUNSPOTS.
By the Rev. Arthur East.
THAT sunspots are holes in the sun most people
admit ; that they are black is manifest to everyone
who has observed them, even with a field-glass ;
but whether they are raised above or sunk below
the general level — if there even be a general level —
and why anything in the sun should be black, are questions
not so easily answered. That the blackness of the " umbra "
is probably brighter than the electric light is immaterial.
Compared to the far brighter photosphere the inner por-
tions of a spot are black or nearly black. To the superficial
observer the answer might appear obvious, viz., this: "The
deeper a hole is, the blacker are the shadows." But it must
Fia. 1. — Symmetrical .Spot, elevated Penumbra. Black Umbra
surrouBded by Penumbra; margins of "Spot" depressed below
general level.
be borne in mind that we are not dealing with shadows ;
there can be no such thing on a self-luminous body as a
shadow, and the reason why one part of the sun is darker
than another, and even relatively black, is due to an
entirely different cause, namely, absorption of the light.
The edge of the sun is darker than the central parts
because the light from the edge reaches us after passing
through a vast thickness of solar atmosphere, and this is
very manifest in photographs of the sun ; for the same
reason the middle part of a spot appears black because
the light from below has to traverse the depth of the spot,
which is known to be filled with comparatively cool and
Fig. 2. — Symmetrical Spot. Penumbra with dark margin next
to Photosphere.
light-absorbing vapour. If the writer has been fortunate
enough to induce anyone to experiment in the way of
making artificial sunspots, •'it will have been observed that
the spots may be broadly classified under four types : —
1. Spots more or less elevated above the general level,
with deep central part and gaping orifice, as Fig. 1.
2. Spots with a cup-shaped orifice, where the ascending
fluid scours out the sides of the cone of granules, as Fig. 2.
3. Spots where the hot fluid rushes up obliquely, making
the sides much steeper in one part than another, as Fig. 3.
4. And, lastly, spots which are not cone- or crater-like
in form at all, as the others are, but where the sides recede
from the orifice, leaving only a black and gaping hole as
Fig. 4.
It is not meant that each spot is restricted to any one
type ; it may belong to two or three, or even all four, in
different parts of the same spot : e.g., the sides of the
penumbra may be nearly flat in one place and concave in
another, and almost vertical in a third ; whilst the older a
* See article on " Artificial Sunspots " in Knowiedob, December,
1897.
90
kNOWLEDGfi.
[Apbu, 1, 18d8.
spot is the larger grows the vent, and the more the crater
form tends to disappear. And these forms may be modified
at any stage of development — with this exception, that the
form in Fig. 4 always comes last.
Now, if these pulp spots were self-luminous, and seen
from above and not in section as the diagrams are drawn,
and if the usual terms used to describe sunspots may be
used, it is evident that they would, when filled with light-
absorbing vapours, appear as follows : —
Fig. 1 would show as a black umbra surrounded by a
lighter border, this latter being due to the light of the
photosphere having to travel through a comparatively
shallow stratum of absorbing vapour ; the black vent or
nucleus at the bottom of the crater-like spot might or
might not appear, according to its position in the bottom
and the clearness of the " seeing."
Pig. 2 would show as a black umbra surrounded by a
lighter penumbra, with an overhanging "thatch "at its
outer edge.
M t PI
Fl8. 3. — Unsymmetrical Spot : Penumbra wanting on one side.
Fig. 3 would appear as an unsymmetrical spot, i.e., with
the penumbra wider on one side of the umbra than the
other.
Fig. 4 would appear as a spot consisting of an umbra
alone, not surrounded by any penumbra.
It is easy to see how the Figs. 1, 2, and 3 come to be as
they are : in the lowest part or vent, the hot vapours are
confined by the weight of the photospheric matter ; as
they approach the surface the weight is less, and they are
able to thrust the granules aside into the crater-like
form. When the surface is reached they expand more
suddenly, sometimes making a salver-shaped orifice as
Fig. 1, and sometimes scouring out the sides into the cup-
shaped form of Fig. 2. This latter is often beautifully
shown in the artificial spots, the stray granules playing
within the hollow in a most realistic manner.
An objection to these diagrams as truly representing
actual sunspots will no doubt be made that the umbra is
often seen when the spot is close to the limb, and that
therefore a spot must be nearly always relatively shalloir,
otherwise the umbra would be hidden ; and herein, as in
the general discussion of the appearance of spots seen
obliquely, I venture to suggest that there occurs occasion-
ally a very great fallacy. The text-books say : " Imagine a
Fig. 4. — Spot without Penumbra, and level with Photosphere.
saucer with a blackened middle slowly turned edgeways to
the observer, and see the black part gradually disappear."
This is quite true of an empty saucer, but a full saucer will
behave differently, and the black middle in the /'nil saucer
will apparently keep on rising long after it should have
been hidden. It is, of course, as everyone knows, refracted
upwards, owing to the difference in density between the
water in the saucer and the air through which the observer
views it ; and a spot is not an nnpty saucer but a full saucer,
K,G. .-,, — Siin-iN.t-. 'Fn.ii, Sir K E:,ll- '-i,,,-; ut ' ■ - , y
kind permissiou of Messrs. Cassell £ Co.)
filled with dense vapour, and doubtless the bottom of the spot
is refracted upwards more and more as the spot approaches
the limb, and making it visible long after it apparently
should have disappeared. Not only will the umbra be
affected in this way, but the whole of the farther side of
the spot, causing the curious optical effect of the edge of
the spot appearing to rise up, and tend to face the observer,
when, in reality, it of course lies flat on the solar surface.
To show that these analogies between the form of
artificial " spots " and the real solar spots are true ones —
at least, if not wholly, yet in part — I would refer to the
very beautiful photograph of a sunspot taken by M.
Janssen, and reproduced by kind permission of the pub-
lishers of Sir Kobert Ball's " Story of the Sun " (Fig. 5);
Fig. 6. — Empty Vessel, with black bottom just in view.
and I would ask the reader to compare one feature in this
photograph with Fig. 3 of the plate in Knowledge of
December, 1897.
There appears in this photograph of M. Janssen's the
black umbra with a few wandering granules within : the
lighter penumbra with sides vertical apparently in one
part, steeply inclined inwards elsewhere ; the brilliant
bridge extending across the chasm, and the granulated
surface of the photosphere beyond : but the brightest part
of the whole plate, except the bridge, is the portion next
to the penumbra. Looking at it, it is almost impossible
to doubt that we are looking down upon a vast mnund or
tiimuh(.^ with a yawning opening and steeply shelving sides
April 1, 1898.]
KNOWLfiDGe,
91
within, and that the reason for this excessive brightness
is that the edge of the spot is really protruded to a vast
height above the general level, and that the brilliance of
Flii. 7. — The same viewed from identieally the same point, but
fillei with water.
that part is to this extent unimpaired by absorption.
Now the Fig. H, already referred to, gives exactly this
appearance of an elevated mound with a gaping hollow,
which, as a matter of fact, it was.
The appearance of a spot having a penumbra with its
outer margin the darkest part must be familiar to all
observers of sunspots ; the photosphere at some points
seems to overhang the spot — as it probably does.
But there is one effect caused by this darker part of the
penumbra coming next the bright photosphere, and the
brightest part of the penumbra coming next the black
umbra, namely, that the centre of the spot appears to be
protruded outwards, in a convex manner — an appearance
due, in my opinion, to the deceptive shading, as it were,
in spots of this character, the penumbra being in reality
wholly concave within.
sphere by micrometric measurement of the farther side
of the penumbra is not only impossible, but that the
results arrived at would be entirely misleading.
As the nifiiii density of the sun is only about 1- i compared
with the density of water, it is evident that the vapours on
the solar surface cannot be of anything like the density of
the water in the basin ; their density, nevertheless, must
be very great, the attraction of the sun being more than
twenty-seven times that of the earth.
j-jo. s. — The same viewed very obliquely, the bottom apparently
risen to the top.
There is just one other point shown in the diagrams.
Figs. 1, 2, and 3, which may interest some observers of
sunspots. The weight of the protruded penumbra, resting
as it does on the photosphere (artificial), depresses_ the
surface not a little, so that the mouiul is resting in a
depression of its own making ; and if this condition of
the penumbra really exists on the sun, it ought to be
observable on the limb, as a writer m the British Astro-
n(miic<(l Journal for August, Mr. F. K. McDowall, states
that he does see it.
The Figs. 0, 7, and 8 may serve to make clear the above
contention as to the probable refraction of the umbra. It
will be seen that, when viewed even very obliquely, the
black bottom (umbra) is very visible, and suffers but little,
comparatively, from being viewed in profile.
It is not contended that spots are very deep relatively
to the sun's diameter, which is improbable, but only that
they are very much deeper than they appear to be ; and
also that to attempt to arrive at the depth of the photo-
THE EVOLUTION OF THE VENOM-FANG.
By Lionel Jervis.
IT would be difficult to name a creature more feared
and loathed than the deadly serpent ; yet, deprived
of its fangs, how helpless it becomes ! It is true
that the great size and enormous muscular power
of the giant constrictors render them formidable
antagonists to all but the very largest animals, but these
monsters are comparatively rare, and are confined to a
limited number of species. The anaconda (Kunectes
murinus) from South America, two species of python
(P. molurus and P. nticulatus) from the East Indies, and
one (P. seke) from Africa, about exhaust the list of
unvenomed snakes dangerous to man, though the common
boa constrictor sometimes attains considerable proportions.
Generally speaking, however, the non-venomous serpent,
or the venomous serpent that has been rendered innocuous
by the removal of its fangs, is quite defenceless against its
enemies — and they are numerous.
The mongoose, the hog, and many other animals — not
to mention man — kill them on sight. It is, indeed,
wonderful that the harmless species succeed in holding
their own in the struggle for existence, considering that
even the most venomous serpents frequently fall victims.
The hog, for instance, is said to have extirpated in certain
districts the rattlesnake, which is far from harmless,
although a very overrated creature, its sluggishness ren-
dering it a comparatively easy prey. The inhabitants of
the Lesser Antilles — at least, so the tale was told to me —
seem to have been unacquainted with this fact, or to have
overlooked it, and, arguing no doubt that if a hog would
kill a rattlesnake it would kill a fer-de-lance fLaclwsis
lanceolatus), they imported swine to keep down the pest ;
but that was a very different story. Then they tried the
mongoose ; but the mongoose does not appear to have
found the business good enough, and turned its attention
to the fowl-houses — a move which the inhabitants neither
anticipated nor approved. It would seem from these
incidents that to interview the fer-de-lance is a risky
commission, though I believe that the secretary bird was
domesticated in Martinique with a fair amount of success.
Thus we see that, although no doubt the object of the fang
is primarily to render the capture of the prey easy, it is
also very valuable as a means of defence.
The first trace of this terrible weapon is found in the
ophistoglyphs, and to explain its gradual development in
this family and in the vipers, as well as in the elapine
and sea-snakes, it will be necessary to say something about
the normal dentition of serpents. Generally speaking a
snake has six rows of teeth, one on each side of the
upper jaw, one on each side of the lower jaw, and one
on each side of the palate : certain species have
teeth on the pre-maxiUary bone, but (for the pur-
poses of this article) this feature is unimportant. Now,
some snakes appear to have decided that the capture of
lizards, birds, and " such small deer " as formed their
prey would be greatly facilitated if the struggles of their
92
KNOWLEDGE
[April 1, 1898.
victims could be rendered less violent. They seem to have
been disinclined to exercise or develop their muscular power
to crush or smother them like the constrictors ; the only
alternative was to paralyze them. Nature accordingly set
to work to modify a portion of the salivary gland, and to
impregnate the saliva wiih venom, or to develop the
poisonous properties already existent therein. Here, then,
the serpent had a store of the composition necessary for
its purpose ready to hand. At the same time a groove
began to be formed in two or three of the teeth at the back
of the upper jawbone (that is to say, those below the
salivary gland), and gradually became deeper, thereby
of the mouth until it could find shelter in the reserve
fang which is advanced to take the place of the broken
or discarded one ; in either of these contingencies it
would in all probability be irretrievably damaged. In
reality the duct terminates in the centre of the gum,
just between the fangs. It frequently happens that a
portion of the venom goes astray between the opening of
the duct and the base of the fangs, although they are very
close together, and the fleshy sheath that covers the
fangs when at rest, but is raised and crinkled up across
the gum when the serpent strikes, is said to be instru-
mental in preventing the poison being ejected right in
Fig. 1. — Maxillary bone of innocuous colubrine, shovring solid teeth. FlG. 2. — Maxillary of opliistoglyph, showing development
of back fangs. Fio. 3. — Maxillary of innocuous colubrine, showing solid teeth. FtO. 4. — Maxillary of elapine snake, showing solid teeth
remaining behind poison-fangs . Fio. 5.— Maxillary of cohra CNaja J, dho-mng almost total absence of solid teeth. Fio. 6. — Maxillary
of mamba (VendraspisJ, solid teeth altogether discarded.
forming a channel by which the poison might be transmitted
into the system of the victim. The snake thus became
furnished with its poison and the means of injecting it.
As a last measure— to make quite sure that the animal,
when seized, should not escape — the poison-fangs became
somewhat longer than the original solid teeth, and the
whole machinery of death was complete (sec Figs. 1 and 2).
The prey is entangled in the front teeth and forced back
under the fangs. These are then driven home and the
venom is injected ; the struggles of the victim almost at
once become feeble and soon cease, when it is devoured at
leisure.
This apparatus, though efifectual, is rather clumsy, and
we find a great improvement in the proteroglyphs. It is
obviously better to have the fangs in the front of the mouth
than at the back, as the serpent can then seize its prey
and inject the poison at one and the same time, instead of
having to work it under the back fangs before it could
commence to paralyze it. Before I go any further I should
like to have it quite clearly understood that the development
of the fangs of the vipers, which are descended fi-om the
ophistoglyphs (as I shall endeavour to show later on), is
in no way connected with the development of the fangs of
the other proteroglyphs, viz. : the elapines and the sea-
snakes. In fact, two distinct families of serpents appear to
have become venomous at about the same time, quite
independently of each other.
Accordingly, in the elapines and sea-snakes" two of the
front teeth on either side of the upper jaw became grooved
and enlarged, and a channel was gradually formed from
the gland behind the eye to the base of the fangs. The
distance, however, between the gland and the poison-fang is
never great, and the modification of their relative positions
is more apparent than real. As a matter of fact the fangs
are always either nearly under the eye or close in front of it.
For many years it was believed that the duct from the
gland to the poison-fang was continued into the fang itself,
but research has shown that this view is entirely incorrect.
The functional fang is frequently either broken off or
shed, in which case the end of the duct would either be
carried away or left to dangle unprotected in the front
Fig.
(much enlarged)
* One species of sea-snake (Distira semperi) is confined to a fresh-
water lake in Luzon.
front, and in directing it down the channel and into the
wound. To prevent the venom escaping when the snake
is using its jaws without the intent of poisoning, a strong
binding muscle is placed close up to the front of the duct.
The groove is much deepened and the edges
have come closer together, forming a more
perfect channel for the passage of the poison ;
in fact, in the genus Klaim (the coral snakes)
the fang has come to have the appearance
of being perforated. The poison - gland
itself is much enlarged — in one case
(Doliophis) eccentrically so, for it is ex-
tended about a third of the way down
the body, thereby further upsetting the
already disordered internal arrangements of
the serpent — and round it is twisted the
anterior temporal muscle, so that it can
be violently compressed and the poison
squirted deep into the wound. It can be
readUy seen that this machinery, even in
its undeveloped stages, is a great improve-
ment on the back-fanged arrangement. . , - ,
T ,1 1- r i-a of elapine snake,
In the earlier forms numerous solid growing groove,
teeth continued to exist behind the poison-
fangs, as can be well seen in the sea-
snakes, and in the less specialized elapines ( Figs. 3
and 4) — examples, Glyphndon and Pseuddnps from New
Guinea and the neighbouring coimtries. The serpents,
however, with their new and formidable dental armature,
began to discover that the envenomed wound caused by
their bite paralyzed their prey so quickly that it became
less and less necessary for them to retain their hold in
proportion as the poison apparatus became more and more
developed, and consequently the solid teeth on the maxil-
lary bone became useless and gradually disappeared ; so
that in the cobra [Xirja), in which the fangs are highly
specialized, we only find two or three left (Fig, 5), while
in the Eing Hals snake {Scpcdon), the coral snake
(Elaps), a,nd in the mamba {l\'7idiaspis) (Fig. 6), they are
altogether wanting.
In some cases the fangs have grown so large that it has
become imperative to provide for a certain amount of
motion in the maxillary bone, so as to allow them to point
slightly backwards when the month is shut, and to avoid
April 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE.
93
wounding the lower jaw. Of course, when the snake is
about to strike, the fang has to be raised again ; and with
this object certain modifications have been made in the
bones of the palate, and certain muscles have been requi-
sitioned to govern the necessary motions, to explain which
in detail would require another article as long as this one.
By means of this complicated machinery the fang of the
cobra (Fig. 5) can be erected and depressed to a limited
degree, though not to anything like the same extent as in
the case of the vipers. In the mamba, however, the diffi-
culty has been overcome in another way : the maxillary
bone is lifted in front and curved backwards (it is shaped
something like a sickle with about six inches of the point
broken off, held edge downwards i, so that the base of the
fang is considerably above the roof of the mouth (Fig. 6).
Now, these long, sharp, delicate weapons are extremely
likely to be broken off, and it is very necessary that there
should be a reserve of fangs to take their place in case of
accidents. Consequently, behind the functional fangs are
others in every stage of development : the minute germ,
the more markedly grooved tooth, and so on to the per-
fectly developed functional fang, with the edges of the
groove nearly joining in front (Fig. 7). This being so, the
necessity for taking any
particular care of the
front fangs of course
ceases to exist ; indeed,
it appears that they are
not unfrequently shed
voluntarily.
While the sea-snakes
and elapines were thus
being armed, the back-
fanged snakes (ophisto-
glyphs) were slowly
becoming front - fanged
snakes (proteroglyphs ) also. As regards the poison-gland
(with the exception of the exaggerated development of
the Dvliiipliis), the duct, and the fang-sheath, the same
principles are in evidence ; but the maxillary bone has
been modified and turned up in front, the solid teeth
in front of the grooved fangs have been discarded
(Fig. 8), and the fangs themselves have come into position
in the front of the mouth— or, rather, to be more accurate,
the front of the mouth has come back to the faugs.
At the same time the edges of the groove have gradually
closed up, until at length they are fused, and have the
appearance of being tubular (Fig. 9) — an appearance
which has deceived many into the belief that the fang is
actually hollow or perforated. If the fang be bisected,
however, the error at once becomes evident, for the section
will show the semicircle of pulp completely surrounded by
dentine (Fig. 10). Thus came the vipers. It is true that
for many years it was considered that the fang machinery
of the viper was merely a specialization of the elapine,
and it is to Mr. Boulenger's researches that we owe the
true solution of the question. In the less specialized
forms of viper, such as the Cape viper (Caiisits rhombeatux),
"the fangs," to quote his words, " are situated on the
posterior extremity of the maxillary, close to its articula-
tion with the ecto-pterygoid — a condition which is identical
with that of the ophistoglyphous colubrids." In the more
highly specialized vipers, such as the crotalines and the
atractaspis, the maxillary bone has fallen away altogether
in front of the fangs. It is hardly necessary to say that
in this family the soUd teeth which were originally in
front of the back fangs have altogether disappeared.
Having, as I have said, the fangs already grooved and
elongated before their position was altered from the back
Fio. 8. — Portion of skull of viper
(rattlesnake), showing the vertical
position of the maxillary.
I
Pia. 9.— Fang (much
enlarged) of viper ; a,
ori6ce by which venom
enters fang ; b, orifice
through which venom is
injected into wound
(much enlarged).
to the front of the mouth, it became doubly necessary
for the vipers to have the maxillary bone movable.
There was not much difficulty in
,-■''" this, as that bone had already so
changed as to lie almost vertically
to the jaw instead of parallel with
it (Fig. 8), there being only just
sufficient space left on its tooth-
bearing face to admit of a single pair
of fangs. It was a comparatively
easy process, then, that this face
should become normally directed
towards the throat, with the fangs
shut back, as it were, like the blade
of a clasp knife, on the roof of the
mouth ; and that by a modification
of the structure of some of the bones
in the front of the skull, and by an
exaggeration of the action of the
motor machinery already referred to,
it should be possible for the snake to
erect its fangs vertically to the upper
jawwhen it was striking. It is almost
superfluous to say that the fangs,
having in their new recumbent posi-
tion much more room to grow in than when they were at the
back of the mouth, have availed themselves of the space at
their disposal to the fullest extent, some of them reaching
almost to the back of the palate. It is natural, then, that
the mobile erectile fangs of the viper should be longer than
the practically immovable fangs of the elapine. I trust
that no one will be misled by this sentence into the erro-
neous idea that the fang itself is movable : the fang ia
always and quite immovable ; it is the maxillary bone, to
which the fang is attached, that moves.
The viper of vipers, the most highly
specialized of the group, is the
atractaspis from Tropical Africa. The
solid teeth on the lower jaw and palate
have almost altogether disappeared —
there are only about eight or ten all
told — and the poison - fangs are so
enormously developed that Mr. Wood,
in his popular but not over reliable
natural history, suggests that the
atractaspis cannot open its mouth sufficiently wide to
erect its faugs, and that the poison is injected while the prey
is being swallowed. If this view were correct, it would be a
case in which ultra-development had defeated its own end,
for the serpent would find itself in the same position as
regards injecting its poison as when it was in its back-
fanged position — or, rather, in a worse one, for it would
have no solid teeth to secure its prey with. But of course
Mr. Wood's supposition is incorrect. The gape of the
viper is enormous ; it can easily open its jaws to an angle
of one hundred and eighty degrees ; so that it ia quite
clear that, however long the fangs may be, there is plenty
of space in which to erect them — unless, indeed, they were
to grow right down the throat.
Specimens of these different families are usually to be
found in the reptile house at the Zoological Gardens, except
the sea-snakes, which die almost at once in captivity, how-
ever large the tank. The ophistoglyphs are usually repre-
sented by the Cape bucephalus ( Dispholidus tiipus) and
some species of sand-snake t PsammopJiis J : the elapines
by the cobras, and what they are pleased to call death-
adders (as a rule the Pseudechis porphyriacus ) : and the
vipers by one or two pit-vipers. They have a cotton-
mouth ( Ancistrodon piscivorusj there now and a fer-de-
Fio. 10. — Section
of fang of viper; a,
dentine ; b, pulp
(much enlarged).
94
KNOWLEDGE
[Apbil 1, 1898.
lance. The other species of viper do not as a rule thrive
in captivity, though the cerastes seem to be doing well
enough, and there is usually a pufif-adder ( Bids arictanaj
on view ; but, as I believe they lost thirteen of these
last year, this is probably due to a large number being
generally available. At the present moment they have a
mamba there, and a true death-adder f^ca«(/«)/i)s ((»«<(?■(■-
ticusj, both elapine snakes, which I understand to be the
only serpents of these species ever exhibited in this
country.
It may be interesting to those who are inclined to be
sceptical to know that the theory as to the derivation of
the vipers from the ophistoglyphs has been recently
confirmed by researches on the venom-glands of snakes.
To attempt to give even an outline of these conclusions
would, however, exceed the scope and limits of this article,
and it will be sufficient to refer intending students to the
paper of M. Phisalix on this subject.
NOTES ON COMETS AND METEORS.
By W. F. Denning, f.r.a.s.
CoMETARY Discoveries. — The total number of comets
observed sufficiently well during the last thirty years
(1868-1897) for their orbits to be calculated amounts to
one hundred and thirty-five, but of these thirty-seven were
returns of periodical comets which had been previously
seen. The average rate of apparition of new comets has,
therefore, been 3-27 annually, and of new and periodical
comets 4-r, annually. In 187.S, 1881, 1892, and 1896,
seven comets were discovered ; in 1872 not one was
observed ; and in 1875 the only two comets which
appeared were known ones. The best months for the
discovery of these objects appear to be July and August.
Of three hundred and twenty-eight comets discovered
between the years 1782 and 1897 inclusive, the following
are the numbers found in the various months : —
January
. 22
July
37
February
21
August
43
March
. 24
September . .
. 25
April ...
.. 27
October
26
May ...
20
November
. 34
June ...
22
December
27
These figures include every description of these bodies.
During the sixty years from 1782 to 1841 there were
eighty-seven comets, averaging 1-45 per year ; but during
the fifty-six years from 1842 to 1897 there were two
hundred and forty-one comets, averaging 4 -Hi) per year.
Ponx-Winnerkc's Comet. — -This comet is now too faint
for observation, and is, moreover, unfavourably placed in
the morning twilight. Its position during the next few
months is indicated by Hillebrand in Ast. Ndch., 3480, as
follows for Berlin noon : —
1898.
April 8
„ 24
May 14
June 3
„ 23
R.A.
Declination.
22 51 56 -11 51
0 5 21 —7 32-5
1 11 59 -3 21-2
2 6 82 -fO 1-4
2 49 35 +2, 10'9
Perrine's Comet, 189G, VII.— In Ast. Naeh., 3478, Hans
Osten, of Bremen, gives definitive elements for this comet.
It was observed from 1896, 8th December, to 1897, 1st
March, and was visible, therefore, for twelve weeks. He
finds the period 2352-5 days, or 6'441 years, with a probable
error of 6-8 days. This result agrees exactly, as regards
periodic time, with that given by Ristenpart in Ast. Xach.,
3402, based on observations in 1896, December, and 1897,
January. At the time of the comet's next return in 1903,
April-May, there is little prospect that it will be observed,
as it will pass through its perihelion when the earth is on
the other side'of the sun. In 1909, October, however, the
conditions will be extremely favourable.
Fireballs of 1898, February 20ih. — On this night two
large meteors were seen, their times of apparition being
8h. 54^m. and lOh. 20m. The former was observed by
many persons, and some of the details were as follows : —
Cliidilingfold, Surrey. — Brilliant meteor passed close
under Procyon and pursued a straight course through the
middle star of Orion's belt to about ten degrees beyond,
when it was lost sight of behind the roof of a house. The
colour was that of the arc electric light. Nucleus pear-
shaped, leaving a trail. When about midway between
Procyon and Orion it [blazed up, emitting sparks ; then
became much fainter until past Orion, when it blazed
again, and then again faded. The meteor seemed to be
moving very slowly to the west, and remained in sight
about three seconds, during which time it travelled throut;h
about fifty degrees of arc. — Rear-Admiral Ma( lear.
Ealing, Middlese.r. — Meteor of exceptional size and
brilliancy appeared in due south at altitude of about
twenty to twenty-tive degrees, and travelled to west, at
first slightly ascending and then descending. Light
greenish, and it left behind a long, broad, livid streak. At
middle of flight it threw off numerous small pieces of
slightly redder tint. Duration of flight, four seconds. —
0. J. Preston.
Freemantle, Southampton. — Splendid meteor; emitted a
brilliant blue light which lit up everything around. Quite
stationary for several seconds before it sped away due
south, leaving a trail of thousands of sparks behind it.
Hiirriujati-, Yorks. — Very brilliant meteor low down in
south sky. Apparent motion slow, and it was observable
for about four seconds. It left a long trail. — J. G. C.
Edghaston, Iiiniiiniili(im. — Brilliant meteor seen low down
in the south (about the height of the middle of the small
stars under Sirius). — W. Abthdr Smith.
Wedtunlniri/. — Magnificent meteor, of an intense orange
colour, and leaving a long train of sparks ; travelled a long
distance from east to west, and finally disappeared appa-
rently just under Sirius. — T. F. Bissell.
Clifton, Bristol. — Brilliant meteor appeared rather low
in the south-eastern sky, and travelled slowly in a westerly
direction along a nearly horizontal path. Visible for
several seconds, and disappeared nearly in the south. —
R. F. Sturge.
WimbU'dioi. — Walking along a road facing south the
meteor came into view in front of me, a little to the right of
my course, and about two-thirds up towards the zenith. It
travelled quite slowly towards the west. Interior blue
with an outer edge of red. It appeared to me a little less
than half as large as the full moon. — E. J. R. Radcliffe.
Westminster. — Meteor brighter than Venus, bluish white,
swift. Path, 111° -t-5" to QT-IT.—W. E. Besley.
Xeiiburi/. — A large and brilliant luminous body travelled
across the heavens in a nearly straight line from east to
west. Visible for several seconds. It illuminated the entire
district.
Chichexter.^Shot athwart the zenith, crossing the clear
open space directly overhead, and leaving a trail of sparks.
It moved with slow apparent velocity, and passed north of
Pleiades before itdisappearedbehindclouds. — A.Roshridge.
Without attempting to reconcile these and other accounts
it seems that the meteor appeared over the English Channel,
and fell from a height of sixty-one to twenty-seven miles.
When first seen it was above a point thirty-three miles
April 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE
95
south of Beachy Head, and moving almost due west ; it
disappeared thirteen miles south-east of St. Alban's Head.
The earth point is indicated near Teignmouth, and the
length of observed path was ninety-five miles. Taking
the duration as four seconds, the velocity will be twenty-
four miles per second. The radiant point was at about
17(> + 12' near /? Leonis, and it agrees with the position
of a long-enduring meteor shower.
The tireball which appeared at lOh. 20m. on the same
evening as the one described above, was not observed with
sufficient fulness to enable its path to be determined.
FiREBAi,L OF March 12th, 7h. 5m. — A very brilliant object
of this class was observed at Slough and St. John's \\'ood,
London. The nucleus was globular, and traversed its path
with moderate velocity, leaving a long train behind it.
Tlu' Ajiiil Lijriils. — This shower will be due on April
19th-"20th, and, the moon being absent, the conditions will
be highly favourable for witnessing any display that may
occur. The periodical maxima of this stream probably
recur at long intervals, for its parent comet has a com-
puted time of revolution of four hundred and fifteen years.
There was, however, a brilliant display of Lyrids on the
morning of April 20th, 1803. This shower is usually by
no means rich, but it requires further observation. Its
radiant point is at 270^+ 32 \ and it probably travels east-
wards during the very few nights of the shower's visible
activity.
♦
THE FACE OF THE SKY FOR APRIL.
By Herbert Sadler, f.r.a.s.
SOJIE spots still occasionally diversify the solar disc.
Conveniently observable minima of Algol occur
at Oh. 15m. a.m. on the 13th, and 9h. Im. p.m.
on the 16th.
Mercury is an evening star, and is very favour-
ably situated for observation during the first three weeks
of the month, but afterwards he approaches the Sun too
closely to be visible. He is at his greatest eastern elonga-
tion, 19i', on the 11th. On the 1st he sets at 8h. 5m.
P.M., with a northern declination at noon of 11° 38', and
an apparent diameter of 6''. On the 11th he sets at
8h. 50m. P.M., with a northern declination of 17- 45', and
an apparent diameter of 8 '. On the 23rd he sets at
8h. 26m. P.M., or about one hour and a quarter after the
Sun, with a northern declination of 18 '39', and an
apparent diameter of 10| '. While visible he describes a
direct path in Aries, without approaching any conspicuous
star.
Venus is too near the Sun to be conveniently observed
this month.
Mars is technically a morning star, but his diameter is
so small that it would be useless for the amateur to expect
to see any indications of markings on his surface.
The minor planet Vesta is in opposition to the Sun on
the 6th of May, with a stellar magnitude of 6-0. However,
she is conveniently situated for the amateur observer
during the last half of April, so we give a short ephemeris
of her. On the 15th she rises at sh. 18m. p.m., with a
southern declination at transit of 6 52'. On the 25th she
rises at 7h. 29m. p.m., with a southern declination at
transit of 6 IS'. During the month she pursues a retro-
grade path in Libra.
•Jupiter is an evening star, rising on the 1st at oh. 26m.
P.M., with a southern declination of 0^ 20' at noon, and
an apparent equatorial diameter of 41^'. On the 9th he
rises at 4h. 39m. p.m., with a northern declination of 0° 2V,
and an apparent diameter of 44". On the 16th he rises
at 4h. 27m. p.m., with a northern declination of 0° 21',
and an apparent diameter of 44". On the 23rd he rises
at 3h. 55m. p.m., with a northern declination of 0° 37',
and an apparent diameter of 43 V'- On the 30th he rises
at 3h. 24m. p.m., with a northern declination of 0 51', and
an apparent equatorial diameter of 43". During the
month he describes a retrograde path in Virgo.
As Saturn does not rise till 9h. 50m. p.m. on the Ist,
with a great southern decUnation, and Uranus is as badly
situated, ephemerides would be useless.
Neptune has left us for the season.
There are no very well marked showers of shooting stars
in April.
The Moon is full at 9h. 20m. p.m. on the 6th ; enters
her last quarter at 2h. 28m. p.m. on the 13th ; is new
at lOh. 21m. p.m. on the 20th ; and enters her first quaiter
at 2h. 5m. a.m. on the 29th.
<[K{)css Column.
By C. D. LooooK, b.a.
Communications for this column should be addressed to
C. D. LococK, Burwash, Sussex, and posted on or before
the 10th of each month.
Solutions of March Problem.
Key-move. — 1. B to E7.
If 1. ... P to R7, 2. E to KKte, etc.
1. ... K to R7, 2. K to Kt4,etc.
Correct Solutions received from Alpha, J. T. Blakemore
G. J. Newbegin, Capt. Forde.
H. S. Brati'lntli (Algiers). — Solutions of February
Problems correct.
Alpha. — The laws of the British Chess Association,
approved by Mr. Steinitz in his " Modern Chess Instructor,"
allow a Pawn to decline promotion. By common consent
this " dummy Pawn " is no longer allowed in problems.
P. G. L. F. — Many thanks ; they shall appear next
month.
J. T. Bliikemore. — It sounds good ; have had no time to
examine as yet. Your other suggestion comes just a day
too late to be adopted. The game, however, is so short
that we thought one diagram rather liberal in the way of
illustration.
PROBLEM.
By A. C. Umlauff.
Black (7).
♦ # 5 i
WB M
P .^,^..1^/
% 2
White (7).
White mates in three moves.
96
KNOWLEDGE
[April 1, 1898.
CORBESPONDENCE GAME.
(Concluded.)
Position after White's Thirteenth Move
Black (i:).
14. Q to ESeh (j)
15. QxKtP
16. Kt to Q2 (l)
17. P to KKt3 (m)
18. Kt to K4 (o)
19. R to Qsqeh
Black.
13. R to Q4 (J)
14. K to Q2
15. ExP (/.')
16. R to KKt4 !
17. KB to B4 (n)
18. QxKt
19. B to Q4
Notes.
(i) The most attacking continuation. 13. . . . Q to Q5
■would be perfectly safe, as Black must exchange Queens
with a slightly inferior development.
(j) He should certainly keep the check in reserve.
Other continuations are most interesting, cr/. ■ —
I. 14. Kt to B-l (.'), RxP; 15. E to Qsq, B to Q3 (if
15. P to KKt3, Q to E6, threatening Q x Rch ! as well as
E to KE4) ; 16. Q to E8ch (?J, K to Q2 ; 17. Q x E, and
Black mates in four moves.
II. 14. Kt to tji', B to KKt5; 15. Kt to B3 (if 15. Kt to
B4, B to QB4 ; and if then White checks and wins the R,
Black mates in two moves), 15. . . . BxKt; 16. PxB,
RxP (or ... P to KKt4!); 17. E to Qsq, E to Q4 ;
18. B to K3, Q to E6 (threatening B to Q3) ; 19. R x R,
P X R ; 20. P to KB4, P to KKt4, etc.
III. 14. B to KS! RxP; 15. R to Qsq (if 15. Kt to
Q2, B to Q4), 15. ... B to Q4 (or a) ; 16. Kt to B3 ! (if
16. P to QB4, Q to KKt5, or Q x BP).
(a) 1>. . . . B to Q3 ; 16. Q to RHch, K to Q2 ; 17.
Q x R, E X B ; 18. P to KKt3, Q to Kt5 ; 19. Kt to B3,
R moves, etc., with a good game.
IV. 14. Pto£:A'(3(.'), QtoR6(orQtoQ5); 15.BtoB4,
B to QB4; 16. Q to RBch, K to Q2 ; 17. QxR, B to
KKt5! (17. ... RxP, or 17. ... R to Q7, is very
tempting, but is met by 18. Kt to B3, the only move in
each case) ; IS. P to K6ch, K to K2 ; 19. R to Ksq (best)
(if 19. PxP, Black mates in three moves), 19. . . .
B X Pch probably wins.
(/,•) 15. . . . B to QB4 would threaten Q xPch, but is
much inferior to the Rook's move.
(l) Natural enough, but he overlooks the bolt from the
blue. In any case he has a bad game now.
(jn) There is no good defence to the numerous mates
latent in the position, e.g. : —
I. 17. Kt to B3 (or anywhere except to K4), RxPch
and wins.
II. 17. R to Ksq, Q to R6 ! 18. P to KKt3, B to Q4 ;
19. Kt to K4, E to E4 ; 20. B to B4, Black mates in
three moves.
III. 17. P to KB4, B to B4ch ; 18. K to Esq, RxP
and wins.
IV. 17. R to Qsq, RxPch; 18. KxE, Q to Kt5ch wins,
v. 17. Q X RP, Q to R6 (B to Q4 is even stronger j ;
18. P to KKt3, B to Q4 ; 19. P to KB3, R x Pch.
VI. 17. Kt to Ki, E X Pch (or a ; but if 17. ... R
toQKt4, 18; QxEP, QxKt; 19. E to Qsqch prolongs the
game); 18. KxE, BtoEGch! 19. K to B3 (best), Q to
Kt5ch ; 20. K to K3, B x E and wins, for if 21. Q to Kt3,
P to KB4.
(a) 17 BtoQ3(?); 18. Pto KKt3 (?) (or i.), Q xKt;
19. B x E, B to Q4 ! 20. P to KB3, B to B4ch ; 21. K to
Kt2 (if 21. K to Esq. mate in two), 21. ... Q to K7ch ;
22. K to E3, B to K3ch ; 23. P to Kt4, B to Q3 ! and
wins.
(i.) 18. KttoKtS! Eto KR4 ; 19. Pto KE3, BxP;
20. E to Qsq ! (not 20. Kt x E, on account of the winning
reply, Q to Kt5).
yn) Much stronger than the more showy move, 17. . . .
B to Q4 (threatening Q x EPch), for White could then
reply 18. Kt to B3 (forced), BxKt; 19. BxE, QxB
(best) ; 20. Q X EP, B to Q3 ; 21. KE to Ksq, etc. The
waiting move made leaves White absolutely without re-
source.
(o) Any reader who may have persevered so far will be
able to work out for himself the forced (and in some cases
beautiful) mates resulting from any other move. We give
only one variation: 18. E to Qsq, RxPch; 19. K to
Esq (A), B to Q4ch ; 20. Kt to B3 (or 20. P to B3, Q to
Kt5!), 20. ... R to Kt8ch; 21. ExE, QxBP!
(a) If 19. K to Esq, R to KtSch ; otherwise Q x Pch,
B to Q4ch, and Q to B6ch.
KNOWLEDGE, PUBLISHED MONTHLY.
Contents oi No. 148 (February).
The Floor of u Contiueut. By
Grenville A. J. Cole, m.r.i.a.,
F.G.s. {lUuhtratcd) 25
Eccuiomic Botany. By John E.
Jackson, a.l.s., etc., 28
From a Hole in the Mudflats. By
Harry F. Witherby, F.z.s.,
M.B.o.c. (Ulustraled) 29
Liqnid Fluorine. By C. F.
Townseud, f.c.s. (Illustrated) 31
Letters 33
British Ornithological Notes 36
Science Notes 37
Notices of Books 37
Total Solar Eclipse, January 22nd,
Contents of No. 149 (March).
PAOE
The Total Solar Eclipse, January
22,1898. By E.Walter Maunder,
F.E.A.S. (lUvMrntti) 49
British Bees, — I. By Fred. Enock,
F.L.S., F.E.S., etc. [UlusirateA) 50
The Vinesrar EeL By C. Ains-
worth Mitchell, b.a., f.i.c 53
Botanical Studies. — II. Coleo-
chaete. By A. Vanghan Jennings,
F.L.S., F.o.S. {lUustrated) 54
Cloud Belts. By Wm . Shackleton,
F.E.A.S
56
Photograph of the Spiral Nebula
Messier 33 Trianguli. By Isaac
Roberts, D.sc, F.R.S 39
Moon in Eclipse, January 7th,
1898. By L. Paxton 40
The Spectra of Brisht Stars. By
E. W. Maunder. F.K.A.s 40
Ancient Red Deer Antlers. Bv
E.Lydekker,B.A.,F.B.s. (Illiis.) 43
Notes on Comets and Meteors.
B.7 W. F. Denning. F.E.A.S 46
The Face of the Sky for February.
By Herbert Sadler. F.R.A.S 47
Chess Column. By C. B. Locock 47
Plate.— Spiral Nebula Messier
33 Trianguli.
A New Theory of the Milky Way.
ByC. Eastoo 57
Letters 60
The Masses and Distances of
Binary Stars. By J. E. Gtore,
j F.E.A.S (12
i Science Notes 63
i Notices of Books 63
] British Ornithological Notes 66
Obituary 67
The Karkinokosm, or World of
Crustacea.— II. By the Rev.
Thomas R. R. Stcbbing, ma.,
F.E.S., y.L.S. {llhu^trateA) 67
Notes on Comets and Meteors.
By W. F. Denning, f.b.a.s. . 70
The Face of the Sky for March.
By Herbert Sadler, f.e.a.s, 71
Chess Column, By C, D. Locock 71
Plate,— The Equatorial Cloud-Belt.
The yearly bound volumes of Knowledge, cloth gilt, 8s. 6d., post free,
Bindin? Cases, Is. 6d, each ; post free. Is. 9d.
Subscribers' numbers bound (inclu<iing case and Indes), 23, 6d. each volume.
Index of Articles and Illustrations for 1891, 1892, 1894, 1395, 1896, and 1897
can be supplied for 3d. each.
" Knowledge " Annual ' Subscription, throughout the world,
8s,, post free.
Mat 2, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE
97
Founded in l88i by RICHARD A. PROCTOR.
LONDON: MAY 2, 1898.
CONTENTS.
British Bees.— Hi. Bv Feed. Enock, f.i.s., f.e.s., etc.
{Illustrated) ... "
A Valley on Sao Nicolau, Cape Verde islands. By
BoTD AlEXAXDEB, ST.B o.u. {Illustrated)
Deserts and ttieir Inhabitants. Bt K. Ltdekker, b.a.,
P.R.S. ...
The Karktinokosm, or World of Crustacea,— ill. By
the Kev. Thomas R. R. Stebbiso, m.a., f.b.s., f.l.s.
(Illustrated)
Nebulae and Region round y Cassiopeiae. By Isaac
EOBBBTS, D.SC, F.K.S. {Plate)
The Recent Eclipse. By E. Waltee Maunder, f.e.a.s.
{Illustrated) '.
Notices of Books
Books Rkceitsd ... ... ...
British Ornithological Notes. Conducted by Haebt F.
WiTHEEBT, F.Z.S., M.B.O.U. . .
Science Notes
Letters : — Wm. Shackleton {Illustrated) ; Eer. W. Srn-
ORBAVEs (Note by E. Waltee MArNDEE) {Illustrated) ;
G. KOBTHOTEB SiRETTOX ; C. B. HOIMES
Nature's Finer Forces. — Some Notes on Old Work
and New Developments. By H. Sxowde.v Ward,
F.H.P.S. ... ...
Botanical Studies. — III. Jungermannia. ByA.VAroHAX
Jexnings, f.l.s,, F.Q.S. {Illustrated)
Notes on Comets and IVIeteors. By W. F. Dknsino,
F.E.A.S
The Face of the Sky for May. By Heebeet Sadleb,
F.R.A.5.
Chess Column. By C. D. Locock, b.a
97
100
101
107
109
111
114
115
US
119
119
BRITISH BEES.-III.
By Fred. Exock, f.l.s., f.e.s., etc.
IT is only when we come to examine the burrows of leaf-
cutter bees and dissect the newly formed cells, that we
begin to realize the marvellous ingenuity displayed in
their construction. AVefind that generally the founda-
tion is formed of a circular piece of leaf, which the bee
has so rammed down that it fits into the rounded end of the
Fig. 12.— Foundation of First Cell.
burrow (Fig. 12). The bee, having satisfied itself with its
work so far, next proceeds to exhibit such high intelligence
that we are bewildered with the thought, " Where does so-
called instinct end and reasoning power begin ?" The bee
does not hesitate in its work, but as soon as the circular
piece of leaf is fixed it seems to recognize in a moment that
it would not do to attempt to form the sides of the cells of
circular pieces; accordingly, without compasses or two-foot
rule, or any other means of measurement than her unerring
eye and powerful mandibles, in a few seconds she has cut
an oblong wedge-shaped piece of leaf (Fig. 13), which she
Fig. 13. — First Side-piece cut and carried.
carries to her burrow, and, taking it down thin end first,
carefully places that end in the saucer-shaped foundation
(Fig. 11). Another oblong wedge-shaped piece of leaf is
cut and carried home and down the burrow, and once more
our "superior intellect " is humbled when we find that the
bee shows still greater common sense in depositing the
second piece than the first, for she so fits it that one edge
just overlaps that of the first (Fig. 15). Another visit to
the bush outside furnishes an exact counterpart of the first
and second oblongs, fixed in the same methodical manner
(Fig. 16) ; but still the circle is mcomplete, and for the fourth
time the untiring architect leaves the nest for the stores,
from which it again cuts an oblong, and as quickly returns
to its burrow, and so carefully and correctly has it measured
the circumference that this fourth piece fits in. just
overlapping both the third and first pieces (Fig. 17).
Owing to the wedge shape of these four pieces the cell
is not by any means fit to receive the nectar and
pollen for which it is intended. The bee still works
on, cutting another oblong from a leaf, which she places
exactly midway over the joint of the first and second
(Fig. 18), and so on until she has completely closed every
98
KNOWLEDGE.
[May 2, 189g.
opening at the sides. Sometimes she places an additional
thickness both at the bottom and at the sides. The cell
now is ready for the " pudding," and the bee goes out
to gather the ingredients from the flowers — notably
Fig. 15, — Second Side-piece fiied.
those of the campanula. Having filled her reservoir with
nectar and covered her body with pollen, she flies off to
her burrow, and quickly divests herself of her load.
Carefully brushing the pollen from her abdomen, and
ejecting the nectar from her honey stomach, she proceeds
to mix the two into a " pudding," to the best of her ability,
30 that it will not disagree with the stomachs of her
Fig. 16.— Third Side-piece fixed.
progeny. Many journeys are made before a sufiicient
supply is collected, and the cell filled to within a certain
distance of the top. When this point is reached, the bee
lays a single egg on the top of the pudding (Fig. 19 j. Having
taken so much trouble to build up this wonderful cell, it
is not surprising to find that she next proceeds to protect
her property. She makes another journey to the bush,
and cuts out a circular piece of leaf, which she fits into
the cell so carefully that it does not press upon the delicate
egg ; and, to make assurance doubly sure, she not un-
frequently places as many as a dozen of these circular
covers superposed on each other, a short space being left
from the last cover to the top edge. As soon as this first
cell is finished and sealed up, she proceeds to buUd the
second, the end of which fits into the first (Figs. 20 and 21).
i'lG. 17. — Foui'tli Side-piece fixed.
In this way the industrious bee continues her work as
long as the sun continues to shine, until she has placed
from nine to a dozen cells in her burrow, the entrance to
which is then carefully closed with sand ; a few broken bits
of dead leaves and heather bells are scattered about, and
no trace is left. Should the weather continue bright, the
bee sinks another burrow, which she fills with cells, and
sometimes she will make others before her energies are
exhausted.
Other marvellous work lies hidden under the sand, but
nature is carrying on her transformations. The eggs hatch
into legless maggots, that find their food ready to their
mouths (Fig. 22); a few weeks of such sweet food brings them
to full growth, and they are ready for their next change —
the chrysalis. Before that stage is reached, however, they
spin themselves a silken shroud, and fastening the silk to
the sides and ends they turn themselves round and rest
upon their backs, with their heads pointing to the entrance
of the burrow (Fig. 23). In this position they assume the
chrysalis stage, in which they remain for at least a month.
During this time the changes of colour and gradual forma-
FlG. 19 Section of First Cell, -bowing Pudding and Egg.
tion of the bee may be watched. At first there is but little
difference in the form, but in a week the limbs are all
plainly visible. The eyes and mandibles then begin to
assume distinct shape and colour, and the various parts of
the delicate tongue can be traced out under the membrane
which encloses the whole of the body. In a fortnight the
joints appear and then the hairs on various parts, and in
a month's time the bee appears quite ready to burst
through its delicate shroud. This generally happens in
early morning, and is a sight to be remembered. After
brushing each organ, and pluming each wonderful hair,
the bee is ready for its virgin flight. Occasionally the bees
are matured some time before they emerge in June.
It is a remarkable fact that the eggs laid first in the
lower cells produce females, which take some days longer
May 2, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE.
99
to reach maturity than do the males, which are always
produced from the eggs laid last in the cells nearest to the
entrance of the burrow. This egg laid last is matured
first, and the bee (a male), excavating its way into the open
air, leaves its cell empty, so that the bee below it can then
eat its way through the cap of leaves and pass out through
the empty cell (Fig 21). The third bee does the same, and
Fig. 21.— Section of Cells and Puddings.
ao on until the last bee (the egg of which was laid first)
is enabled to pass through the whole of the other cells
until she reaches the open air.
The peculiar bee the sole representative in this country
of the genus Anthidium is fond of taking to any old hole
in a post or tree. It has the habit of collecting the woolly
tomeutum from the stems of the hollyhock. The bee
runs up the stem and quickly divests it of its covering,
which it heaps up into a ball and holds between the legs
and mandibles. This material is used in the formation of
its cells. I used to take this bee plentifully in my garden
near Finsbury Park some twenty years ago, when houses
and smoke were not quite so plentiful as now. The male
is very much larger than the female, and has its abdomen
terminated by an armature of strong spikes.
Two small bees constitute the genus Chelostoma — the
larger one, C. jhrisminn', being particularly fond of the
flowers of mignonette, wild and cultivated ; while the
smaller, C. campanulai-tim , is plentiful in the delicate hare-
bell.
The bees forming the genera Heriades and Ceratina are
both strangers to me. The records of the capture of
Heriades are somewhat doubtful. Naturalists cannot be
too exact in such matters.
Eiifera longicornis is the only one of the genus and is a
very beautiful bee. The male has immensely long antennas
that reach right over and beyond the tail when the bee is
flying. A large colony used to exist in the bank bounding
the horse exercise ground near the Vale of Health at
Hampstead. It has long ago disappeared — even before I
commenced to work this locality. At Woking it was
tolerably plentiful years ago. In company with this bee I
generally found its striking parasite — Xnmada sexfasciata.
Our next bee generally makes itself heard before being
seen, for of all notes (and all bees have their special ones)
this is the shrillest. They love the hottest and most
brilUan sunshine, and they whiz past with lightning-like
rapidity from flower to flower. The opal eyes of the male
render it a most beautiful insect. The bank from which I
used to dig these bees at Woking is, I am pleased to note,
still in existence.
We now come to two bees which are also musicians, viz.,
Anthophora return and neeri-orum — the so-called " mason
bees" of certain localities. On February 19th of this
year I noticed one of the first-named species basking in
the sunshine on a wall at Haslemere, while the ground
was almost an inch deep with snow. This is one of my
earliest records of this merry bee. At Hampstead there
still exists a small colony of A. acen-orum, and few prettier
sights can be seen in April than that of the males sitting
with outstretched legs at the entrance of their burrows.
The intermediate legs have very long fringes of black hairs
arranged in the most exact manner. In various parts of
Lincolnshire and the south coast these bees absolutely
Fig. 23.-Pup(E.
swarm in the mud or mortar between the stones of walls
and old buildings. The young natives catch the " white-
nosed " ones, and put them into their handkerchiefs for
company during school hours ; but even they are wise
enough not to catch the " black-nosed " ones (the females),
though they are quite ignorant as to the sex, and why one
possesses a sting. I once was fortunate in finding a fine
specimen of the strange beetle, Sitaris, which is a parasite
of this bee. These bees do not loiter about when on the
wing, but fly with immense rapidity, coming upon one so
suddenly that a nervous person is often startled by their
loud hum.
Oar very old friends the humble bees and their parasites
{Psithijrus) are next in order, and so much has been written
of these " bumblers " that we can only confirm the praise
bestowed upon the beautiful creatures whose hum is so
comforting to the tired entomologist. How eagerly do we
watch for the reappearance of the hybernated females to
the yellow catkins of the sallow. To these bees the
farmers of New Zealand owe the fertilization of the clover.
To the bees comprising the genus Apis every human
being is more or less indebted, for what should we do
Fig. 24.— Five Cells ; two vacated.
without honey or beeswax ? Perhaps better than our
ancient ancestors, who had not the knowledge which we
now possess for manufacturing all kinds of things, pure
and impure.
Bees have ever been set forth as the emblems of industry,
100
KNOWLEDGE
[Mat 2, 1898.
and the more we study the habits of the solitary species
so much more does our wonder and admiration increase.
When we subject each species to a microscopical examina-
tion, we find such an endless wealth of beauty of form,
and marvellous adaptation of every part, that we feel
utterly at a loss for words wherewith to describe their
perfection.
♦
A VALLEY ON SAO NICOLAU, CAPE VERDE
ISLANDS.
By Boyd Alexander, m.b.o.u.
ON dropping anchor in Porto Preguiza, the little
harbour of Sao Nicolau, one seeks in vain for
cool verdure whereon to look and rest one's eyes.
Brown, lofty hills, with asute-angled summits,
chiselled by the rough hand of Vulcan, rise up
with weary persistency. There are places, however, on
their lower portions washed over with the filmy green of
grass, a growth which is quickly eaten over by goats and
the thousands of locusts that infest the plains. The
little clouds now and again take pity on these pastures of
stone ; they come creeping to their relief, but it is often only
to expire in the attempt about half way down the steep
slopes. Here and there on the small plains grow scattered
acacia trees {Acacia alhida). Some are stunted as though
they had devoted all their lives in trying to obtain a firm
foothold in the rocky soil, while there are others with backs
bent double by the strong north wind.
For the past three years rain has hardly fallen on the
island, with the result that a famine is pinching the
inhabitants.
The maize, the peasants' chief support, will not grow,
and now they have only to rely upon the tardy arrivals of
schooners filled with grain from the States.
From Preguiza a road leads up to the village of Stancha,
situated in the only fertile valley that the island possesses.
It is a broad, finely paved road, constructed with great
skill, and with a careful eye to gradients ; too good by far,
and, in fact, incongruous, for such an island, where there
is only donkey and foot traffic. But the Portuguese excel
in road making. Furthermore, this road is the means of
employing many of the native women, who would other-
wise starve during frequent dearths of rain on the island.
On November 5th we travelled along this road on
donkeys, and met numbers of women struggling with heavy
stones upon their heads and sweating from every pore.
Their work, which lasts from sunrise to dusk, is hard, and
they earn scarcely enough to keep body and soul together
— fourpence a day.
After a good half-hour's ride along the foot of a lofty hill
range, that increased in height as we journeyed north-
wards, we commenced to descend a steep and capacious
valley ; and at the bottom of this great dried-up water-
course, just where it bends eastward to gain the sea, lay the
village of Stancha, nestling amongst an abundance of
tropical growth. Owing to the limited space the houses of
this little town are closely picked together, the majority
being nothing better than huts, with walls of rough stone
pieced and stuck together with mud, and thatched with the
dried blades of the maize and sugar cane. Id colour the
huts are a predominant brown, only a shade or two darker
than the steep sides of the valley.
There are, however, besides a church, a few houses that
stand out distinct, by reason of their size, white-plastered
walls, and red-tiled roofs. One of these, a well-built
chateau, is on an eminence overlooking Stancha, and
belongs to Mr. St. Aubyn, an Englishman — and the only
one on the island.
Both he and Senhor Antonio Reis, one of the principal
Portuguese citizens of the place, showed us much kindness,
supplying us, amongst other necessaries, with bread that
was almost at famine prices.
The day after our arrival we arose early and started
out to investigate the bird life of this large valley. On
that particular morning an entrancing beauty seemed to
hold it.
Coffee bushes clothe many portions of its sides, while
on the higher ground maize surrounded the scattered huts
of peasants. Here and there the coffee growth gives way to
orange trees flourishing in the midst of sugar cane planta-
tions, bordered in places near a stream's bank with strips
of fish cane ; while beyond, and overtopping them, are tall
cocoanut trees.
AU this mass of foliage forms a fine study in shades of
green — the deep green of the orange leaf, and that of the
cocoanut palm a few tones lighter ; then the tender verdure
of the sugar cane blade ; and, lastly, the delicate bluish
green of the fish cane.
The innumerable banana plants, with some of their
large leaves in shreds, as if deftly torn by many fingers,
made avenues of the streams, with banks adorned by
maidenhair ferns hanging in tresses from the rocks.
Almost the first birds to draw our attention were
two species of sparrows — the Santiago sparrow {Passer
jaf/oensis) and the Spanish sparrow {Paxser salicicola). We
had met with them on the other islands of the archipelago,
but had come to Sao Nicolau just at the right season to
find them breeding.
Since Gould described Passer jagoensis as being peculiar
to Santiago it has now become well distributed throughout
the whole group, but it is most numerous on Santiago and
Maio, where, in the latter island, its numbers are truly
remarkable.
This bright plumaged sparrow is not at all particular as
to where it builds its nest. Where trees are absent,
hollows underneath boulders or crevices in rocks are chosen
as nesting sites. In a tree the nest is domed, but when
in a hollow of the ground it is an open, compact structure,
and often lined with feathers.
The eggs are four in number, and, like those of our tree
sparrow, in each clutch they are fairly uniform in colour,
with the exception of one, which is invariably lighter than
the rest.
As to the Spanish sparrow, it breeds in the tops of the
cocoanut trees, and for this reason it has received the
name of the " cocoanut bird " from the natives.
While on the island of Maio we came across this species
in vast numbers.
Small clumps of acacia trees in a vaUey close to the sea
presented extraordinary spectacles. The upper branches
were simply crammed with bulky domed nests, hardly a
fo'bt intervening between each, while musical chirpings
issuing from a thousand throats tended to enhance the
remarkable aspect of this sparrow colony.
Blackcap warblers filled the valley with their singing,
while now and again a far more mellow song would come
from a reed warbler ' Calamocichla breiipennis / hidden in
the depths of some coffee grove. The blackcap (Sylvia
atracapitlii) is a resident in the island, and breeds in
November. We found a considerable number of nests —
all built in the upper boughs of the coffee trees. The eggs
of only one out of the six perfect clutches we obtained
approach in any way the common type of our blackcap's ;
all the others are very light in ground colour, being
blotched, spotted, and streaked with dark and reddish
brown and underlying purplish markings — all forming a
thick zone round the larger ends.
May 2, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE
101
Of course we devoted much attention to Calamocichla
brevipinnis, and secured a fine series of this rare warbler,
together with a couple of nests containing eggs. This
species exhibits all the habits of a true reed warbler.
Though concealed from view, in yonder group of coffee
bushes there is a pair. Ever and anon the male bird
tempts his mate with song. First of all the male bird
begins by uttering a soft, melodious " chou " several times
in a deliberate and slow manner, and this call is responded
to in a similar way by the female ; and then the male, as
if assured of her attention, pours out his string of exquisite
notes. The first three notes are uttered with marked
feeling and a pause follows, after which the remaining
notes are given out in quick succession and in a higher
key — a pretty, mellow trill being given to the last one.
This song is not unlike that of our reed warbler {Acroce-
phalus streperwi), but it is of far finer quality, though not
so rich in notes. English reed beds are not conducive to
fine singing. A chilly atmosphere pervades them, while
the reeds themselves tremble and commence to jostle one
another at the mere mention of the wind's coming. And
amid such disturbing influences the reed warbler utters his
song, which at times becomes discordant and shrill as
though he were shouting to the reeds to keep quiet.
But the other reed warbler (C. brcviptiinis) pours out
his song under peaceful and lethargic influences. The
leaves hardly as much as stir ; a tropical heat pervades
the passages of the cofl^ee groves, and imparts to the bird
just that amount of languor which makes him utter his
song with soft deliberate feeling, coaxing forth the notes,
as it were, till they become round and mellow — a song,
truly, that haunts the memory.
The nest, figured here, is of a deep cup-shaped form,
Xest of Calamocichla Irevipennis in a Coffee Tree.
and bound to two or more of the upper stems of a cofi'ee
bush or of a young orange tree, and about eight or nine
feet from the ground.
Fine strips from the dried-up blades of the maize plant,
dead grass, and the fibrous rind from the trunk of the
banana tree compose the body of the nest, while fine
grass and bents form the lining.
The eggs, generally three in number, are bluish white,
spotted and blotched all over (but more thickly at the
larger ends) with pale brown and purplish brown, with
underlying blotches of violet grey.
Their dimensions correspond with those of the round
form of our reed warbler.
Round about this valley a species of owl {Strix insulaiis)
is met with. It is a very beautiful bird, and is closely allied
to our common bam owl {Stri.r jfammea). A deep fawn
colour takes the place of the white in the latter, while
its upper parts are suffused and marked with a rich French
grey. It is by no means common, and we found it a
matter of great difficulty to induce the natives to search
the tops of cocoanut trees, in which these birds generally
live. They look upon this owl with superstitious fear,
believing that a wound from its claws never heals.
On returning home, as we entered the outskirts of
Stancha, a company of Egyptian vultures arrested our
attention. They gave us a lazy glance, and then stared
in the opposite direction.
In spite of their repulsive habits, one cannot help
possessing a sneaking regard for these birds with their
wrinkled faces of the colour of yellowed parchment, for
one somehow feels that they are old and venerable, and
have outlived many a human life.
The birds find plenty of food about Stancha. Every
morning, as regular as clockwork, they troop towards the
slaughter-house and then return the same way — only a
little slower this time — to an old place of rcnile-.nius outside
the town, where they indulge in siista.-^, now and again to
awake, to ponder, perhaps, upon what the nature of the
next " kill " would be in yonder house.
During the breeding season, which is generally in
December, they cease to haunt the villages, and betake
themselves in couples to lofty hill ranges ; and then they
appear again in the vicinity of dwellings with their young
as February comes round.
The Cape Verde Islands are the westernmost range of
this species.
Above the heads of the vultures, enjoying a pure atmo-
sphere, resided a number of ravens (Comts umbrhuis) that
cawed lustily from time to time.
It is very interesting to have discovered this raven, with
the brown head and neck, on Sao Nicolau, as the species
was considered by ornithologists to have its westernmost
range in Egypt.
With another hour gone by the light of a brief twilight
commenced to creep over the plains and then down into
the valley, while the distant hills were suffused with a hue
like the purple bloom on a grape. And then, as twilight
glided into dusk, the stillness was broken by the locusts,
who vamped incessant accompaniments to the soft music
of night.
DESERTS AND THEIR INHABITANTS.
By E. LrDEKKEB, b.a., f.r s.
IP popular errors connected with matters scientific are
hard to kill, stiU more is this the case when the
erroneous opinions have been held by scientists
themselves. The idea that flints and other stones
grow is, I have good reason to believe, still far from
extinct among the non-scientific ; and it is not improbable
that there are persons possessing a more or less intimate
acquaintanceship with science who still cherish the belief
that deserts are uninterrupted plains of smooth sand,
originally deposited at the bottom of the sea, from which
102
KNOWLEDGE.
[May 2, 1898.
they Lave been raised at a comparatively recent epoch.
At any rate, there are several valuable books, published
not very many years ago, in which it is stated in so many
words that the Sahara represents the bed of an ancient
sea, which formerly separated Northern Africa from the
regions to the southward of the tropic.
As a matter of fact, these opinions with regard to the
origin and nature of deserts are scarcely, if at all, less
erroneous than the deeply ingrained popular superstition
as to the growth of flints and pudding-stones. And a little
reflection will show that the idea of the loose sands of the
desert being a marine deposit must necessarily be erroneous.
Apart from the difficulty of accounting for the accumulation
of such vast tracts of sand on the marine hypothesis, it
will be noticed, in the first place, that desert sands are not
stratified in the manner characteristic of aqueous formations ;
and, secondly, even supposing they had been so deposited,
they would almost certainly have been washed away as
the land rose from beneath the sea. Then, again, we do
not meet with marine shells in the desert sands, of which
at least some traces ought to have been left had they been
marine deposits of comparatively modern age.
Whether or no the subjacent strata have ever been
beneath the ocean, it is absolutely certain that the sands
of all the great deserts of the world have been formed (?i
situ by the disintegration of the solid rocks on which they
rest, and have been blown about and rearranged by the action
of wind alone. All deserts are situated in districts where
the winds blowing from the ocean's surface have to pass
over mountains or extensive tracts of land, which drain them
more or less completely of their load of moisture. Hence,
in the desert itself, when of the typical kind, little or no
rain falls, and there is consequently no flow of water to
wash away the de'luis resulting from the action of the
atmosphere on the rocks below.
In other words, as has been well said, desert sands
correspond in all respects, so far as their mode of origin is
concerned, to the dust and sand which accumulate on our
high roads during a dry summer. On our highways,
indeed, the summer's dust and sand are removed by the
rains of autumn and winter, only to be renewed the
following season ; but in a desert no such removal takes
place, and the amount of sand increases year by year,
owing to the disintegration of the solid rock exposed here
and there.
Only one degree less incorrect than the idea of their
submarine origin is the notion that deserts consist of
unbroken tracts of sand. It is true that such tracts in
certain districts may extend on every side as far as the eye
can reach, and even much farther; but, sooner or later,
ridges and bands of pebbles, or of solid rock, will be met
with cropping up among the sand, while frequently, as in
the Lybian desert, there are mountain ranges rising to a
height of several thousand feet above the level of the
plain. And it is these exposed rocks which form the source
whence the sand was, and still is, derived. Such moun-
tains naturally attract wh at moisture may remain in the '
air, and in their valleys are found a more or less luxuriant I
vegetation. Oases, too, where the soil is more or less I
clayey, occur in most deserts ; and it is in such spots that [
animal and vegetable life attains the maximum develop-
ment possible in the heart of the desert.
In the most arid and typical part of the Lybian desert
the sand is blown into large dunes, which are frequently
flat-topped, and show horizontal bands of partly con-
solidated rock ; and between these are open valleys, partly
covered with sand, and partly strewn with blocks of rock
polished and scored by the sand-blast. In such sand
wastes the traveller may journey for days without seeing
signs of vegetation, or hearing the call of a bird or the hum
of an insect's wing. But even in many of such districts
it is a mistake to suppose that vegetable and animal life
is entirely absent throughout the year ; in the western
Sahara, for instance, showers generally moisten the ground
two or three times a year, and after each of these a
short-lived vegetation springs suddenly up, and if no other
form of animal life is observable, at least a few passing
birds may be noticed.
Among the most important and extensive deserts of the
world we have first the great Sahara, with an approximate
area of sixteen thousand square miles, nearly connected with
which is the great desert tract extending through Arabia,
Syria, Mesopotamia, and Persia. By means of the more or
less desert tracts of Baluchistan, Sind, and Kuch, this area
leads on to the great Rajputana desert of India. More
important is the vast Gobi desert of Mongolia, and other
parts of Central Asia. In Southern Africa there is the
great Kalahari desert, of which more anon. In North
America there is a large desert tract lying east of the
Rocky Mountains, and including a great part of Sonora ;
while in the southern half of the New World there is the
desert of Atacama, on the borders of Peru and Chili.
Lastly, the whole of the interior of Australia is desert of
the most arid and typical description.
But among these, there are deserts and deserts. Tracts
of the typical barren sandy type are, as already said,
extensively developed in the Sahara, as they are in the
Gobi and the Australian deserts. Between such and the
plains of the African veld there is an almost complete
transition, so that it is sometimes hard to say whether a
given tract rightly comes under the designation of a desert
at all. A case in point is afiforded by the South African
Kalahari. Although there are endless rolling dunes of
trackless sand, and rivers are unknown, yet in many places
there is extensive forest, and alter a rain large tracts
could scarcely be called a desert at all. Mr. H. A. Bryden,
for instance, when describing the Kalahari, writes as
follows : — " And yet, during the brief weeks of rainfall, no
land can assume a fairer or more tempting aspect. The
long grasses shoot up green, succulent, and elbow-deep ;
flowers spangle the veld Ln every direction ; the giraffe
acacia forests, robed in a fresh dark green, remind one of
nothing so much as an English deer park ; the bushes
blossom and flourish ; the air is full of fragrance, and pans
of water lie upon every side. Another month, and all is
drought ; the pans are dry again, and travel is full of
difficulty." During the grassy season herds of springbok
used to migrate in the old days to the Kalahari, in the
northern part of which giraffes live the whole year, although
they must exist without tasting water for months.
While such a district can scarcely be termed a desert
in the proper sense of the word, yet its sands have pre-
cisely the same origin as those of deserts of the typical
description.
For sand to accumulate to the depths in which it occurs
in many parts of the Sahara and the Gobi by the slow
disintegration of the solid rocks under the action of
atmospheric agencies, must require an enormous amount of
time, to be reckoned certainly by thousands, and, for all we
know, possibly by millions of years. And we accordingly
arrive at the conclusion that the larger desert tracts must
not only have existed as land for an incalculable period,
but also as desert. Hence we can readily understand why
the animals of Algeria and the rest of Northern Africa
diSer for the most part from those of that portion of the
continent lying to the south of the northern tropic, the
Sahara having for ages acted as an impassable barrier-to
most if not all.
May 2, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE.
103
But if other evidence were requisite, there is another
reason which would alone suffice to compel us to regard
deserts as areas of great antiquity. The habitable parts of
all deserts — and it is diilicult for the inexperienced to
realize what barren tracts will suffice for the maintenance
of animal life — are the dwelling places of many animals
whose colour has become specially modified to the needs
of their environment. And it will be quite obvious that
such modifications of colour, especially when they occur in
animals belonging to many widely sundered groups, cannot
have taken place suddenly, but must have been due to
very gradual changes as the particular species adapted
itself more and more completely to a desert existence.
To obtain an idea of the type of coloration character-
istic of the smaller desert animals, the reader cannot do
better than pay a visit to the Natural History Museum,
where, in the Central Hall, he will find the lower part of a
case devoted to the display of a group from the Egyptian
desert, mounted, so far as possible, according to their
natural surroundings. He may also turn with advantage
to the coloured plate of desert finches and larka facing
page 380 of the third volume of the " Eoyal Natural
History."
Among such animals may be mentioned the beautiful
little rodents respectively known as jerboas and gerbils,
together with various birds, such as sand grouse, the cream-
coloured courser, the desert lark, desert finches, and desert
chat, and also various small snakes and lizards, among
the latter being the common skink. Although some of
the birds retain the black wing-quills of their allies, in all
these creatures the general tone of coloration is extremely
pale : browns, fawns, russets, olives, greys, with more or
less of black and pink, being the predominant tones ; and
how admirably these harmonize with the inanimate sur-
roundings one glance at the case in the Museum is sufficient
to demonstrate. Very significant among these are the
desert finches {Eri/throspi:a), which belong to the brightly
coloured group of rose-finches ; one of these specially
modified species ranging from the Canaries through the
Sahara and Egypt to the Punjab, while the second is an
inhabitant of the Mongolian desert.
Among larger animals a considerable number of the
gazelles are desert dwellers, these including the palest-
coloured members of the group ; and lions are likewise to
a great extent inhabitants of deserts — as, indeed, is true of
tawny and pale-coloured animals in general.
All the animals above mentioned belong, however, to
widely spread groups, which are common to the desert
tracts of both Africa and Asia, and they do not, therefore,
serve to prove the antiquity of any particular desert, as they
or their ancestors might have migrated, and probably did
migrate, from one desert to another. Birds of such groups
are, of course, even more untrustworthy than mammals,
owing to their power of flight. And among those referred
to, some, such as the sand grouse, can scarcely claim to
be regarded as exclusively desert birds, since they are
partial to any open sandy plains, like those of the Punjab,
or even Norfolk.
The case is, however, very dififerent with certain of the
larger mammals, a notable instance being afforded by the
antelopes allied to the South African gemsbok (Oryx).
All the members of this group are inhabitants of more or
less sandy open districts, and none range eastwards of
Arabia, or possibly Bushire. The gemsbok itself, together
with the beisa of Eastern and North-Eastern Africa, are
inhabitants of districts which do not, for the most part,
come under the designation of typical deserts. And we
accordingly find that they are by no means very pale
coloured animals, while both are remarkable for the bold
bands of sable ornamenting their faces and limbs. On the
borders of the Sahara there occurs, however, a very
different member of the group— the white oryx (O. leucnnj.r)
—differing from all the others by its curving horns, and
likewise by the extreme pallor of its coloration, which is
mostly dirty white, with pale chestnut on the neck and
undcr-parts. Obviously, this species has been specially
modified as reganls coloration for the exigencies of a purely
desert existence, and as it is also structurally very different
from all its existing kindred, it must clearly be looked upon
as a very ancient type, which commenced its adaptation to
the surroundings of the Sahara ages and ages ago. The
Arabian desert is the home of another species of oryx
{(>. Iieatri.r), which, although more nearly allied to the
East African beisa, is a much smaller and a much paler
coloured creature. In this case also there would seem
little doubt that the period when this animal first took to a
purely desert existence must have been extremely remote.
But an even more striking instance is afforded by
another antelope remotely connected with the gemsbok,
which is an inhabitant of the Sahara and the Arabian
desert, and is commonly known as the addax. It is an
isolated creature, with no near relation in the wide world,
easily to be recognized by its dirty white colour, shaggy
mane, and long twisted horns. It must have branched off
at a very remote epoch from the gemsbok stock, and
affords almost conclusive evidence of the antiquity of the
deserts it inhabits, since we have no evidence of the
occurrence of allied extinct species in other countries.
Some degree of caution is, however, necessary in drawing
conclusions that ail isolated desert animals have been
evolved in the precise districts they now inhabit. A case
in point is afforded by the saiga, a pale-coloured antelope
without any very near kindred, inhabiting the steppes of
Eastern Russia and certain parts of Siberia, where it is
accompanied by the hopping Kirghiz jerboa (Alactaga).
Now, since fossilized remains of both these very peculiar
animals have been discovered in the superficial deposits of
the south-eastern counties of England, it is a fair inference
that physical conditions similar to those of the steppes
(which, by the way, are by no means true deserts)
obtained in that part of our own country at an earlier
epoch of its history. From their comparatively isolated
position in the zoological system, as well as from their
occurrence in the strata referred to, both these desert animals
evidently indicate very ancient types ; and they accordingly
serve to show not only that the semi-desert steppe area
formerly had a much greater western extension than at
present, but probably also that the existing portion of that
area dates from a very remote epoch. Hence they confirm
the idea of the early origin of the present deserts of the
Old World and their inhabitants.
It will be gathered from the foregoing that the deserts
and steppes of Africa and Asia possess a large number of
animals belonging either to speci(-s which have no very
near living relatives, or to altogether peculiar genera. In
the Arizona desert of the Souoran area of North America
it seems, however, to be the case that its fauna is largely
composed of animals much more nearly related to those
inhabiting the prairie or forest lands of the adjacent
districts, of which, in many cases at any rate, they con-
stitute mere local races distinguished by their paler and
more sandy type of coloration. This is well exemplified
by the mule deer, which in the Rocky Mountains is a
comparatively dark and richly coloured animal, but be-
comes markedly paler on the confines of the Arizona desert,
assuming again a more rich coloration when it reaches the
humid extremity of the Californian peninsula. Most of
the North American mammals, indeed, acquire similar
104
KNOWLEDGE
[May 2, 1898.
pale tints as they reach the Arizona desert tract ; and a
practised naturalist can pick out with comparative ease
the specimens coming from this area from those of the
moister districts.
It is not easy to obtain information as to the physical
features of the Arizona desert as compared with the
Sahara, and especially as to the amount of sand it con-
tains area for area ; but, judging from the comparatively
slight modifications which its mammals appear to have
undergone as compared with those of the more humid
regions adjacent, it seems not unlikely that these deserts
are of more modern origin than the Sahara and the Gobi.
Whether or no it be true in this particular case, it may
be laid down as a general rule that the greater the amount
of sand to be found in a desert, and the greater the
difference between the animals inhabiting that desert from
those dwelling in the adjacent districts, the greater will be
the antiquity of the desert itself. In the case of a desert
forming a complete barrier across a continent, like the
Sahara, if the animals on one side are quite different from
those on the other, its antiquity will be conclusively
demonstrated. If, on the other hand, they are more alike,
the age of the desert will be proportionately less.
THE KARKINOKOSM, OR WORLD OF
CRUSTACEA.-III.
By the Eev. Thomas R. E. Stebbing, ji
R.S., F.L.S.
THE poet aays, " Tell me where is fancy bred." The
philosopher asks, " Where shall wisdom be found?"
To the carcinologist it is no less important to
inquire where he should search for Crustacea. To
him a comprehensive answer may be given that,
with one exception, there is no sort of place
on the garment of the globe where they may
not be encountered. Like adventures to the
adventurous, they will meet the expectant
observer as well in his daily rambles as in his
most audacious wanderings from Pole to Pole.
Only in arid deserts the pursuit is at a
monstrous disadvantage. For almost every
crustacean specimen might claim a share in
the sweet singer's epitaph : " Here lies one
whose name is writ in water." Whether Mam-
malia have had marine ancestry may be dis-
puted by the disputatious, but few will care to
deny that crabfishes and the whole crustacean
tribe must have begun the business of life in
the sea. Out of water, and out of salt water,
the most part cannot sustain life at all. Almost
all of them are dependent for health and activity
on an abundant and constant supply of moisture.
The comparatively small number of terrestrial
species, by their close affinity to the aquatic
hordes, show that they themselves must have
had water-breathing progenitors. Some of them,
as is well known, make periodical pilgrimages to
lay their eggs in the ancestral sea. In lakes
which are evidently upraised and isolated frag-
ments of the ocean, crustaceans are found the
counterparts of others which are stUl marine.
From the general facts of the distribution
one may beheve that the Crustacea began in
moderately shallow water, and that they have
thence spread themselves on the one hand to the shores,
up the rivers, over plains, valleys, and mountains, and
on the other hand into all depths and all quarters of the
widespread sea. Thus, to deal with them efficiently as
a whole you need a dredge and a trawl, a boat and a
ship. You need a navy. That such an expression is
not hyperbolical can easily be proved. For though the
names of the Racehorsr, the DUcorery, the Vincennes,
the Samarang, the Astroluhe, and others may be little re-
membered in connection with the progress of carcinology,
yet the Luihtniwi, the Porcupine, and the Challenger,
the Talisman and the Traraillcur, the Blake and the Alba-
truss, have been made familiar to the present generation
by popular narratives as well as by volumes of profound
research. Without entering into rivalry with Homer in
his famous " Catalogue of the Ships," which is after all
only a sum in addition, one may make honourable mention
of the Novara, the Jos/pliine, the Vettor Pisani, the
Dijmphna, the Willem Barents, the Alert, the Hauch, the
Buccaneer, the HirondeUe, the Princesse Alice, the Hassler,
the Caudan, the Investigator, and stUl leave the list
uncompleted. Some of the vessels, no doubt, have been
less important for their size than for their services. A full
enumeration of them, nevertheless, would show a notable
international fleet. The immediate object of each expedi-
tion may have been geographical discovery, the sounding
of depths, the laying of cables, astronomical observations,
magnetic surveys, or other such trivialities ; but overruling
destiny employed them all — more or less — in catching
crustaceans.
The ocean floor is difficult of access. The ocean surface
is more easily skimmed from a boat than from a man-of-
war. But, whether from boat or pier or ledge of rock, the
sweeping of that surface with a hand-net is productive of
treasure. It is rich in larval forms of various groups. It
is thronged with innumerable Entomostraca. For some
captures the night is the most favourable period. At some
times and places the abundance of individuals is over-
yematocarcinus Agassizii (Faxon). Deep-sea Shrimp, taken b_y the Albatross.
Life size. Upper antenna imperfect.
whelming. Square miles of ocean may be coloured by the
blood-red Calani known as " whale-food." To a cetacean,
with one or two thousand pounds worth of plates of whale-
bone depending from its cavernous skull, the extravagant
May 2, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE.
105
quantity of these Copepoda is not unwelcome. To the
naturalist the superfluity of this or any other single species
is distracting. He does not wish the novel or the rare to
be concealed or entangled amidst the multitudinous. At
times, however, numbers help to enhance the charm as well
as the wonder of the scene presented. Especially is this the
case with the genus of Copepoda called Sapphirina, concern-
ing which Dana says that nothing can exceed the beauty of
some of the species, conspicuous in single specimens, but
still more when they are congregated in abimdance. " On
account of their extreme brilliancy and rich reflected tints
they may be seen at great depths on a sunny day, and as
each becomes visible only when the position is right for
the observer's eye, the water seems to flash with moving
gems ; they even rival the richest opal and sapphire, and
the most brilliant combination of metallic hues." So they
endear themselves to the observer, and he distinguishes
the fascinating species as "the belle," " the rainbow,"
" the gem," " the radiant," " the resplendent."
There was a time when collectors deplored that on board
a swift ocean steamer they could not ply their favourite
occupation. That tantalizing era is at an end. As
explained in recent papers by Giesbrecht* and Herdman,t
small invertebrates from a few feet below the surface can
The sea-shore is generally rich in crustaceans. It is
almost always far richer than might be supposed from a
casual survey. The common shore crab, by way of
exception, is an impudent, defiant creature ; but even the
fighting shore crab is coloured for concealment, lies low by
preference, and, upon occasion ofi"ered, adopts the policy
of scuttle. As a rule the crustaceans of the shore don't
want to fight — at least not with human antagonists. They
do not court the eye ; they make themselves small. They
burrow ; they hide under stones, in crevices of rock, in
folds of seaweed, in neat but unobtrusive tubes, built
by themselves or borrowed. They mimic surrounding
objects. They prowl about in the shells of untempting
molluscs. In captivity some of them change colour ; some
of them flounder about as if indignant. The prawns and
shrimps and hoppers make astounding and unexpected
leaps and bounds — not into the arms of the intellectual
observer, but in the other direction, in an unappreciative
sort of way. There are Tanaids and Cumacea so tiny that
to look for them in the sand which they inhabit is like
looking for a needle in a pottle of hay. These can be
obtained by stirring about a spadeful of the shore in a
bucket of water, and then pouring the water through a
fine net before the small animals have had time to bixry
/C-v,
Last uropod of the Urothoe,
highly magnified.
Urothoe brevicornis (Bate). From
North AVales.
Second antenna of ffavstorius
arenarius (Slabber).
now be easily obtained while the ship is in full career, by
day or by night, in tempest or in calm. The water which
is continually being drawn into the vessel to supply tanks
and baths is simply filtered through nets, which detain the
desired organisms. Dr. John Murray, Captain Ht-ndorff,
and Dr. Kiiimer are credited with having been the
pioneers in this method of retrieving — so facile, so fruitful,
so inexpensive. Thus far it appears that a large proportion
of the game which is bagged in this ingenious manner
consists of Copepoda. How great a hold these and other
Entomostraca have obtained on all the waters of the
globe, both fresh and saline, will be cons-idered hereafter
in connection with notes on their classification. For the
Copepoda in particular Mr. I, C. Thompson has recently
called attention to the grand economic service rendered by
their immense profusion at the mouths of rivers and
outside harbours. Transmuting the importunate refuse
of populous towns into their own minute forms of life,
they in turn become the food of larger marine animals,
variously adapted to gratify the palate of Lucullus, to
illumine his banquet, or adorn his person.
* Abdruclc aus den Zool-jgischen Jahrliicheru, JCeunter Band, 1896.
tfrom Trans. Liverpool Biol. Soc, Vol. XII., 1897.
themselves once more in the subsiding sand. The
ampbipod, Haustoriiis arenariiui, can be obtained in the
same manner, but also by simple digging, as it is a monster
half an inch long. It will " scriggle " in the hand, but is
warranted harmless. O'tfn, Lowevt-r, wlitn taken, it
morosely or mcdestly folds itself up, unwilling to display
the beauties which, were it an exotic species, would make
it a prize. It appears to be little known, though widely
distributed on the sandy shores of our islands ; and much
the same may be said of the species of Urothoe and
Bafhyporeia.
It should be remembered that the population of the sand
is in general quite difi'erent from that of the seaweed-
covered rocks and stones, and this is illustrated in a rather
remarkable manner by the distinction between the sand-
hoppers and the shore-hoppers, although the two groups are
closely related. Of the rock pools it must sutfice to say
that, in sheltered and unfrequented spots, they are often
Liliputian gardens of marine zoology, from which many
interesting crustaceans may be gathered, either by
examining tufts of weed or by fishing with a fine net.
Diflerent forms are to be expected, according as the climate
of the district explored is cold, temperate, or tropical ; but
some species have an extremely extended and others a very
106
KNOWLEDGE
[May 2, 1898.
limited distribution. Tiie mangrove swamps of the tropics
are distinguished by a highly remarkable crustacean fauna.
The weed of the Sargasso Sea may be regarded as a kind
of floating shore. It has its own crabs and shrimps.
Turtles and hairy crabs play the part of floating islands
to a considerable population, and an anchored buoy is
often rich in amphipods among its fringing weeds.
To the general policy of concealment above described
there are some ex-
ceptions. On the
open shore the sessile
cirripedes called
Balani make no pre-
r^ '•iT''^^^^^m tence of hiding. Being
cemented to the rock,
they cannot run away
if they would, and
they have little reason
to wish for the power.
The hermit crab may
say, like an EngUsh-
uian, " My house is
my castle" ; but the
Balanus is a castle in
itself. Six rigid in-
terlocking valves
make a stout wall
round about it, and
the movable valves
above, through which
from time to time
Flaf/iarthriis lloffmannseygii (Braudt). ^'^^ delicate cirri pro-
From ants' nest, South of England, trude, can be firmly
closed down at the
top. Great stretches of coast-margining rocks are coated
with colonies of these Balani. But there are many
other situations in which cirripedes occur. Like the
spider, which impartially fastens its web to the rafter of a
cottage or the ceiling of an imperial palace, the cirripede
plants itself on the body of a whale or the carapace of a
crab, on the iron sides of a merchantman or on a piece of
pumice. It will cluster in dense masses round an old
floating bottle, and some of the small species crowd the
mouth-organs of crab or crawfish, with easy security,
wuere tbny might seem to be running into the jaws of
death. The sau3age-like PuchtjhdAla carcini is parasitic on
the tail part of Can-inus mcEnm, the above-mentioned
shore crab, and within reach of the claws of its ho.-t.
Now, if there is one thing more than another about which
toe sLoie crab is touchy, it is about having its tail part
drawn away from its breast, except by the intervening
ma-»s of its own numerous eggs. No doubt the heartless
Pachtjbdella, brainless impostor though it be, is all the while
making believe to be the eggs of the deluded shore crab.
But the afflicting behaviour of parasites is too extensive a
subject for the end of a chapter.
Of inland Crustacea there is much to be told, of which
only a hint or two can here be given. Several of the groups
are but poorly represented in our own islands. Apart
from Entomostraca, our fresh waters can boast of a crayfish
and here and there a prawn, of the isopod Asclluti communiii,
and of a few Amphipoda in rivulets, lakes, and wells. We
have nineteen species of terrestrial Isopoda, these wood-
lice including the small Platyarthrus Ho/mannsrijijii, found
only in ants' nests — blind, slow moving, white ; and the
delicate Trkhonim-ius roscjte— nimble, rose-coloured, and
rare. Exotic species of sessile-eyed crustaceans may
chance to be found in our botanic gardens as they have
been in France. But no land crabs are likely to disturb
our picnics, requiring as in Panama the flourish of a
cudgel to repress their effrontery. No river crabs ascend
the summit of Helvellyn to match those found at similar
heights in Himalayan ricefields. No little mole of a cray-
fish burrows under our flower beds, as in Tasmania. We
have no prawns like those of America, which rival the size
of large lobsters ; or like those of the Ganges, concerning
which the Asiatic complacently observed to the fastidious
Englishman, " Prawn eat nigger — nigger eat prawn." No
hermit crabs on our hills confront the geologist as they. do
in the West Indies, marching about among the bush in
large and heavy shells transported from the beach a
thousand feet below. No Binnis latro, strange hermit
without a shell, is here seen competing for cocoanuts as in
the islands of the Pacific. But notwithstanding some
deficiencies, our position is extraordinarily favourable for
the study of Crustacea. The extensive seaboard with its
many sheltered bays and inlets and harbours ; the variety
of climate from north to south and from summer to
winter ; the diftering depths of water roimd our coasts ; the
ebb and flow of tides ; the mud, the sand, the weeds, the
rocks, the stones of the shores ; the frequent occurrence of
wooden piles for piers or breakwaters, of buoys and other
floating objects ; the abimdance of fish and of empty shells,
severally enable us to accommodate a multitude of
crustacean species out of proportion to the space our
islands cover on a map of the world. To become familiar
with the names and with the nature, with the habitat and
with the habits, of all these species, will be found a task
the more inexhaustible the more absorbing the industry
brought to bear upon it.
NEBULA AND REGION ROUND y CASSIOPEIyE.
By Isaac Roberts, d.sc, f.r.s.
THE photograph covers the region between R.A.
Oh. lom. and R.A. Oh. 55m. 57s. ; declination
between 59° :2r and 6F 2' north. Scale — one
millimetre to twenty-four seconds of arc.
Co-ordinates of the fiducial stars marked with
dots for the epoch a.d. 1900.
star (.) D.M. No. Hi Zone -t-eo" E.A. Oh. 47m. "-Ss. Dec. N.eO"" 3S-9 Mag. 5-0
„ (..) ., H« „ 59» „ Oh. .50in. 4.V0s. „ 19° 49-3' „ 6-3
,.(•.) „ 157 „ 6iy „ Oh.olm 161s. ., 60»531' „ 70
,.(::) ., 161 ,, 50' ,, Ou. 53m. Sr-jj. „ 5a» 5S 3 „ 7'i .
The photograph was taken with the twenty-inch reflector
on 1895, October 25th, between sidereal time Oh. 16m. and
Ih. 46in., with an exposure of the plate during ninety
minutes.
On the north following side of / are two nebulae having
the outlines of cones or fans, with faint nebulosity between
them, which on the negative can be traced nearly the
whole distance between one nebula and the other ; the
apexes of the nebulae are bright, and the brightness
diminishes gradually into invisibility as it expands outwards
from the conical ends. The nebula farthest from the
north is brighter than the other, and both have a cloud-
like struct'ire, with many stars of between the ninth and
seventeenth magnitudes involved, apparently, in them.
The following are the measured position angles and
distances of the nebulfe.
Position angle from 7 of the faint star touching the
apex of the conical end of the northernmost nebula,
14° 20' 12 ' ; distance from 7 22' 16". Position angle of
the faint star touching the apex of the other nebula,
57° 84' 51" ; distance from 7 19' 19".
A photograph of the region here referred to was taken
on 1890, January 17th, upon which the two nebuhe were
faintly, but distinctly, shown ; and I have compared the
NEBULiE NEAR r CASSIOPEIiE.
By ISAAC ROBERTS, D.Sc, F.R.S.
S
May 2, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE
107
original negative of that photograph with the one h^re
depicted, with the result that no obvious chin^e could be
detected to have taken place, either in the nebulie ihem-
selves, or in the relative position angles, or distances
between them and y, or of the surrounding stars.
An interval of tive and three-quarter years is therefore
too short to show sensible changes to have taken place in
these objects. From this it follows that their distances
from the earth are great ; and we havi' jvt no unqu-ation-
able evidence to prove that the nebuhe are phy-<ically
connected with the star y, but their apparent distances
from the star are not too great for us to entertain the
possibility of sucli a physical connection.
The diffused patch of light surrounding y mnst not be
mistaken for nebulosity ; for it is caused by the strong
light of the star illummating a part of the earth's atmo-
sphere afl'ecting the photographic plate during the exposure.
This atmospheric glare is of the same character as that
observed in forming halos round the sun, moon, and bright
stars ; but the possibility of the star having an extended
coronal light around it should not be omitted from con-
sideration, for, though it might exist, its structure would
be masked on the photograph, by the atmospheric glare,
as effectually as that of the solar corona is masked.
There are many stars visible on the negative involved
in the patch of glare, but they cannot be reproduced on
the photo copies, for the reason that if the glare is printed
out so also are all the stars that differ but little from it in
density.
A dense photo image of the star can be obtained with
the twenty-inch reflector in a small fraction of a second of
time ; but an exposure during an hour, or more, is required
to show the fainter parts of the nebulm, and the faint
stars, with clearness.
THE RECENT ECLIPSE.
By E. Walter Maunder, f.r.a.s.
THE methods of investigation employed during the
late eclipse were so numerous, and their general
success so great, that it seems impossible to give
any adequate accoimt of the entire campaign in a
single paper. I have therefore thought it would
be better if I confined myself to the work on which my
wife and I were immediately engaged, and I have no
donbt that the editors will easily be able to arrange for a
succession of similar papers, contributed by observers
engaged in other departments.
My wife and I, when we contemplated going to India
to take part in the eclipse observations, found ourselves
confronted by an extremely difficult problem. Our instru-
mental means were of the very smallest. They consisted
of a small binocular, one eyepiece of which was fitted
with a little direct-vision prism, and of a photographic
camera, the lens of which, though of high quality, had
but an aperture of one and a half inches, and a focal
length of nine inches. We could not but compare, with
something like a feeling of dismay, this almost microscopic
equipment with the magnificent instruments with which
the members of the official parties were furnished, or
which the directors of large observatories had at their
disposal. We were standing up in line, armed with our
little flint-headed arrows, whilst our comrades in the
battle were rejoicing in the possession of Maxims and
Lee-Metfords.
Still, after looking the problem round, we concluded that
it was not one to lose heart over. We saw our way to at
least trying three lines of work. With the opera-glass and
prism I intendt-d to ascert-iin the distribution of coroiiiurn
in the corona, and especially to see if it fhowed the rifts
and rays whicli form so sirkiog a feature of omnil
struciure as it ttppears to the ^ye. With the camera, we
thought that we might try, fir^t, by giving a v ry ioog
exposure to ob'ain an image of the long cor)n'il streamers,
and secondly to photograph the corona, if possible, after the
end of totaliiy.
All three enterprises appear? d very hizirdons. It was
exoeediugly doubtful under t le first heid whether, with so
sm-ill a dispersion, the 1 171 K light would be snffi -.lenily
stioug to declare itself o^ar the continuous spectrum which
the corona also gives. Tne atiempt t > secure the long
extensions was less likely still. Only a week or two
before we left England Miss Gierke, whose admirable
judgment and exact insight in astronomical matters have
deservedly won such wide and general confidence, had
written : — " . . . the camera, owing to special difficul-
ties, has not yet been able to pursue them [the coronal
extensions so far as four solar diameters." (" Concise
Knowledge Library," Astronomy, p. 268.) And Mr. Albert
Taylor, in a paper read before the Royal Dublin Society in
1891 — a paper evidently most carefully thought out and
in the conclusions of which our own experience led us to
place great confidence — had laid down that the maximum
effective exposure for F 15 iu coronal photography was
thirty seconds — that is to say, for our camera five seconds.
Such exposures had on former eclipses failed to give any
great extensions ; indeed, had generally proved less
effective than shorter exposures, from the cause Mr. Taylor
so clearly points out — the great brilliance of the sky back-
ground. WhUat the last item on our programme seemed,
a fortiori, to be more doubtful still.
It will be seen that our prospects did not appear too
brilliant. Nevertheless, we felt strongly that if new fields
of eclipse work were to be opened up it necessarily involved
the risk of failuVe in the first experiments, and those first
experiments might be made as effectively on a very re-
stricted scale as on a large one. Their success would be
no less indubitable, their failure far cheaper.
And we felt that we were justified in undertaking this
risk. We received absolutely no financial help from
(lovemment or any other public body, either for our
equipment or for our personal expenses in our expedi-
tion, and we were therefore hampered by no restrictions
whatsoever.
We had, moreover, groimds for hope. We had made a few
experiments in the use of the " Sandell " double and triple
coated plates, and had been convinced that they at least
offered us a chance over and above that which ordinary
dry plates afforded. It seemed to us that, by their use in
conjunction with a slow and prolonged development, it
might be possible to bring up the faint extensions of the
corona before the sky glare blotted them out ; whilst in view
of Prof. Wadsworth's recent papers, the very smallness of
the scale of our instrument formed an encouragement.
One difficulty, however, remained. The second item in
our programme demanded an equatorial and driving clock.
These we were without, but the Council of the Royal
Astronomical Society very generously placed at our dis-
posal the pretty little equatorial and camera bequeathed
to it by the late Mr. Sidney Waters, f.r.a.s., and met the
expense of putting it into full working order.
The camera attached to this equatorial was not suitable
* The geaerositT of tTo members of the British Astronomical
Association enabled the iiehpse Committee of that body to undertake
the expense of insuring the instruments taken out by the members of
its two expeditions, and we have to thank them for our share iu this
benefit.
108
KNOWLEDGE.
[May 2, 1898.
for the special work which we had in contemplation, but
it eeemed to us that we might make good use of it. It was
fitted with one of Dallmeyer's telephotographic lenses, and
had a full aperture of nearly two and a half inches and an
equivalent focal length of almost eight feet. The mag-
nifying power employed was therefore very nearly twelve
diameters. This appeared to us much too high, but the
definition which we actually obtained justified Mr. Waters
in his choice of so great a scale, and forms the highest
possible testimonial to the quality of Mr. Dallmeyer's
optical work. Our idea was that with the two cameras
we might obtain a series of photographs, the equivalent
exposures of which might be arranged so as to form a geo-
metrical series ranging from the shortest up to Taylor's
over this one hundred and forty degrees the "coronium"
ring was perfectly continuous, it was interrupted by no
rifts, it spread out into no rays. It was traceable to a
height of between five and six minutes from the moon's limb,
and corresponded therefore very closely to what to the eye
appeared to be the brightest inner corona. So far, then,
"coronium " appears to be pretty evenly distributed round
the sun, and not to follow the striking and characteristic
forms which attract such notice in the corona as seen
directly.
Our second field of work, the attempt to photograph the
long coronal streamers, met with a most wonderful success.
Our two long-exposure plates — four times Taylor's Umit —
equivalent to one hundred and twenty seconds with F/15 —
Sun's Equator.
limit. The common ratio in this case was about four and
a half, and, taking Taylor's limit as unity, ranged from one
four-hundredth up to one. We thought this additional
item would not be devoid of interest, as it seemed to us
that not a few coronal photographs on former occasions
had failed to be so successful as they might have been
through over exposure.
So much as to our programme ; now as to our results.
With the prismatic opera-glass, my first sensation, after
watching the indescribably beautiful changes which the
spectrum underwent as totality came on, was one of pro-
found disappointment. The continuous spectrum entirely
swamped nearly all the bright rings except those of
hydrogen and hehum ; and the 1474 K ring, either because
it was fainter on the eastern side than on the western, or
because my eyes took some time to become attuned to the
light, was not seen till after the middle of totality. It was
then detected over an arc of about one hundred and forty
degrees — that is to say, only in the semicircle round the
point of third contact, and not over the whole of that, as
the continuous spectrum was necessarily so bright at its
two edges as to swamp the bright line spectrum there. Still,
showed the four principal coronal streamers to a much
greater distance than ever before. They can be clearly
and unmistakably followed to distances from the moon's
centi'e of three, four, four and a half, and six diameters
respectively. In the case of the great south-west ray we
believe that we have traced it, though very feebly, under
suitable illumination, to a much greater distance still, and
we may have further remarks to make upon its details on
some future occasion. As it is, however, it is beyond
challenge that this south-west ray is shown clearly and
distinctly upon two photographs much further than has
been the case in any photograph of the corona that has
ever been taken before.
Indeed on three photographs. For beside these two long-
exposure photographs taken on " S an dell " plates (kindly
developed by Mr. J. T. SandeU himself), a third photo-
graph taken with one quarter the exposure — practically
Taylor's limit — an " Ilford extra rapid " plate which we
developed ourselves, might have claimed, had it not been
for the two " SandeU '' plates, to have given the record
coronal extension.
The orientation of these three plates is given with great
May 2, 1898.1
KNOWLEDGE.
109
precision by the presence upon them of Venus, which
burned like a lamp some six degrees away from the sun.
The plates were amply large enough to take in the planet,
since they were sixteen centimetres square ; and the focal
length of the lens being nine inches, six and one-third
degrees correspond to an inch, and the solar diameter is
almost exactly one-twelfth of an inch.
We learn at once by this means that the great south-
west ray, so far from coinciding with the sun's equator,
lay in thirty-five degrees south latitude. The two rays
which composed the " fishtail " on the eastern side of the
sun, lay some twenty-four degrees north and south of the
equator respectively, the equator itself therefore being
void of any great streamer.
It will be seen that, in disregarding Taylor's limit, we
have been abundantly vindicated by the result. Never-
theless, the considerations Mr. Taylor urged in the paper
alluded to substantially held good. In developing these
plates, even the one with only five seconds exposure, the
general sky glare came up deep and black at an early stage.
Here we owe our success to the fact that we exposed two
plates for each given exposure. The companion plate to
the Ilford five seconds was in itself a comparative failure,
but its development gave us the experience and courage
necessary to push the development of its more fortunate
comrade to a successful conclusion.
Our last photograph was the most important. Totality
was over by nearly two minutes when we exposed a plate
with our little camera for a second and a half. This on
development yielded us not only the brilliant arc of sun-
light, but showed an unmistakable coronal ring, for the
entire dark disc of the moon is seen upon it.
This success, we may well hope, will have far-reaching
effects. It is a very long way from realizing that ambition
of so many astronomers, the photographing the corona
in full sunlight. But the corona has never before been
photographed unmistakably and beyond challenge in so
mucit sunlight. And even should it never lead on to the
desired goal, something has at least been done to lift large
partial eclipses from the category of being astronomical
mere waste material. It will be a distinct advance if in
future we can fix the
positions of the roots
of the great coronal
rays on such more
frequent occasions : a
most necessary advance
if we are to learn the
true nature of coronal
change and motion.
Our experiments,
therefore, were success-
ful beyond our hopes,
and their success seems
to justify us in having
made them. Yet had
they failed we feel that we should have been not one
whit less justified.
But our photographs are on an almost microscopic
scale, and although sufficient to prove the practicability of
our methods it is much to be desired that they should be
repeated on the next occasion with ampler means. We
feel it incumbent on us, if any way possible, to take part
in the observation of the next eclipse, that of May 28th,
1900. ^Ve want to photograph the sun during the entire
period of the partial phases, to give a considerable range
of exposures, and to try the efiect of various developments.
We want, in short, to follow the corona to the utmost
extent which the sunlight permits. We want also to
obtain the greatest possible extension of it. We want also
to give two exposures during totality of much greater
length than the longest we gave in India. These experi-
ments we are prepared to carry out with the little camera
which has just done us such yeoman service, but we
earnestly hope that we may also be entrusted with in-
struments that may enable us to duplicate this programme,
but on a much larger scale.
The accompanying pictures are reproduced from drawings
which Mr. W. H. Wesley has most kindly made from the
original long-exposed photographs. Amongst other details
of interest Mr. Wesley especially remarks on the cor-
roboration which these negatives aft'ord of certain well-
known drawings of the corona. Hitherto there has been
a wide difference between the corona as presented us on
the sensitive plate and in drawings even of the most trust-
worthy observers, and this fact has thrown a good deal of
doubt upon the value of such drawings. A comparison
of the corona as here shown with the well-known drawing,
by Captain Bullock, of the eclipse of 1868, shows a most
remarkable resemblance between the two. If the two
were representations of the same eclipse one could not ask
a more complete correspondence.
Noti»0 of Boolts.
A New Astronomy for Bt;iinners. By David P. Todd,
M.A., PH.D. (The American Book Company, New York.
1898.) This book deserves an appreciative welcome. It
is moderate in compass, precise in plan, succinct in treat-
ment. There is a freshness about it, too, that pleasantly
reminds one of its origin in a "new" continent. Loci
commuufs are few : the topics introduced are mostly dis-
cussed from an original point of view ; students are made
to feel the i)uranlne<is of them. A " pedagogic purpose"
is throughout kept in view. The fundamental idea of the
volume is to teach astronomy as a science of observation —
to inculcate principles and indicate modes of working
them out in practice, no matter how roughly, were the
available equipment " but a yard stick, a pinhole, and the
rule of three." One recalls — ^be it said without prejudice
— the system in vogue at Dotheboys Hall of learning
botany by planting cabbages. For, apart from the
rigorous sic ros non fohi.s code there enforced, that system
possesses high excellences and manifold resources, which
Prof. Todd's sixteen years' experience as a teacher enables
him to develop to the full. With resourceful ingenuity,
he makes the " appeal to observation which can alone,"
as Huxley wrote, " give scientific conceptions firmness and
reality." In the pages before us, precepts are given for
pursuing a "laboratory course" in the study of the
heavenly bodies ; the construction of home-made apparatus,
needing only " moderate mechanical deftness,' is de-
scribed preferably to the latest refinements of modern
instrumental methods ; nor can we doubt that its use,
while flattering the instinctive egotism of beginners, tends
at the same time to develop in them both mental alacrity
and manual aptitude. The present author, while rightly
dwelling upon " the importance of thinking rather than
memorizing," lets them ofi' with perhaps undue ease from
the stem necessity of confronting mathematical difficulties.
Yet we cannot find it in our hearts to quarrel with the
capital illustration at page 398, where an instantaneous
photograph of a " foul ball " at cricket replaces a formal
demonstration that "a projectile's path is a parabola."
The book is to a most praiseworthy extent "up to date."
The newest results in every department are included in it —
included, perhaps, with too slight an allowance of grains
110
KNOWLEDGE,
[May 2, 1898.
of salt, desirable c«cf((f.s being here and there conspicuously
absent. We note, however, with satisfaction that the
author has boldly adopted Schiaparelli's long periods of
rotation for Mercury and Venus, while withholdin;,' an
unqualified assent from the hypothesis of "irrigation
works " on Mars. A few slips and errors might be pointed
out, but they are in general not very material. The most
misleading is an attempt to explain stellar variability by
the direct analogy of sunspots, the actually subsisting
relation being of the inverse kind. Most of the illustrations
are new and excellent. Only the coloured frontispiece
savours of claptrap.
A Uixtonj of FoH-Uwi. By Rev. H. A. Macpherson,
.M.A., ji.D.o.u. (Edinburgh : David Douglas.) Illustrated.
We have in this volume a detailed and exhaustive
account of the many curious devices by which wild birds
are or have been captured in different parts of the world.
The energy, the pains, and the time which the author
has expended in the compilation of his work may be
gathered from the fact that his plan has been, as he tells
us in the introduction, " to read through every ornitho-
logical work that I could find, in the five or six languages
which are all that I can personally translate"; besides
which he has elicited much information by correspondence
with persons in Japan, China, Borneo, India, AustraUa,
New Zealand, as well as in many different parts of Europe,
Africa, and America.
The result is that we have a book which will long remain
as a classic upon the subject of past and present fowling
(exclusive of the use of gunpowder) in every part of the
world. Comment upon such a book is needless, since it is
evident at the outset that the author has made himself a
thorough master of his subject. The book is profusely
illustrated ; many of the cuts being taken from rare and
quaint prints and drawings specially prepared from speci-
mens of traps and devices which the author has procured
from many parts of the world. The book is printed and
bound in the sumptuous style generally adopted by Mr.
David Douglas — a style very well suited for a book of this
character, but the use of which cannot be too strongly
condemned for books which should be within reach of the
purse of every naturalist.
It is neither our intention nor indeed within our province
to dictate to anyone as to what he should do or what he
should not do, but we cannot refrain from expressing our
regret that so good an ornithologist as the author should
have employed so much energy and time in a work of this
character, which does little to advance the science in
which he is so prominent and devoted a labourer.
What ix Life.' or. Where are lee .' KViat are ive .' Whence
did iir come .' mid Whither do ue go ! By Frederick Hoven-
den. (Chapman & Hall.) 6s. As the majority of people
are rightly impressed with the complexity of the experiences
and functions which are collectively referred to as " life,"
Mr. Hovenden's well-meaning efforts to reduce this com-
plex expression to its simplest terms may, by those who
judge books by their titles, be considered deserving of
encouragement. An examination of the prolix argument,
and perusal of the large amount of irrelevant matter con-
tained in this volume, will, however, soon convince the
reader that there are many things both in life and in
Mr. Hovenden's explanations of it quite beyond com-
prehension.
The book, which comprises two hundred and eighty-four
pages, is divided into three parts. The first of these
consists of a statement of the case in two pages ; the
second is concerned with what the author calls the
evidence proving the case ; the third includes the deductions
which Mr. Hovenden derives from the issue. The " state-
ment of the case " is a bewildering succession of definitions
of elementary truths and assertions which challenge
contradiction. We have no space to multiply instances,
but the following examples are typic*! of the uneven value
of these statements : — " 4. Time is the measurement of
terrestrial motion." "9. AU 'regeneration' arises from
the influence of the prime factor, the ether, through
which the inherent properties of the atom or molecule are
made active. Hence, no ether, no regeneration.''
In Part II. Mr. Hovenden succeeds in being interesting
only when he confines himself to a description of well-
recognized facts, and forgets Lis special mission. When he
is possessed by the prophetic spirit he becomes impolite.
Thus, on page 50 : " The mathematician is so confident that
his powers are absolute, and he is so dogmatic in his tone,
that he is unapproachable. He stands alone, a monument
of his own creation, in his own egotistical greatness. " Or,
page 53 ; " The public should study and grasp these ideas,
which transcend the mind of the physicist, for the physicist
has got into a fossilized condition ; he will not move until
that rising power, general intelligence, forces him." We
trust that when this happens it will not mean the publica-
tion of more books after the nature of the present one.
We must refer the curious reader to the book for the
contents of Part III. Mr. Hovenden becomes even more
pronounced in his language when he speaks of the orthodox
religious teachers of the time. On page 221, in dealing
with the story of the fall of man, our author says : " What
must we say, then, of priests who attempt to fossilize the
mind within the limits of this grand lie ! — a lie which is
damned." The italics are Mr. Hovenden's.
But we must leave this book, which Mr. Hovenden
describes as his " contribution to the altruism which is to
commemorate the jubQee of our beloved Queen Victoria,"
and as ■' the result of original experiments, earnest
thought, of extensive reading, and of help from contem-
porary workers and thinkers. It is practically the work of
a lifetime." We can only regret that the work of a life-
time should not have been better directed and more
worthily employed.
The Sun's Place in Nature. By Sir Norman Lockyer,
K.cB., r.B.s. (Macmillan & Co. London, 1897.) 12s. The
present work is, in the main, a repubUcation of a series of
" lectures to working men," given in 1894, at the School
of Mines, by Sir Norman Lockyer, and which were pub-
lished in Nature at that time.
We must at the outset enter our protest against the
attacks upon one of the most eminent astronomers of the
age which disfigure so much of the present book. They
lower science and scientific men in the eyes of the pubUe,
and they tend to hide from the reader the real value of
Sir Norman Lockyer's own work.
For if we could cut out from the present volume these
unworthy attacks on Sir William Huggins, and the
author's reiteration of his own infallibility — a good third
of the book — we should have left a very large amount of
most valuable scientific material, most of which has been
the work of Sir Norman Lockyer himself or has been
gathered under his superintendence. Prof. Lockyer's
industry in the collection of facts and opinions is great,
and this book, like the " Chemistry of the Sun " and the
" Meteoritic Hypothesis," will be very useful as a work of
reference.
The chief points dealt with in the work are, in the first
book, the romantic story of the discovery of terrestrial
helium ; in the second^ the demonstration that nebuL-e and
stars are but stages in one and the same evolution ; the
third book is an attempt to reinforce the meteoritic
hypothesis from the observations of new stars ; the fourth
May -2, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE
m
and final book is a strong argument that we have, amongst
the stars, oases not only of diminishing but also of rising
temperature, and incidentally that our sun should be in-
cluded in the former class. Had the work been confined
to the setting forth of these four subjects it would have
demanded a very considerable meed of praise, though Sir
Norman Lockyer is always too much theory-ridden to be
quite a safe guide to the student. A further and serious
drawback to the book is that several of the most important
diagrams are completely spoiled in the printing.
The Concise h'nowlethje Astronomy. By Agnes M. Gierke,
A. Fowler, and -J. Ellard Ciore. (Hutchinson & Co.
London, 1898.) os. A handbook of astronomy from three
such writers might well be expected to be one of most
unusual excellence, and, as a matter of fact, there can be
no question but that they have produced a very useful
and interesting volume. And yet, those to whom the
deservedly high reputations of Miss Gierke and Mr. Gore
are known, will scarcely avoid a feeling of disappointment.
This is chieHy due to the untoward conditions under which
these two gifted writers have had to work. To Miss Gierke
are assigned two sections of the book — a history of
astronomy and the section on the solar system. The
former has been limited to thirty-six pages and has been
marvellously well done within this contracted compass.
It is true that it begins only with Hipparchus, omitting
absolutely all reference to the astronomies of Chaldea and
early Egypt, and the enforced rapidity of its glance gives
no opportunity to the author fairly to exercise her research
or her grace of style. In the third section, on the solar
system, also entrusted to her. Miss Gierke has an ampler
space, which she therefore uses to much better effect, but
which is yet too confined for her subject. And we notice
in not a few instanses that an unfaltering verdict is given
on subjects which are still before the court. So doubt, did
space permit, the evidence for and against would have been
fairly presented. We may mention as illustrations the
rotation of Venus and the nature of the zodiacal light.
Mr. Gore in the fourth section, on the sidereal heavens,
has brought together a vast amount of important informa-
tion ; but it is simply a reference book, carefully collated,
well arranged — not a treatise.
Mr. Fowler, in section two, on geometrical astronomy
and astronomical instruments, deserves unqualified praise,
and has handled bis subject in a clear, straightforward,
businesslike manner. We may mention the conditions,
number, and recurrence of eclipses, the " hunter's " and
" harvest " moons, amongst many others as subjects which
he has treated with special lucidity. We would only take
some exception to the title " Geometrical Astronomy " as
applied to his section, as the term so used is a little apart
from its ordinary acceptance.
In conclusion the book is admirably illustrated by five
fine plates and a number of clear diagrams. Its faults,
which are few, are almost inseparable from the plan of such
a handbook ; and as carried out by its three authors the
book is most thorough, trustworthy, and complete.
SHORT NOTICES.
Phiisiof/raphif fur Advanced Students. Bv A. T. Simmons, B.sc.
(Macmillan.) Illustrated, -ts. 6cl. Intended for students preparing
for the exaniinations of the Science and Art Department, this book
is one of the best which we have seen for that purpose. There are
many others in the field written on similar lines, but in this one a
large section is devoted to geolosv — a subject which, in the new
syllabus, has been considerably modified — and in many other respects
the author has contrived to adapt his subject-matter to the latest
requirements of that unstable syllabus of physiography which, ever
since its first inception, has been undergoing a kind of metamorphosis
that renders all books on the subject of an ephemeral character.
Hence the never-ending procession of them, which, like Banquo's line
of kings stretching out to the crack of doom, quickly follow on the
heels of each other.
Slementari/ J'hi/sics, Practical and Theoretical. First Year's
Cour.ie. By John G. Kerr, m.a. (Blackie.) Illustrated. Is. 6d.
Intended for organized science schools, this book deals with both
practical and theoretical physics, and includes mechanics and hydro-
statics for first year students. The treatment of the subjects is con-
ventional, yet sound. The book will, no doubt, serve as a useful
lever for the purpose of lifting students over the stile in those for-
midable examinations of the Science and Art Department.
We have received from Messrs. George Philip & Son a little book
entitled '" A Popular Introduction to the Study of the Sun," by George
Mackenzie Knight, a very young man, who displays a wonderful
insight into that complex subject — cosmography. Mr. Knight is
already known as the author of a sliort history of astronomy. The
work under notice is written in an eminently popular style, and, as
the production of a young man only twenty years of age, it augurs
well for the author's future as a man of letters. The book is inscribed
to tlie late llr. Ranyard, who took a friendly interest in the youthful
astronomer's earlier work.
Semarkable Comets. By William Thynne Lynn, b.a.. f.b.s. Sixth
Edition. (Stanford.) 6d. The present edition of this little brochure
is brought up to date. All the n ost remarkable comets from the
earliest times up t3 the present day are here described. A list of
comets which are expected to return during the next hundred years
is inserted at the end of the book.
The Story of the British Coinage. By Gertrude Burford Bawlings.
(Xewnes.) Illustrated. Is. Our author has presented the history
of our coinage from the earliest times. Each coin is exactly described,
and many of them are figured on both the obverse and reverse sides.
Colonial coins also are included, and photographic reproductions
given, the whole forming a very complete and handy guide to what
may be called British numismatics.
BOOKS RECEIVED.
William Moon, LL.D., and his Work for the Blind. By John
Rutherford, m.a. (llodder & Stoughton.) Illustrated, os.
Cantor Lectures on Gutla-Percha. By Dr. Eugene F. A. Obach,
F.i.c. (Society of Arts.)
A Student's Text-Book of Zooloffi/. By Adam Sedgwick, ii.A.,
F.ES. (Sonnenschein.) IDustrated. 18s.
With Peari/ near the Pole. Bv Eivind Astrup. Translated bv
H. J. Bull. (C. A. Pearson, Ltd.) ' Ulustrated. 10s. 6d.
The Free- Trade Movement. By G. Armitage - Smith, M.A.
(Blackie & Son.) 2s. 6d.
Viisical Statics. By .Tohn Curwin. \ew Edition. Revised by
T. F. Harris, B.sc. (Curwin & Sons.) Illustrated. 3s. 6d.
A Simple Photographic Guide to the Choice of a Photographic
Lens. By T. R. Dallmeycr. (Dallmeyer, Ltd.) Illustrated.
Elementarg Chemistrg. First fear's Course. By T. A. Cheetham.
(Blackie.) Illustrated. Is. 6d.
Practical Radiography. By A. W. Isenthal and H. Snowden
Ward. Revised Edition. (Dawbarn is. Ward.) Hlustrated. 23. 6d.
net.
Notes on Observations. By Svdney Lupton, si .A. (MacmiUan.)
3s. 6d.
Essays on Museums. By Sir William Flower, K.c.B. (Macmillan.)
Illustrated. 12s net.
Radiography and the X Rays. By S. R. Bottone. (Whittaker.)
Illustrated. 3s.
Meteorological and Magnetic Obser cations. (Stonyhurst College
Observatory. 1897.)
The Barometrical Determination of Heights. By F. J. Cordeiro.
(Spon.) 43. 6d.
The Process of Creation Discovered. Bv James Dimbar. (Watts
& Co.) 7s. 6d.
A Text-Book of Botany. By Drs. Strasburger, Jfoll, Schenck, and
Schimper. Translated from the German by H. C. Porter, ph.d.
(Macmillan.) Illustrated. IS3. net.
What is Science ' By the Duke of Argyll. (David Douglas.)
Bibliography of the Metals of the Platinum Group. By Jas. Lewis
Howe. (Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections.)
The MammiU, Reptiles, and Fishes ofFsscr. By Henry Laver.
(Simpkin, Marshall, & Co.) Illustrated.
112
KNOWLEDGE
[May 2, 1898.
BRITISH
J0^
ORNITHOLOGICAL
Conducted by Hakey F. Witheeby, f.z.s., m.b.o.u.
Notes feom Dublin Bay.
KuFF. — On the 28th of August I obtained a pair of
Euffs in immature plumage, and also saw another one.
CuELEw Sandpiper. — On the same daj' I saw large
flocks of Curlew Sandpipers ; one Hock certainly could
not have been less than five hundred strong. It passed
quite close to me, the white upper tail coverts of the
birds being very conspicuous, thus easily distinguishing
them from the Dunlin when flying.
AvocET. — In the beginning of October I saw an Avocet,
which stayed about the marshes till the last week in the
month, but I failed to add him to my collection.
AldinoVakieties of Mistle Thrush, Common Snipe, Wood-
cock, AND Curlew. — The following is a Ust of the varieties
which came under my notice last season.
Mistle Thrush. — October 5th ; bluish white all over,
showing the markings of the breast and throat. This
ueems a very persistent variety, as a winter seldom passes
without two or three specimens coming under my notice.
This, Uke all the other ones 1 have seen, was greatly
frayed along the edges of the wings and tail. The owner
informed me that it had been mobbed by other Mistle
Thrushes for at least a month during which it was under
his observation.
Common Snipe. — October 10th; perfectly white all over,
eyes dark, bill and feet Hght yellowish brown. Obtained
in Co. Meath. November 27th ; whole plumage rich buff,
the usual Snipe markings showing through. One of the
commonest varieties of this species ; usually get three or
four in a season. Obtained in Co. Kerry.
Woodcock.- — December 6th ; whole plumage a beautiful
buff, with a bluish sheen on wings and tail, bars and
markings a bright brick red. Beak and legs reddish
brown. From Co. Tipperary.
Curlew. — January 4th ; whole plumage white, with
usual markings showing against the white background ;
a most striking variety ; bill and feet tan colour.
Shot by Mr. Young, Brockley Park, Queen's County. —
E. Williams, 2, Dame Street, Dublin.
Wafer Pipit (Anihus spipoleita) in Carnarrovshire. — At a
meeting of the British Ornithologists' Club, held on January 19th,
Mr. Howard Saunders exhibited an immature example of the Water
Pipit which had been procured by Mr. Gr. H. Caton Haigh on
December 3rd, 1897, in Carnarvonshire.
All contributions to the column, eitJier in tlie way of notes
or photographs, should be forwarded to Harry F. Witherby,
at 1, Eliot Place, Blackheath, Kent.
Note. — The first issue of Knowlkdoe containing British Ornitho-
logical Notes was that for October, 1897.
.\t a recent meeting of the Members of the Institution
of Electrical Engineers, Mr. Robert Hammond explained
in detail a method by which electrical energy on a large
scale will, at an early date, be generated and at the
service of consumers. The cost, it is stated, will be such
as to bring the electric light within the sphere of all light-
users, as the distribution can be effected at the rate of
about three farthings per unit.
Neptune's diameter, according to a recent determination
by Prof. Barnard, is 32,900 miles.
Sections A to K of the British Association at the Bristol
meeting in September next will be respectively presided
over by Prof. W. E. Ayrton, f.r.s. ; Prof. Francis R. Japp,
F.R.s. ; W. H. Huddleston, f.r.s. ; Prof. W. F. R. Weldon,
F.R.S. ; Dr. J. Bonar ; Sir John Wolfe-Barry, f.b.s. ; H.
E. W. Brabrook, c.b. ; and Prof. F. O. Bower, f.r.s. Sir
William Crookes, f.r.s., is the President elect, and he will
deliver his address on Wednesday evening, 7th September.
Prof. W. J. Sollas, m.a., f.r.s., and Mr, Herbert Jackson,
will dehver the two evening discourses.
The third annual Congress of the South-Eastern Union
of Scientific Societies, whose President is the Rev. T. E.
R. Stebbing, will be held at Croydon, on June the 2nd,
3rd, and 4th. A number of interesting papers are to be
read and discussed, among the contributors being Mr. J.
W. Tutt, Mr. C. Dawson, Prof. J. Logan Lobley, Mr.
Fred. Enoch (on the " Life History of the Tiger Beetle "'),
and Prof. G. S. Boulger, who will deliver the annual
address, as President elect, on June 2nd. The hon.
secretary is G. Abbott, m.b.c.s., 33, Upper Grosvenor Road,
Tunbridge Wells. ,..
As an indication of the interest centred in technical
education, the vast sum of money raised for the Northamp-
ton Institute, ClerkenweU, is convincing. On the 18th
March the Lord Mayor inspected and formally opened
the buildings, which, together with the equipment, have
cost upwards of d€80,000. In addition, the land, generously
given by the late Marquis of Northampton, is estimated
to be worth not less than £25,000. Dr. Mullineaux
Walmsley, the Principal, is a man of great experience in
applied science, and a casual inspection of the programme
of studies to be carried out under his direction augurs
well for the artizan classes. Examinations (to youths and
men of this class) are a bugbear, and it is gratifying to
note that this institute provides courses of lectures and
demonstrations for nearly all trade subjects at twopence
per lecture, without any stipulation as to examination for
the purpose of grant earning.
[The Editors do not hold themselves responsible for the opiniong or
■tatements of correspondents.]
THE LEVEL OF SUXSPOTS.
To the Editors of Knowledge.
Sirs,— The instructive article on " The Level of Sun-
spots," by the Rev. Arthur East, in your last issue, part of
which dealt with the probable refraction of the umbra by
the vapours on the solar surface within the spot cavity (an
opinion which he has already expressed in a recent paper
to the British Astronomical Association), is interesting from
the fact that the late R. A. Proctor had arrived at the
same idea many years ago. In Proctor's " Old and New
Astronomy," on page 381, the figure (257) is sufficiently ex-
Mat 2, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE.
113
plantltory as embodying this idea ; and on page 382 the
footnote reads ; — " In Fig. '257 I indicate a way in which
the width of the penumbra on the side furthest from the
sun's edge (occasionally equal to the width of the side
PHOTOGRAPHED
Ideal Vertiual Secliou of a Sun spot in the earliest stage of its
deTelopment.
nearest to the edge) may be explained by the refractive
action of the vapours within the spot cavity. The lines
Pp, Uuu, U'u'u', and P'p', are supposed to be lines of sight
from the earth when the spot is viewed aslant."
We must, however, thank the Eev. A. East for the beauti-
ful experimental illustrations of this point.
From the satisfactory way this theory simplifies many
of the difficulties connected with spot phenomena, it is
somewhat surprising that it has not found its way into
more general favour and recent text-books.
Wm. Shackleton.
Royal College of Science, London,
April 11th, 1898.
SPECTRA OF
: HERCULIS.
o CETI AND
By the kindness of the Kev. W. Sidgreaves we are enabled
to give the accompanying reproduction of two beautiful
photographs of these most interesting stellar spectra, ob-
tained at the Stonyhurst College Observatory in December
and February last. The spectra are on the same scale as
that of 0 Ceti given in the number of Knowledge for March
(page 61), but are prolonged a little in both directions,
extending, in the orange, below the D lines ; and the
reference numbers to the great absorption bands, acciden-
tally displaced in the earlier reproduction, are here given
in their proper places.
The juxtaposition of the two spectra brings out clearly
their very significant likenesses and differences. Under
the former head comes the series of great fluted absorption
bands which forms the distinguishing feature of this
stellar type. Under the latter may be noticed the greater
structural detail in the bands of a. Herculis, the presence
of numerous fine hnes, and the appearance, whether
actual or a mere contrast effect, as of a very bright line
to the blue of the sharp edge of the dark bands, especially
of bands four, five, and six. The spectrum of o Ceti, on
the other hand, is especially distinguished by its two bright
lines of hydrogen, y and i. The comparison of the two
spectra at the places of the three hydrogen lines renders
more distinct the relationship of these to the rest of the
spectrum, and emphasizes the remarkable fact of the
absence of the third line, H/3 ; the line which we should
have rather expected to show its presence with the greatest
plainness. — E.W.M.
7 8 9
(I)
(2)
Photographed Spectra of o Ceti (1), 1897, December, and o Herculis (2), 1898, February.
X
A
A
1 = 4227.
4 = 4757.
7 = 5447
2 - 4420.
5 = 4951.
8 =- 5597
3 = 4581.
6 = 6162.
9 = 5756.
Stonyhurst College ObserTatory.
114
KNOWLEDGE
[May 2, 1898.
A BRILLIANT METEOR.
To the Editors of Knowledge.
Sirs, — Last night at 10.20 I saw an extremely brilliant
meteor, ■which appeared a little south and east of Procyon,
and disappeared quite at the zenith. In spite of the bright
moonlight it was a very conspicuous object of bluish white
colour ; its course appeared (perhaps from my point of
view) to be quite straight, and occupied about five or six
seconds of time. It seemed simply to " go out " at last,
without explosion, sparks, or anything else.
April Cth, 1898. G. Northover Stretton.
MERCURY.
To the Editors of Knowledge.
Sirs, — I think it may possibly interest some of your
readers to know that I observed Mercury to-night, un-
assisted, except by a mental knowledge of its R.A. and
Dec, at the short interval of seven minutes only after
sunset, from my window at King's Cross. Is not this a
record for a London view ? It was conveniently observ-
able until 7.50 P.M., except at infrequent intervals, when
it was obscured by stray clouds. C. B. Holmes.
April 12th, 1898.
P.S. — It was between three and four minutes to seven
when it first revealed itself.
NATURE'S FINER FORCES.
SOME NOTES ON OLD WORK AND NEW
DEVELOPMENTS.
By H. Snowden Ward, f.r.p.s., Editor of " The
Photogram."
IT is rather difficult to find a title for an entirely new
subject which is still in its early days of investi-
gation, and to which its pioneer has given no name,
it is all the more difficult when three or four un-
authorized persons have undertaken to christen the
subject, when its scientific basis is uncertain, and when
there is a suspicion that it may be closely allied to an
older class of results which have a recognized title. The
subject of the Bakerian Lecture before the Royal Society
this year is extremely interesting, because it opens up a
field of investigation in which the results are surprising
and curious, while the methods are so simple and the
requisites are so cheap that it is possible for anyone to
take up the work and to carry the results a few stages
further.
Dr. W. J. Russell gave his lecture the non-committal
title of " Experiments on the Action exerted by Certain
Metals and Other Bodies on a Photographic Plate " ; and
journalists who have recorded his results have given the
subject such titles as Scotography (apparently because
this is the name of a method of teaching the blind to
write), Vapography (because the phenomena may be the
result of vapour given off from the metals, etc.), and other
equally appropriate titles.
Before dealing with Dr. Russell's observations it may
be well to recall one or two older phenomena which do
not seem to have been referred to in the discussion on
Dr. Russell's lecture, but which may have a distinct con-
nection with his work.
A common phenomenon, familiar to students, and even
to many schoolboys, is the formation of " breath figures "
upon a mirror, a piece of plate glass, or, better still, a
polished metallic reflector. On the polished surface, which
should be cold, lay any small object such as a coin. While
this is in position breathe on the polished surface. After-
wards, for days and sometimes even for weeks or months,
the image of the object may be restored by again breathing
upon the polished surface ; and this may be done re-
peatedly, even though the surface be well cleaned and
polished.
A possibly kindred efi'ect may be seen on windows to
the inside of which a printed placard has been affixed.
Though the printing ink does not touch the glass, it will
be found, after the placard has been exposed for some time,
that the window has acquired the property of condensing
moisture on the parts near the printing ink of the placard
differently from its condensation on other parts. And
this property will remain for weeks or months, through
repeated cleanings of the window.
In the early forties, M. Moser, of Konigsberg, and
Robert Hunt, the British investigator on light, reported
some extremely interesting experiments on the eflects of
contact between various substances and polished metallic
plates ; and after long, patient research Hunt attributed the
results to difference of temperature, and called the process
Thermography. He even went so far as to anticipate that
the process might prove more valuable than photography
when fully developed.
Hunt, working in the days of the Daguerreotype, when
the photographic image was developed upon a metalhc
plate by means of vapours, applied the same method to the
development of his thermographic images, with the result
that he got strong and permanent representations of the
objects laid upon his metallic plates. He found that
dissimilarity in the objects and the polished plates was
necessary ; for instance, gold and silver coins gave good
images on a copper plate, while copper coins did not act on
copper. He noted further that the mass of the receiving plate
affected the result, and that better images were made upon
a large than upon a small sheet of copper. Using various
pieces of glass, mica, tracing paper, etc., it was found that
while some of the glasses and the tracing paper gave
strong images, other glasses made little or no impression,
and the mica left no trace. It was found that some objects
of which no trace could be developed with mercury vapour
gave good images with the vapour of iodine.
The later experiments bring us nearer to the results
shown on dry plates by Dr. Russell, for Hunt found that
objects separated from the metallic plate by air space of
half an inch, or more, were capable of strongly im-
pressing it after one night's exposure, and that a deal
box acted very strongly. Further, that printed paper
acted on the plate to such an extent that very good copies
of any printed matter could be made, and it was in this
direction that Hunt suggested the first practical applica-
tion of Thermography.
Another set of observations, received with scorn by most
of the scientific men of their day, but confirmed in 1883 by
a committee of the Psychical Research Society, were those
of Reichenbach, on what he called " odic force," a property
which he found to emanate from almost aU substances.
Most of Reichenbaeh's observations were made by means
of sensitive patients, who stated that they could see
luminous emanations from various metals, etc. ; and it is
unfortunate that he did not carry out to a considerable
extent his experiments with photographic plates — on
which he did find results after the very few experiments
made. I mention Reichenbaeh's work because his patience
in research and verification was enormous, and his book
(" Researches on the Dynamics of Magnetism") is full of
reports of very suggestive experiments — researches which
might now be repeated with lenses and photographic dry
plates, with, perhaps, good results in the light of the recent
work of Dr. Russell.
May 2, 1898.
KNOWLEDGE.
115
Scattered through the pages of the photographic journals
are many reports of single observartions, and short series of
experiments on similar lines to those of l>r. Russell, and
the results have been variously ascribed to heat, to X rays,
to magnetism, to " dark light," etc. ; but it seems to have
been left to Dr. Russell to carry out a comprehensive series
of experiments, and to — in some measure — raise the veil
■which has hitherto shrouded these phenomena in obscurity.
i)r. Russell found, incidentally, and in the course of
experiments for another purpose, that zinc, if placed in
contact with a photographic dry plate, had some action
upon it which would enable it to be developed as if it had
been exposed to light ; and, further, that a similar action
was exerted by many other metals, by wood, by straw-
board, by many printed papers (which would leave a clear
impression of their printed matter), etc., etc. All these
results he detailed in a paper before the Royal Society
about a year ago ; and in the meanwhile he has been
repeating.verifymg, and extendinghis observations, with the
results which were brought forward in the recent Bakerian
Lecture. At first the zmc and other materials were placed
in contact with the photographic plates, and it was found
that after a week's contact an image could be developed
which would plainly show such minute marks as scratches
on the zinc ; that the structure, rings of growth, etc., in a
section of a pine tree, and even the grain of mahogany
which had formed part of a piece of furniture, and had
been practically in darkness for a couple of centuries or
more, were also plainly visible ; and that not only the
printing, but also the water-marks and accidental defects
on certain papers, could be developed on the plates. When
the objects were placed at a little distance from the dry
plate (gradually increased to an inch or more) the efifect
was still produced, but, of course, without any detaQ being
visible. Not only would the action thus pass through
an inch or more of air, but it also passed easUy through
gelatine, celluloid, collodion, and gutta-percha tissue.
Glass was found to be quite impervious, though, curiously
enough, glass was pervious to the emanation from some
of the uranium salts which were tested, and which acted
very strongly, whether in the dry state or in solution.
This point is important, since it shows that there are at
least two classes of emanation ; and other experiments
point to the possibility of there being several more.
Amongst the most active metals are zinc, magnesium,
aluminium, nickel, lead, and bismuth. Cobalt, tin, and
antimony are less active, while copper and iron are prac-
tically inert. Strawboard and fresh charcoal act very
strongly upon the plate, as does copal varnish, even when
quite dry and hard. In the earlier experiments mercury
seemed to be one of the most energetic agents, but it had
since been shown that pure mercury was inactive, and that
the effects observed were due to zinc and lead contained as
impurities.
With zinc, which is one of the most satisfactory subjects
for experiment, it is found that the action is strongest when
the face has recently been brightened (as by cleaning with
emery paper), and that old zinc, which is considerably
oxidized, has practically no effect upon the plate.
The possibility of the action being due to what may be
called latent light was suggested, but Dr. Russell finds that
the action is the same whether the active substance has
been recently insulated or has long been k«pt in complete
darkness.
The action of temperature is very important, and while
the necessary exposure for a good impression is usually
about a week (at a temperature of fifteen degrees Centi-
grade), an increase of temperature to fifty-five degrees will
reduce the exposure to a few hours.
As to the cause of these results Dr. Russell does not
speak with certainty, but he has made many experiments
which confirm his idea that the effects are due to vapours
given off by the objects. On this point a great deal of
additional work is needed, especially in view of the signifi-
cant facts that the most volatile metals are not the most
active ; that some oils and gums (such as turpentine
and copal) will act strongly, while volatile substances
like alcohol and ether have no effect ; that the uranium
salts act strongly through glass ; and that a book printed
so long ago as IGll still gives a faint impression, while one
dated 1805 gives a strong impression on the plate. If the
results are due to a vapour it will be interesting to know the
conditions under which it can continue to be given off
through two hundred and fifty years.
Altogether the field of research is most attractive and
promising, and the publication of Dr. Russell's results
should lead very many investigators to take it up. If they
do, I trust we may have more careful observation and less
hasty publication than was revealed by many of the
announcements made soon after the publication of the
work of Prof. Rontgen.
BOTANICAL STUDIES.-III.
JUNGERMANNIA.
By A. Vaugha>- Jennings, f.l.s., f.g.s.
OUR last study* dealt with a type of fruit formation
which is about the most highly developed among
the lower cellular plants. In ColeochcEte, whUe
the vegetative part of the plant consisted of a
simple cell-plate, it was noted that the reproductive
process was far more specialized than that in the first type,
ra!(c/(e''-(''/.t It was observed that the egg-cell (or ompher,)
after fertilization became surrounded by a layer of cells
developed from adjacent tissues, and also that it subse-
quently divided into a number of separate bodies (carpo-
sporrs), each of which could give rise to a new plant Uke the
parent.
It is evident that both these modifications of the method
of reproduction are of great advantage to the chances of
survival of the plant. Not only is the egg-cell more
protected in its resting stage, but by dividing into several
independently living portions the probabihties of preserva-
tion of the type become vastly increased. Those genera in
which the liberated carpospores have the greatest activity
and the best power of resistance are those which will
survive and multiply.
In the algie, and certain fungi which are probably their
degenerate descendants, this seems to be the highest stage
reached in the evolution of " fruits " and the phenomenon
of •' alteration of iienenitiom." When we look for the next
step there is a great break in the series, and one which we
shall probably never be able to bridge over satisfactorily.
There seems every reason to suppose that the early stages
in the evolution of the higher plants resulted from the
spreading of simple aquatic forms on to the land, their
attempt to gain a footing there, and to adapt themselves
to terrestrial conditions.
What the intermediate stages were there is no evidence
to show. Delicate cellular plants have practically no
chance of preservation in the rocks of the earth's crust,
and geological science can give no help. The only avail-
able method of Investigation is the study and comparison
of living forms : their life history, and early stages of
development.
* Knowledge, iJarch, 1S98. t Knowledge, January, 1898.
116
KNOWLEDGE
[May 2, 1898.
There would seem to have been three alternatives open
to the water plants which invaded the land. In the firstplace
they might perhaps accommodate themselves to living under
terrestrial conditions without undergoing much structural
change. So long as moisture is abundant enough at times,
a plant can, as it were, learn to do without it at others.
It can Hve through times of dryness, and complete its
life history when proper conditions are prevalent. Thus
the simpler forms of the green and the blue-green algie can
be found in salt water, in fresh water, and on damp earth,
trees, or brick walls ; and even such highly developed forms
as Chrodleptis and Pln/copcltis are distinctively land plants,
though retaining all their algal characters. One is liable
to forget that a very thin layer of moisture is suificient in
proportion to the actual size of these living cells : a con-
sideration of much importance in connection with the
reproduction of terrestrial cryptogams.
Other algal forms seem to have accommodated them-
selves to earthly life, even under conditions of extreme
dryness, by entering into a mutual contract with certain
fungi, and establishing the type of plants we know as
lichens. This story is a biological romance in itself, but
for the present outside our line of study.
The third alternative was the gradual change of the
structure of the plant, so as to render it more capable of
existence and propagation imder altered circumstances.
In this process of accommodation of the plant to new
conditions it became advantageous to develop parts which
could penetrate the soil and absorb moisture and partial
nutriment from it, as well as to raise some parts above the
original level, to be sure of their reaching the sunlight.
Thus in time resulted the well-defined distinction of root,
stem, and leaf, with which we are naturally familiar.
The simplest of terrestrial plants— using the term for those
distinctly modified for living on ground, as distinct fi:om
algffi — are the IJepaticce or Livernorts. They can be found
everywhere, on damp banks or rocks or tree-trunks, and
they present a beauty and variety of structure that makes
them a fascinatmg study to the microscopist.
There are the wide-spreading lobes of the flat thallus of
Marchantia and its kin, to be found on moist banks every-
where ; and in mossy places in the springtime the slender
leafy branches of the ■hmi/ernuinnias grow and fruit with a
fresh luxuriance which renders them, in the opinion of
many, more attractive than their drier and hardier cousins,
the mosses. It is unfortunate that names of such Teutonic
clumsiness as Liverwort and Jungermannia should be
applied to so graceful a group ; but the necessities of
scientific nomenclature oblige us to retain them.
So far as the vegetative part of the plant is concerned,
the different genera do to some extent bridge over the
space between the mosses above and the algse below.
Though in Marchantia the thallus has a structure so
specialized as to show at once how widely it is separated
from a simple seaweed, there are other forms, like Paccia
and Anthoceros, in which the thin, green, plate-like thallus
seems but little different from Coleochate.
Yet all the forms included in the Hepatic a differ from
lower plants and agree with all higher crptyogams in the
fact that the most essential part of the reproductive system
is an " archegonium." So constant is this organ that the
liverworts, mosses, ferns, and fern allies are now often
grouped together under the name "Arclt^goniatce."
An archegonium is a flask-shaped structure containing
the oijsphere. Its lower part is an oval chamber in which
the egg-cell lies, and is prolonged upward into a neck
composed usually of four columns of cells round a central
axis. As the egg-ceU becomes mature the cells of the
central axis degenerate, so that a canal is formed full of
a mucilaginous material, which projects also at the top of
the neck.
The antheridia are little round or oval bodies occurring
at the bases of the leaves of the same or a separate shoot.
Their interior cells divide up into numerous minute
antherozoids (or xpennatozoids) which are capable of swim-
ming by means of a pair of delicate ciha. They are, of
course, so minute that even a raindrop is amply sufficient
to enable them to reach the archegonia. When this
occurs some of them enter the mucilaginous cap at the
end of the neck, and, making their way down the canal,
effect the fertilization of the oosphere.
Hepatics, then, differ from even the highest of thallo-
phytes in the fact that the egg-cell is, even before fertiliza-
tion, contained in a special structure intended not only for
protection, but also modified to assist in the process of
fertilization.
It might be expected that this advance in the preliminary
stages would be followed by a corresponding elaboration of
the fruit structure, but such is not the case. In aquatic
types, such as Coleochate, the resting stage seems to be
a necessity to the oospore in view of the future free-
swimming life of the unprotected carpospores.
In a land plant, on the other hand, the swimming powers
of the carpospores would be of little use in comparison
with the far wider distribution attainable by the help of the
wind. If the spores developed protective coats of their
own they would be capable of considerable resistance to
adverse conditions, and this appears correlated with a
decreasing necessity for a resting stage of the oospore.
Accordingly, what takes place after fertilization is an
almost immediate enlargement of the fertilized egg-ceU,
and its commencing internal division into spores. At the
same time the cells below it grow down into close con-
nection with the tissues of the parent plant, forming a
structure known as the foot. So that the spore-bearing
generation or Sporophyte adopts the method of remaining
in connection with its parent plant till it is ready to liberate
its spores ; instead of, as in the algse, preparing itself to
keep alive for a time after the parent plant has died down.
In this way it differentiates itself into a foot which remains
in connection with the parent tissues, a seta or stalk which
grows upward, and a globular sporangittm or capsule carried
at its apex. The whole is thus not a fruit, but almost a
second or alternative plant dependent on the first. It has
no roots, leaves, or green colour (chlvrophi/ll), and therefore
cannot exist as an mdependent plant, but is nevertheless
on the road to become one.*
The further stages in the life history differ, of course,
in different genera, but the main features are remarkably
uniform throughout the group.
The neck of the archegonium withers after fertilization
of the egg-ceU. Its wall enlarges for a time with the
growth of the oospore, but finally spUts at the top, leaving
a sheath, termed the laginula, round the base of the up-
growing sporophyte.
The tissues of the sporangium itself become differentiated
into an outer two- layered wall and an inner cell-mass or
archesporium . It is in the further development of the latter
that we meet with the most striking difference from the
corresponding organ in algie, and the most evident modifica-
tion for terrestrial conditions. The cells divide up into a
large number of smaller ones, and while some of these
develop into spores, the remainder change into long sterile
threads termed elaters. The latter are long filaments
* In one very interesting group of the Jungermanniacfcc, the
archegonia are carried in a sac-like structure hanging down from
the stem, and in some cases this may bury itself in the soil and even
attempt to root itself.
May 2, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE.
117
pointed at the ends, and possess a single or double spiral
thickening-band. Their elasticity and response to chang-
ing conditions of moisture and dryness assist very much in
the dispersal of the ripe spores.
Both spores and elaters are formed while the capsule is
still surrounded by its " perianth," and the upgrowth of
the seta commences later and takes place with great
rapidity. Finally, when atmospheric conditions are suit-
able the capsule bursts, and in the -Tundermanniacea
alwaj's divides into four valves. Spores and elaters are
wall, when there are two coats, breaks through the outer,
and the contained protoplasm grows out into a cell-plate or
a cell-thread {protonona), which then buds out into a new
plant and develops its own arnhegonia.
This protonema stage seems to be a " reminiscence "
of the algal ancestor, but it is curious that it is far less
evident here than in the true mosses, as will be seen later.
Meanwhile the parent egg-bearing plant or oophyte may
still continue to exist, and throw out fresh shoots to bear a
new generation of archegonia and antheridia.
A. — The end portion of a shoot of Sardia crenulata, a simple type of the leafy Hepaties. The terminal leaves differ
from the rest, and form a Perianth, at the base of whieh the reproductive organs are developed. B. — Archegonia of one of the
leafy Hepaties (Caloiri/um). c. — Antheridia of the same. D. — ilicrascopie section through the apex of a shoot of a similar
type (Junfjermannia). Two unfertilized Archegonia are shown ; one on each side. In the centre is the young " Sporophyte"
resulting from the fertilizat on of a third Archegonium. The archegonial wall stUl remains as the Calyptra. with the lower part
of the neck, but has enlarged with the growth of the Oospore. The latter is already undergoing internal division to form Spores
and Elaters. E. — The apical portion of a shoot of Nardia, showing an Antheridium and two imfertiiized Archegonia. In the
centre is the Sporophi/te, consisting of a globidar Sporangium carried up on a Stalk or Seta, and sheathed at the base by the
remains of the Archegonium. F. — A ripe Sporangium or Capsule of Radula complanata at the moment of dehiscence, showing
the splitting of the wall into four valves, and the ejection of the numerous Spores mixed witli Elaters. G. — Spores and Klaters
magnified. (A and E, after Engler; D, after Hofmeister; B and c, after Gobel.)
thrown out and dispersed together. In some genera a
number of elaters remain attached at one end to the tips
of the segments of the capsule, but in the genus which
forms the subject of our illustration they are all free. It
is very interesting to note that, while the mosses and ferns
dispense with this assistance to the liberation of the spores,
it should occur in such different groups as the liverworts
and the horsetails. Further, that a similar phenomenon
is seen in those strange fungi, the ilyxomycetes ; and that
a somewhat similar mechanism is employed in dispersmg
the seeds of some flowering plants.
The spores themselves are small spherical bodies with a
single or double wall. Under suitable conditions the inner
If, then, we summarize the results of our study of the
liverwort, regarding especially the mode of reproduction
and the interrelationship of the two stages of its Ufe, we
arrive at some such conclusion as this : —
When the water alga? tried to Uve on land some of them
were able to do so with little change of structure and still
retain their primitive character. Others gradually advanced
by a specialization of the reproductive process and the
evolution of archegonia, whether or not accompanied by
increasing complexity of the thallus. This advantage in
the life struggle was followed up by the persistence of the
connection between the fertilized egg-cell, with its resulting
growths, and the parent plant ; just as the evolution of
118
KNOWLEDGE.
[May 2, 1898.
mammals haa gone side by side with the progressive
dependence of the young on the mother.
At the same time, the formation of spores with a strong
protective coat became a necessity under the new conditions,
and the accessory assistance of the elaters became of much
value in securing the wide dispersal of the spores.
In the liverworts we have, in fact, an indication of a
tendency on the part of the spore-bearing generation to
assert itself as an independent plant. It will be our
business in our future studies to try to discover what has
been the result of this tendency, and along what lines it
has acted.
NOTES ON COMETS AND METEORS.
By W. F. Denning, f.b.a.s.
New Comet. — A bright comet was discovered by Mr.
C. D. Perrine, of the Lick Observatory, Mount Hamilton,
on the night of March 19th. The position of the comet
was at R.A. 319" 39', Dec. 10° 43' N., and it was moving
rather quickly to the north-east. Its brightness was esti-
mated as of the seventh magnitude, the diameter of the
coma was two minutes, and it had a tail about one degree
in length. Elements were computed by Kistenpart and by
Hussey and Perrine, from which it appeared that the comet
had just passed its perihelion, and was receding from the
sun and earth. From observations between March 19th
and 31st, Kreutz, of Kiel, gives the following elements : —
Perihehon passage 1898, March, 17-37558
Longitude of perihelion ... 310 8 11-7
Longitude of ascending node 262 33 59-6
Inclination 72 27 48-1
Perihehon distance ... 1 -098(3
The perihelion place of the comet occurred, therefore, at a
distance of about nine millions of miles outside the orbit of
the earth. The position of the comet will be as follows : —
Ephemeris by F. Mijller, for Berlin, Mean Midnight.
Distance iu
R.A. Decimation. millions of
h. ni. s. ° ' miles. Briglitness.
Mar 4 0 hi IC -h51 574 177 0 47
„■ 8 1 15 0 -h53 14-7 182 042
„ 12 1 30 25 -hSi 16-3 188 038
„ 16 1 57 IS -1-55 2-5 193 0-33
„ 20 2 17 30 +55 36-6 198 030
„ 24 2 36 52 -H55 69-9 204 0-27
., 28 2 .55 20 -h56 14-1 209 0-24
June 1 3 1.J 49 +56 205 214 022
.,5 3 2 J 19 +56 20-7 219 0 20
„ 9 3 44 51 +56 15-8 224 0 18
„ 13 3 .59 25 +56 70 229 'Oie
On April 80th the comet will be placed three degrees
south of the star X, Cassiopeiaj (magnitude 3-7). On May
Cth it will be two degrees south of S Cassiopeiae (magnitude
4-4), and for a few nights, about May 18th, wiU be very
near the great star cluster in Perseus.
Enche's Comet. — This well-known periodical comet will
pass its perihelion on May 24th, but will not be visible at
that time, as it is near l Tauri, and only about twenty
degrees east of the sun. In June the comet will move
rapidly southwards, and will approach the earth to within
about twenty-three millions of miles on July 3rd, so that
it will be a fairly conspicuous object to observers in the
southern hemisphere.
Cometdrij ]>iscoveri). — At the last meeting of the British
Astronomical Association, on March 30th, Mr.Crommellin,
of the Greenwich Observatory, made some remarks rather
derogatory to English observers in regard to discoveries
of comets. His strictures appear to be quite justified by
the facts, for there is no reason why nearly all the prizes
in this field should be carried off by Americans. In view
of the large number of capable observers, it is certainly a
very remarkable circumstance that so few comets are
discovered in this country. The climate cannot be blamed
for it. Either observers do not thoroughly pursue the
work of sweeping or there mast be something wrong with
their instruments or methods. The work itself is easy
and requires no great skill, the chief things essential to
success being patience and perseverance. But a man's
individual observational capacity comes in as an important
factor, for small, faint, and difficult comets would again
and again elude detection by a poor observer. It is hoped
that some English amateurs will give their earnest
attention to this department. They would find it equally
interesting, and in the end more profitable, than observing
the moon, planets, and double stars.
Recent Fip.eb.\lls.. — On March 29th, 8h. 51m., a fine
slow-moving meteor, not quite as bright as Jupiter, waa
observed by Mr. A. King, at Leicester. It had the appear-
ance of a bright green star, followed by a red tail three
and a half degrees in length. Its path was from 124^"
+ H° to 97^" — 12°, and duration of flight about equal
to four and a half seconds.
On April 4th, lOh. 35m., a very brilliant meteor was
seen by Mr. J. H. Preston, of Fishponds, near Bristol.
It fell in a very oblique path from east to west. The
nucleus appeared to be of the size of a fairly large orange,
and at the end of its flight it apparently exploded into a
large number of fragments.
On April 5th, lOh. 15m., a large meteor, brighter than
Venus, and with a remarkably slow movement, was
observed by the Kev. T. E. R. Phillips, at Yeovil. He
says : " It was of a beautiful golden yellow or orange
colour, and left a train of sparks behind. One can hardly
conceive of what its splendour would have been had there
been no moon. It travelled through a hundred degrees of
longitude so far as I traced it, and I probably missed the
beginning and certainly missed the ending, as the meteor
dropped behind some houses. Owing to the brilliant moon-
light it was diflicult to determine its position with accuracy.
I first caught it near i; Leonis, and followed it as far as a
point a little below S Herculis. The duration of flight was
twelve to fifteen seconds, and position of the path from
154° -I- 17° to 260° + 22°." The same object was seen by
Mr. Vaughan Cornish at Bournemouth. He gives the
time as lOh. 17m., and says the meteor was quite as bright
as Venus at her maximum. The nucleus had a sensible
diameter and a deep yellow colour. It threw off a short
train. The observed part of the path was very nearly
vertical, and extended over about twelve degrees, ending
three degrees to the right of Vega, and about half a degree
lower than that star. " The finish up of the meteor was
like that of a burning body being extinguished ; it did not
end with a burst." Mr. P. M. Ryves, of Stone, Stafford-
shire, also witnessed the appearance of the meteor, and
gives the time as lOh. 10m. He describes it as travelling
from south-west to south-east in a very nearly horizontal
flight, and with extreme slowness. There wis no train,
but a fragment behind and in front. The duration was
from twenty to thirty seconds, but may have been much
more as he did not see the beginning. The exact path was
from 151° -9° to 199°-19°.
From a careful comparison of these observations it
appears that, when first seen, the meteor was situated at a
height of eighty-nine miles above a point in the English
Channel about twenty-five miles south-east of Dartmouth.
Moving very slowly to the north-east it entered upon the
English coast near St. Alban's Head ; then, successively
passing over Bournemouth, Southampton, Alton, and
Aldershot, it finally disappeared at an elevation of twenty-
May 2, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE
119
five miles over a point five miles north-east of Bisley.
The flight was directed upon an earthpoint at Braintree in
Essex, and, seen from this district, the object must have
appeared stationary in the heavens. The whole length of
its observed flight was one hundred and sixty-two miles,
and if the time of its duration is considered to have been
fifteen seconds its velocity must have been only eleven
miles per second. The radiant point was in Monoceros at
121°—!^, but it does not correspond with that of any
known meteoric shower. This fireball was an exceedingly
interesting one from its brilliant aspect, and long, graceful
flight, and it is also notable as a typical specimen of the
very slow-moving and isolated meteors often directed from
radiants low in the western sky.
THE FACE OF THE SKY FOR MAY.
By Herbert S.vdler, f.r.a.s.
THE minimum period of sunspots has not arrived yet.
Mercury is a morning star, and is in inferior
conjunction with the Sun on the 1st. On the
14th he rises at 3h. 40m. a.m., with a northern
declination at noon of 10^ 51', and an apparent
diameter of 11". On the 21st he rises at 3h. 31m. a.m.,
or about half an hour before the Sun, with a northern
declination of 10^ 42', and an apparent diameter of OV'.
On the 31st he rises at 8h. 9m. a.m., or about three quarters
of an hour before the Sun, with a northern declination of
13" 20', and an apparent diameter of 7^ '. He is at his
greatest western elongation on the 28th. While visible
he describes a direct path in Aries, without approaching
any very bright star very closely.
Venus is well placed for observation as an evening star.
On the 1st she sets at 9h. Oca. p.m., or one hour and three
quarters after the Sun, with a northern declination at noon
of 20' 21', and an apparent diameter of 10^ . On the
11th she sets at 9h. 38m. p.m., or about two hours after
the Sun, with a northern declination of 22 57', and an
apparent diameter of 11 ', about ninety-three one-hun-
dredths of the disc being illuminated. On the 21st she
sets at lOh. 2m. p.m., with a northern declination of
24^ 25, and an apparent diameter of 11 . On the 31st
she sets at lOh. 18m. p.m., or about two hours and a
quarter after the Sun, with a northern declination of
24^ 44', and an apparent diameter of 111 '. She will be
occulted by the Moon on the afternoon of the 22nd, the
disappearance taking place at 6h. 54m. p.m., at an angle
of 115^ from the vertex, and the reappearance at 7h. 32m.
P.M., at an angle of 184 ■ from the vertex ; of course, in both
cases, before sunset.
Mars is, for the purposes of the amateur, invisible.
Jupiter is an evening star, and is still very well placed
for observation, rising on the 1st at 3h. 20m. a.m., with a
northern declination of 0^ 52', and an apparent equatorial
diameter of 43". On the 7th he rises at 2h. 54m. p.m.,
with a northern declination of 1° 1', and an apparent
diameter of 42V'. On the 14th he rises at 2h. 24m. p.m.,
with a northern declination of 1° 8', and an apparent
diameter of 42". On the 21st he rises at Ih. 56m. p.m.,
with a northern declination of 1° 11', and an apparent
diameter of 41j". On the 31st he rises at Ih. 15m. p.m.,
with a northern declination of 1" 10', and an apparent
diameter of 40V'. During the month he describes a retro-
grade path in Virgo without approaching any naked-eye
star.
Saturn is in opposition to the Sun on the 30th, but his
southern declination is so great as to prevent any satis-
factory observation of him in these latitudes, and the
same remarks apply to Uranus. Neptune is invisible.
There are no well-marked showers of shooting stars
in May.
The Moon is full at 6h. 34m. a.m. on the 6th ; enters
her last quarter at 9h. 36m. p.m. on the 12th ; is new
at Oh. 58m. p.m. on the 20th ; and enters her first quarter
at 5h. 14m. p.m. on the 28th.
C^css Column.
By C. D. LooooK, b.a.
Communicationa for this oolomn should be addressed to
C. D. LococK, Burwash, Sussex, and posted on or before
the 10th of each month.
Solution of April Problem.
(By A. C. Umlauff.)
Key-move. — 1. Kt to Kt7.
If 1. ... K to Kt3, 2. Q to K8ch, etc.
1. . . . Kt to B4, 2. Kt to K5ch, etc.
1. . . . Any other, 2. Q to K6ch, etc.
[There seems to be a dual after 1. ... Kt to Kt7 which
has escaped notice.]
Correct Solutions received from Alpha, B. Goulding
Brown, W. de P. Crousaz, Capt. Forde.
A. C. Chiillenr/er. — Many thanks for the problems, which
shall appear shortly. Much regret your abstention in the
other matter.
PEOBLEMS.
By P. G. L. F.
No. 1.
Blaci (4).
White mates m two moves.
No. 2.
Blacs (6).
White (3).
White mates in three moves.
120
KNOWLEDGE.
[Mat 2, 1898.
CHESS INTELLIGENCE.
The Cable Match between teams representing the British
Isles and the United States was played on March 18th and
19th, an exciting contest resulting, as last year, in a
victory for the British team by the odd game. It will be
noticed that the three American players new to these
contests (at boards Nos. 8, 9, and 10) met with no success.
Our opponents would, perhaps, as they seem inclined to
admit, have done better to rely on well-tried players, even
at the risk of complaints as to the " New York clique."
The following is the score : —
Great Britain.
3. H. Blackbume (London)
A. Bum (Liverpool)
H. Caro (London)
H. E. Atkini (Leicester)
G. E. H. Belllngham (Dudley) .
D. Y. MiUs (Edinburgh)
C. D. Locock (London)
E. M. Jackson (Loudon)
Herbert Jacobs (London)
H. W. Trenchard (London)
America.
H. N. PUlsbury (New York) ..
J. W. Showalter (New York)
J. H. Barry (Boston)
E. Hymes (New York) ...
A. B. Hodges (New York)
E. Delmar (New York)
D. G. Baird (New York)
F. K. Young (Boston)
A. K. Robinson (Philadelphia) ,
J. A. Gttlbreath (New Orleans)..
5i
A brief description of each game is appended. The
American players had the move at boards 1, 3, 5, 7, and 9.
No. 1. — Mr. Blackburne, in defending the Queen's
Gambit, obtained an inferior game, and was compelled to
give his opponent the advantage of a passed Pawn. After
many fruitless attempts to utilize his advantage, Mr.
Pillsbury, most unselfishly playing to the score, gave up
his best Pawn on the chance of a win. In the end Mr.
Blackburne was a Pawn ahead, but this was probably
insufficient to win.
No. 2. — Mr. Burn obtained a slight advantage in a close
game, but after nearly all the pieces were exchanged, Mr.
Showalter made a most brilliant combination out of the
small material left, the sacrifice of a piece leaving him
ultimately with two Pawns to the good and a won game.
No. 8. — Mr. Caro disregarded his opponent's King's side
advance in a close game, and obtained a (perhaps) winning
advantage on the Queen's side ; but he overlooked a most
ingenious saving and winning resource, and was compelled
to resign.
No. 4. — Mr. Atkins obtained a slight advantage in a
French Defence (2. Q to K2), but the sacrifice of a piece
did not turn out so well as he expected, and he was glad to
have an opportunity of giving perpetual check.
No. 5. — Mr. Bellingham, defending the " close Buy
Lopez," found himself under a violent attack. He defended
himself with great care and patience, and most of the
pieces were exchanged ; but the attack came again with
Q and R on each side, and the Black Pawns could not be
saved.
No. 6. — Mr. Mills had not much diflSoulty in disposing
of the eccentric variation of the French Defence played by
his opponent. He won the exchange first, and then the
game, having only to steer clear of a few traps.
No. 7. — Mr. Locock's Two Knights Defence was promptly
converted into a Giuoco Pianissimo. Black obtained a
slight advantage early, but was unable to prevent the
exchange of all the mmor pieces. White after that should
have made some desperate attempt to win or lose (a draw
being useless to his side), but neither side attempted any-
thing, and the position at the end of the second day was
practically the same as at the end of the first.
No. 8. — Mr. Jackson waited until his opponent had
finished his eccentric development in a French Defence,
and then proceeded to take vigorous advantage of the
various flaws in his opponent's position, winning first the
Queen and two Pawns for Rook and Knight, and after-
wards what he liked.
No. 9. — Mr. .Jacobs played P to KB4 in answer to 1. P
to Q4. His opponent injudiciously exchanged the centre
Pawns, thereby freeing Black's game for an attack on the
King's side. Mr. .Jacobs won a Pawn, and the Bishops
of opposite colours made winning all the easier. The
actual process chosen was very pretty, Mr. Jacobs sacri-
ficing the exchange in an end game in order to permanently
block in his opponent's Rook.
No. 10. — Mr. Trenchard attacked a little prematurely
on the King's side in a close game. His opponent weakly
blocked the Queen's side, and afterwards sacrificed the
exchange rather unnecessarily. After that Mr. Trenchard
picked up Pawns till his opponent resigned.
The Inter-University Match was played at the British
Chess Club on March 25th. The following is the score : —
E. G. S. Chnrchill (Magdalen) ..
E. E. W George (New College)
A. P. L. Hnlbert (Keble)
F. Soddy (Merton)
F. A. Babcock (Wadham)
L. T. Dodd (Merton)
Cambridgc.
C. E. C. Tattersall (Trinity) ..
L. McLean (King's)
H. G. Softlaw (Trinity HaU) ..
A. Potheringham (Emmanuel)..
A. W. Foster (St. John's)
K. S. Makower (Trinity)...
H. K. Cullen (Caius)
KNOWLEDGE, PUBLISHED MONTHLY.
Contents ol No. 149 (March).
PASE
The Total Solar Echpse, January
2-2, 1898. By E. Walter Maunder,
F.K.A.S. (Illustrated) 49
British Bees.— I, By Fred. Enock,
F.I..S.. F.E.S., etc. (Illustrated) 50
The Vinegar Eel. By C. Ains-
worth Mitchell, B.A., F.l.c 53
Botanical Studies.— II. Coleo-
chfiete. By A. Vaughan Jennings,
F.I..S., F.o.s. (Illustrated) .54
Cloud Belts. By Wni.Shackleton,
FKA.S 56
A New Theory of the MUky Way.
ByC. Eastou 57
Letters .- 60
The Masses and Distances of
Binary Stars. By J. E. Gore,
P.R.A.S 62
Science Not«s 63
Notices of Books 63
British Ornithological Notes 66
Obituary 67
The Karkinokosm, or World of
Crustacea. — II. By the Rev.
Thomas E. E. Stebbing, ma.,
F.R.S., F.L.s. (Illustrated) 67
Notes on Comets and Meteors.
By W. F. Denning, f.r.a.s. ... 70
The Face of the Sky for March.
By Herbert Sadler, f.r.a.s 71
Chess Column. By C. D. Locock 71
Plate.— The Equatorial Cloud-Belt.
Contents of No. 15a (April).
PAGE
Economic Botany. By John E.
Jackson, a.l.s., etc 73
The Structure of Ireland. By
Grenville A. J. Cole, m.b.i.a.,
F.G.S. (Illustrated) 74
The Sea-Otter and its Extermina-
tion. By E. Lydekker, ».A.,
F.E.s. (Illustrated) 78
British Ornithological Notes 80
Letters 81
British Bees. — II. By Fred.
Enock, F.L.s. , F.E.S. , etc. (Illus-
tra(ed) 82
In the Moon's Northern Regions.
By Arthur Mee. F.R.A.a 84
Notices of Books 85
Stars having Large Proper Motion.
By E. C. I-ickering 89
The Level of Sunspots. By the
Eev. Arthur East. (Illustrated) 89
The Evolution of the Venom-Fang.
By Lionel Jervis. (tHustiated) 91
Notes on Comets and Meteors.
By W. F. Denning, F.R.A.S. 94
The Face of the Sky for April.
By Herbert Sadler, f.r.a.s 95
Chess Column. By C. D. Locock 95
Plate.— The Limar Alps and their
Neighbourhood.
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"June 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE.
121
a£N€EJ.lTERATa
Founded in i88i by RICHARD A. PROCTOR.
LONDON: JUNE 1, 1898.
CONTENTS.
The Mourne Mountains. By trEExviLLE A. J. Cole,
.U.K. I. A., F.G.s. {Illuxtra(ed)
The Petroleum Industry. By G-EOEaK T. Hollowat,
ASSOC. B.c.s. (LOND.), F.i.c. (illustrated)
Economic Botany. By John E. Jackson, a.l.3., etc. ...
Weather Accounts. By Alex. B. McD.iwall, m.a.
(Illustrated) "
The Prismatic Camera at the Recent Eclipse. By
J. EVBESHED, F.E.A.S. (Plate)
Occultation of 26 Arietis observed Photographically.
By Edward C. Pickeeinq-. (Illustrated)
Notices of Books
Shoet "Notices
Books Received
Letters ;— Edwin Holmes; W. F. DEXNixa ; G. Abbott,
II.B.O.S
Science Notes
Africa and its Animals. By R. Ltdekker, b.a., f.r.s. ...
The Vinegar Fly and the Vinegar Mite. By C. Ains-
WOKTH MiiCHELT., U.A., F.I.C. (Illustrated)
A Classic Legacy of Agriculture. By John Mills
Notes on Comets and Meteors. By W. F. Denning,
F.E.A.S
The Face of the Sky for June. By Heebeet Sadleh,
P.E.A.S
Chess Column. By C. D. Locock, b.a
136
130
137
139
140
143
143
THE MOURNE MOUNTAINS.
By Grenatlle A. J. Cole, m.b.i.a., f.g.s., Professor of
Geology in the Roijal CoUer/e of Science for Ireland.
IT is one of the many advantages of a thinly populated
country that its barren regions are left very much to
lovers of scenery. The Mourne ^fountains, though
situated on the easily accessible coast of the county
of Down, have remained but little visited, even by
dwellers in Ireland. Despite the admirable introductions
that have been made to them in recent years,'' the scientific
observer and the keen pedestrian need have little fear of
being hampered in their pursuits by the presence of the
purely casual tourist.
Those, however, who may not tind it convenient to leave
the beaten track, can, in a few inspiring drives, complete
* R. Lloyd Praeger, M.H.r.A., "The Mourne Mountains," Science
Gossip, new series. Vol. II. (1895), p. 85; and '■ G-uide to County
Down and the Mourne Mountains," published by the Belfast and
County Down Railway Company, 1898, with one hundred illustrations,
price Is. (Marcus Ward & Co.)
the circuit of the Mournes, and can even cross at one point
from the western meadows to the sea. The character of
the mountain group, in all its isolated individuality, can,
indeed, be best grasped from a preliminary survey of its
spurs. From Newry, at the head of the long Carlingford
inlet, we climb to the upland formed by the " Caledonian "
granite in this district, and presently, across the Silurian
foot-hills, we see upon our right the grey-green ridges of
the Mournes. At Hilltown we meet the first road that
cuts into the silent area, and we gain some notion of the
steep-sided valleys that lie between these smooth round
domes. On certain of the nearer summits, little " tors " of
rock stand out, much as they do on Dartmoor, but on a
more impressive scale. Then, as we follow the steadily
rising road, we are cut oii' for a time from distant views ;
but in four miles the finest of them all bursts on us—
the seemingly sheer face of Slieve Meel, the grass, as it
were, sliding away on it and leaving the bare white rock
exposed ; and beyond, across a romantic bend of the valley,
the craggy nr.'te of Slieve Bernagh — without question the
noblest summit of the Mournes.
And so down, mile after mile, under the wooded slopes
to Bryansford, where the corner ia turned and we see the
northern aspect of the highland. Slieve Commedagh and
Slieve Donard, with a rocky pass between them, dominate
the landscape here, the latter being the highest mountain
of them all. Its two thousand seven hundred and ninety-
six feet bring it, in fact, only a little short of Cader Idris.
On the east, this compactly arranged highland falls
steeply to the sea, so that the summit of Slieve Donard is
only two miles from the actual coast. The splendid road
is carried, as best it may be, between the heather of the
moorland and the sea, and crosses at intervals the alluvial
fans that stream down from the eastern valleys. A pebbly
raised beach that runs along part of the coast also provides
a convenient terrace.
At Bloody Bridge, only two miles south of Newcastle,
the old roadway, of bitter memory, is seen a little further
up the glen; and behind it, and stretching high towards the
notch from which the stream descends, is one of those huge
cones of detritus that assure one of the reahty of denudation.
It may have been formed, in the first instance, by a land-
slide ; but it no doubt was freely added to when the moun-
tains above were at their highest. Now the stream has
cut a clear section through it, down to the granite floor,
and grass has climbed across the slopes of Slieve Donard,
from which much of the material fell. The outer edge of
the cone has, moreover, been removed by the sea ; but in
its remaining mass, and the beauty of its form, it is still an
admirable picture of a talus-fan, such as may be seen in full
vitality at the foot of any ravine in Norway, Tyrol, or
Karinthia.
At the tiny port of Annalong, we cross one of the larger
rivers of the Mournes, which rises in a superb steep-sided
valley under the rock-terraces of Slieve Commedagh. A
second large stream, the waters of which are about to be
stored up for Belfast, comes down out of a similar valley
at Kilkeel ; and soon the road turns westward, passes along
the beautiful sea-inlet up to Kostrevor, Warrenpoint, and
Narrow Water, and reaches Newry, where the fifty-mile
circuit is complete.
When we examine this moimtain-mass in detail, we find
that we are not dealing with a range, but with a great
boss of granite, shaped somewhat like a dumbbell, the
narrow part being crossed by the road from Hilltown to
Kilkeel. The principal valleys have been cut far back
from north or south. The watershed is consequently sinu-
ous, between the short streams flowing to the Irish Sea
and the rivers that reach the Atlantic with the Bann ;
122
KNOWLEDGE
[June 1, 1898.
but it has, when mapped out, a fairly north-east and south-
west trend. A bold line of summits lies along it, from
Slieve Meel More to Eagle Mountain ; but their average
elevation is surpassed by those rising from the wall
between the Annalong and Kilkeel valleys, beginning
with Slieve Commedagh (2512 feet), and ending in the
castellated crags of Slieve Bingian (2449 feet), from
which a long spur descends southward on Kilkeel. The
depth of the valleys, in proportion to their width, is one
of the fine features of the Mournes, and is only fully
realised by walking along the watershed, and looking down
over granite cliffs into these veritable grooves, the combes
According to this view, the domes and valleys of the
Mourne Mountains have been carved out of an obstacle,
discovered by the agents of denudation on the side of an
older ridge. The former covering of Silurian strata is
actually left to us in a few admirable outliers — a patch
half a mile across on Thomas Mountain, about half way
up Slieve Donard ; another on Slievemaganmore, midway
between Hilltown and Kilkeel, at a height of 1830
feet ; and another, fifty feet higher, on Finlieve, some
three miles to the south. It has been stated that
these fiakes of strata have been floated up on the
surface of the invading granite ; but the Silurian beds
Fia. 1. — View in the Valley of tlie lulkeel River, Mourue Mountains, showing cliff, taluses, and distant summits.
Bernagh is on the right.
The peak of Slieve
[R. Wdch, Photo.
at their heads girt about with crags, and their mouths
crossed by the blue horizon of the sea.
The north-and-south trend of the valleys is not due to
any special structure of the Mournes, for it is one common
to the district. So constant is it, whether the Mourne
granite, or the Silurian strata, or the older granite of the
Newry axis is traversed by the streams, that it probably
points back to a time when the rocks exposed at the
surface were more uniform in character, and when a
highland of Silurian and Ordovician strata concealed the
Mourne granite altogether. The watershed then may
have run east and west, and on its surface the streams
received a uniform trend. As they cut away this surface,
particularly in the region of their head-waters, they came
down upon the concealed granite boss, and worked against
that more slowly. At one point, the streams running
northward have found no granite as yet beneath them,
and have notched back the old watershed conspicuously,
forming the long valley leading over to Kilkeel.
in situ reach 1940 feet upon Slieve Muck, and 2200
feet on Shanslieve, north of Slieve Commedagh, and may
thus easily, at no distant period, have covered the whole
area of the Mournes.
Slieve Donard, in that case, would be one of the first
knobs to protrude through the slates and sandstones as
denudation had its way ; while the low south-western
portion of the granite has far more recently come to light.
The boldness of outline, and the existence of so many
contrasted domes and peaks (Fig. 1), point equally to the
modern character of the group. Granite masses readily
become worn down, in our climate, to round and uniform
moorlands. On a fine day an observer on the Hill of
Howth, near Dublin, has only to compare the outlines of
the old Leinster granite with those of the blue peaks of
* The geological details are described in Traill, " Explanation to
Sheets 60 and 71," Geological Survey of Ireland (1878), and Hull,
" Explanation to Sheets 60, 61, and 71 " (1881) ; but recent advances
already necessitate some revision.
June 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE
123
Mourne, some sixty miles north across the sea, to admit
that the northern group has at least a supremacy of form.
This is apparent, also, in the details of the landscape,
as one may come across them in the higher passes of the
mountains. We have referred to the bold peak-like tors of
Slieve Bernagh, and to the frequent vertical rock-walls ; but
the most impressive scene of all is, perhaps, the group of
granite pinnacles weathered out on the south side of Slieve
Commedagh. We may come upon these suddenly as the
mist lifts from the great dome of Donard, leaving the deep
valleys filled with cloud below us ; and close against us is,
as it were, a fantastic temple, the columns rising on each
side of a little gorge. The vertical joints have here had a
dominant eiiect, while the horizontal ones cut up the
pinnacles with a fictitious air of masonry. The neigh-
bouring cliflfa also display the level tabular joints, so
characteristic of granite, in a remarkable degree, and the
whole hill-side suggests an acropolis given over to decay.
The same air of titanic masonry is seen in the analogous
granite mass of Goatfell in the Isle of Arran.
This brings us to the petrological characters of the granite
of the Mournes. While, as in the quarries that scar the
hills near Annalong, the rock is often coarsely crystalline,
the general mass is of finer texture, with a ground in which
the quartz and the alkali-felspar may be intergrown with
one another. The ferromagnesian constituent is a dark
mica. Throughout the whole region a drusy structure is
very common — that is, cavities occur, varying from a
microscopic size up to four or five inches across, in which
minerals have developed out freely, with all their proper
forms (Fig. 2). The orthoclase felspar here appears in dull
white or yellowish white crystals, as clean and neat as the
wooden models that are placed before students of miner-
alogy. The quartz in these cavities is usually a smoky
variety, forming prisms capped by pyramids, in complete
contrast to its ordinary mode of occurrence in igneous
rocks. The mica forms the most exquisite little hexagonal
tables, standing up on edge ; and, in addition, blue-green
beryl and colourless topaz are not uncommon, and have been
much sought for by collectors. One must conceive such a
rock as having been saturated with liquids under pressure,
each knot, if we may so say. of the liquid acting as a
hydi'othermal laboratory — at first delaying crystallisation,
but finally allowing of free growth, and of the production
of the most delicate prismatic forms. Few pleasures can
be greater to the mineralogist than the breaking up of
these granite blocks in the high passes of the Mournes, and
the sight of the perfect little crystal-groups, lying there
fresh as when made, and never before bared to human
eye.
The granite of Arran, above referred to, is closely
similar to that of the Mourne lMountain3,f and we meet
allied, but less drusy, masses in the heart of Mull and
Skye. The latter rocks are among the more recent pro-
ducts of the great period of volcanic activity in the
Hebrides, which opened in Lower Eocene times. \ Hence
the peculiar fine-grained granites of Mull and Skye are,
at the earliest, of Eocene age.
South of Carlingford Lough there is another granite
mass, which is intrusive in the dark gabbro of the Carl-
* See the fine illustratiou in Sir A. Geikie's ■' Ancient Volcanoes of
Great Britain," Tol. II., p. 419.
t See Judtl, '' Secondary Rocks of Scotland," Quarterly Journal
Geological Socief;/, Tol. XXX (1874), p. 275 ; and Teall, " British
Petrography," pp'. 328 and 330.
X See J. Starkie Gardner, " Lower Eocene Plant-Beds of Ulster,"
(^arferli/ Jourant Geological Socittii, Tol. XLI. (1885), p. 82, and
"Leaf-Beas of Ardtun." ibid., Tol. XLIIL, p. 292.
ingford promontory. The relations of these rocks have
been admirably described by Prof. Sollas ; and there is
no doubt as to the correlation of the granite with that of
the Mourne Mountains. The gabbro is represented on
the Mourne coast by a multitude of dykes of basaltic
andesite and basalt, which form a marvellous picture of
the fracturing to which the Silurian rocks were subjected.
These dark ribs of igneous rock have altered the Silurian
shales and sandstones, which appear as a fringe along the
coast ; but they are cut off abruptly by the granite of the
adjacent hills. The flakes of Silurian strata that remain
here and there on the surface of the mountains are
similarly seamed by dykes ; but the granite cuts off all of
them, and is clearly later than this first eruptive series.
A few basic dykes, however, which may be well seen as
grey-green bands in the granite north of Slieve Bernagh,
cut through the granite, and represent a return of basaltic
conditions. Hence we have three igneous series, two being
basic, with a highly siliceous one between them.
This is precisely the order of events in the Eocene
volcanic centres
of Mull and Skye ;
and, even in
microscopic de-
tails, the rocks of
the one area may
be paralleled by
those of the other.
Moreover, in the
county of Antrim,
the outpouring of
the sheets of the
"Lower Basalts"
was followed by
local eruptions of
rhyolite, a highly
siliceous lava,
agreeing in com-
position with the
granite of the
Mournes. t This
series was in turn
buried by the
" Upper Basalts."
All this volcanic
material in An-
trim seems to be
of Eocene age ;
and the sequence of events practically clinches the argument
that the Mourne granite belongs also to the Eocene period.
Here, then, we have a granite, one of those rocks formerly
supposed to be of very ancient origin, brought near the
surface as a fluid mass as recently as Cainozoic times, and
probably not exposed, even in its upper layers, until shortly
before the glacial epoch. The geological history of the
Mournes, of Carlingford Mountain, and of the high volcano
of Slieve Gullion in Armagh, is seemingly, then, a very
modern matter compared with that of the adjacent Newry
granite and the old weather-beaten core of Leinster.J
Possibly the little dome of Ailsa Craig, which has
suffered so heavily from denudation that its pebbles lie
* " The Tolcanic District of Carlingford and Slieve Gullion,"
Trans. S. Irish Acad., Tol. XXX. (1894), p. 477.
t See A. McHenry, "Age of the Trachytic Kocks of Antrim,"
Geol. Mag., 1895, p. 264; also G. Cole," " Rhvolites of Coontv
Antrim," Sci. Trans. S. Dublin. Soc, Tol. TI. (189d), pp. 84 and
104.
t See Knowledqb, Vol. XXI. (1898), p. 76.
Fig. 2. — Speciuieu of Mourne Granite,
showing crystals developed in a drusy cavity.
The pointer, marked T, inilicates a crystal
of topaz.
124.
KNOWLEDGE
[June 1. 1898.
scattered by hundreds all down the Irish coast, was a bold
mass of the same age as the Monrnes and Arran, and
became almost destroyed by the severities of glacial times.
In any case, we can now follow out the line along which
granite intruded in Eocene times, from the south of
Carhngford Lough to the smooth Red Hills of Skye. Aa
yet denudation has discovered only the higher knobs, the
fine-grained and the drusy surface-layers, of the great bar
of crystalline rock that has here been added to the crust.
Some day, perhaps, on the rising edge of Europe, the whcfle
axis may become revealed, worn and rounded into one long
moorland, extending north and south for two hundred and
twenty miles.
Granites of Cainozoio age are naturally seldom met with,
owing to the depth at which such rocks consolidate. It
would be interesting to compare with the Mourne granite
that described by M. Chofifat from Cintra in the west of
Portugal,* which penetrates Upper .Jurassic strata, and
which is probably of Eocene age. The granite of Elba is
actually later than the Eocene ; and, in the elevated
regions of the Western Alps, which have been severely
attacked by denudation, the central gaeissic-granice may
even belong to the Pliocene period.
We have already! pointed to the great north-and-south
line, along which materials were erupted in Cainozoic
times in Western Europe, as being possibly connected
with the movements that determined our present con-
tinental edge. Certain it is that the signs of unrest
spread eastward, and, by the close of the Miocene period,
the central plateau of France, the brown-coal region of
Bohemia, the fringe of the Hungarian plain, and the whole
north-west of Italy, had already become involved. Then
the great Alpine series of chains rose in their full vigour,
and the volcanoes of Auvergne, Catalonia, the Eifel, and
the eastern Ebinelands, piled up the cones that remiin,
scarcely denuded, at the present day. The Italian region,
down to the sea between Sicily and Tunis, is still active
and unstable ; and, when compared with these vigorous
manifestations, the land of Mourne assumes quite a cold
and ancient aspect. The great lava-plateaux to the north
of it were probably broken up and partly submerged by the
forces that were raising Central Europe;; and the bold
attempt at western elevation, which allowed of the accent
of the granite of the Mournes, seems to have ended merely
in weakening the crust and in enlarging the bounds of the
Atlantic.
THE PETROLEUM INDUSTRY.
By George T. Holloway, assoc. r.c.s. (lond.), f.i.c.
ALTHOUGH the use of petroleum and its products,
on what may be called a commercial scale, has
only arisen within the last forty years, crude
petroleum has been known and used from the
earliest times. The " everlasting fire " of the
Guebers, or fire worshippers of Baku, was fed by natural
gas — really only the most volatile of the products of crude
petroleum ; but the most important of the early uses of
this " rock oil " was for medicinal purposes— mainly skin
diseases — for which purpose its value is even now recog-
nized by the medical profession.
• See De Lapparent, " Traitfe de Geologie," 3me ed., p. 1457.
t Knowlbdqe, Vol. XX., p. 209 ; also Vol. XXI., p. 77.
X See the striking remarks of Sir A. Geikie on subsidence between
the Inner Hebrides and Iceland, in " The Tertiary BasiltPlateaux
of North-West Europe," Quarterly Journal Qeoloaical Society., Vol.
LII. (1896), pp. 399-405.
Numerous references to petroleum occur in the Scriptures,
and, in the opinion of Lord Playfaur, the " word translated
as ' salt ' in reference to its loss of savour on exposure,
should have been rendered ' petroleum,' which, in the air,
loses its more volatile constituents, and leaves asphalte,
good only to be ' trodden under foot of men.' "
Petroleum appears to have been collected and sold at
Baku, in Russia, and in the Burmese Empire earlier than
in other districts ; however, its exploitation on a large
scale may be considered to date from the year 1859, when
the celebrated " Colonel " Drake, acting on behalf of the
Pennsylvania Rock Oil Company, sank the first well
drilled avowedly in pursuit of oil, at Oil Creek in Penn-
sylvania. The hilarity which the public had previously
indulged in immediately gave place to the "oil fever"
when this well was found to yield to the pump twenty-five
barrels of oil in a single day. Rapid development ensued
down Oil Creek and along the AUeghany River, so that the
output of two thousand barrels, each of forty-two American
gallons, with which 1850 was credited, had risen to five
hundred thousand barrels in 18G0, and over two million
barrels in 18G1. Since then the yield has steadily
increased, almost without any setback, until now the United
States production amounts to over forty-seven million
barrels.
The earher wells yielded their oil only to the pump, but,
in the summer of 18G1, a well drilled to a deptb of four
hundred and sixty feet discharged its oil under pressure
at the rate of three hundred barrels daily. This was
followed by numerous other flowing or " spouting " wells,
deUvering, in some cases, as much as three thousand
barrels daily, thus keenly acsentuating the oil fever, which
became so intense that the drilhng of a successful well in
a new district was the signal for a rush of prospectors,
and, in case of further success, soon gave birth to a sub-
stantial town, which, when the oilfield became exhausted,
might vanish as quickly as it had grown up.
A typical instanca is found in Pithole City, which, about
nine months after the discovery of oil, in January, 1865,
had in its vicinity a population of batween twelve and
sixteen thousand, and, in importance, ranked but little
below the flourishing town of Pittsburg. Within two years
of its origin, however, its oil was practically all removed,
and the founders deserted it in favour of numerous other
fields which had meanwhile been developed.
In Russia the petroleum industry is of much greater
antiquity than in the United States, and oil is said to have
been exported from that country as early as the tenth
century. The oil occurs in certain localities in much
larger quantity than in the States, and is more cheaply
produced ; indeed, there is no doubt that the Russian
industry will be flourishing when the American oilfields
have been practically denuded of their contents, although,
at present, the business ability, the enormous capital, and
the perfect organization of the Americans, enable them to
command the principal markets of the world.
The " spouting " wells of Russia entirely eclipse those
of America in output. The first was struck in 1873 by
the Kalify Company of Biku, and was followed by many
others, the oil of most of them, as in the case of the
American oil fountains, being wasted on account of lack of
storage tanks to receive the sudden and enormous dis-
charges. The most celebrated oil fountain known, although
not the largest, was the "Droojba" well, which was struck
on the 1st of September, 1883, and commenced flowing
at the rate of about one million eight hundred thousand
gallons daily, an amount of oil which was valued at eleven
thousand pounds. The oil rushed from the well in a
column about eighteen inches in diameter and nearly three
Jt!NE 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE.
125
hundred feet high, and then fell, forming, together with
the sand which it had carried up from the well, banks of
sand enclosing lakes of oil, much of which ran out in a
broad channel towards the sea. When, after about three
months, the well was brought under control and capped,
it was estimated to have yielded between two hundred and
twenty thoufand and five hundred thousand ton.'< of petro-
leum, most of which was wasted. Mr. P. Stevens, our
Consul at Baku, states that early in 1893 a well drilled
in the district yielded oil at the rate of seventeen thousand
seven hundred and forty-two tons daily, an amount far in
excess of that of the Droojba well. Most of this oil also
was wasted.
Oil is mainly obtained from the districts already men-
tioned ; still, petroleum occurs in many countries and in
Derricks in the Oilfield of Bradford.
most of the strata comprised between the older Laurentian
rocks and the newer members of the Tertiaries. In the
United States the principal deposits lie in Pennsylvania
and New York (which are generally taken as forming
one field), and in Western Virginia, Ohio, and Indiana.
Notwithstanding the new fields that are being opened up,
the amount of unprospected country is now by no means
large ; whereas, in Russia, enormous areas of proved
oil territory, as well as still larger tracts of presumably
oil-bearing land, are lying fallow because the small areas
actually imder the drill are capable of more than supplying
the immediate demand. In Grosnia, and in the Kouban
and the Crimea, as well as on the Apsheron peninsula, of
which the oil district of Baku forms a small part, we have,
for instance, proved tracts of land the output of which is
likely to be enormous when the exigences of the market
call for their development.
Petroleum occurs in commercially workable quantities in
Canada, Gahcia, Boumania, India, Java, and Sumatra ; also
in Japan, China, Peru, Germany, and many other countries ;
and it has been found in several parts of England, though,
not in sufficient quantity to admit of profitable working.
Taking the oils of America and Kussia as the most
important and typical, it is interesting to consider the
different geological conditions under which they occur.
The American oil is found in strata of the Silurian and
Carboniferous epochs, and belongs to what is known as
the " paraffin " series of compounds ; while that of Russia
may be referred to the Eocene and Miocene strata of the
newer Tertiary series, and consists of compounds of the
" benzene " family.
The American oil yields on distillation about seventy
per cent, of kerosene oil suitable for ordinary lamps,
together with lighter products form-
ing the various petroleum "spirits,"
heavier oils used in gas manufacture,
lubricating oils, paraffin wax, vase-
line, and residuum utilized as liquid
fuel. The Russian oil, on the other
band, yields less than half as much
kerosene and light distillation pro-
ducts as does the American oil, and
practically no paraffin, but it gives a
higher and better yield of lubricating
oil and a larger proportion of
residuum, which, under the name
" astatki," is used as fuel more in
Russia than in any other country.
In America, as in all other
countries, the earlier developments
were due to the appearance of
petroleum on the surface of the land,
4^*, S^^E^St or tD its occurrence in wells sunk for
S;?*' nSi^^E^HH water or brine ; but now the oil wells
are very deep, those in the deepest
drilled district — the Washington dis-
trict of Western Virginia — averaging
two thousand four hundred feet. The
oil occurs mainly in the interstices
separating the grains of sandstones,
or between the crystals of a dolomitic
rock ; and experience has shown that
it is necessary to raise the oil without
regard to market requirements, or
the whole may be pumped up through
the wells of the neighbouring lease-
holders, a condition of things which
has led to a common practice of
drilling round the boundary of the
holding before commencing operations elsewhere.
In Russia, however, the conditions are different ; the
oO is usually found at comparatively shallow depths, often
not more than one-fourth of the depth of the American wells.
A loose sand, consisting of independent grains, comes up
with the oil, and these grains of sand are a cause of serious
trouble in the flowing wells on account of their cutting
action on the caps with which the drillers endeavour to
close the top of the well-casing to control the outflow. In
the case of some of these tiowing wells, the blast of sand
has been known to cut through several thick steel caps
before the flow could be stopped. The strata in which the
oil occurs are also so disturbed as to practically constitute
a large number of independent oil reservoirs, so that closely
contiguous wells are found to be practically independent
of each other, and there is no necessity for raising the oil
until required.
Had space permitted, it would have been interesting to
126
KNOWLEDGE
[June 1,1898.
trace the development of the modern drilling plant em-
ployed for the sinking of the oil wells, from the simple
hand-worked appliances which, first used in the States
for the sinking of brine wells, have become gradually
superseded by the rapid and beautiful drilling plant com-
prised in what is known as the " American system." This,
although not the only system in use, will be described as
representative.
The first necessity is the "derrick" — a strong wooden
framing resembling the structure at the pit-head of a
colliery, and serving to support and control the working
of the string of drilling tools. The derrick varies in height
from about thirty feet, in the case of shallow wells, to
seventy feet, in the case of the deeper wells, and the drilling
tools are suspended from it on a stout rope, which is operated
by an engine to raise and lower the tools. Somewhat com-
plicated in their construction, the drills act by giving a blow
at the bottom of the boring each time they are allowed to
descend. A special appliance known as the "jars" is
arranged to prevent the drill becoming jammed. It con-
sists of two parts which slide upon each other and give a
jar to the tool on the up-stroke, so that any tendency to
"torpedoing" — at the bottom of the well, in order to loosen
the strata, and so facilitate the oil's access to the well.
The oil is either pumped, or flows naturally, into a tank,
from which it is conveyed by pipe lines to the refineries,
as will be described later on.
1
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V\\-\\ after being " torpedoeil." A f^ule Dieeliarj
jam is overcome. The total weight of a set of drilling
tools is nearly four thousand pounds, and, in addition to
this, a series of ingenious tools known as " fishing tools"
has to be provided for finding and raising any part of the
drilling tools which may become detached and remain in
the well.
At intervals the tools are withdrawn, and the sand pro-
duced by the drilhng is removed by pumps or balers.
As the well is sunk it is cased throughout with metal
tubing to avoid choking up by detritus or caving-in of the
strata.
When the oil stratum is struck, or, more usually, when
the well begins to show a decreased yield, it is common
in America to explode a charge of dynamite — known as
ECONOMIC BOTANY.
By John R. Jackson, a.l.s., etc., Kce/ier of the Mtiseums,
Roi/al Gardens, Keiv.
PAPAVERACE/E.— Though this is a comparatively
small order in the number of genera and species,
and though the plants themselves are of the nature
of small herbs, the order is one of considerable
economic importance and interest. The plants
are natives of temperate climates, particularly of Europe,
and are well marked by their narcotic properties. By far
the most important plant of the family is the opium poppy
[I'apnvei- sornniferum), which, though it cannot be said to
be known at the present time in a truly wild state, is
probably a native of South-Eastern Europe and Asia Minor.
The poppy has been cultivated from
early antiquity for the sake of its
dried juice, well known as opium.
It is now very widely spread, but
Asia Minor, Egypt, Persia, and India
yield the principal supply ; China
also yields a large quantity. In Asia
Minor, from whence the best opium
used in medicine is obtained, the
juice is collected by making incisions
around the circumference of the
poppy head or fruit while the plants
are yet growing. The milky juice
exudes slowly, soon becoming plastic
or semi-solid, and turning brown; it
is scraped ofi" with a knife and placed
on a leaf of dock {liumex), which is
carried in the left hand by the
collector. When sufficient has been
thus obtained to form a moderate-
sized lump it is rolled up in the leaf
and allowed to harden. In India
the mode of collection is somewhat
different ; the fruits are scarified
longitudinally by a kind of small
lancet, the juice is scraped ofi' in little
scoops, and poured into bowls, in
which part of the moisture separates.
In the factory it is mixed or stirred
in vats to insure uniformity of sub-
stance, and then made into balls
of about six inches diameter and
covered with the dry poppy petals.
In this condition it is stacked in racks in the opium store,
and when required for exportation to China it is packed in
chests divided into numerous compartments, each division
holding one ball. Indian opium contains a much lower
percentage of morphine than that from Asia Minor, and
is consequently of much less value for medicinal purposes.
It is, however, largely used for eating and smoking.
The cultivation of the opium poppy in cool countries is
chiefly for the sake of the capsules and seeds, the former
for supplying the shops with " poppy heads" for making
fomentations for allaying pain as well as for making
syrup of poppies, and the latter for the sake of the oil they
contain, which, when clarified, is of a sweet nature and of
a pale straw colour, and is used for mixing with, or as a
June 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE
127
substitute for, olive oil for culinary purposes, and the residue
or marc is used for feeding cattle. Under the name of
" maw seeds " they are given to cage birds. In this country
the opium poppy is cultivated in many medicinal gardens,
notably at Bodicote, near Banbury, Hitchin, and other
places.
Crucifer.t:. — The plants constituting this order are
mostly of an herbaceous character, particularly abundant
in the temperate parts of the northern hemisphere.
Though they mostly possess pungent or biting properties,
none are poisonous, but, on the contrary, are eminently
wholesome and antiscorbutic. The following best known
examples of the order will illustrate this. Horse radish
{Cochharia aniwracia), a perennial herb naturalized in this
country, occurring in damp, waste places, and found
throughout the greater part of Europe. Under cultivation
it forms a thick, somewhat fleshy root, and is much
valued as a condiment. Mustard is another condiment of
equal or greater value, and is the finely pulverized seeds of
two species of Jhossica — B. alia the white, and B. niiirn
the black mustard. They are annual plants widely distri-
buted over Europe, B. alba occurring also in Asia Minor,
Algeria, and China, and cultivated in the home counties
of Essex and Cambridgeshire; while B. niijni is also found
in Asia Minor, as well as in North Africa and North-West
India, its cultivation in this country being chiefly carried
on in Lincolnshire and Yorkshire. In the preparation of
mustard, or flour of mustard of commerce, the seeds of both
species are used mixed, and great care is taken in reducing
them to a very fine powder which is sifted through a fine
silk gauze. Besides the use of mustard for table purposes,
it is an important medicinal agent on account of its power-
ful stimulant and rubefacient properties. The cabbage
(Brassica oh'racea) is another Ulustration of a valuable
esculent belonging to this important order of plants. In
its wild state it is abundant on the clifl's by the sea-coast
in many parts of England, especially in the south-eastern
counties. The eftect of cultivation has produced marvellous
changes in this plant, giving us all the varieties of brocoli,
Scotch kale, Savoy, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, and even
the red cabbage. The same power of culture has also
changed the woody root of the common wild turnip
{Brassica campestiis var. Bapa) into the fleshy, globular
root of our gardens, while the Swede turnip has sprung
from another variety of the same species ; and the rape,
again, so largely grown by us as a green fodder, and on
the Continent for the sake of its seeds, from which is ex-
pressed rape or colza oil, has originated from still another
variety.
The radish (Rapliatnts satii-us) is still another of the
esculent cruciferous roots. The plant is unknown in its
wild state, but it has been suggested that it may have
sprung from an allied species of the Mediterranean coast.
In the early ages it was extensively cultivated in Egypt,
and found its way into England about the middle uf the
sixteenth century. Gerard mentions four varieties as
being known in 1597. We cannot leave this interesting
family of plants without a reference to woad, the blue
colouring matter used by the ancient Britons to stain
their skins, and produced by hat is tinctoria. At that early
period its culture seems to have been general for the
purpose mentioned above, as well as for dyeing cloths,
but in later times the general introduction of indigo
seriously mterfered with the use of woad ; and though it
is still manufactured in some parts of the Continent, its
preparation in this country is fast dying out, and at the
present time is carried on only in the neighbourhood of
Wisbech, and there it is still made in the most primitive
fashion.
Cappabide.t:. — This comparatively small order is com-
posed of herbs and shrubby plants, very rarely trees, chiefly
tropical, abundant in Africa, America, and India. The
order is marked by the presence of pungent and stimulant
properties, in this respect somewhat resembling the crucifers.
Only one plant, however, in the order has any special
economic value, and that perhaps of more interest than
actual commercial value. We allude to capers, which
are the flower buds of Cajiparis spinosa, a scrambling bush
of the Mediterranean region. The plant is cultivated in
some parts of France, as well as in Italy, for the sake of
the flower buds, which are gathered and pickled in vinegar.
The imports to this country are very small, the use of
capers being only for culinary purposes.
Cistinet;. — Shrubs or herbs generally known as rock
roses, natives chiefly of Southern Europe and Northern
Africa. They are noted for the presence of a fragrant
balsamic resin. The best known plant is Cistus Critvus,
a native of Crete and Cyprus, Macedonia, Rhodes, and
other Greek islands. A resin known as ladanum is
collected from the leaves and branches by whipping or
bruising them with an instrument consisting of long
leathern thongs attached to a rake-like frame. The
thongs become coated with the resin, which is after-
wards scraped off and moulded into small cakes. In
Cyprus, ladanum is often collected by combing the resin
from the fleeces of the sheep, which become loaded with it
while they are pasturing among the plants. It possesses
stimulant and expectorant properties, but it is seldom or
never used in medicine at the present time ; it nearly all
goes to Turkey, where it is used for fumigation and as a
perfume.
BrxiNE.F.. — A group of shrubs or trees, natives of the
tropics, and found mostly in the East and West Indies and
Africa. The principal economic plant of the order is the
anatto {liixa ordlana], a tree twenty to thirty feet high,
native of tropical America, but now cultivated in many
tropical countries for the sake of the seeds, which are small,
of a bright red colour when fresh, and of a waxy nature.
It is this red coating of the seeds that forms the anatto
of commerce, and it is removed by placing the seeds in
water, which is stirred till the colouring substance is
detached, when it is strained and evaporated to difi'erent
consistencies and used for colouring cheese and butter, as
well as for dyeing silks. Large quantities of these seeds
are regularly imported.
Amongst other economic plants of this order of less
importance may be mentioned the chaulmugra (Gt/nocardia
odorata), a large Indian tree, producing hard-skinned
globular fruits about four inches in diameter. These con-
tain numerous seeds embedded in the pulp, and from these
seeds an oil is expressed known as " chaulmugra oil." It
has an established reputation in India as a medicinal oil,
and was introduced a few years ago to this country for
the treatment of rheumatic affections and skin diseases.
Its use has now, however, quite died out.
GuTTiFEK.E. — Trees and shrubs are the plants which
compose this order, and they are all natives of tropical
countries. They are for the most part resinous, besides
which many of them yield oils or fats. The best known
resinous products are those furnished by species of Garcinia
and collectively known as " gamboge." The most important
of these are Garcinia Hanburyi, yielding the best quality,
or Siam gamboge, and Garcinia Morella, giving the Ceylon
kind. Gamboge is obtained from the first-named plant by
making a spiral cut through the bark of the tree as it
stands ; the yellow juice readily flows and is received into
the hollow joints of bamboos, where it is left until it solidi-
fies, after which the bamboos are broken away, leaving
128
KNOWLEDGE,
[June 1, 1898.
what is known in commerce as " pipe gamboge," which is
the best and purest quality, the second quality being
that which is collected in lumps. In Ceylon gamboge is
collectcci either from incisions made in the bark or by
cutting out pieces of it, from which the yellow juice oozes
and hardens on exposure, and the lumps are then scraped
off. Gamboge possesses powerfully purgative properties,
and was at one time used in medicine. At the present time
it is only used in veterinary practice. Its chief use, how-
ever, is as an ingredient for lacquering brasswork and as
a pigment in water-colour drawing. The well-known man-
gosteen is the fruit of a (ianinia — (i . mamjostana. It is a
moderate-sized tree of Malacca and the JIalay Archipelago,
but it has been introduced into other tropical countries.
It is the juicy pulp surrounding the seeds which is the
delicious morsel that has caused the mangosteen to be
classed as the best of all tropical fruits.
Many other plants of this order might be mentioned as
yielding important economic products, but space will not
permit us to do so.
TEEN^iTElEMIAcE.«. — This IS an order of trees and shrubs
chiefly tropical. It is not marked by any character-
istic property. In some of the South American species
the trees are noted for their hard and heavy woods and
the sweetness of the seeds, or nuts, as they are called,
the Souari nut of our shops (Caryocarmiciferum) being one
of them. The most important plant in the order — indeed,
one of the most important in the whole vegetable kingdom —
is the tea plant (Camellia tlna). From its early and very
extensive cultivation in China it was for a long time
supposed to have been a native of that country. It has,
however, been more recently shown to have originated
in Upper Assam, and to have been introduced to China at
a very early period. In like manner it was supposed for a
very long time that the black and green teas of commerce
were the produce of distinct species. This has likewise
been shown to be a fallacy, and it is now well known that
black and green teas are prepared from the same plant
by different methods of drying and curing. Thus, for
green tea, the leaves after gathering are not allowed to
lie so long as those intended for black tea before they
are rolled and roasted. By this means the fermentation
during the process of withering is avoided, and the leaves
in consequence retain much of their natural green colour.
Many details, which cannot be explained here, also have
to be followed, resulting in the two commercial kinds of
tea— black and green. In connection with the increased
demand for tea the world over, it will be interesting to
note that to meet that demand the range of the culti-
vation of the plant has considerably extended in recent
years. Thus we find it thoroughly established in Ceylon,
while in Japan, Java, and in Natal, excellent tea is grown
and prepared.
The following figures will give an idea of the proportions
of the commerce in tea so far as Great Britain is con-
cerned:— The total imports for the year 1897 amounted to
two hundred and sixty-nine million, thirteen thousand, four
hundred and eighty-two pounds, of the value of ten million,
four hundred and forty-three thousand, one hundred and
four pounds.
DiPTERocARPE.E. — The plants composing this order are
for the most part large forest trees of India, noted for the
strength and durability of their timber and for the valuable
resinous products they yield. The best known in the first
category is the sal or saul tree (Shorea rohusta), a tree
forming extensive forests over a wide range in India, where
the timber is almost, if not quite, of equal value as teak,
and is in great demand for gun carriages, raOway sleepers,
and building purposes generally. It, moreover, yields a
quantity of resin known as " dammar," and used for pre-
serving the woodwork of boats. From several species of
Tlijileroiarpus, notably /'. aliitus, D. turhi}uitus, and Z>.
trinenis, an oleo-resin known as " wood oil," or " Gurjun
balsam," is obtained, chiefly from the coast of Burma and
the Straits of Malacca. To collect the balsam, the trees
are tapped at the end of the dry season by making several
deep incisions with an axe into the trunks and scooping
out a good-sized cavity. Fire is lighted in this hole, and
when the wood has become heated or scorched the balsam
begins to flow. After collection it is allowed to settle,
when the clear liquid or oil separates from the more solid
or resinous portion. It is said that as much as thirty or
forty gallons has been obtained from a single tree in one
season. Though it is used in India as a substitute for
balsam of copaiba, its chief use is as a natural varnish for
preserving woodwork from atmospheric effects or the
attacks of white ants. The Sumatra camphor tree (Dryo-
balanops aromatka) is of considerable interest in con-
sequence of its peculiar habit of forming masses of
camphor crystals in clefts of the trunks. It is much less
volatile than ordinary commercial camphor, and fetches a
high price amongst the Chinese, by whom nearly the whole
of the produce of Sumatra is taken, and these people
believe it to possess many remarkable properties. It
does not reach Europe, except occasionally as an article
of curiosity.
The only other product of the I Hpterocarpene that space
will allow us to mention is that known as " piney resin,"
or " Indian copal," the produce of Vuteria indica, a tree of
Malabar. This resin is of a semi-fossiUzed character, and
is used slightly in the preparation of varnish. From the
large fleshy seeds a kind of fat or tallow is obtained, which
is used in India for making candles, and is known as
" piney tallow."
WEATHER ACCOUNTS.
By Alex. B. MacDowall, m.a.
AN analogy might be traced between the fluctuations
of weather and those of a banking account. And
we might deal with the plus and minus values of
the former (with reference to an average) as we
might with sums deposited in a bank and sums
withdrawn, so as to show the position of affairs at any
given date in relation to a previous date.
Thus, suppose a man opens a banking account, which
he is allowed to overdraw. The first week he deposits
ten pounds and the next ten pounds. Next he draws five ;
then deposits ten ; then draws thirty. The final resuli
obviously is that he is five pounds " to the bad." And
this set of transactions, and the position each week, might
be simply represented thus : —
1 2 3 4 .5
Transactions ...10 -F 10 - 5 -I- 10 - 30 = -
State of Account ...10 -f 20 -i- 15 -h 25 - 5
On the other hand, take as a simple case of weather
the monthly amounts of rain in London last year. Mr.
Symons, in his magazine, gives us the plus or minus
values in which these are referred to an average. We
proceed accordingly thus ; —
Jan. Feb. Mar. April.
+ -43 + -87 + 1-81 - -17, etc.
4- -43 -I- 1-80 -f 3-11 -I- 2-94, etc.
The second line, completed, we may plot as a curve
(H, Fig. 3).
We often hear questions like this, " Have we had more
■June 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE,
12J5
or less than our share of rain ? " This curve supplies
answers for the months of 18'.t7. The first three months
were wet. This excess was brought down in the next
four ; so that by the end of July we had had nearly our
■f 3cra
+75-0
+ "200
+ laa
■tSo
0
-i'o
^^
6 12. J
X)c<r »S97
■J/^ 3o S II 17 23 2o M-
3a-n. /6<29 Tib
FiQ. 1. — Gain and Loss Curve of Daily Terapevaturo at Greenwicli last Winter.
proper amount. But by the end of the year there
was about two and a half inches (as we may say) still
due.
Let us see what kind of curve we get from the daily
temperatures (at Greenwich) in the remarkably mild
wmter we have lately passed through. (The relation of
these to the average is given in the WeekUj TUturn.) The
curve is that marked A (Fig. 1).
In these curves a rise means a plus value, and a fall a
minus ; we may speak of the one class as " gains," the
downward course of the curve continue some time ? It
would be difficult to say.
We may take a wider survey in this matter of tempera-
ture. Consider the years as hot or cold. Here is a curve
(B, Fig. 2)which shows,
in the case of Green-
wich, the result of the
method as applied to
the years since 1841.
Up to 1878 there has
been a general rise ;
since 1878, a general
fall. More hot years
than cold in the former
case (twenty-three to
fifteen) , more cold than
hot in the latter (twelve
to seven). The rise
since 1892 may be the
beginning of a long
general ascent : but it
seems not inconsistent
with our being still on
the " down grade."
Can we go further back with confidence? Earlier
figures are in some uncertainty. If we take a table of
estimated Greenwich temperatures, by Mr. Glaisher, in the
Philosopln>-<il Tmnsiictions for 18-30, and extending from
1771 to 1849, and apply our method, we get the curve C.
An interesting table by Dr. Buchan, for the North-East of
Scotland (chiefly Gordon Castle and Culloden), from 1764
to 1892, yields the curve D. There is a degree of similarity
between these two curves, and they may be taken to afford
a general idea of the truth. They dip down to low points
2?
-t
>n«.r
f^ ?*• 3o
17^0 &> 72 'S n'SU'go '6 'mz''8 'l/f'TV '6 '32 'S '44 "io '6 '6Z. 'd '7^ '90 '6 '92. '8
Fig. 2. — Gain and Loss Curves of Annual Temperature, Greenwich, Xorti-East Scotland, and Harvard.
other as " losses "; and we see that in this curve, from the
beginning of December to February 17th, the gains were
much more than the losses. Neglecting for the present
the individual amounts of gain or loss, we find that the
warm days were much more numerous than the cold.
After February 17th the balance was the other way. Here
are some figures : from December 1st to February 17th we
had sixty-one warm days and only eighteen cold ; there-
after thirty-two cold days and only ten warm. Will this
in the second and third decades of this century ; after
which comes a long rise to the seventies. The first twenty
years of our century evidently included some very intense
cold. Perhaps the severest wmter of the century (thus far)
is 1813-14, when a fair was held on the Thames, and there
was a snowstorm lasting forty-eight hours.
It is a curious fact that in America the weather is often
opposite to ours. Thus, if winter is severe on the continent
of Europe it is generally mild in America, and rice nrsd.
130
KNOWLEDGE,
[June 1, 1898.
How does America show in temperature from our present
point of view ? E is a " gain and loss " curve, as we may
call it, for Harvard Observatory, from 1841. It is distinctly
opposite in character to that for Greenwich. Up to 1875,
more cold years than hot ; since 1875, more hot years
than cold. A similar kind of variation might be shown for
Chicago, and, doubtless, other places.
In all these curves, we may here note, it is the general
trend of the curve that has to be considered, rather than
the relation to the average line. For the starting point is
/8^
-0 ■
5- J^ '
5- c
0 '
5-70 \
5- 's-o ;
5- 70 '
3-
^ Z>6
+ 30
Ir 6
0
- 6.
-Jz
- Is
f!?
A.
f
I
\
r
\
\
f^
— ¥
V.
;
\
^^
ft,
n
t
f
>
1 3o
I
k
1
'«a
"J
I
'\
's\
u
■'i-s
C
V
u
-^17
^6S
iPi
\
f ro
^^
\r^
A
l^
N
/
M
^
(1
V
J
\l
VA.
f
i i
'h
\l
V
-11
'5-»
.,
-J-
■^^
■f 2
/
\
»-^
+ )
/
V^
->
0
/
\
/
\
-/
\
—
-z
— 1
\
-3.
N
^^
1
J
. B
: f
L /
I. jy
[. J
J
. A
L 5
c
>. J
i:i3
Fig. 3. — Gain and Loss Curves of Kainfall, Edinburgli and
Greenwich (years), and London (moutlis of 1897).
chosen arbitrarily, and we always commence near the
average line. Referring to curve D, if we commenced in
1824 we should get a curve wholly above the average line,
instead of mostly below it, as in the diagram.
We may now, in conclusion, briefly glance at rainfall.
The annual rainfall at Edinburgh from 1841 to 1896
(according to Mr. Mossman's figures), treated by our
method, yields the curve F (Fig. 3) ; and that for Green-
wich the curve G.
In both of these we may observe a gradual rise from
1858 to 1882; more wet years than dry. Thus, in the case
of Edinburgh, of these twenty-five years, sixteen were wet
and only nine dry. Since 1882, again, the dry years have
preponderated ; in Edinburgh ten dry to four wet. From
the general aspect of these curves we may, perhaps, be
inclined to think the preponderance of dry years may
continue some time further.
The method here illustrated does not seem to have been
much used in this country, but is capable, I believe, of
throwing some light on the vagaries (as we often call
them) of our weather.
THE PRISMATIC CAMERA AT THE RECENT
ECLIPSE.
By -J. Etebshed, f.e.a.s.
SPECTROSCOPIC research formed an important
feature in the work of most of the astronomical
parties who went to India to observe the total
solar eclipse of last January, and photographic
methods, which have so largely replaced eye obser-
vations at recent eclipses, were, it is needless to add, em-
ployed at every station where this analytical method was
in vogue.
Owing to the ideal condition of the weather ail along
the line of central eclipse, a large number of very beautiful
photographs are the result. The amount of interesting
material thus secured, and which is now available for
discussion, certainly exceeds anything obtained at any
previous eclipse.
Among the various lines of research undertaken by
spectroscopists, perhaps the largest share of attention was
given to the study of the spectrum of the layer of gases
lying immediately above the dazzling photosphere, and
known as the " flash spectrum."
It may be well to explain, for the benefit of those who
are unfamiliar with the subject, the conditions under
which this spectrum is revealed during an eclipse. Out-
side the visible surface of the sun, and covering the entire
sphere pretty uniformly, there exists a stratum of gas of
considerable depth and comparatively simple composition,
known as the " chromosphere." Its spectrum of bright
lines indicates the presence of the three elements calcium,
hydrogen, and helium. This layer and the prominences
arising from it may be seen at all times by the aid of
powerful spectroscopes ; but the base of the chromosphere —
that is, the region lying within one or two seconds of arc
of the photosphere — is not accessible to ordinary spectro-
scopic observation, on account of the perpetual unsteadiness
of the telescopic image of the sun, and the very intense
atmospheric illumination so near to the sun's edge.
Now, during the progress of a total eclipse, the moon,
advancing from the west, gradually covers up the photo-
sphere until only a thin crescent remains on the east side,
and this rapidly narrows down and finally vanishes alto-
gether ; when this occurs, however, the chromosphere
lying outside still remains uneclipsed on the east limb,
and even the very lowest strata are uncovered near the
point where the last streak of photosphere disappeared.
It is just here that the most interesting and beautiful
spectral phenomena are revealed ; bright lines flash out in
hundreds — there seems literally to be a shower of bright
lines all along the spectrum the moment the photospheric
light is withdrawn — but it is only momentary ; the steadily
advancing moon almost immediately occults the lowest
gaseous strata and only the ordinary chromospheric spec-
trum remains.
June 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE.
131
This beautiful phenomenon can therefore only be seen or
photographed at the momenta of disappearance or reap-
pearance of the photosphere at the beginning and end of the
total phase respectively. Under the average conditions of
an eclipse, perhaps not more than two seconds are available
just as totality comes on in which the flash spectrum may
be photographed in its full splendour ; and if the observer
is discerning enough to know exactly when the sun is
going to burst out again at the end of totality, he wiU
have another two seconds in which to expose a second
plate !
It has been estimated that our opportunities for studying
the corona do not amount in the aggregate to more than
some hours per century, and the progress of knowledge is,
in consequence, not rapid. How long it will take to
unravel the mysteries of the flash spectrum it is bard to
say, seeing that the time available for its study must be
reckoned in minutes per century. This method of estima-
tion is, however, certainly unjust to the photographic
plate, which enables us to study at leisure so very transient
a phenomenon.
A great variety of photogi'aphic spectroscopes were used
at the recent eclipse, but all may be classed under two
heads, viz., slit spectrographs and prismatic cameras.
The great advantages possessed by the latter for eclipse
work were first pointed out by Sir Norman Lockyer, who
employed them with great success at the eclipse of 1893,
and again in 1896, when Mr. Shackleton first succeeded
in photographing the flash spectrum at his station in
Novaya Zemlia. The crowning success for the prismatic
camera is the splendid photogi-aph of the flash which Sir
Norman Lockyer has obtained at the recent eclipse with
his six-inch instrument in the hands of Mr. Fowler.
The photographs which accompany this article were
obtained at the recent eclipse with a small instrument of
this class, which I constructed in 1896 for the eclipse of
that year. Without going into details as to the design of
this particular instrument, I may say generally that the
prismatic camera is the simplest of all spectroscopic appli-
ances. It consists essentially of a prism placed in front
of a camera lens. There is no slit or collimator, which in
the ordinary spectroscope are used to give purity to the
spectrum, and consequently it is not possible to photograph
spectra from extended sources of light, such as the disc of
the sun. But the prismatic camera is particularly well
adapted for photographing the spectrum of the solar
atmosphere during an eclipse, because, as before explained,
when the disc is enth-ely covered by the moon there
remains a thin crescent of light due to the layer of gases
outside, and which acts the part of a curved slit. If the
moon and sun were precisely equal in apparent size this
would extend all round in a ring, and would produce con-
siderable confusion in the spectral images ; but under
ordinary circumstances the moon is slightly the larger in
angular diameter, so that early in the total phase the
chromospheric gases appear as a half circle or crescent on
one side only, while later on this is in turn eclipsed and
the opposite portion is uncovered.
In the succession of photographs given in the plate it
will be noticed that the spectral images of these crescents
exhibit this change, which occurs about the time of mid-
totality (between Nos. i and 7). It will of course be
understood that, owing to the essential nature of gaseous
radiation, and to the wonderfully complete mixture of gases
existing at the base of the chromosphere, an enormous
number of distinct images or spectrum '• lines " are shown
in the photographs taken near second and third contact.
The pair of very strong images to the left hand of the
central portion of each spectrum are those due to the well-
known radiations of calcium vapour, namely, H and K ;
they give complete images of the chromosphere and pro-
minences— or, rather, as much as was uncovered by the
moon at the time each photograph was taken.
Before proceeding to describe in detail the results
obtained, I will give a brief description of the arrange-
ments I made for this work at the camp of the British
Astronomical Association stationed at Talni.
My plan of work was first to obtain a series of ten
photographs with the prismatic camera during totality,
and including, if possible, the flash spectrum at both
second and third contacts ; secondly, to photograph the
flash spectrum on a larger scale with a large slitless
spectrograph attached to a six-inch telescope; and, thirdly,
to expose a single plate to the spectrum of the corona
during the whole time of totality by means of a slit spectro-
graph containing quartz prisms.
Besides these three photographic instruments I had
available a four- inch polar heliostat, kindly placed at my
disposal by Mr. W. H. Maw ; and a three and a quarter
inch equatorial telescope provided with a powerful solar
spectroscope, with which I intended to actually observe
the flash of bright lines at second contact, and thus
determine the exact moment when to expose the photo-
graphic instruments.
The heliostat, which I arranged with two four-inch
mirrors instead of one, was used to supply light to the
prismatic camera and to the slit spectrograph, both these
being mounted on fixed supports firmly bedded in cement.
The six-inch telescope with its spectrograph was mounted
equatorially, but without any driving gear, and was
pointed directly at the eclipsed sun.
As there would be no one available on the day of the
eclipse to assist me, the three photographic instruments
bad to be arranged with their exposing shutters near
together, so that I could work them all while seated near
the telespectroscope.
The diagram will show better than any description
the disposition of the various instruments within the
observing hut.
H- SOUTH.
Px.Ay OF Obsebving Hut.
E. Equatorial Telespectroscope ; H. Heliostat ; PC. Prismatic
Camera ; SG. Spectrograph with Six-inch Object Glass ; ss. Slit
Spectrograph with two Quartz Prisms.
Thanks to the facilities afforded by the Indian (.iovern-
ment in providing workmen and materials, and to the
132
KNOWLEDGE.
[June 1, 1898.
very attentive way m which all our needs were provided
for by the Deputy Commissioner of the district, Lieutenant
Morris, I was able to get everything erected and in
working order during the fortnight preceding the ecHpse.
In adjusting the instruments and putting together the six-
inch telescope and spectrograph I had also the advantage
of receiving moat elBcient help from Captain Molesworth,
R.E., without whose skilled assistance it would have been
impossible to get all ready in time.
On the day of the eclipse the actual procedure was as
follows : — About ten minutes before totality the heliostat
was started going and the mirrors adjusted. Then the
exposing cap of the prismatic camera was put on and the
first plate drawn up into position by means of a rack-
and-pinion arrangement which I had made for this instru-
ment to obviate the necessity for " changing plates "
after each exposure. Next, the exposing shutter of the
slit spectrograph was closed and the dark slide drawn
out ready.
At eighty-eight seconds before second contact the six-
inch telescope was adjusted and clamped in such a position
that the diurnal motion would carry the image of the
eastern edge of the sun exactly into the middle of the
field of the spectrograph at the moment of second contact.
This was effected by moving the telescope until the image
of what remained of the sun touched a certain mark
previously made on a screen placed in the focal plane,
and keeping it there by following in R.A. until the
chronometer I was using indicated eighty-eight seconds
before totality.
During the last half-minute before the eclipse was total
I began exposures with the prismatic camera, taking two
instantaneous photographs of the cusp spectrum, and then
drawing another plate into position ready for the " flash."
Now, all being ready, only a few seconds remained
before the bright lines of the flash spectrum might be
expected to appear. The gloom of the approaching
shadow was already increasing at an alarming rate. I
turned to the visual spectroscope, took oS' the slit head,
and watched the spectrum of the last remaining thread of
sunlight without any slit. The well-known j,'roups of dark
lines composing the ordinary solar spectrum were seen at
first just as though the slit had not been removed, but
they were curved arcs instead of straight lines, each taking
the form of the little crescent of photosphere remaining
uncovered.
The band of continuous spectrum in which these dark
lines appeared was seen to be rapidly narrowing, but,
instead of thinning down to a single thread, the roughness
of the moon's edge caused it to suddenly break up into a
number of strips with dark spaces between, and at this
instant the bright lines flashed out in hundreds between
and across the streaks of continuous spectrum. I was
astonished at the suddenness of the reversal from dark
lines to bright, and at the brilliancy and extreme sharpness
of the lines ; many of them extended for thirty degrees or
more round the limb of the moon, but interrupted here
and there by the projecting lunar mountains.
Without waiting for further developments I immediately
exposed the prismatic camera and the large spectrograph,
in hopes that the photographic plate would be equal to the
occasion and duly record this wonderful display.
In the resulting photograph (No. 3) certainly not all of
the finer lines are depicted which I could see reversed in
the part of the spectrum I was observing. But in the
ultra-violet, where the definition is best, an extraordinary
wealth of fine lines are shown ; and this end of the photo-
graph gives a good idea of what I actually saw near the
group /' in the green.
Immediately after second contact I made an instan-
taneous exposure with the prismatic camera — the fourth of
the series — and then started a series of long exposures, at
the same time opening the shutter of the slit spectrograph.
During the first long exposure I left the seat near the
heliostat and closed the slide of the large spectrograph,
reversed it, and opened again ready for the second flash.
Then I had to turn the right ascension handle four revolu-
tions to bring the west limb into the field of the spectro-
graph at third contact. The forty seconds occupied in
this way with my back to the eclipse was an ordeal which
I trust I may never again have to undergo ! After returning
to the seat I closed the long exposure and started another ;
then I had a look, for the first time, at the corona. With
a pair of binoculars I examined the beautiful streamer on
the south-west side which was so successfully photographed
by Mrs. Maunder (see the May Number of Knoi\xedge).
But almost before I could gain any very distinct impressions
I was interrupted by the time caller, only twenty more
seconds remaining before the sun would reappear ! It was
necessary to close the long exposure, expose another short
one, and then look out for the flash again.
Fortunately I made the exposure for the second flash
spectrum just as the first points of sunlight burst into
view on the west limb, forming what is known as
" Bailey's Beads." (See No. 8.)
Two more snap shots with the prismatic camera taken
in rapid succession completed the programme.
The whole performance seemed to have gone ofif without
any serious hitch, but too late I discovered the slit spectro-
graph still open, with the crescent sun right across the
slit ! I had forgotten to close the shutter in the hurry of
the last moments of totality.
The number of photographs secured altogether was
thirteen ; one with the slit spectrograph, two with the
large spectrograph, and ten with the prismatic camera.
The single photograph obtained with the first named
failed from the above-mentioned cause, the direct sunlight
and halation nearly obliterating the faint coronal spectrum.
The large spectrograph yielded two negatives of the
flash spectrum which show a considerable number of lines
in a limited region of the spectrum, but on the whole they
do not quite come up to expectation. The best results
were those obtained with the prismatic camera. This
instrument gave images of the spectrum extending from
A 600 in the orange to A 338 in the ultra-violet. The
scale of the original negatives is -33 inch to the moon's
diameter and one inch from F to H, the total length of
spectrum photographed being 2-8 inches.
All the ten exposures yielded good negatives. Nos. 1, 2,
9, and 10 of the series give the spectrum of the cusps just
before and just after the total phase. They show the
P^aunhofer dark-line spectrum bordered with bright lines,
and in \o. 10 nil the dark lines in the ultra-violet end in
a short bright line.
The flash spectrum lines are shown in Nos. 3, 7, and 8.
In No. 3 they are beautifully defined in the ultra-violet
from H upwards, and this photograph is certainly the
finest of the set. It will be necessary to study it in great
detail by means of enlargements and with the help of the
Fraunhofer spectrum (obtained under precisely the same
angle of incidence) given in Nos. 1 and "2.
Of the remaining plates, No. 4 reveals a very curious
feature in the prominence spectrum. In the ultra-violet
are seen a succession of little dots due to the hydrogen
radiations, and at the point where these terminate (at
K 3660) the spectrum abruptly changes its character and
becomes a continuous one, a delicate line running from
the last dot to the end of the plate.
l\'noirh'd{ie.
ECLIPSE SPECTRA.
Photographed with Prismatic Camera. 2\ inches Aperture, 36 inches Focus.
June 1, 1898.1
KNOWLEDGE
133
The long exposures made near mid-totality show the
distribution of " coronium " in the corona. The well-
known radiation of this gas, 1 171 K, is, in these, shown
to correspond more or less with the general structure of
the corona ; but it is very much brighter on the east side
than on the west, where it is hard to trace it at all.
Six out of the ten photographs taken are reproduced in
the plate, enlarged about two and one-third times. The
series number is given beside each spectrum, iluch ot
the delicate detail shown on the original negatives is
inevitably lost in the reproduction, although the main
features are well brought out. In referring again to the
flash spectrum, as seen in Nos. 3 and 7, I would call
attention to the beautiful sequence of the hydrogen lines
(the positions of these referring to No. 3 are given at the
top of the plate). I do not know that these lines have ever
before been photographed in such completeness in the
chromosphere spectrum. In the original negative twenty-
six or twenty-seven lines can be counted, starting with the
line a at the red end. In the ultra-violet they become so
closely crowded together that it is not easy to say exactly
how many there are and where the series ends. According
to the well-kuowu empirical formula of Balmer, which
expresses with such extraordinary accuracy a series of
numbers given by nature, the limit should be at >. 3(ji7, a
position in the spectrum which is indicated by an arrow
at the top of the plate. In the photograph, however,
there is a beautifully regular gradation in the intensity
of the lines, which become fainter and fainter as this limit
is approached, so that line No. 27 (A SCUM) is so exceed-
ingly faint as to be barely distinguishable, and it apparently
forms the termination of the series.
Another point which is well shown in No. 3 is that, if
we except the ordinary chromosphere lines (those of
calcium, hydrogen, and helium), all the fainter lines due to
the flash spectrum proper are of the same length and form,
a well-defined band of even width running from end to end
of the spectrum. This shows that the low-lying gases at
the base of the chromosphere form a well-defined layer
pretty definitely bounded, and not fading by insensible
gradations into the higher portions of the chromosphere.
An estimate based on the width of this band of bright
lines gives for the depth of the layer about one and a
half seconds of arc — or say seven hundred miles — the total
depth of the chromosphere itself being some eight seconds
of arc, or three thousand six hundred miles.
The limits of this article preclude my entering upon
the discussion as to the relation between the flash spectrum
lines and the Fraunhofer spectrum, beyond saying that,
from a careful consideration of the facts so far brought to
light, I am inclined to believe that the flash
spectrum does in fact represent the upper
portion of the layer which by its absorption
gives us the ordinary dark- line spectrum, as
was held by Prof. Young, who first discovered
the so-called "reversing layer" at the eclipse
of 1870.
I think that too much stress has been
laid upon the fact that, while the flash
spectrum lines correspond in position with
the Fraunhofer lines, yet in relative intensity
there are marked differences. This, it seems
to me, is only what we should expect to be the case when we
consider that in the one case we are looking tangentially
through the higher parts of the layer (which, it is to be
remembered, is some seven hundred miles in depth, with
a probable enormous increase of density at the base), while
in the other the line of sight passes entirely through the
layer from top to bottom.
OCCULTATION OF 26 ARIETIS OBSERVED
PHOTOGRAPHICALLY.
THE disappearance of a bright star when occulted
by the moon is always a striking phenomenon.
There is no celestial event whose time is susceptible
of more precise determination. For many years
various plans have been suggested, both here and
elsewhere, by which this time could be determined with
greater accuracy than by ordinary visual observation. In
fact, the apparatus for photographing the eclipses of
Jupiter's satellites, used here for several years, was devised
in part for this purpose.
On February 2.5th, 1898, Mr. Edward S. King for the first
time succeeded in satisfactorily photographing the occul-
tation of a star. The apparatus used was an improved
form of that constructed for photographing the eclipses of
Jupiter's satellites, and described in the Astrnpln/^ical
.Journal, Vol. I., p. 146. The plate was moved automatically
every second by means of an electro-magnet. A motion
of about 303 cm. was given to the plate whenever the
circuit was closed, and of an equal amount when it was
opened. Connecting the apparatus with the standard
clock, Frodsham 132'7, two images alternately faint and
bright were obtained every second. As the faint images
are three magnitudes fainter than the bright images, the
ratio of the durations was about one to sixteen, so that
the absolute durations were O-OGs. and 0'.»ls. It is here
assumed that, as the times of exposure were very short,
the chemical action was proportional to the time. This
assumption is verified by actual measurement.
Considering only the images taken during the minute
following 6h. 35m. Os., the bright images of 26 Arietis, as
shown, are equally intense, including that having an
exposure lasting from oQ-OGs. to SlOOs. Since this image
appears to be as bright as the others, the light of the star
could not have begun to diminish much before the time
51003. If the star had disappeared suddenlyat 50-!»3. the
last image would be at least 012 of a magnitude fainter
than the others, an amount readily measurable. The next
image is apparently invisible. Had the disappearance
taken place at 51-06s. the image would appear, and would
be as bright as the other faint images. A slight darkening
of the film is perceptible near the position the next image
would have had, with an intensity nearly equal to that of
the fainter images. If this were due to the star it would
denote that the latter suddenly disappeared at about 5ri2s.
The absence of the preceding image would indicate a more
gradual disappearance. In any case, the time is fixed at
Occultatioa of 20 Arietis. (Kiilargod 10 times.)
51-ls., to within one-tenth of a second. As the clock was
2m. 19-ls. fast, not including armature time, the corre-
sponding Greenwich mean time is 12h. 51m. 26"5s. By
using shorter exposures the uncertainty in the time of dis-
appearance can doubtless be greatly reduced, especially in
the case of the brighter stars. Since satisfactory images
of 26 Arietis, magnitude 01, were obtained in 0 OGs., it is
134
KNOWLEDGE,
[Juke 1, 1898.
probable that occuUatione of stars as faint as the ninth
magnitude can be observed photographically.
Measures were next made of the intensity of the last five
images of 26 Arietis, to see if there was any diminution in
light due to the absorption of a lunar atmosphere. The
distances of these images from the moon's limb were 1-8 ",
I'i", 1-0", O'C", and 0-2", respectively. The corresponding
changes in light expressed in magnitudes as compared with
ten more distant images were +003, +0-03, —0-02,
+ 008, and — 0-02. A positive sign denotes that an image
was fainter than those at a greater distance from the
moon. From this it appears that no diminution in light
was perceptible. No correction need be applied to any of
the above calculations for the diameter of the star's disc,
since, assuming its intrinsic brightness equal to that of the
sun, its time of disappearance would be only 0-002s. [Proc.
Anwr. Acad., XVI., p. 1.
In this connection it is interesting to note that the
determination photographically of the position of the moon
by means of a star about to be occulted, was one of the
subjects investigated by Prof. G. P. Bond forty years
ago. He obtained a number of photographs of the moon
and a Virginis shortly before the occultation of the latter
on June 2nd, 1857.
A VARIABLE BRIGHT HYDROGEN LINE.
The presence of the bright hydrogen line H^ in the
spectrum of the star A. G. C. 9181 was found from the
Draper Memorial photographs in 1895, and was announced
in the Astrojihi/xical Journal, Vol. I., p. 411. From a
comparison of photographs of this object taken on different
dates Miss A. J. Cannon finds that this line is variable.
On October 5th, 18!i2, it was invisible. On November 28th,
1894, it was about half as bright as the corresponding line
in A. (i. C. 9198, uj Canis Majoris. On April 27th and
30th, 1895, the line in A. G. C. 9181 was distinctly the
brighter of the two, while in January, 1897, it was again
invisible. From a large number of photographs of this
object taken recently it appears that this line, which was
bright in October, 1897, is now, December 27th, invisible.
A NEW SPECTROSCOPIC BINARY.
From an examination of the Draper Memorial photo-
graphs Mrs. Fleming finds that the star A. G. C. 20203,
fi Lupi, is a spectroscopic binary. The period has not yet
been determined, but photographs are being taken for this
purpose.
Measures of the spectroscopic binaries, jw.' Scorpii and
A. G. C. 10534, show that the relative velocities of the
components are approximately 460 km. and 610 km.
respectively. The velocities are therefore much greater
than in the case of ? Urs.T Majoris and /3 Aurigrc. The
separation of some of the lines amounts to as much as
nine tenth-metres.
PHOTOGRAPHIC SPECTRUM OF THE AURORA.
Various attempts have been made at this observatory to
photograph the spectrum of the aurora. In 1880 on several
occasions long exposures were given to plates during bright
auroras, but no result was obtained. On April 1, 1897,
Mr. Edward S. King succeeded in obtaining a photograph
in which four bright lines were visible, but imcertainty
existed regarding their wave lengths. The exposure was
one hundred and forty-seven minutes. During the bright
aurora of March 15th, 1898, he obtained a photograph
showing two bright lines. The exposure was one hundred
and forty-one minutes. The brightest of these lines extends
in wave length from about 3892 to 3925, and the wave length
of the second is 4285. Assuming the two brighter lines
photographed in 1897 to be identical with these, the four
lines on that plate have the wave lengths 3862, 8922,
4288, and 4094. The first of these lines is very faint.
The errors of measurement of these lines do not exceed
one or two units, but much greater uncertainty exists in
the reduction owing to difliculties in comparing them with
the lines of the solar spectrum, which was photographed
upon the same plate. Probably the two auroras gave
difi'erent spectra. That in 1897 was taken with a wide
slit, but the images of the lines were well defined on the
edges and of equal width, so that the line 3922 was
probably really narrow and coincident with the edge of
^greater wave length of the line 3892 to 3925. The
spectroscope used was not especially designed for photo-
graphing faint surfaces, and it is hoped that better results
may be obtained with a new instrument now in course of
construction. As is the case with all results announced
in these circulars, it is expected that full details will be
published later in the annals of the observatory.
Harvard College Observatory. Edwabd C. Pickebdco.
Notf»0 of ISoolts.
The Smithsonian Institution, 1^40-1890 : the Histor;/ af its
First IJalf-Century, Edited by George Brown Good. (City
of Washington.) When James Smithson, in 1826, drew
up his will [containing this most significant provision, " I
bequeath the whole of my property to found at Washington,
under the name of the Smithsonian Institution, an estab-
lishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among
men," he laid the foundation of an organization which,
for half a century, has been one of the most important
agencies in furthering the intellectual development of man-
kind. The institution is a rallying point for workers in
every department of scientific and educational activity, and
the chief agency for the free distribution of books, apparatus
of research, and of scientific intelligence throughout the
world. Its pubUcations, which include some hundreds of
volumes, are sent to all the most important libraries in the
world, and many of them, it is safe to say, are found on
the work-table of every scientific investigator. In view of
the present enthusiasm for the idea of the federation of the
Anglo-Saxon races, it may not be inopportune to point out
that James Smithson was an Englishman who graduated
at Oxford in 1786. "The best blood of England flows in
my veins," he once wrote ; " on my father's side I am a
Northumberland, on my mother's I am related to kings."
This sumptuous volume contains a complete history of the
Institution, and appreciative notices (each by a distinguished
man of science) of the various branches of work carried out
under its auspices during its existence. Though the plan
of the volume is due to the late Dr. Goode, the enormous
labour involved in seeing the work through the press has
fallen upon Prof. S. P. Langley, the present secretary of
the Institution, whose own contributions to science have
placed him in the foremost rank among investigators of
natural phenomena. The volume is in every way a worthy
jubilee memorial ; the printing, the plates- — in fact, the
whole /on/(a; — leave nothing to be desired ; and whoever is
fortunate enough to obtain a copy may well be gratified at
his possession.
Memorials of William Cramh Bond and of his timi George
Phillips Bond. By Edward S. Holden. (1897. Ban
Francisco, C. A. Murdock & Co. ; New York City, Lenicke
Buechner.) It is not given to every man to be a
Boswell, but the pity of it is that would-be Boswells do
not recognize the fact, and assume the rule. The first
part of this book is extremely dull. It consists largely of
June 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE.
135
autobiographical or biographical sketches of a Bond by
himself or by another Bond, and the rest is a repetition of
the same, paraphrased by Prof. Holden. The second part
is not so dull, consisting as it does of Prof. George Bond's
diary during his visits to Europe. Its interest chiefly
lies in the comments of a personal nature on contemporary
philosophers. We confess to being mterested in hearing
that he " found M. Plantamour a young man of thirty,
and very good looking for a savant": that he noticed
" that the most distinguished scientific men are bad.
hesitating speakers — except, perhaps, Sir John Herschel."
The last part of the book consists of letters from or
to the Bonds from other scientists, which are simply the
short epistles that one astronomer must write to another
in the ordinary course of business. We fail to see why
they were inserted, except that they occupy some sixty
pages.
A Treatise on Magnetism and Electricity. By Prof.
Andrew Gray, LL.D.,F.R.s. (London: Macmillan andCo.)
143. net. Students of physics have been long awaiting
the publication of Prof. Gray's treatise on magnetism and
electricity, the first volume of which is now before us.
The plan adopted is to " regard electric and magnetic
forces as existing in a space-pervading medium in which
the electric and magnetic energies are stored, and by which
they are handed on from one place to another with a finite
velocity of propagation." We need hardly say that this
modem plan of regarding the subject has, in the hands of
Prof. Gray, resulted in a book which no serious student of
physics can afford to neglect. Though an elementary
acquaintance with electric phenomena and apparatus is
assumed, the reader possesed of a fair knowledge of the
calculus will have no difficulty in intelligently following
the subject as it is here presented. As stated in the words
of Bacon, quoted upon the title page; "All true and fruit-
ful natural philosophy hath a double scale or ladder, an
as3endant and descendant, ascending fi-om experiments to
the invention of causes and descending from causes to the
invention of new experiments." Prof. Gray is concerned
with both these processes ; and by showing how, first,
electrical phenomena can be satisfactorily explained by
action in a medium, he is able to also indicate the con-
sequences to which they lead. This treatment is the
natural outcome of the pioneer work of Maxwell, who,
following the ascendant ladder, elaborated a mathematical
theory of electricity which was not only retrospective but
prophetic. The volume, of nearly five hundred pages,
includes an account of the ordinary facts of magnetism
viewed from a theoretical standpoint, a discussion of
electrostatics and electric currents, of electro-magnetism,
and of the electro-magnetic theory of light. It wUl un-
doubtedly occupy a prominent place as a book of reference
in every well-equipped library, and will be read wherever
the modern aspects of magnetism and electricity are
studied.
Mcwori/ and itx C'.dti ration. By F. W. Edridge-Green,
M.D., F.R.c.s. (Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, i Co.)
The author of this addition to the " International Scientific
Series " claims that the facts he has discovered enable him
to learn a subject in about a fifth of the time that it pre-
viously took him. With such a tempting allurement, one
sets about the task of reading the manual with no little
avidity. Unfortunately, however, it is difficult to main-
tain this preliminary enthusiasm. Though a few of the
instances given to exemplify the statements made are in-
teresting reading, we very much doubt whether the volume
will find many appreciative readers. The idea of using a
physiological basis for the analysis of memory is good, but
it needs more careful treatment than it receives in the
present book. Physiologists and psychologists wiU be
content to differ from Dr. Edridge-Green's view, that
"memory is a definite faculty, and has its seat in the
basal ganglia of the brain, separate from, but associated
with, all the other faculties of the mind " (page 8).
As for the author's elaborate scheme of thirty-seven
faculties, it would perhaps be kindest to limit ourselves to
the statement that scientific men consider them fantastical
and that the general reader will find them misleading.
Whoever purchases the book with the idea of improving a
bad memory will be disappointed ; and few people will be
deeply interested in the views which the author has taken
the pains to expound.
Ainhroise Par' and his Times. By Stephen Paget.
(G. P. Putnam.) This is a very attractive volume, beauti-
fully printed and well illustrated. As most of our readers
will know, Pare was contemporary with a number of dis-
tinguished men whose names are famUiar to everyone. We
need only mention Shakespeare and Rabelais, Calvin and
Knox, to enable Part 's place in history to be located. He
was born three years before the battle of Flodden Field,
and died (after an eventful life of eighty years) a year and
four months after the destruction of the Armada. The
volume, upon which we cordially congratulate Mr. Paget,
is well worth reading. It is brimful of interesting matter,
and though it is but natural that the ".Journeys in Diverse
Places " from Part's own pen should attract most attention,
yet Mr. Paget's work is well able to sustain the reader's
interest throughout. To medical students and practising
surgeons this biographical sketch should be particularly
readable. How many of them would be content to do as
Pare did at Turin ? This is what he says in the " Journey
to Turin," 1537 : " I found a surgeon famed above all others
for his treatment of gunshot wounds, into whose favour I
found means to insinuate myself, to have the recipe of his
' balm,' as he called it, wherewith he dressed gunshot
wounds. And he made me pay my court to him for two
years before I could possibly draw the recipe from him.
In the end, thanks to my gifts and presents, he gave it to
me." (Page 3.5.) Knowledge is more easily gained nowadays
and is less highly prized.
SHORT NOTICES.
The Centuries. Second Edition. (Xewman & Co.) ob. 6d. post free.
Intended to supply a skeleton conspectus of general history, and to
serve at the same time as a note-book for the reception of additional
memoranda, this book is designed as a study-table companion for
readers in biography or history. It forms a chronological synopsis of
history on the " space-for-time " method, a page being allowed for
every century, which is divided into ten-year periods, and each event
is inserted as nearly as practicable in its proper position. The year
'• one," it is edifying to note, in this work is placed ten thousand
years before the Christian era !
Modern Architecture. By H. Heathcote Statham. (Chapman
& Hall.) Illustrated. Mr. Statham has treated a very intncate
subject in a lucid style. At the preseut day bridges, theatres
and many buildings of a commercial kind are too frequently con-
structed rapidly and without any serious effort at artistic effect.
Believing that the sight of artistic buildings will produce ennoblin"
results on the rising generation, the author in Iiis book — which is
compreheusive, and embraces street, public, and domestic architecture
— exerts himself to arouse greater enthusiasm for decorative effect in
those who have never been able to raise themselves above the purely
utilitarian.
Elementary Sotan)/. By Percy Grroom, M.A., F.L.s. (George Bell &
Sons.) Illustrated. Ss. 6d. " Though by no means a ' cram book '
for elementary examinations, a thorough knowledge of the contents
of this book will enable a candidate to pass with distinction." This
is what the author says in his preface. Mr. Groom insists on the
free use of the simple microscope in commencing the study of botany,
and in these lessons the compound microscope is deemed unnecessary.
136
KNOWLEDGE
[June 1, 1898.
A somewhat norel departure in the work consists in the study of
vegetable physiology prior to a knowledge of the histology of plants ;
a plan which, we think, is open to criticism, inasmuch as it is fairly
comparable to entering upou the study of a steam engine before hariag
mastered the principles inToIved in the simple mechanical powers.
The Suilding of the Intellect. By Douglas M. Ganc. (Elliot
Stock.) 58. The author of this book endeavours to present to the
reader some of the leading views pertaining to man's education in
all its aspects. He says : " Education being now regarded as a
question of such Tital importance, and opinions differing so widely
as to its method, character, and scope, a summary of the views of
tliose best qualified as guides and teachers cannot fail to arrive at
something like unanimity of ojjinion." The volume, which is happily
hung together, consists mainly of extracts from recognized authorities,
the author modestly preferring tliis method rather than the bolder
plan of clothing their opinions in his own words.
We hnve received from Messrs. Darlington & Co., of Llangollen, a
parcel of their excellent handbooks for tourists, including their new
" Guide to London," by Mrs. E. T. Cook. This latter is probably the
most complete handbook to London ever issued. It is fully illustrated
with maps, plans, and views of the great city ; contains a most in-
forming index ; and is both well written and admirably planned.
Finally, Mr. E. T. Cook has himself contributed the chapters on the
British Museum, the National Gallery, and the National Portrait
Gallery.
BOOKS RECEIVED.
The Flora of Perthshire. By Francis Buchanan W. White.
(Blackwood.) 7s. 6d. net.
The Cid Ballads. By the late .Tames Young Gibson. Edited by
Margaret Dunlop Gibson. (Kegan Paul.) Portrait. 12s.
The First Philosophers of Greece. 'By Arthur Fairbanks. (Kegan
Paul.)
The Epic of Sotnids. An Interpretation of Wagner's "Niebeluugen
Ring." New Edition. (Novello.) Illustrated. 3s. 6d.
Flemeiitari/ General Science. By A. T. Simmons and L. M. Jones.
(Macmillan.) Illustrated. 3s. 6d.
' First Stage Magnetism and Elect riciti/. ByR. H.Judc. (Clive.)
Illustrated. 2s.
Heturn — Technical Education — Application of Fnnds hif Local
Authorities. (Spottiswoode.) Is. 6d.
Text-Book of Physical Chemistry. By Clarence L. Speyers.
(Spou.)
Electro-Physiology. By W. Biedermaun. Translated by Francis
A. Welby. Vol. II. (Macmillan.) Illustrated. 17s. net.
The Story of Photography. By Alfred T. Story. (Newnes.)
Illustrated. Is.
Responsible or Irresponsible ! Criminal or Mentally Diseased !
By Henry Smith, m.d. (Watts & Co.) Is.
Scientific Method in Bioloi/t/. By Dr. Ehzabetli Blackwell.
(Elliot Stock.)
Industrial Electricity. Edited by A. G. Elliott. (Whittaker.)
Illustrated. 2s. 6d.
The Process Year-Book for 1S98. (Penrose.) Illustrated.
London in the Time of the Diamond Jubilee. By EmUy Constance
Cook. (Darlington & Co., Llangollen.) Illustrated.
Urttevs.
[The Editors do not hold themselves responsible for the opinions or
statements of correspondents.]
" THE MASSES AND DISTANCES OF THE BINARY STARS."
To the Editors of Knowledge.
Sirs, — Referring to Mr. Gore's paper on the " Masses
and Distances of the Binary Stars." In his paper of
December, 1894, he used — 25-5 as the stellar magnitude
of the sun. In his present paper he assumes —27, but
assigns no reason for the change. Will he explain 'r
The word " brightness " seems to be used by Mr. Gore
in a sense in which I think it implies something he does
not intend. I may be wrong, but I think he means
"quantity of light." We cannot tell how "bright"
a star is when we only know its mass and distance.
We could if we knew its surface and distance. Assum-
ing that Mr. Gore is right in his data for y Leonis, for
instance, and that its mass equals that of the sun, while it
emits two hundred and sixty-three times as much light
as the sun : this may be accounted for either on the
supposition that it is two hundred and sixty-three times
as bright, or a little over sixteen times the diameter of
the sun, or evidently any compensatory variations in the
two data. Of course Mr. Gore knows all this, but the
doubleuseof the word "brightness" gives trouble in reading
his papers, and leads him into such a sentence as, " Hence
we see that Sirius is nearly ten times brighter than it
would be had it . . . the same brightness of surface
as the sun has." It cannot be hri<jhter if of the same
brhjhtness. When I light a second candle I get twice
the surface and twice the light of the one, but neither
candle is brii/hter than the one first lighted.
Edwin Holmes.
To the Editors of Knowledge.
Sirs, — Mr. C. B. Holmes's detection of Mercury on
April 12th, seven minutes after sunset, would certainly
establish " a record for a London view " if the object he
saw can be unquestionably identified as Mercury. The
planet Venus was, however, in the very same region of
sky, and not more than about six and a half degrees
distant, in a south-westerly direction, from Mercnry. If
Mr. Holmes really observed the latter, then he must
naturally have also seen the far more brilliant object
\'enus.
Your correspondent's observation is such a remarkable
one that I am induced to suggest that Venus may possibly
have been mistaken for Mercury. On consulting my
note-books, I find that though I have obtained at least
ninety-four naked-eye observations of Mercury, I have
never been able, under the most favourable conditions, to
distinguish the planet within half an hour of sunset.
Bristol, 1898, AprU 29th. W. F. Denning.
"DESERTS AND THEIR INHABITANTS."
To the Editors of Knowledge.
Sirs, — Mr. Lydekker, in your last issue (p. 101), ridicules
" the idea that flints and other stones grow." As one with
"more or less intimate acquaintanceship with science"
I think his illustration unfortunate and misleading, for if
segregation means growth — which I assume it does — then,
startling as it may appear, stones do " grow."
G. Abbott, m.e.c.s.
[Your correspondent fails to reahze the difference be-
tween rocl.s and stones. Rocks, during their formation,
such as the sand and shingle of our beaches, may, in a
sense, be said to gro^v ; but the stones composing such
shingle grow only in one way — that is, less. Similarly,
congretions and segregations, such as flints, grow while in
course of formation in their native rock, but, when denuded
and reduced to the condition of stones, only alter in size
by diminution. I must decline further discussion on the
matter. — R. L.]
A LITTLE pamphlet giving " Local Particulars of the Total
Eclipse of the Sun on May 27th, 1900, ' has just been
issued from the XKUtical Almanm- office. In America, the
path of the moon's shadow reaches from New Orleans in
Louisiana to Norfolk in Virginia ; and in the Eastern
Hemisphere, from Oporto in Spain to Algiers in Northern
Africa.
June 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE.
137
Raoul Pictet, of Geneva, and Louis Paul Cailletet, of
Paris, received the Davy medal of the IJoyal Society, in
1878, for their researches on the liquefaction of gases —
including hydrogen, which, however, was scarcely more
than a mere fog in the glass tube. I'rof. Dewar has
during the past month performed the unprecedented feat
of liquefying hydrogen to the amount of half a wineglass-
ful in five minutes. The boiling point of hydrogen is
— 240° C, and the density of the liquid, there is reason to
believe, is about 0-6, water being talien as the unit.
Prof. Boyd Dawkins, in a letter to the " Times " dated
7th May, protests against the removal of the Jermyn
Street Museum andLibiary to South Kensington, recom-
mended in an interim report of the Select Committee. He
says : " It would be worse than a mistake to uproot it and
make it a mere unit in the fortuitous concourse of atoms
known as the Science and Art Museum at South Kensing-
ton. ... If technical education is to be encouraged
our museums must be multiplied and made more accessible
to the many, instead of being diminished or concentrated
in a suburb where they can only be a luxury of the few."
On Monday, the 7th May, the Council of the Royal
Geographical Society awarded one of the two medals
to Dr. Sven Hedin for his work in Central Asia, and
especially for his survey of the glaciers of Mustagata. The
Doctor was the first explorer to cross the Tal<la-Makan
desert, and has done much good work in further advancing
our knowledge of the physical geography of the Lob region.
The other medal was awarded to Lieut. E. A. Peary, for
his explorations in Northern Greenland, begun twelve years
ago, and especially for his sledge journey across the Green-
land ice, and the discovery of its northern termination.
We understand that the valuable collection of meteorites
formed by Mr. James R. Gregory is to be disposed of as a
whole. As the collection includes about five hundred
specimens, rich in fine examples of the earlier " falls,' and
has occupied nearly forty years in the compilation, it might
be a useful acquisition for some museum.
The Royal Photographic Society's Exhibition at the
Crystal Palace was a great success, and almost all branches
of photography were well represented. The most striking
feature of the exhibition was the degree of perfection
which photography has attained as an art, many beautiful
enlargements being " as good as pictures. " Photography,
as applied to science, was in quality excellent, but one
would like rather more of it. A few choice astronomical
subjects (the eclipse being well shown), also a fair pro-
portion of photomicrographs and radiographs, deserved
careful study. There svere, too, some very successful flash-
light photographs in coal mines, and a marvellous panoramic
view from a balloon taken by means of the telephoto lens.
Ornithological Notes. — Owing to the absence from
England of Mr. Harry Witherby, these have to stand over
until next month.
AFRICA AND ITS ANIMALS.
By E. Lydekker, b.a., f.r.s.
IF we take'a map of the world, and, after tracing upon a
sheet of thin paper the outline of the British Islands,
cut out the tracing and lay it upon India, we shall
find that it covers a mere patch of that great area.
Repeating the same process with India, and placing
the tracing thus obtained on Africa in such a manner that
the sharp angle on the tracing formed by Assam overlies
the projecting point of Somaliland, which it almost exactly
covers, it will be found that the area embraced in the
tracing occupies only a small patch in the middle of the
eastern side of the Dark Continent. As a matter of fact,
the patch thus marked out ends in a blunt point north-
wardly some distance above Khartum, thence it runs south
to the neighbourhood of the Victoria Nyanza, from which
district it rapidly narrows to teiminate in a sharp point
some distance to the southward of Zanzibar. Allowing
for some slight overlaps, no less than six Indias can be
traced on the map of Africa ; and as these leave between
them and on their margins considerable spaces of the
country still uncovered, it would be but a moderate esti-
mate that Africa includes at least seven times the area of
British India. Some idea, especially to those familiar
with our vast Indian dominions, may in this manner be
most readily gained of the huge extent of the African
continent.
Having made these comparisons of the actual size
of the three areas under consideration, I must ask my
readers to regard them for a moment from another point
of view. Everyone famihar with the birds and mammals
of the British Isles is aware that, even excluding Ireland,
'the same species are not found over the whole area. The
Scottish hare, for instance, is specifically distinct from the
ordinary English kind, while the red grouse is unknown
in the southern and eastern counties of England, and the
ptarmigan is confined to the colder districts of Scotland.
There are accordingly indications that even such a small
area as the British Isles contains local assemblages of
animals, or faunas, difiering more or less markedly from
those of other districts.
Turning to India, we find such local faunas — as might
be expected from its larger area — more distinctly defined,
and more markedly different from one another. One great
fauna occupies the southern slopes of the Himalaya from
the base to about the upper limit of trees ; this fauna,
which includes many peculiar types unknown elsewhere,
being designated the Himalayan. The second, or typical
Indian fauna, occupies the whole of India from the foot
of the Himalaya to Cape Comorin, exclusive of the Malabar
coast, but inclusive of the north of Ceylon. The third, or
Malabar fauna, occupies the JIalabar coast and some of
the neighbouring hills, together with the south of Ceylon ;
the animals of these districts being very different fi-om
those of the rest of India. The fourth, or Burmese fauna,
embraces only the province of Assam, in what we commonly
term India ; and many of its animals, again, although of
the general Oriental type, are very different from those of
the other districts. But even such divisions by no means
give the full extent of the local differences between the
animals of the whole area. In the second or typical area,
for example, the creatures inhabiting the open districts of
the Punjab and the North-West Provinces display remark-
able differences from those dwelling in the forests of
Southern India (the home of the strange loris) ; while the
dwellers in the jungly tract of the south-western districts
of Bengal are equally distinct from those of either of the
other areas.
Seeing, then, that while slight differences are observable
in the local faunas of such a small area as the British
Islands, and that much more important ones characterize
the different zoological provinces of the vastly larger
extent of country forming British India, it is but natural
to suppose that distinctions of stiU higher value would be
characteristic of different parts of Africa, accordingly as
they difl'er from one another in climate, and consequently
in vegetable productions.
As a matter of fact such differences do occur to a most
138
KNOWLEDGE.
[Ji-NE 1, 1898.
marlied degree ; but when the vast superiority in size of
Africa over India is taiten into consideration, the marvel is
that the fauna of the greater part of that area is not more
dissimilar than it is, and that it has been found possible
to include the more typical portion of the continent in one
great zoological region or province.
But the reader will naturally inquire what is meant by
calling one portion of a continent more typical than the
rest. As has been pointed out in an earlier article in this
journal,* Northern Africa has, so far as its animals are
concerned, been cut off from the districts lying south of
the Tropic of Cancer by the great barrier formed by the
Sahara : and as the animals of the districts to the north
of that desert are for the most part of a European type,
while Southern Europe and Northern Africa were evidently
joined by land at no very distant epoch of the earth's
history, the districts north of the Sahara are for zoological
purposes regarded as part of Europe and Asia. Typical,
or Ethiopian Africa, as it is more generally termed,
includes, therefore, only such portion of the continent as
lies to the south of the northern tropic.
But the critical reader may perhaps here be led to
remark that some at least of the animals of Northern Africa
are common to the South ; the lion, whose range extends
from Algeria to the Cape, affording a case in point. To
this it may be replied that, popular prejudice notwith-
standing, the lion cannot in any sense be looked upon as
a characteristic African animal. Although year by year
growing rarer, it to this day still lingers on in certain parts
of Western India, while it is likewise found in Persia and
Mesopotamia, and within the historic period was common
in South-Eastern Europe. At a still earlier epoch, as
attested by its fossilized remains, it was an inhabitant of
our own island. It may, therefore, to a certain degree be
regarded as a cosmopolitan animal, which may have
obtained entrance into Africa by more than one route.
In a minor degree the same may be said of the hippo-
potamus, which was formerly found in the lower reaches
of the Nile, and at a much earlier epoch in many parts of
Europe, inclusive of Britain. Being an aquatic animal,
it can avail itself of routes of communication which are
closed to purely terrestrial creatures.
Of the fauna of typical Africa, as a whole, some of the
most striking features are of a negative nature ; that is to
say, certain groups which are widely spread in most other
districts of the Old World are conspicuous by their absence.
This deficiency is most marked in the case of bears and
deer, neither of which are represented throughout the
whole of this vast expanse of country. Pigs allied to the
wild swine of Europe and India are likewise lacking; their
place being taken by the bush-pigs and the hideous wart-
hogs, both of which are among the most characteristic of
African animals. Except for a couple of species of ibex
in the hills of the north-east, sheep and goats are likewise
unknown in a wild state. Among other absentees in
the fauna, special mention may be made of marmots, and
their near allies the susliks, as well as of voles, beavers,
and moles.
Of the mammals (and space permits of scarcely any
reference to other groups) which may be regarded as
characteristic of typical Africa as a whole, the following,
in addition to the bush-pigs and wart-hogs already men-
tioned, are some of the most important. Among the
monkeys the most widely distributed are the hideous
baboons (Papio), now restricted to Africa and Arabia, the
southern portion of the latter country being included
in the same great zoological province. The guenons
* "Deserts and tbeir luhabitants,' Knowledge, May, p. 101.
(Cercojjitheais), species of which are the monkeys commonly
led about by organ-grinders, have also a wide distribution
on the continent, although of course more abundant in the
forest regions than elsewhere ; and the gnerez&s {(^<l>jbm),
one of which was described some months ago in Know-
ledge, ' have also a considerable range. In a totally different
group, the curious little jumping shrews (Macroscelides)
form a peculiarly characteristic family of African mammals
belonging to the insectivorous order. There are also
many peculiar genera of mungooses, but as most of these
have a more or less local distribution they can scarcely
be considered characteristic of the continent as a whole ;
still, they are quite different from those found elsewhere.
A very curious carnivorous mammal known as the aard-
wolf (Proteles), strikingly like a small striped hyaena, is
not the least peculiar among the animals of Africa, where
it has a comparatively wide range. The hunting dog
(Li/caiDi), which presents a considerable resemblance ta the
spotted hyicna, is an equally remarkable representative of
the dog family. Although formerly found In Europe, the
spotted hyipna itself is now exclusively African.
Passing by the rodents, or gnawing mammals, as being
less familiar to non- zoological readers, we have the two
species of hippopotami absolutely confined to Africa at the
present day ; we are all familiar with the common species
in the " Zoo," but the small West African kind, which has
more the habits of a pig, is much less commonly known.
The stately giraffes are solely African, but appear to
be mainly confined to the more open districts. The herds
of antelopes, for the most part belonging to generic types
unknown elsewhere, with the exception of a few in Arabia,
form one of the most distinctive features of African life.
Many of them, like the strange gnus and the graceful
gemsbok group, are confined to the open districts of the
south and east; but others, such as the bush-bucks and the
harnessed antelopes, have representatives in the forest
districts of the west, lioth species of African rhinoceros
are quite different from their Oriental relatives, but only
one of these, the common species, has a wide distribution
in the country. Zebras, and the now extinct quagga, are
familiar and striking African animals, although they are
confined to the open plains and mountains. On the other
hand, the African elephant, which differs so widely in the
structure of its teeth from its Asiatic relative, has a
much more extensive distribution, and may therefore be
classed among the most characteristic of Ethiopian
animals. Even more peculiar are the little hyracea
(Prociivia), the miscalled coneys of our version of the Bible,
which form a family absolutely peculiar to Africa, Arabia,
and Syria ; some of the species dwelling among rocks,
while others are active climbers, and frequent the forest
districts. But perhaps the strangest mammal that may be
regarded as characteristic of Africa as a whole is the
aard-vark (onjcteritpus), commonly known to the colonists
as the ant-pig. It is a strangely isolated creature, having
at the present day no near relations, either poor or
otherwise.
The African buffaloes, with their several races or species,
also belong to a type quite peculiar to the continent. To
a great extent the ostrich is characteristic of Africa and
Arabia, although there is evidence to show that it formerly
enjoyed a considerable range in parts of .^sia.
The above are only a few of the more striking instances
showing how different are the animals of Africa as a whole
from those of the rest of the world. Many others might be
added, but they would only weary my readers. Of coarse,
there are many groups, like the cats, common to other
• June. 1897. p. 130.
June 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE
1?.9
countries, the lion and the leopard being found alike in Africa
and India ; but auch do not detract from the peculiarity of
the African fauna as a whole. And here it may be mentioned
that a large proportion of the types now peculiar to
the Dark Continent appear to have come from India or
some adjacent country, fossil remains of baboons, giraffes,
hippopotami, ostriches, antelopes of an African type, and
not improbably zebras, having been discovered in the
Tertiary deposits of India.
But if the animals of Africa as a whole stand out in
marked contrast to those of the rest of the world, much
more is this the case when those characteristic of certain
districts of that huge continent are alone taken into
consideration. And most especially is this so with the
inhabitants of the great tropical forest districts extending
from the west coast far into the interior of the continent —
reaching, in fact, the watershed between the basins of the
Congo and the Nile in thu neighbourhood of Wadelai.
Since a large number of the peculiar animals of this district
are more or less exclusively confined to the west coast,
extending from Sierra Leone to the Congo, the area is
appropriately termed the West African sub-region. It is
here alone that we find the gorilla and the chimpanzee,
the former being restricted to the neighbourhood of the
coast, whereas the latter ranges far into the heart of the
continent. And this district is likewise the exclusive
home of the pretty little mangabys, or monkeys with
white eyelids (Cercdcelnni). The galagos, which are near
relatives of some of the lemurs of Madagascar, extend
throughout the forest region ; but the even more curious
pottos, or thumbless lemurs, are confined to the west coast.
Huge and forbidding fox-bats, some of them with remark-
able tufts of long white hairs on the shoulders, are likewise
restricted to this portion of the tract, as is the insecti-
vorous otter, or Potumoijale, first discovered during the
travels of Du Chaillu. The equatorial forest tract is also
the sole habitat of the African tiyiug squirrels, distinguished
from the very different flying squirrels of Asia by the
presence of a number of scales on the under surface of the
tail. Most of these belong to the genus Anomnluni.s, but
the smallest of all forms a genus {[diurus) by itself, and
will be familiar to readers of this journal by a life-sized
portrait published some years ago. Dormice of peculiar
types and tree mice are also very characteristic of this
tract. But far more generally interesting are the pigmy
hippopotamus of Liberia and the water chevrotain (Dorca-
tlieriuw) of the west coast, an ally of the true chevrotains
of India and the Malay countries. So far, indeed, as the
equatorial forest tract fauna has any representative in
other parts of the world, it is to the Malay peninsula
and islands that the resemblance is closest. It is there
alone that the other large manlike ape — the orang —
dwells ; and there is a group of brush-tailed porcupines
common to these two districts, and unknown elsewhere
throughout the wide world. Both faunas, however, in all
probability trace their descent from the animals inhabiting
Europe during the Pliocene and Miocene epochs, among
which was an extinct species of water chevrotain.
The other great sub-regions include the open grazing
grounds and mountains of South and East Africa, the fauna
of which is quite different from that of the equatorial forest
tract. Minor divisions may also be recognized in this area,
the Cape having many animals not found further north.
Among the latter are the so-called white rhinoceros, the
pretty little meerkat(.SK?uY(f«), the long-eared fox ((Jtocyon),
and the Cape sand mole (Butliyergux), which, by, the way,
has nothing to do with the true moles, being a member of
the rodent order. This tract as a whole may be termed the
east central sub-region ; and to it belong the great hosts
of antelopes, the zebras, and the aard-wolf and hunting
dog. Very characteristic of the southern and eastern parts
of this tract are the beautiful golden moles (C/u-yscldorh),
unique among mammals for the lovely play of iridescent
colours on the fur, and which have comparatively nothing
in common with the moles of Europe and Asia. To
the northward, in Abyssinia, this tract is the home of
another very remarkable animal, the great gelada baboon
{TheropithccHs), easily recognized by the lionhke mantle
of long hair on the fore quarters, whose nearest relatives
are the ordinary baboons of Africa.
Whether Somaliland should be included in this area, or
should have a division to itself, may admit of argument ;
but at any rate it has many peculiar animals, among
which are a number of antelopes, some of which have but
recently been made known to science.
Lastly we have the Saharan sub-region, which contains a
comparatively limited fauna, passing by almost insensible
degrees into that of Northern Africa.
In some respects, especially in its galagos, the fauna
of Africa presents a certain resemblance to that of
Madagascar ; but the connection between that island and
the mainland was evidently very remote, and must have
taken place before the great incursion of antelopes, zebras,
rhinoceroses, monkeys, elephants, etc., from the north, as
none of these are found in the island. Madagascar, there-
fore, is best regarded as forming a zoological province by
itself.
Within the limits of a single article it is manifestly
impossible to give aaything like an adequate sketch of the
fauna of such an extensive area, but such points as have
been noticed serve to sho'.v in some faint degree its rich-
ness in peculiar forms of animal life.
THE VINEGAR FLY AND THE VINEGAR MITE.
By C. AiNswoRTH Mitchell, b.a., f.i.c.
THE vinegar eel, of which a description appeared in
a recent number of Knowledc-e (page 53), is not
the only creature with a marked partiality for
vinegar, for two other animals have become so
associated with its manufacture that they are
known as the vinegar fly and the vinegar mite.
The vinegar fly [DrosophUa funebris) is of very common
occurrence, and may be found in any vinegar works during
the hotter months of the year. It is about a tenth of an
inch in length, and is characterized by large red eyes, red
thorax, and red legs. The abdomen is black with yellow
stripes, and the wings are somewhat longer than the body.
According to Brannt the larva is white, has twelve seg-
ments to its body, and four wart-like structures on its
back, two of these being yellow. After eight days it is
transformed into a yellow chrysalis.
Vinegar makers are not in the habit of paying much
attention to the presence of the vinegar fly, since, as far as
is known, it does not in any way aflect the manufacture ;
and it is readily prevented from becoming a nuisance by
keeping the works thoroughly clean and not allowing any
spilt vinegar to lie about on the ground.
The vinegar mite, unlike the fly, must be regarded as a
distinct enemy to the acetic bacteria, though not, perhaps,
to the same extent as the vinegar eel. When once it has
obtained a footing within an acetifier it multiplies with
amazing rapidity, interferes with the oxidation process,
and is not easily exterminated. Dr. Bersch describes the
state of an Italian factory about which he was consulted
in 188L Every drop of vinegar produced contained one
or more of these mites, which were present in myriads
140
KNOWLEDGE
[June 1, 1898.
Flo. 1. — From the under
side. X 120 diameters.
After Bersch.
At first the acetic
on every part of the acetifiers, and which finally had
brought the manufacture to a complete standstill — the
manufacturer being unable to account for their presence
beyond stating that they were derived from the soil beneath
his apparatus.
In its simplest form an acetifier consists of a large vat
with a perforated false bottom. The space above this
is filled with shavings or other porous material on which
the bacteria settle, and the alcoholic liquid is pumped over
and over through the shavings until the whole of the
alcohol has been converted into acetic acid. The necessary
air is admitted through holes made in the side of the vat,
whilst smaller holes at the top allow the waste air to escape.
Many modifications of this apparatus are in use, in which
means are taken to exactly regulate the air supply and
the temperature ; but it is in this simple form, as first
invented by Sehiitzenbach in 1823, that most of the
acetifiers in England and Germany are constructed. Prior
to Schiitzenbach's invention, which
is still known as the " quick vinegar
process," vinegar was made by
placing the alcoholic liquid with a
little vinegar containing the bacteria
in barrels, which were turned and
aiirated from day to day by work-
men. It is through the holes for
aurating the acetifier that the
vinegar mite finds its way into the
interior, and attempts have been
made to prevent this by placing
birdlime round the outside of the
holes, whilst in some of the more
recent patents fine wire gauze
is employed for the same purpose
bacteria do not appear to be much affected by the presence
of the mites, but as these increase and then die ofl' and fall
to the bottom their dead bodies begin to putrefy, and the
putrefaction bacteria or their products sooner or later have
an injurious effect, and if not removed will eventually
completely master the acetic bacteria.
The vinegar in which the mites have thus gained the
upper hand has a peculiar
yellowish shade, and con-
tains what appear to the
naked eye to be a large
number of white specks.
When examined under the
microscope these have the
appearance shown in Figs. 1
and 2.
These two forms, appa-
rently those of the male and
female, are always found,
many of the individuals
being only one quarter or
one half of the size of the
others. Bersch assigns
them to the class of Sarcop-
tidce, but little appears to be known about their life history.
When once vinegar mites have established themselves
within an acetifier they can only be expelled by destroying
them simultaneously with the acetic bacteria. For this
purpose the vat must be emptied of vinegar as completely
as possible, and the interior thoroughly washed with hot
water, well fumigated with burning sulphur until all Ufe
is destroyed, and then washed again. It is then charged
afresh with the alcoholic liquid and a little crude vinegar
containing the bacteria, but of course it is some time
before the apparatus gets into working condition again.
FiQ. 2
; 120 diameters.
Bersch.
A CLASSIC LEGACY OF AGRICULTURE.
By John Mills.
ALL great discoveries are the result of much study,
and often arise out of those truths of science which
appeared least promising on their first announce-
ment. The time is past when practice can go on in
the blind and vain confidence of a shallow em-
piricism, severed from science like a tree from its roots.
Scientific principles are now extensively applied in problems
concerned with the improvement of the artificial means em-
ployed for increasing the fertility of the soil. During the
last sixty years, more especially, the transmuting power of
the " philosopher's stone " has been displayed, and many
triumphs have been achieved through the painstaking re-
searches of men who, like Sir John Lawes and Sir Henry
Gilbert, are not content to adhere strictly to the role-of-
thumb methods which have been in vogue for untold ages.
Agriculture is both an art and a science. On the
scientific side chemistry plays an important part, and is
called into request for the investigation of the composition
of soils, manures, and of the vegetable and animal sub-
stances which it is the aim of agriculture to produce. All
the conditions of the life of vegetables, the origin of their
elements, and the sources of nourishment, are secrets which
can be elicited by the aid of science. Given a barren tract
of country, which has been unproductive from generation
to generation, the scientific agriculturist will improve the
parts by transporting and transposing the different soils.
The analysis of the soils will be followed by that of the
waters which rise or flow through them, by which means
he will discover those proper for irrigation. A knowledge
of chemistry teaches us when and in what condition to
use lime, and the difference in the properties of marl, peat,
dimg, mud, ashes, alkali, salt, soap-waste, sea-water, etc.,
and consequently which to prefer in all varieties of soil—
a knowledge which thus imparts a new character to the
agriculturist, and renders his emploj'ment rational.
Environed by an endless variety of processes and results,
scientific agriculture is constantly disclosing surprises.
The nineteenth century has witnessed developments greater
than those of all previous time. It is as true to say now
that agriculture is in a state of transition and development
as it was a century ago to say it was in a state of inanition
and even stagnation. The position of agriculture is now
hopeful, for the age is progressive. It is a period of
adaptation, of new departures, new energy, and greater
economy. Foreign competition is understood and expected.
To know what it is provides the means of meeting it.
We purpose m this article to afford a glimpse of the
artificial aids to agriculture which Sir John Lawes and
Sir Henry Gilbert have for upwards of fifty years practised
at the Rothamsted Agricultural Experimental Station —
the model of all agricultural stations, and the methods
there introduced are everywhere regarded as classical. The
researches carried on by these coUaborators have elicited
information which will ever serve as the foundation of a
truly scientific knowledge of the correlation of plant-
growth and manurial constituents of the soil, and will be
of the utmost value in all discussions of the chemistry of
plant Ufe. The immense number of exact data which they
have placed at the disposal of chemists is without parallel
in the annals of science. As Sir Joseph Hooker has said,
in the whole history of science, never have two of its
greatest divisions been brought into more profitable cor-
• We are much indebted to both Sir John Lawes, Bart., f.b.s.,
and Sir Henry Gilbert, f.e.s., for generous assistance in explaining
the arrangement of the experimental plots at Rothamsted, the
conduct of the laboratory, and in placing records, etc., at our disposal
in preparing this article.
June 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE
141
relation than chemistry and botany have been in the
Rothamsted esperimeuts. The far-seeing intelligence which
devised the details affords results which have completely
reformed the practice of agriculture, and the carrying on
of a single research without interruption during a period of
over fifty years is unexampled — a research which has
taught those concerned how to estimate the actual mean
fertility of the earth's surface, and, in the subordination
of permanent pasture to the practical advantage of the
farmer, to successfully employ readily available chemistry
to modify at pleasure the entire character of the vegetation.
Sir John Lawes, apart from his acientilic researches in
conjunction with Sir Henry Gilbert, is probably the oldest
practical farmer in England, and inherited all the traditions
of a long ancestry, so that he may truly be regarded as an
adherent to the motto, " Practice with science." The
manor house of Rothamsted is situated in the midst of a
beautifully wooded park, at Harpenden, near St. Alban's,
and the experimental grounds are in the estate adjoining
the park. Sir John first commenced operations in 1834,
soon after succeeding to his property, first with plants in
pots, and afterwards in the fields, using different manuring
substances. The researches of De Saussure on vegetation
were the chief subject of his study to this end. The
most striking results were obtained by the use of neutral
phosphate of lime, in bones, bone-ash, and apatite,
rendered soluble by means of sulphuric acid. The mixture
so obtained answered well for root-crops. In 1813,
the date at which the researches commenced in real
earnest, and when Dr. (now Sir Henry) Gilbert entered
into the work, more systematic field experiments were
initiated. These researches relate not only to the growth
of cereal and other crops under the most varying conditions,
but also to the economic effect of different foods on the
development of the animals of the farm. They have
embraced, moreover, most important researches concern-
ing the sources from which plants derive their supply of
nitrogen.
Following in the wake of the Rothamsted experiments,
Germany has worked in the same field, and to-day she can
number twenty-five experimental stations, which institute
both scientific researches and deal with their adaptation to
practice. Germany is indebted to experimental stations
for the progress she has made during the last decade,
especially in agriculture. Yet while the German stations
have been founded by associations of agriculturists and
maintained at the public expense, the Rothamsted experi-
ments are due to the activity of two eminent men, and are
maintained by private funds ; from the commencement
they have been entirely disconnected from any external
organization, and have been maintained at the sole cost of
Sir John Lawes. For the continuance of the investigations
after his death, Sir John has made the munificent endow-
ment of one hundred thousand pounds, besides the famous
laboratory and certain areas of land, and has nominated
some of the most distinguished scientific men of the day
to administer the trust.
While it is a fact, affording some cause for self-satis-
faction, that the farmers of Great Britain grow a larger
produce per acre than the farmers of any other country in
the world (the average yield of wheat per acre in 1888
was twenty-eight bushels, while that of the United States,
for example, was eleven bushels), it is a noteworthy fact
in connexion with these investigations that they have not
been of the same benefit to our own nation as they have
to some other nations. Thus, while, as in the case of
Germany, Government has come to the aid of agricultural
research to a praiseworthy extent, enterprise in this country
is carried on by private resources, save in the college at
Glasnevin, near Dublin, to which a Government grant is
allotted; the colleges at Cirencester, Downton, and the
Colonial Training College in Suffolk, being self-sup-
porting, and these all draw to a considerable extent upon
the researches at Rothamsted for exact information.
The investigations were commenced upon truly orthodox
lines, and with truly orthodox views ; but as it was not
possible to alter the laws of nature, it was soon found that
the results brought out did not agree with the views of the
recognized authorities of the day. Among other things it
soon became woefully apparent how small after all was
the available leverage for artificially assisting the processes
of nature. Too conspicuous to be mistaken, the weather
announced itself as the great factor in producing crops.
Every day in the year makes its impression, good or bad,
on the final issue, which appears to be something very like
the algebraic sum^the positive and negative result of the
favourable and unfavourable weather of all the days in the
year leaving us the victims of circumstance in spite of aU
the refinements of science. These investigators also saw
clearly the explanation of an experiment which Hale per-
formed more than two hundred years ago. Hale had
carefully tended a plant in a pot, and noticed that, although
the soil lost very little in weight, the plant increased by
an amount tremendously in excess of that lost by what
appeared to be the parent soil. Whence came, then, the
elements of the plant ? The Rothamsted experiments show
clearly that about ninety-five per cent, come from the
atmosphere, and only some five per cent, from the soil,
thus driving home Dumas' saying that " at last analysis
we are nothing but condensed air. "
Some idea of the magnitude and importance of the
researches carried on at Rothamsted may be gleaned from
the list of field experiments given in the accompanying table.
Crops.
Duration.
Area.
Plots.
Tears.
Acres.
Wheat (rarious manures)
54
11
34 (or 37)
Wheat, alternated with fallow
46
1
2
Wheat (varieties) ...
15
4-8
about 20
Barlev (various manures)
46
a
29
Oats (various manures)
10*
i
6
Beans (various manures)
32t
U
10
Beans (various manures)
27:
1
5
Beans, alternated with Wheat ..
28 §
1
10
Clover (various manures)
2911
3
18
Various Legimiinous Plants . . .
20
3
18
Turnips (various manures)
281
8
40
Susar Beet (various manures)...
5
8
41
Mangel- Wurzel (various
manures)
22
8
41
Total Root Crops ...
55
Potatoes [various manures)
Rotation (various manures)
Permanent Grass (various
manures)
* Includinsr one year fallow.
t Including one year Wheat and five years fallow.
j Including four years faUow.
§ Inclading two years fallow.
" Clover, twelve times sown (first in 1848), eight yieldi:^ crops, bnt fonr
>f these very small, one year Wleat, five years Barley, twelve years fallow.
■" Including Barley without manure three years (eleventh, twelfth, and
hirteenth seasons).
Many of the experiments were commenced without any
idea of long continuance, and it was only as the results
obtained indicated the importance of such continuance
that the plan eventually adopted was gradually developed.
It is, however, to long continuance that we owe some of
the most interesting and the most valuable results.
142
KNOWLEDGE.
[JrxE 1, 1898.
The table further shows the area and the number of
plots under experiment in each case ; and it may be stated
that the total area under exact and continuous experiment
has been for some years, and is at the present time, about
forty acres.
To cultivate and simultaneously investigate scientifically
the products of such an extensive series of plots of ground,
a staff of workers of no mean order is of course necessary.
A number of general assistants, therefore, are engaged to
superintend the field experiments— that is, the making of
the manures, the measurement of the plots, the application
of the manures, and the harvesting of the crops ; also the
taking of samples, the preparation of them for analysis or
preservation, the determination of dry matter, ash, etc.,
and the keeping of the meteorological records. There is a
permanent laboratory stafl' of two, and sometimes three,
chemists, and three or four computers and record-keepers
for calculating and tabulating field, feeding, and laboratory
results, copying, etc. In addition to a large staff of this
kmd, the best professional assistance has been called in
from time to time. Among these may be mentioned Prof.
Frankland, who determined the nitrogen as ammonia, as
nitric acid, and as organic nitrogen in many samples both
of the rain and of the various drainage waters collected at
Rothamsted; Prof. \V. J. Russell estimated the sulphuric
acid in some of the monthly mixed samples of rain water ;
the late Dr. Voelcker determined the nitrogen, and likewise
the incombustible constituents, in sixty-five samples of the
drainage waters ; Dr. Richter has made more than eight
hundred analyses of the ashes of various products, animal
and vegetable, of known history ; and the late Dr. Pugh
took a prominent part in the experiments to determine
whether plants assimilate free nitrogen, and also various
collateral points.
Samples of all the experimental crops are taken and
brought to the laboratory. Weighed portions of each are
partially dried, and preserved for future reference or
analysis. Duplicate weighed portions of each are dried at
100° C, the dry matter is determined, and it is then burnt
to ash on platinum sheets in cast-iron mufHes. The
quantities of ash are determined and recorded, and the
ashes themselves are preserved for reference or analysis.
In a large proportion of the samples the nitrogen is deter-
mined ; and in some the amount existing as (dbumimids,
iimidfs, and nitric acid. There is now a collection of more
than forty-five thousand bottles of samples of experimen-
tally grown vegetable produce, of animal products, of ashes,
or of soils, besides some thousands of samples not in
bottles ; and the laboratory having become very incon-
veniently full, a new detached building — a " sample house "
— was erected in the autumn of 1888, comprising two
large rooms for the storing of specimens and for some
processes of preparation, and also a drying room.
The general scope and plan of the field experiments
has been to grow some of the most important crops of
rotation, each separately, year after year for many years
in succession on the same land, without manure, with
farmyard manure, and with a great variety of chemi-
cal manures ; the same description of manure being,
as a rule, applied year after year on the same plot.
Experiments on an actual course of rotation without
manure, as well as with different manures, have also been
made.
Having thus indicated the scope of the researches at
Rothamsted, the resources available, and the disposition
of the estate, we shall endeavour in a subsequent article
to present some of the remarkable results which have been
derived therefrom, and the bearing of the conclusions
arrived at on practical agriculture.
NOTES ON COMETS AND METEORS.
By W. F. Denning, f.r.a.s.
Lewis Swift. — The famous American astronomer, Lewis
Swift, well known for his discoveries of nebulae and
comets, furnishes a remarkable example of the retention
of brilliant observational capacity to an advanced age.
Though the time of his birth dates back to 1820, Feb-
ruary 29th, he still discovers numbers of exceedingly faint
nebuhr, and occasionally announces a new comet. The
most recent of his cometary discoveries was in 1896, April,
when he was in the seventy-seventh yi'ar of his age ! His
success has certainly been astonishing. No other comet-
finder appears to have effected discoveries at a period so
late in life as the veteran of whom we are speaking. Pons
was about sixty-six years old, Mechain fifty-five, and
Messier sixty-eight, when they sighted their last comets.
Let us hope that Swift will yet be spared some years to
add to his laurels by the discovery of further objects in
the fields where he has already laboured so long and with
so much distinction.
Feriine'ti Comet (Marfh 19th). — This object is still
visible, though becoming very faint. At the early part of
June its brightness will be only one-fifth that at discovery.
\n ephemeris was given in the last number of Knowledge.
Periodical ( omets. — The comets of Wolf, Encke, and
Tempel (1867, II.), are shortly expected to appear, but
the circumstances are not favourable. Pons-Winnecke's
comet is now exceedingly faint. The following are ephe-
merides : —
Comet Wolf.
distance in
RA.
Durliuatiuu.
millions of
Date.
h.
m. s.
o
miles.
June o
1
36 19
-f 18 33-0
204
,. 11
1
59 58
+ 19 190
199
,, 19
2
23 18
-f 19 51-3
194
„ 27
2
17 43
Comet
-h 20 8-7
ExCKE.
lOO
June 1
11
7 12
+ 20 15-5
82
„ 10
6
16 H
+ 13 16-6
60
„ 14
7
1 41
+ 9 15-8
51
„ 18
7
18 43
+ 4 24-2
44
„ 22
7
38 59
- 1 38-7
38
„ 26
8
4 46
- 9 16-8
33
„ 30
8
39 19
Comet Pons
-18 45-8
-WiNXECKE.
28
June 3
1
56 1
- 1 7-0
174
,. 11
2
14 26
- 0 12-2
177
,, 15
2
23 3
+ 0 11-4
178
„ 19
2
31 17
+ 0 32-3
179
June 1
Comet Tempel (1867, II.).
11 41 11 +13 501
177
Comet Wolf is approaching the earth, but it will not
come as near as in 1891, and will probably remain a faint
object during the whole of this apparition. It will reach
its perihelion on July 4th, though it will continue to
become very gradually brighter until the close of October.
Comet Encke is rapidly advancing nearer to the earth
and its apparent brightness increasing, but its position
is not favourable for northern observers, as its motion
carries it very quickly southwards. During the month
the comet passes from the north-west extremity of Gemini
to the south-east border of Monoceros. Tempel's comet
June 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE.
143
will be close to (3 Leonis at the beginning of June, but its
exact place is doubtful.
M. Legarde has recently published a new determination
of the orbit of Tempel's comet of 1871. The comet was
observed during^an interval of one hundred and nine days,
and its orbit appears to be that of a very excentric ellipse,
with a periodic time of about two thousand and thirty
years.
The April Meteors. — Prof. A. S. Herschel, at Slough,
registered the paths of sixty-eight meteors observed on
clear nights between April 12t,h and 2-tth. The sky was
hazy on April 19th, and only one uncertain meteor was
seen in a watch of two and a half hours' duration. On
April 20th clouds prevailed. Very few, if any, Lyrids were
observed, but the meteors recorded indicated a large number
of minor showers in Corvus, Libra, Ursa Major, Draco, and
the region of Hercules. At Bristol, on April 17th, 18th,
19th, and 22nd, meteors were found to be somewhat rare,
and very few Lyrids were noticed. Four of the meteors
observed at Bristol were also recorded by Prof. Herschel
at Slough, but in two cases the observations do not match
very well, as the meteors were very indifferently seen at
Bristol. Of the other two, one appeared on April 17th,
lOh. 28m. It was a small, very slow moving meteor, with
a radiant near the southern horizon. Its heights were
from seventy-two to seventy miles over Malmesbury to
Evesham, and it traversed a path of about thirty-four miles.
The other was seen on April 22nd, lOh. 32m. It was
directed from a radiant at 252^ -(-49^, and fell from a
height of seventy-two to fifty-two miles from above Alcester
to Malvern.
The brighter meteors seen by Prof. Herschel were as
under : —
Path.
, Diirutiou
Date. Time. Mag. v K.A. Dec. K.A. Dec. in
b. m. o o o o Seconds.
April 16 10 47 1 290 +52 to 327 +52 25
,.16 11 27 1 92.i +44 „ 91 +37 04
„ 17 9 38i 1 44+73 „ 61 +60 10
„ 19 9 53 1 280 +61 „ 286 +55 0 8
„ 23 12 43 1} 158 +30 „ 138 ■^37 2-2
„ 23 12 48i 1 232^ - 5 „ 231 +1 0-4
Mr. W. E. Besley, of Westminster, watched the sky on
April 21st and 22nd during an aggregate period of three
and a quarter hours, and recorded twenty meteors, of
which twelve were Lyrids. The principal radiant appeared
to be very well defined at the usual position, viz., 273~ + 3:5 \
If observers at other places noted any of these objects
the data would be valuable as affording the materials for
computing their real heights in the atmosphere.
Fireball of April 5th. — Mr. G. N. Stretton's description
of this object, as observed at Fulham (Knowle»&e, May,
p. 114), agrees remarkably well with the radiant point at
121" — 1'. As seen by your correspondent, the meteor
must have ascended in a perfectly vertical course ; but if it
actually reached the zenith, as he remarks, then the place
I gave for the disappearance must be shifted some
miles to the north-east, and the height at disappearance
must have been a little less than that stated. But in
discussing and endeavouring to harmonize materials of
this character, one has to adopt the path which best
satisfies the majority of the observations. Mr. Stretton's
position was evidently very near the point of the meteor's
disappearance. The fact that at Bournemouth it fell
vertically downwards in north-east, while at Fulham it
ascended straight up to the zenith from south-west, affords
the clearest proof that the direction of flight of the meteor
was on a line joining those two places, and that it succes-
sively passed over Bournemouth, Southampton, Alton, and
Aldershot, as stated in my paper in your May Number.
THE FACE OF THE SKY FOR JUNE.
By Herbert Sadler, f.b.a.s.
GROUPS of, and small detached, spots are still to be
detected on the solar surface.
Mercury is, theoretically speaking, a morning
star, but cannot be conveniently observed for any
practical purpose by the amateur during the month,
owing to his proximity to the Sun. He is in superior
conjunction with that luminary on the 30th.
Venus is an evening star, and is conveniently situated
for observation. On the 1st she sets at lOh. 17m. p.m.,
with a northern declination of 24^ 42' at noon, and an
apparent diameter of Hi . On the 11th she sets at
lOh. 26m. P.M., with a northern declination at noon of
23" 42', and an apparent diameter of 12 ". On the 18th
she sets at lOh. 24m. p.m., with a northern declination at
noon of 22' 19', and an apparent diameter of 12^ '. On
the 23th she sets at lOh. 18m. p.m., with a northern
declination of 20' 27' at noon, and an apparent diameter
of 12^'. -On the 30th she sets at lOh. 15m. p.m., with a
northern declination at noon of 18' 51', and an apparent
diameter of 13". During the month she describes a direct
path through a great part of Gemini into Cancer.
Mars is practically invisible.
•Tupiter is an evening star, and is still well placed for
observation. On the 1st he rises at Ih. 16m. p.m., with a
northern declination of 1" 9' at noon, and an apparent
equatorial diameter of lOi". On the 11th he rises at
Oh. 35m. P.M., with a northern declination at noon of 1°,
and an apparent diameter of 39i". On the 18th he rises
at Oh. 10m. p.m., with a northern declination of 0' 49', and
an apparent diameter of 38i". On the 30th he rises at
llh. 25m. a.m., with a northern declination of 0*^ 24', and
an apparent diameter of 37i". During the month he
describes a very short path in Virgo.
Our remarks last month about the futility of attempting
to observe either Saturn or Uranus in these latitudes
apply with equal force to the present month. Neptune is
invisible.
There are no very well marked showers of shooting stars
in June.
The Moon is full at 2h. 11m. p.m. on the 4th; enters
her last quarter at 6h. 4m. p.m. on the lith ; is new at
4h. 19m. A.M. on the 19th ; and enters her first quarter
at 4h. 54m. a.m. on the 27th.
Ctjcss CEolumn.
By 0. D. LooocK, B.A.
Communications for this column should be addressed to
C. D. LococK, Burwash, Sussex, and posted on or before
the 10th of each month.
Solutwn of May Problems.
(By P. G. L. F.)
No. 1.
1. Q to B5, and mates next move.
No. 2.
Key-move. — 1. Q to B3.
If 1. ... K moves, 2. Q to K2ch, etc.
1. . . . Anything else, 2. Q to Qsq, etc.
[There is a near " try " by Q to Qsq at once.]
Correct Solutions of both problems received from
Alpha, K. W., Capt. G. A. Forde, W. F. Denning, E. W.
Brook, W. de P. Crousaz, H. S. Brandreth.
Of No. 1 only from G. G. Beazley, W. Clugston,
J. M'Eobert.
J. Nield fCrumpton). — Many thanks ; we hope to find
space for them this summer.
iU
KNOWLEDGE
[June 1, 1898.
PE0BLEM8.
No. 1.
By A. C. Challenger.
Black (If).
m
White (7).
White matea in two moves.
No. 2.
By J. T. Blakemore.
(From the Birminiiham W'eekhi Mercury.)
BlIck (1»).
White (j).
White mates in three moves.
CHESS INTELLIGENCE.
It is with the greatest regret that we learn the news of
the death of the Kev. W. Wayte, for many years honorary
treasurer of the St. George's Chess Club, and formerly
professor of Greek at London University. Prof. Wayte,
who was for twenty-three years a classical master at
Eton, was certainly one of the very strongest amateur
players in England. His knowledge of the whole theory
of the game was profound, the openings being perhaps his
especial forte. He was a most successful competitor at the
annual meetings of the old Counties Chess Association, and
was captain of the southern team when the North v. South
contests were instituted. Prof. Wayte was the editor of
an annotated edition of Plato's " Protagoras," and other
classical works. His interesting " Chess Reminiscences "
appeared in the liritish Chess ^[llf/<l:ine (March and April,
1898). It will surprise many who knew him to find that
he was in his seventieth year.
We omitted last month to record the result of the
Pillsbury-Showalter match. Mr. Showalter did not play
nearly so well as last year, and was defeated by seven
games to three, with two draws. Mr. D. G. Baird has
tied with Mr. Kohler for the championship of the Manhattan
Chess Club.
Herr Marco has won the latest Vienna Club tourney,
Herr Schleohter being as low as fifth. The international
tourney at Vienna begins this month. Considerable dis-
satisfaction is expressed at the necessity for playing two
rounds ; so unpopular, in fact, is this condition that the
committee have been compelled to extend the time for
entries, owing to the paucity of desirable competitors. It
is stated that Herr Lasker will be among the abstainers on
this account, and possibly, too, Mr. PUlsbury. Messrs.
Blackburne, Burn, and Caro will represent Eugland.
Mr. P. F. Blake, the eminent problem composer, has
won the level tournament of the Manchester Chess Club.
Mr. Lawrence has again won the City of London tourna-
ment, although he started badly owing to ill-health.
Messrs. L. Seraillier and W. Ward were leading for the
greater part of the tournament.
REVIEW.
The Art of Chess. By James Mason. Second Edition.
(Horace Cox.) This is an extension of the edition of 1895
from three hundred and eleven to four hundred and twenty
pages. The price is increased from five shillings to six
shillings net. Apart from a very interesting and suggestive
introduction, we find that the section on end games is in-
creased by forty pages ; the part deaUng with middle-game
combinations being practically the same as in the former
edition. The section on openings, which Mr. Mason rightly
and logically 'places last, is considerably enlarged, and again
the introductory remarks are most useful. Mr. Mason has
during the last few years attained the position of the leading
English chess author. He is the first Englishman to treat
the game as a science to the extent of adopting a scientific
method and scientific language in expounding it. Mr.
Mason's style is terse and epigrammatic — at times even
Carlylean, but, above all things, Masonic. In other
words, the book is eminently readable.
KNOWLEDGE, PUBLISHED MONTHLY.
Contents ol No. 150 (April).
PAGE
Economic Botany. By Jolin R.
Jackson, A.L.S., etc 73
The Stracture of Ireland. By
GrenviUe A. J. Cole, u.b.i.a.,
F.o.s. (nimlratei) 74
The Sea-Otter and its Extermina-
tion. By K. Lydekker, b.a.,
r.R.s. (Illustrated) 78
British Ornithological Notes 80
Letters 81
British Bees. — II. By Fred.
Enock, F.L.s.,F.E.s.,€tc. (Illus-
trated) 82
lu the Moon's Northern Regions.
By Arthur Mee, F.E.A.a &4
Notices of Books 85
Stars having Large Proper Motion.
By E. C. Pickering 89
The Level of Snnspots. By the
Eev. Arthur East. (Uluslrafud) 89
The Evolntionot the Venom-Fang.
By Lionel Jerris. (lUustraUi) 91
Notes on Comets and Meteors.
By W. F. Denning, f.r.a.s 94
The Face of the Sky for April.
By Herbert Sadler, f.b.a.s 95
Chess Column. By C. D. Locock 95
Plate.— The Lunar Alps and their
Neighbourhood.
Contents of No. 151 (May).
PAas
British Bees. — III. By Fred.
Enock, F.L.s.jF.E.s., etc. (niu»-
trated) 97
A Valley on Sao Nicolau, Cape
Verde Islands. By Boyd Alex-
ander, M.u.o.r. {llXusUated) ... 100
Deserts and their Inhabitants.
By K. Lydekker, B.A.,F.R,s. ... 101
The Karkinokosm, or World of
Crustacea.— III. By the Bev.
Thomas E. B. Stebbing, m.a.,
F.R.9., F.L.S. (Illustrated) 104
Nebulae and Eegion round y Cas-
siopeise. By Isaac Eoberts,
» SC, F.R.S. 105
The Recent Eclipse. By E.
Walter Maunder, f.b.a.s.
(niustrafed) 107
Notices of Books 109
British Ornithological Notes 112
Science Notes 112
Letters 112
Nature's Finer Forces.— Some
Notes on Old Work and New
Developments. By H. Snowden
Ward, F.E.p.s 114
Botanical Studies. — III. Junger-
mannia. By A. Vanghan Jen-
nings.F.L.s., F.o.s. (Iliustriited) 115
Notes on Comets and Meteors.
By W. F. Denning, f.b.a.s.... U8
The Face of the Skv for May.
By Herbert Sidler, f.r.a.s 119
Chess Column. By CD. Locock 119
Plate. — Nebalse near y Cassiopeifie.
The yearly bound volumes of Knowledge, cloth gilt, 8s. tid., post free.
Binding Cases, Is. 6d. each ; post free, Is. 9d.
Subscribers' numbers bound (including case and Index), 2s. 6d. each volume.
Index of Articles and Illustrations for 1891, 1892, 1894, 1395, 1886, and 1897
can be supplied for 3d. each.
" Knowledge " Annual Sabscription, throaghont the world,
8s., post free.
Conunnnications for the Editors and Books for Beview should be addressed
Editors, " Kkowledgk," 326, High Holborn, London, W.C.
July 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE.
145
>r^llHISTRATED MAGAZINE <<
Founded in i88i by RICHARD A. PROCTOR.
LONDON: JULY 1, 1898.
CONTENTS.
The Karkinokosm, on World of Crustacea. — IV. By
the Kev. TnoM.\s R. E. Stebbing, M.A., f.b.s , p.r..3.
(Illustrated)
A Classic Legacy ot Agriculture.— II. By John Mills.
(Illustraled)
"The Mimic Fires of Ocean." By G. Clabke XniALL,
B.SC
The Petroleum Industry.— II. By Gteoege T. Hollowat,
ASSOC. K.o.s. (lOND.), F.i.c. (Illustrated)
On the Eclipse Theory of Variable Stars. By Lieut.-
Colon>-1 H. K. JiAEKWiCK. F.R.A.s. [Til Ksl rated)
The Recent Eclipse.— The Lick Photographs of the
Corona. By E. Walteb llArNDKB, f.e.as. (Plate)...
Notices of Books
Short Notices
Books Received
Obituary
Letters :—W. H. S. MoscK ; J. E. aoBE
Science Notes. (Illustrated)
Self-Irrigation in Plants. By tlu> Rev. Alex. S. Wilsox,
M.A., B.SC. {Illustrated) ... ... ..7
British Ornithological Notes. Conducted by Habbt F.
WiTHEEBT, r.Z.S., M.B.O.U
Botanical Studies.— IV. Mnium. By A. YArGHfN
Jesnixgs, F.L.S., F.G.s. (Illustrated)
Notes on Comets and Meteors. By W. F. DENNnra,
F.E.A.S
The Face of the Sky for July. By A. Fowibb, f.b.a.s. ...
Chess Column. By C. D. Locook, b.a
145
148
loO
151
1.5.3
135
156
157
157
158
159
159
1150
HJ2
163
166
167
167
THE KARKINOKOSM, OR WORLD OF
CRUSTACEA.-IV.
By the Rev. Thomas, R. R. Stebbing, m.a., f.k.s., f.l.s.
SEEING that the mammalian tail is allowed to con-
tract or expand the number of its joints at discre-
tion, it looks like a kind of obstinacy in natural
arithmetic that has assigned seven vertebrse alike
to the neck of the hippopotamus and the neck of
the giraii'e. Attention has already been drawn to a similar
case of numerical persistence in the Karkinokosm. The
whole of the great and diversified sub-class of the Malacos-
traca is bound together by the circumstance that the body
segments never exceed twenty-one, and only fall short of
that number when motives of personal convenience have
induced a broad Cancrid, for example, to consolidate, or a
threadlike Caprellid to relinquish, some of its somites.
But the other great sub-class, the Entomostraca, prefers
always to have a number of body segments greater or
smaller than twenty-one. Between these two sub-classes
some authors give an independent position to the little
group of the Nebaliidse.
Xebaliu hipes has a wide distribution in the northern
hemisphere. You may find it at Spitzbergen and in the
Mediterranean. You may find it also under stones on the
south coast of Devon, always exquisitely neat, however
untidy the surroundings may be. In this half-inch of
animal organism there can be counted twenty pairs of
appendages, exactly the full number allotted to the Mala-
costraca, and implying a corresponding number of segments ;
but at the tail end of this creature there are two extra
segments and a pair of caudal branches. Moreover, in
Xihalia the eight pairs of limbs which follow the maxilljc
are all of a peculiar pattern. The leglike character of the
main stem is overshadowed by the great leaflike expan-
sion of the subsidiary branches, which have a respiratory
function : they act as branchiae or gills.
Though in Crustacea the gills are commonly enough
connected with the feet, yet the order Branchiopoda has a
special claim to take its name from this connection, because
the branchial character of the feet, instead of being, as
elsewhere, subordinate or modestly withdrawn from view,
is here monstrously developed and prodigiously obtrusive.
The order Branchiopoda is so extensive a division of the
Entomostraca that it has to be again divided into four sub-
orders, with names that may not sound to all ears alluringly
mellifluous, but which are moderately handy and in their
measure significant. The four names are Phyllocarida,
Phyllupoda, Cladiicera, Branchiura. These names, being
interpreted, are Leafy Shrimps, Leafy Legs, Branching
Antennae, Gill Tails. Unfortunately the interpretation
needs an interpreter, just as it is not enough for us to
know that Hiawatha is the Teacher, and that his wife's
name, Minehaha, means Laughing Water, or that Mudje-
keewis is the West Wind, and that the Kingdom of
Ponemak is the Land of the Hereafter. The poet needs
five or six thousand lines to unfold the story of these
names, and to bring the hero to the haven where he
would be.
The Phyllocarida are represented by the border tribe of
the Nebaliidffi. Till the voyage of the Cludlemjer that
little group contained but one genus. Now it has three,
and it is a curious thing that in one of the two new forms
the breathing legs are exceedingly long, while in the other
they are exceedingly short, the old northern genus standing
intermediate between them.
At no great distance from the Phyllocarida may be set
the Phyllopoda, with a name that differs little from theirs
either in sound or sense. It refers to the same feature in
their construction — the leaflike limbs. The Phyllopods
have been dinded into three groups, closely connected,
but, in one respect, singularly unlike. One set have a
dorsal shield, leaving a long caudal part exposed ; another
set are enclosed in a pair of valves in such a way that they
might well be mistaken for little molluscs ; whUe the third
set are really quite too informal, almost indecorously
negligent of the conventionalities observed by the respect-
able class of Crustacea. These have no dorsal shield, no
' covering valves, no encrusting carapace ; but each swims
about unencumbered, a vagrant " neat and slim, without a
rag to cover him."
Of the last-mentioned group two forms were at one time well
known in England, though of late years no one seems able
to come across them. One of these, Artemia sa/ina, the brine
shrimp, occurred at Lymington, in Hampshire, myriads of
these graceful little creatures curvetting and gambolling
about in the strong brine of the salterns. They are not
marine animals. None of the known Phyllopods exist in
the sea. Not too many tears need be shed over our lost
Lymington specie^, for it is known to inhabit in countless
numbers shallow brackish- water ponds along the shores of
Europe, and a very similar form abounds in the Great
Salt Lake at Utah, in the United States of America. Our
146
KNOWLEDGE
[July 1, 1898.
other missing species is Chiroceplial'u.i diaphanvs, the fairy
shrimp. The name of the creature is deservedly pre-
possessing and rightly suggestive of its real beauty. Of
this no picture conveys any adequate idea, because the
great antennae, or " hands on the head," to which the
generic name refers, distract attention and look clumsy in
a drawing ; while the pellucid limpidity of the whole
organism, its
iridescent
colouring, and
the graceful
vivacity of its
motions be-
long to nature
rather than
art. One point
in the history
of this fairy is
apt to excite a
smile of in-
credulity, for
it is said to be
found in places
quite out of
harmony with
the birth of an
Oberon or a
Titania — " in
stagnant
water, very
often in the
ditches and
deep cart-ruts
on the edges
of woods and
plantations."
These wood-
land cart-ruts,
as everyone
knows, though
soft and brim-
ming with
water at times,
become at
other times
perfectly dry
and of a stony
hardness. It
may seem,
therefore, like
one of Baron
Munchausen's
miracles to
people these
transient
troughs with
crustaceans an inch in length. They cannot fall from the
sky. Spontaneous generation has never been accused of
producing shrimps. The fact is that inland Entomostraca
accommodate themselves, like the Rose of Jericho, to the
exigencies of recurrent drought and varying seasons.
Though they are inhabitants of water, their eggs can retain
vitality unimpaired for long periods after complete desicca-
tion of the mud in which they have been deposited. For
observing the development and habits of numerous species
belonging to the remotest lands, it is no longer necessary
for the student to extend his survey by toilsome travel from
China to Peru, lie can engage a correspondent to send
him by post a small piece of Australia or Egypt, a sample of
Nebalia /-i>e« (O, Fahi-icius).
Siberia or Ceylon. It is a pleasing experience to find a hand-
ful of earth, dug out of a pond at the other side of the globe,
teeming with foreign species responsive to the gift of a
cup of cold water poured upon the thirsty soil. In these
experiments it is expedient in Great Britain to wake up a
tropical brood, not amidst our frosts and fogs and chilling
east winds, but when warm nights and summer sun, in
which such broods delight, will favour their quick develop-
ing, until it can be said that—
' Cupid, empire sure,
Fluttcr'd and laugh'd, and ofttimes through the throng
Made a delighted way."
These Phyllopods go through strange metamorphoses,
for whereas in the full-grown condition they come to have
from ten to more than sixty pairs of legs, they almost
always begin life in what is called the iiaupliu.t stage,
with no true legs whatever, having to be content with two
pairs of antennn' and a pair of " mandibular legs " that are
not permanent. With this limited apparatus they manage
to jerk about in their watery world with tolerable activity.
Instead of a pair of compound eyes the young ones are
provided only with a central ocellus, the nauplian eye —
sufficient, no doubt, for their childish wants. Like crusta-
ceans in general, Phyllopods pass from stage to stage of
Dorsal View. V.-utral View.
Lepidiiru\ arrdens (I'liUas).*
development and of growth by shedding the skin. Their
exuvise are easy to collect and examine when the pond
containing them is a bowl on a table. \\'ith the eye-
* "FaunaNor7egiffi,"Bd. I., Tab. XI. By G. O. Sars. 1896.
JrLY 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE.
117
cases and antennas, the oral parts and the respiratory
limbs, the bright spines and feathered hairs — all the
delicate structure, glassily transparent, is exposed to view,
like the wreathed pearls, the unclasped jewels, and the
rich attire which Madeline had put off on that famed Eve
of St. Agnes, when, enamoured and entranced, " Porphyro
gazed upon her empty dress. "
The I'hyllopod's story, however, is not exclusively
romantic. The cultivation of many species in a small bowl
is convenient for the observer, but it also gives the stronger
forms great and not always unwelcome facility for preying
on the weaker. A couple of the Kstherin ijihoni, figured
in the first chapter, caused me much surprise one summer
for two reasons. First, the pair attained an unwonted
size, which implied that the conditions were healthy ; but,
secondly, contrary to custom, all other animals, even those
of the same species, though grown under the
same conditions, speedily disappeared. At .,-,
last the pair that had waxen fat were put
to death, just to see what would happen, and
straightway a brood of youug Estheria grew
up and prospered. It seems scarcely uncharit-
able to infer that the long-dominant pair had
thriven on cannibalism. In the kindred genus,
Limnndia, there is another strange circum-
stance which interferes with romance. Of
this genus only two species are as yet known
— one European and one American — and in
neither of them has any specimen of the male
sex been observed. The propagation, according
to Prof. G. 0. Sars (an unsurpassed authority),
is exclusively parthenogenetic. " Males," he
gays, " in spite of the most careful investiga-
tion, have not yet been found, and probably
do not exist." It is not a little wonderful that
these Amazons should occur in a group which
commonly has both sexes abundantly repre-
sented. But perhaps the effacement of the
inferior sex will prove even here not to be
quite so absolute as for the moment it seems,
although the Russian and Hungarian natu-
ralists, Krynicki and Chyzer, who claim to have
observed the males, may have been deceived
as to the species they examined.
The division of the Phyllopods with a cara-
pace or dorsal shield contains the largest of aU
the species, Apus aitstrnlitnsis Spencer and Hall,
nearly three inches long, and Ltjii'luriis inacni-
nis, exceeding an inch and a half in length. Fig
It is in this division also that the legs reach the Fig
surprising number of a hundred and twenty-
six. This being the case, it will appear an odd thing that
the primary genus, which is scarcely or not at all to be
distinguished from Lejiidunis, should have been called Apu^
— that is to say, " the legless." The explanation is this.
The ingenious Dr. Johannes Leonhard Frisch, who in 1732
published the first description and figures of what he called
" the fin-footed lake worm with the shield," did not over-
look the little packet of almost innumerable leaflets under
the trunk, but decided that they were more like fins than
feet. He therefore obligingly left it open for those who
thought them legs to call this " insect " or " water worm "
a, polypus — that is, " many legs," while for him it was pre-
ferentially an aptia, or " no legs."
In the Apodidte it may be noted that the males are very
rare ; and abundant as the females are in some parts of
the world, the student in England may not always find
specimens at his command. He can always solace himself
by having recourse to the Cladocera. These are distin-
guished by the conspicuously branched second pair of
antenna', which are their swimming organs. They content
themselves with a comparatively parsimonious number of
legs— from four to six pairs— and have the whole body
except the head encased in valves, which, for the benefit of
the naturalist, are often conveniently transparent. In all
countries may be found some puddle, pool, or pond, some
swamp, or tarn, or lake ; and therefore in all countries the
zoologist may recognize a link with home by finding
Daphnia puh'x or one of its near relations. In numbers
numberless may members of this prolific tribe be obtained
by dipping a net into almost any horsepond. Their
movements can be studied by transferring a few to a
tumbler of water ; their organization by isolating one in a
watch-glass under the microscope. No Runtgen rays are
needed. The living works of the machine are plain for
on left, Daphnia carinata, var. intermedia Sare, female with epMppium.
on right, typical form of Daphnia carinata King, ovigerous female.*
all folk to see. It is worth taking a little trouble to
observe the winking of that ever-trembling eye, the motions
and adornment of the branchial feet, the little pulsating
heart, the strokes of the spiniferous tail, the curious
sinuosity of the intestine. One may chance to see the
eggs pouring from the ovary and taking shape in the
maternal pouch. Often within that pouch may be seen
numerous eggs or young ones forward in development.
Daphnia islike^piw, the prevalent method of reproduction
being, as Dr. G. S. Brady expounds the matter, '• not
sexual at all, but parthenogenetic, the female producing
and detaching in rapid succession broods of young, which
are the restilt of the development, not of fertilized eggs,
but of mere buds or " pseudova." The fertilized eggs,
the winter eggs, the eggs which keep and pass the winter
* ■' On Fresh-water Entomostraca from the Neighbourhood of
Sydney, partly raised from Dried Mud." By G. O. Sars. PI. I. 1896.
148
KNOWLEDGE.
[July 1, 1898.
independent of maternal care, are laid in the so-called
" ephippium " — a case developed in the mother for this
special purpose, and subsequently detached. An old
writer has been scoffed at for speaking of Daphniu judex
as a " wonderful insect." It is not in modern classifica-
tion an insect. Of forms now known which belong to the
same social set it is by no means the most eccentric. It
is not rare, but, on the contrary, multitudinously common.
None the less, it is to my mind easy to sympathize with
Bradley when he caUed it wonderful.
A CLASSIC LEGACY OF AGRICULTURE.-U.
By .John Mills.
THERE is no more beneiicial creation of wealth than
that which arises from the complete development
of the resources of the soil and the correct
manipulation of its products. Better education
in agriculture would contribute largely to an
intelligent appreciation of the problems which arise in
farming as a business, and increase the efficiency of the
mental machinery destined to direct operations in the field.
Farmers of the future, whose minds are thus counterpoised
and adjusted so as to retain their equilibrium under all
conditions — favourable and unfavourable — will play an
important part in the struggle for supremacy between
civilized countries ; and, so equipped, complete confidence
may be placed in the ability of the tillers of the soil in
our own country to maintain a secure place in the markets
with rivals, distant and near, who make it their chief
occupation to supply cur population with food. In the
attainment of such knowledge a great multitude of facts
present themselves for consideration, each of which requires
due thought to discern its bearing on the whole and to
assign it a place in agriculture so as to render the science
of maximum usefulness. Thus, the quantity and quality
of the crops, the character of the soil and of the climate,
differences in the habits of plants, general economy of the
farm, and so on, give rise to a number of questions which
form a sort of algebraic equation involving many unknown
quantities, and to solve which requires not only a vast
amount of exact observation, but also profound skill in
the marshalling of facts and manipulation of data. The
experiments at Eothamsted, conducted by Sir John Lawes
and Sir Henry Gilbert, are of this complicated description,
some of the results being merely tentative.
The object to be attained in the cultivation of root crops
is to encourage, by artificial means, a quite abnormal
development of a particular part of the plant. If, for
example, the turnip plant were grown for its natural seed-
product oil, a heavier soil would be more suitable than
when the object is to develop the swollen root. When
grown in ordinary soil without manure, either for a few
years in succession or even in rotation, root crops scon
revert to the uncultivated condition ; they depend for
luxuriant growth on an abundance of nitrogenous as well as
mineral constituents within the soil, and they are therefore
generally highly manured. In the accompanying table,
the results obtained with Norfolk white turnips are shown,
NoBFOLK White Tuenips, without Manube, axd with
Faemtaed Manuek.
Roots per Acre.
Leaves per Acre.
Year.
Without j With Farm-
Manure, yard Manure.
Without
Manure.
With Farm-
yard Manure.
1843
1844
1845
Tons. cwts. 1 Tons. cwts. '
4 4 ' 9 10
2 4 10 15
0 14 1 17 1 j
Tons. cwts.
1 not weighed
0 14
Tons. cwts.
not weighed
• 7 8
and it will be noted that when grown without manure the
crop dwindles down almost to zero, whilst with farmyard
manure there is a marked increase year by year. The
form of the unmanured root resembles that of a carrot
more than a turnip, and its composition is totally different
from the cultivated root. There is, indeed, much more
nitrogen taken up by the latter, but the percentage of that
element — apparently lower than in the unmanured plant —
is masked by the accumulation of a large amount of other
matters which render the plant an important food crop.
The average proportion of leaf to root under different
conditions as to manuring clearly indicates the suscepti-
bility of these plants to artificial influences : to one thousand
of root with mineral manure alone, the yield of leaf
being three hundred and twenty-nine ; with mineral and
ammonium salts, four hundred and thirty-four ; and with
mineral and ammonium salts and rape cake, six hundred.
Potatoes have been grown on the estate for twenty-two
years in succession, different sorts being selected on the
supposition that in growing the crop year after year change
was desirable, especially with a view to the avoidance or
lessening of disease. It is now an established fact that
season has much to do with the development of the potato
disease, and these experiments show that there was on the
average much more disease in the wetter seasons. When
the unsuitable weather comes, those tubers suffer the most
which have the richest juice — that is, the least fixity of
composition. The first material change in the develop-
ment of the disease is, apparently, the destruction of
starch and the formation of sugar ; there is also a con-
siderable loss of organic and chiefly ?io?! -nitrogenous sub-
stance, due in part to the decomposition of the produced
sugar, but probably in some measure to the evolution of
carbonic acid, as a coincident of the growth of the fungus
at the expense of ready-formed organic substance, this being
a characteristic of the growth of such non-chlorophyllous
plants. Regarding the cultivation of the plant under varying
conditions, it is somewhat interesting to observe that the
produce of starch per acre was about one thousand one
hundred pounds without manure, nearly two thousand
pounds with purely mineral manure, and with nitrogenous
and mineral manures together about three thousand four
hundred pounds. In other words, the increased produce
of starch by the use of the mineral and nitrogenous
manures together was more than one ton per acre. That
is to say, there was a great increase in the production of the
«o?}-nitrogenous constituent, starch, by the use of nitrogen
in manure — a striking result, indeed, and one more hint
Ihat nature will have her own way, paradoxical though it
may seem to us. In truth, it is for the production of the
non-nitrogenous substances — starch, sugar, and cellulose —
that our direct nitrogenous manures are chiefly used 1
The fixation of free nitrogen directly from the atmo-
sphere is a subject which has engaged the attention of
many inquirers, notably Sir John Lawes and Sir Henry
Gilbert at Eothamsted ; and a theme of much controversy
among scientific men for many years past has been —
" How is the fixation of nitrogen to be explained?"
Diversity of opinion still obtains on this question, and,
unfortunately, there is yet much to learn before a satis-
factory answer can be given ; but though the explanation
is wanting there can be no doubt that the fact of the
fixation of free nitrogen in the growth of leguminosffi —
clover, vetches, peas, beans, sainfoin, lucerne, and so on —
under the influence of suitable microbe infection of the
soil, and of the resulting nodule formation on the roots,
may be considered as fully established. What, then, is
the basis of this conclusion ? Recent experiments at
Eothamsted show that, by adding to a sterilized sandy
July 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE.
149
soil growing legaminous plants a small quantity of the
watery extract of a soil containing the appropriate organ-
isms, a marked development of the ao-called leguminous
nodules on the roots is induced ; and that there is, coin-
cidently, increased growth and gain of nitrogen. For
example, in growing peas, there was limited growth in pot 1
(see figure) with sand without soil extract, and also an
entire absence of nodule formation on the roots. The
increased growth in pots 2 and 3, with soil extract, was
coincident with a very great development of nodules.
In pot 4, with garden soil, itself supplying abundance
of combined nitrogen and doubtless micro-organisms as
well, there was also a considerable development of nodules,
bat distinctly less than in either pot 2 or pot 3 with
sand and soil extraci only. Further, without soil extract
and without nodules there was no gain of nitrogen, but with
soil extract and with nodule formation there was much
gain of nitrogen. Experimental results, iu fact, clearly
prove that there is immense gain of nitrogen under some
Peas grown in Experiments on the Fixation of Free Nitrogen.
conditions. It has also been conclusively shown that due
infection of the soil and of the plant is an essential to
success. The available evidence at the same time points
to the conclusion that the soU may be duly infected for
the growth of some descriptions of plants, but not for some
other descriptions. Moreover, land which is, so to speak,
quite exhausted so far as the growth of one leguminous
crop is concerned, may still grow very luxuriant crops of
another description of the same order, but of different
habits of growth, and especially of unlike character and
range of roots.
Not only the facts ascertained iu the Eothamsted ex-
periments and in other investigations, but also the history
of agriculture throughout the world, so far as it is known,
clearly show that a fertile soil is one which has accumulated
within it the residue of long periods of previous vegetation,
and that it bscomss infertile as this residue is removed.
That this exhaustion proceeds slowly miy be gathered
from the fact that wheat ha3 baen grown at Rotham3ted
for more than fifty years in succession oa the sama land,
and, setting aside fluctuations due to season, the produce
has only bean reduced by an average of about one-sixth
bushel per acre per annum, due to exhaustion. Without
any manure whatever, the average annual produce for
over fifty years was thirteen and a half bushels — a yield
exceeding the average of the United States under ordinary
cultivation, including their rich prairie lands, and about
the average of the whole world. The accompanying table
8 years,
8 years,
8 years,
8 years,
8 years,
20 years,
20 years,
40 years,
50 years,
1852-59
1860-67
1868-75
1876-83
188-1-91
1852-71
1872-91
1852-91
1844-93
U Tons
Faruiyiird
Mumire
every
Bushels.
34t
35^
39i
351
33|
341
33J
Year.
Bushels.
16^
13J
12i
lot
125
14i
IU
13
13i
Mixed Ammo-
Miueral | uium
Manure Salts
aloue. < aloue.
BusKels. Bushels.
19
15i
14
121
13i
17
32i
3U
28^
27i
32^
31S
29i
30i
shows that with farmyard manure the average annual
produce over the fifty years of continuous growth was
thirty-three and a half bushels — a result not far short of
three times the average produce of the United States, and
more than two and a half times the average of the whole
of the wheat lands of the world. Artificially manured plots
show that mineral manures alone gave very Uttle mcrease of
produce ; that nitrogenous manures alone gave consider-
ably more than mineral manures alone; but that mixtures
of the two gave very much more than either separately.
An inspection of the following table of results, as indicating
the amounts of produce in the best and in the worst
seasons of the forty years, will show how easy it is to form
wrong conclusions as to the effects of different manures
if experiments are conducted for one season only, or in
only a few seasons, and if the characters of the seasons are
not studied and due allowance made accordingly in drawing
Wheat Year aft^-r Year on the Same Land. — Produce of the Best
Season, 1863; of the Worst Season, 1879; and the Average of
Forty Years, 1852-1891.
Dressed Grain (per Acre).
Descriptiou of Manures
(Quantities per Acre).
Unmannred
Farmyard manure
Mixed mineral manure alone
Mixed mineral manure and 200
pounds ammonium salts =^ 43
pounds nitrogen
Mixed mineral manure and 40O
pounds ammonium salts = 86
pounds nitrogen ...
Mixed mineral manure and 550
pounds nitrate soda ^ 86 pounds
nitrogen
Mixed mineral manure and 600
poimds ammonium salts — 129
pounds nitrogen
55}
5;
U
lot
2.;
16J
-l
22
m
20|
3Si
inferences from results obtained. Thus it will be seen
that all the plats suffered severely in the bad season.
Compare columns <( and b. In most cases (see columns
150
KNOWLEDGE
[July 1, 1898.
c and d) the difference between the produce of the best
and the worst season approached, and in two cases actually
exceeded, the average produce of the plats.
More than two thousand years ago the Romans recognized
the fact that leguminous crops enriched the soil for succeed-
ing crops — in short , discovered what is termed the ' ' rotation
of crops," a practice which is admitted to be the foundation
of the improvements in our own agriculture. How, then,
are the admittedly beneficial effects of alternate, as dis-
tinguished from continuous, cropping to be explained ?
Liebig's first definite theory on this subject assumed that
the excreted matters of one description of crop were
injurious to plants of the same description, but that they
were not so, and might even be beneficial, to other kinds
of plants. Later, he considered that, as the dift'erent plants
had such diverse mineral requirements, the alternation of
one kind with another relieved the soil from exhaustion, and
discerned after many years that nitrogen probably played
some important part in the matter. Boussiugault, in
chemical statistics extending over ten years, came to the
conclusion that the difference in the amounts of nitrogen
taken up by various crops constituted a very important
element in the explanation of the benefits of rotation.
Prof. Daubeny, of Oxford, in testing De CandoUe's theory
that the excretions of one kind of plant were injurious to
plants of the same description, arrived at a negative
conclusion, and recognized the validity of Boussingault's
argument that the same kind of plant may continue to
grow healthier on the same land for long periods of time ;
and experience at Rothamsted also is conclusive against
the theory of injurious or poisonous excretions. Upon the
whole the results at Rothamsted show that the benefits
of rotation are very various. The opportunities which
alternate cropping affords for cleaning the land constitute
a prominent element of advantage. The difference in the
amounts available within the soil of the various mineral
constituents is one element in the explanation ; but the
facts relating to the amount and to the sources of the
nitrogen of the different crops are of still greater signifi-
cance. The varying requirements of the different crops,
habits of growth, and capabilities of gathering and assimi-
lating the necessary constituents have to be considered ;
with a variety of crops the mechanical operations of the
farm, involving horse and hand labour, are better distri-
buted over the year, and are, therefore, more economically
performed.
.^
"THE MIMIC FIRES OF OCEAN."
By G. Clabke Nuttall, b.sc.
NATURE dazzles the eye of man with many wonder-
ful phenomena, but perhaps never more so than
when she turns the gloomy night waters of the
sea into a sheet of silvery fire. At these times
every movement of the wave, every cleavage of
the water by oar or prow, reveals in its dark depths a
hidden fire which scintillates and sparkles with weird
and mysterious light. The spectacle is one of absolute
fascination, for the Spirit of Enchantment rests upon the
waters and reality becomes fairyland.
The ancients, keenly alive to a sense of the supernatural,
saw in this lunnnosity a manifestation of some unknown
power, and wondered ; the ignorant read in it a portent of
judgment and terror ; while in all ages the curious and the
searchers after knowledge have speculated as to its cause.
But just as nature has invested its appearance with a halo
of mystery, so she has also wrapt in much obscurity its
immediate cause ; and thus, though in the course of
"cehturies varying suggestions have been put forward,
nothing with any finality about it has been arrived at.
It was asserted truly that certain fishes were luminons ;
sharks have glowed and shone, shoals of herrings, pilchards,
or mackerel have been moving masses of light, and the
fish drawn out of the water have lain in great shining
heaps, the glow of which vanished as they dried and died.
Many writers have described the passages of ships
through such shoals — the sheet of moving flames — the
beautiful pale greenish elf-light that the fish exhibited ;
while poets have apostrophized the " mimic fires of ocean "
and the " lightnings of the wave," and scientists and
naturalists have in turn tried to account for their power of
luminosity. Some have attributed it to the presence of
certain substances of a fatty nature excreted by the fish
and adhering to the surface of their bodies ; others have
declared that it is due to a subtle power of the fish itself
— a form in which the energy of life shows itself under
certain conditions, just as this energy may be exhibited
in heat, or motion, or electricity; others, again, have
ascribed it to direct absorption and transmission of the
light of the sun, and so on. Many theories have been
elaborated, but none convincingly.
But now, it is asserted, the secret is laid bare.
It is wonderful how many secrets the searching light of
the nineteenth century is claiming to reveal. It is, perhaps,
a matter for still more wonder whether in the far future our
descendants will endorse all our solutions, or whether they
will not smUe at some of them just as we, half contemp-
tuously, discredit those of our ancestors. However that
may be, we have, in this case, a solution offered to us that
apparently approaches nearer the heart of truth than any
yet put forward, in that it satisfies the various phases of
the phenomenon and gives a unity and coherence to its
manifestations.
It is only lately that any very serious effort has been
made to study this phenomenon, but the research has
been abundantly rewarded, for it is now pretty certain
that the luminosity is due to the presence in the water
of various kinds of bacteria.
Now, bacteria are the very smallest living organisms of
which we have cognizance. Millions of them can lie on a
penny ; therefore, to produce the gleaming appearance
recognized by us as phosphorescence, they must be present
in numbers too enormous even to contemplate with our
finite minds. It would be immeasurably easier to reckon
with the stars for multitude than with these phosphores-
cent bacteria. They are colourless, rodlike bodies, only
known to us in the land revealed by the highest powers of
the microscope, and careful comparison shows minor
differences among them. For instance, some of them are
capable of independent motion — we can hardly call it swim-
ming— others are non-motile, some are enclosed in a jelly-
like covering, others are without this sheath. Their
power of motion is probably due to excessively fine hairs
at their extremities, which, moving to and fro in the water,
act the part of oars. These cilia have not been found in
all forms of bacteria which move, but their presence is
inferred, since every advance in the study of motile forms
increases the number of bacteria which are seen to possess
them.
These light-producing bacteria are known as photo-
bacteria, and so far some half-dozen varieties have been
distinguished and named. The names in such cases are
usually either given from the locality of their appearance
(thus, photo-bacterium Balticum, found in the Baltic), from
their discoverer (for example, photo-bacterium Fischeri,
after Prof. Fischer), or from some striking attribute (to
wit, photo -bacterium phosphorescens, the commonest light-
giving species).
JrLY 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE.
151
That they lie at the bottom of the matter — that phos-
phorescence is due to their presence — has been and can be
proved in several rather pretty ways. It is not sulScient,
of course, that we should always detect them in any
examination of luminous sea- water; to prove that they are
the cause of light we must be able to procure luminosity
by introducing them into water that did not previously
show this quality, and this can be done thus ; —
Place a few of these tiny organisms into sea-water or
broth prepared from fish, and Iceep at a suitable tempera-
ture ; they can then be cultivated without much ditliculty,
and as they spread and develop phosphorescence appears,
so that a removal of the vessel into another room shows
unmistakably the glow of the familiar li,L;ht. It only
appears, however, at the surface of the liquid, where the
oxygen of the air has free access to the bacteria ; if, for
experiment's sake, the supply of fresh air be cut off — that
is, if no oxygen be allowed to come near them^then the
little colony of bacteria loses its fascinating power and
remains dull and shorn of its glory. But restore the air,
and the microbes again recover their normal condition and
luminosity seems a natural corollary. There is a tale
told that a lady, whose husband made bacteria his study,
took a leaf out of his book, and cultivated these bacteria on
gelatine in such a way that as they developed they shone
out the message, " Hommage a M. Pasteur." The shining
letters were then photographed and the picture sent to
the great bacteriologist, thus conveying in graceful form
the warm appreciation in which he was held by those
following in his steps.
The explanation, too, of the luminous shoals of fish is
now made plain, and we can apparently get " fiery
herrings " at will. No longer are we to believe that the
herrings themselves, by the exercise of some marvellous
power, or by the excretion of an extraordinary substance,
give rise to the striking luminosity, but rather that their
brightness is due to myriads of these infinitesimal bodies,
which cling to their surfaces and invest them in a coat of
shining light. Thus, if some herrings, newly caught, and
with the sea-water still fresh on them, be placed on one
plate and covered down with another, and then put into a
suitable temperature and left for a day and a night, glints
of light can, at the end of the time, be detected at various
points on their bodies when they are examined in a dark
room. If they are yet again put away for another twenty-
four hours, the points of light spread until the whole ol'
the fish are enveloped in a beautiful bluish glow. The
light is then at its best, and gradually fades away as the
fish putrefies and the sea-water dries up. If a little of
the light-giving matter be scraped ofl' the skins of the
herrings and examined under the microscope, it shows
itself to be nothing but colonies or collections of bacteria,
all living at a great pace, dividing, multiplying, ami
developing at a tremendous rate. Each member of a
colony is normally roundish in shape, but in this stage of
reproduction it is continually elongating into a long ellipse,
a constriction appears at the middle, and it divides into
two. Eacli of these two in their turn elongate, become
constricted, and divide. And so it goes on, the process
being often so rapid that short chains are formed, the
various portions being unable to break away in time. The
particular bacterium which affects herrings and cod is
remarkable for its great luminosity ; in fact, it exceeds all
other species in this quality.
It is a curious fact that the addition of a little sugar to
the liquid or the gelatine on which these phosphorescent
bacteria are being cultivated increases very much their
power of producing light ; the sugar must, however, be
used with great moderation, as too much of it has a con-
trary effect and checks the luminosity altogether. The
reason for this is that nearly all this class of bacteria
require carbon as nourishment if they are to develop to
their highest powers. Like much of the food we eat, it is
not essential to them ; they can manage very well without
it, but they are all the better for having it. Now sugar is
very largely composed of carbon ; hence the good results
which follow its presence. Glycerine, which is of similar
composition, will do almost as well ; from both bacteria
can easily withdraw carbon. Two photo-bacteria have,
however, been observed which are somewhat differently
constituted ; one is found round the West Indies and the
other in the North Sea, and neither apparently requires
sugar or glycerine in any form — in fact, either of these
substances, even in the smallest quantity, appears to be
directly injurious. But why this should be so it is not
easy to define.
A Dutchman named Beyerinck lias lately made a special
study of these photo-bacteria, and has experimented with
them in a great number of ways to determine, if possible,
why they should thus become illuminated, and if the light
plays any notable part in their life history ; but his results
are, seemingly, all more or less of a negative nature.
He cannot find that it has any very important function.
The breathing of these tiny organisms is not, apparently,
in anyway bound up with it ; their nutrition, growth, and
development go on quite well even if they are placed
under such conditions that their luminosity is arrested ; in
no way, indeed, is it a vital process. It only seems to
depend on the food which the bacteria feed upon and the
presence of oxygen. Given suitable food and plenty of
fresh air, and they exhibit their characteristic light ; deprive
them of one or the other and they no longer shine.
This knowledge helps us to understand, then, the
phenomenon of phosphorescence. It is visible only at
night because in the full glare of day the greater light
overpowers the lesser ; it is visible at certain times and
seasons because the conditions are such as to evoke it.
And what is favourable for the Lighting up of a single
bacterium is favourable for all ; hence the myriad multitudes
of infinitesimal units, each set glowing with its tiny light,
is sutficient in the sum total to put a whole ocean aflame.
It would, of course, be presumptuous, and doubtless
erroneous, to say that all the phosphorescence of the sea
is due solely to photo-bacteria ; it can only be asserted in
the present state of our knowledge that they are certainly
responsible for a great share of it. But this wonder of
nature must now be regarded as yet another instance of
the mighty results accomplished through the agency of
the smallest of living things.
THE PETROLEUM INDUSTRY.-II.
By George T. Holloway, assoc. r.c.s. (lond.), f.i.c.
IN the earlier days of the petroleum industry the crude
oil was carried from the wells to the refineries in
barrels containing forty-two American gallons, at
such heavy expense as to enormously increase the
cost to the consumer. By land the barrels were
conveyed on rough waggons over the almost roadless tracts
where the oilfields were mainly located, while, where
river transport was possible, barges were used as the
vehicles of transportation. In 1862, however, a branch
railway was carried into the oil regions of Pennsylvania,
and in 1866 railway tank waggons were introduced. At
first constructed of wood, and having a capacity of about
two thousand gallons, these waggons were soon replaced
by the boiler- iron tanks with which we are now familiar.
152
KNOWLEDGE
[July 1, 1898.
These tanks, of which over ten thousand are in use in the
States, usually have a capacity of eight thousand American
gallons.
The introduction of pipe-lines — which are now laid from
all the important oilfields to the central refineries — con-
stitutes the greatest factor among the many innovations
which have, as a whole, led to the present cheap produc-
tion of petroleum in the States. Each well-owner, as his
oil is passed into the pipes, receives a certificate stating
that he is entitled to so much oil, and these certificates
are negotiable like bank-notes among those interested in
the trade. Of course, all the oil passes into the common
stock, so that no producer can obtain his own oil from the
refinery ; and for this reason any special oil, such as the
heavy and valuable oils of Franklin and Smith's Ferry, is
still conveyed in barrels.
The use of pipe-lines was proposed in 18G0, but the first
successful line was laid in 18G5. Notwithstanding the
opposition of the teamsters, who had formerly enjoyei
the monopoly of the transport of petroleum, the laying of
these lines proceeded rapidly from the first, and it is said
that between twenty-five thousand and thirty thousand
miles of pipe-lines now exist in the States.
Uil Keiinerv nx I'luladelpina.
The main pipes are U3ually from four to six inches in
diameter, the small feeders which pass from them to the
wells being about two ioches. As the pipes are liable to
become choked by dirt or solid hydrocarbons, a small brush,
known as a "go devil," is occasionally passed through to
clear them. This brush, which travels along with the
oil as the latter is pumped through the pipes, is provided
with ball-and-socket joints, to facilitate its progress round
the bends ; and it is also fitted with vanes, which ensure
its rotation as it advances.
The pumps now invariably ussd for these pipe-lines are
of the Worthington type, and work at a pressure which
sometimes rises as high as one thousand five hundred
pounds per square inch. The seven hundred and sixty
mile length of six-inch pipe extending along the New York
line is supplied by pumps of from six hundred to eight
hundred horse-power, and conveys about thirty thousand
gallons daily. There are eleven pumping stations, each
containing two pumps. In one case a pair of these pumps
forces the oil through a distance of one hundred and ten
miles, but as a rule each pair serves about half that length.
Kerosene — the product of the distillation of crude
petroleum used as lamp oil— is mainly conveyed in tank
waggons or railway cars, tank barges, and tank steamers ;
but a small proportion is still sold in barrels, and, especially
in the Eastern markets, considerable quantities are disposed
of in tin "cases," each fitted with a screw cap and wire
handle, and holding about five American gallons. S3
great is the sale of these cases that as much as forty
thousand tons of tinplate is said to have been used in
their manufacture in one year.
For ocean transport the oil is now usually conveyed in
tank steamers and sailing vessels, in which the whole hold
is formed in compartments or tanks to contain the oil.
In order to prevent injury to the vessels from the rolling
about of the oil in bad weather, the tanks are kept
absolutely fall, small auxiliary " expansion tanks ' being
fitted to them to receive any overflow when the oil expands
from rise of temperature, or to supply oil to the main
tanks when the bulk decreases. Practically the whole of
the ocean tratlie, both of kerosene, crude oil, and liquid
fuel, is now controlled by "these
vessels, although lubricating oil
and petroleum spirit, and other
of the lighter petroleum products,
are still conveyed in barrels. The
credit for the introduction of this
method of transport is due to
Mr. Ludwig Nobel, who, in 1878,
had two small tank steamers
constructed for use on the
Caspian. They were built at
Motala, in Sweden, in sections,
for conveyance to the Caspian,
where they are said to be still in
use.
In the earlier days the escape
of gas and inflammable vapours
from the oil led to many disastrous
explosions, but the more efficient
methods of ventilation now in
vogue have minimized these dan-
gers. The tanks are also now
so arranged that they may be
thoroughly cleansed by workmen
and used for the conveyance of
ordinary cargo on the return
journey, and the most perishable
goods are so transported.
As the crude petroleum consists of a large number of
constituents in admixture, from dissolved gas and highly
volatile " petroleum spirits " to such solids as paratfin wax
and vaseline, it is resolved by distillation into the various
components used in commerce. For this purpose various
types of still have been devised, the Russians largely using
the " continuous " still, in which the crude oil is supplied
as fast as the distillate passes off; while, in the States,
large non-continuous stills, which are cooled down and
the residuum removed after each distillation, are princi-
pally in use. It is well known that, in distilling any such
mixture as petroleum, some of the constituents are decom-
posed into other bodies which are mainly more volatile
than the substance producing them. In what is known as
the " cracking process " this decomposition is accentuated
by allowing a portion of the distillate to condense on the
cooler upper part of the still, and run back upon the hotter
liquid at the bottom. This action is not allowed to take
July 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE.
153
place until the bulk of the lighter oila and "natural"
kerosene have been distilled oS, as it is the hea\aer and
less valuable constituents of the crude petroleum which it
is desired to decompose in order that the maximum of
kerosene may be obtained. The distillate is agitated with
sulphuric acid followed by a treatment with caustic soda
lye, and it is finally washed by agitation with water, from
which it is drawn off after settlement. The exact action
of the chemical treatment is not known, but it appears to
consist mainly in the removal of the tarry matters, the
aromatic hydrocarbons, and the sulphur compounds, all of
which injure the quality as well as mar the appearance of
the oil.
The nature of the products obtained at different distil-
leries varies according to the market for which they are
intended. The oil allowed to be burnt in lamps in England,
for instance, must not " flash" — that is, giveoff inflammable
vapour in a closnl vessel — at a temperature below seventy-
three degrees Fahren., while in some countries the standard
is higher and in others lower. The principal products
recognized in the trade are : — (1) The lightest, i.e., the
most volatile constituents, known as petroleum spirit or
naphtha, which is sometimes again divided up into rhigo-
lene or cymogene, gasoUne, benzoline, benzine, etc. (2)
Kerosene for burning in lamps. This, the most important
of the products of petroleum, constitutes about seventy per
cent, of the yield from the oil of the United States and
about half as much from that of Kussia — a feature which
has had much to do with the greater success of the
Americans. (3) Oil somewhat heavier than kerosene,
but still capable of burning in suitably constructed lamps.
(41 Lubricating oil, which, on account of its feebler
action on metals and its less tendency to clog machinery,
as compared with the animal and vegetable oils formerly
exclusively used, has now practically displaced the latter
in the markets of the world. (5) Paraffin wax. (6)
Vaseline. And (7) residuum, or waste, now used on an
enormous scale as liquid fuel. Anthracene and other
compounds from which dye-stuffs may be obtained have
also been separated from the residuum, but the cost has
so far proved prohibitive.
The uses to which these various products have been put
are very numerous. The earliest use of petroleum was, as
already stated, for medicinal purposes — an application now
mainly confined to vaseline and the softer paraffin waxes,
which are largely used in preference to lard in the manu-
facture of pomatum, etc. It is stated that vaseline, as well
as much of the heavier petroleum oil, is used instead of
butter in the manufacture of pastry on a large scale, but
it is doubtful whether it possesses any value whatever as
a food.
The lightest of the petroleum spirits are used as local
anassthetics, those of lesser volatUity being largely employed
as solvents for waterproofing materials, varnishes, and as
cleansing agents for the removal of grease spots ; also in
the processes of " dry cleaning " for fabrics. It is, of
course, as a lighting agent that petroleum is most used,
the distillates known as kerosene being employed for that
purpose, and the bulk of the candles now in use are
prepared from the paraffin wax obtained from petroleum.
The use of the heavier oils as lubricants has already
been referred to, but it may be mentioned that the Russian
oil holds the field as the best for this purpose, although
its kerosene has not so good a name as that of America,
mainly on account of the fact that the lamps (especially
those in use in England) are especially designed for burning
the American oil, which does not require so good an air
supply for its combustion as does the Russian.
For use as fuel, the Russian residuum is preferred to
that of America on account of its greater fluidity. Under
the name " astatki," or " masut," it is largely employed
as fuel for stationary and locomotive engines, marine
boilers, furnaces, etc., a jet of the sprayed residuum blown
into the furnace by a blast of air or steam from a nozzle
being the usual method of applying it. On account of the
ease, with which this residuum may be stored, and, above
all, of the almost total absence of smoke and dirt during
its combustion and the little attention and stoking which
is required, it is probable that in the near future its use on
board ship will be greatly augmented.
Finally, the use of petroleum distillates for enriching
coal gas, either by merely passing the gas through the
highly volatile gasoline, or by decomposing the heavier
oil into illuminating gas, which is mixed with the coal gas,
must be mentioned, together with the large and increasing
use for " petroleum engines," in which vaporized or gasified
petroleum spirit, or even kerosene, is exploded with air as
in the gas engines, which some practical men consider will
ultimately be replaced by those using petroleum.
ON THE ECLIPSE THEORY OF VARIABLE
STARS.
By Lieut. -Colonel E. E. Maek^ick, k.r.a.s.
THE theory that the variations in light of such stars
as Algol are due to the presence of a dark or opaque
companion star, which periodically passes between
us and the bright star, is generally accepted as
satisfactorily accounting for the observed changes
in brightness. Vogel's almost classical determination of
the elements of the system of Algol, uniting as it does
the visual and spectroscopic observations, seems to have
clinched the theory, and it has crystallized into a recog-
nized fact in the text-book and lantern-slide worlds. It is
with no idea of controverting this theory that this paper is
written, but simply to examine some of the conditions
which are attached to it, and study them from different
points of view.
For this purpose five different systems, each of two
bodies revolving round their centre of gravity, are pro-
pounded. The two bodies are denominated A and B
respectively, and the following table gives the particulars
of each : —
Diameter of
Remarks.
System.
A. B.
I.
II.
III.
IV.
V.
10
10
10
10
10
9
7
!)
9
^ B, dark or opaque.
)
B, bright.
B's albedo half that of A.
With these data, the diminution in the light of A by the
central transit of B was calculated for every one-tenth
of diameter of A that B advances on its course, supposing
B to move from right to left. Thus in Fig. 1 the area of
the hme D E F G was calculated when the advancing limb
of B had arrived respectively at 1, 2, 3, etc. Fig. 1 shows
the occulting satellite (System I.) arrived at point 3. In
this particiJar case the area of the lune is 14 31, the
distance G E («) being :->. Taking the light of globe A to
be represented by unity, the Hght cut off" is -182 ; the
remaining light is SIS. Assume the " magnitude " of A
when quite unobscured as 1-0 ; then the resulting mag-
\64s
KNOWLEDGE
[July 1, 1898.
nitude of the partly eclipsed globe is 1-22, based on the
light ratio, 2-512. It is supposed that the distance of
the bodies from us is so great that the telescope would
only show them (even if both bright) as a single star.
In this way the five systems have been treated, and
a series of points plotted as in Fig. 2. The abscissa
represents a unit of time, i.e., the period occupied Uy B
in advancing one-tenth of the diameter of A. The motion
is supposed uniform and transverse to the line of sight.
The ordinates are star magnitudes divided into tenths, so
that the length representing one-tenth of a magnitude
equals that representing a unit of time. A curve is then
drawn through the points, which we may call the theoretical
light curve.
It should be noted here that the shape of the light curve
may be altered indefinitely by changing the ratio of time
to " magnitude." But the light curves of different stars are
strictly comparable provided the same ratio is maintained
for all. For this reason the shape of the Algol curve, as
given by Prof. Pickering in Fig. 3, differs widely from the
theoretical curve in Fig. 2, simply because the above ratio
adopted in the two cases is different.
In System I. the diameter of the dark globe is one-tenth
less than that of the bright one. This is pretty nearly
the proportion as given by Vogel for the system of Algol.
Hence a very considerable diminution or drop in light of
A results, owing to so much of its face being obscured by
the dark globe when central.
In System II. the diameter of B is assumed seven as
against ten of A. Hence the light curve is not so deep,
and the central flat is longer ; lor, the occulting globe
being smaller than in I., and supposing it to travel at
same rate as before, it is, for a relatively longer time,
wholly contained visually within the globe or projected
superficies of A. While so contained the light of A is
reduced to a minimum and theoretically does not change.
In in. the small globe is half the diameter of the large
one. Here the resulting light change is so small (only
0-13 of a magnitude) that it would be practically unnoticed
and undiscoverable by a method of visual observation such
as Argelander's. Hence it would seem that any companion
or planet smaller in diameter than -5 of the larger could
never be discovered by present methods of visual observa-
tion. If all the planets of our system could be seen
projected on the sun, as seen from a star, the resulting
diminution in his light would be absolutely unnoticeable.
IV. Suppose now that globe B is bright — in fact, just
the same brightness, surface for surface, as A. Then we
have a binary system like many known ones, except that
we are supposing the distance from us so great that it is
beyond the power of any telescope to " split " the pair. In
this case we regard the normal light as that of globe A
plus globe B. Any portion of H projected on A makes no
difference, seeing that any light obscured is replaced by
a similar quantity. The quantity of light, therefore,
outside the central globe — that is, the lune D G F H—
must be calculated and result added to that of A. This
has been done for the various positions when a 1, 2, 3,
etc., and the fourth light curve results.
In System V. the diameter of B is still regarded as nine,
against ten of A, but the albedo, or light-reflecting power,
only half that of A, surface for surface. In this case the
total light when the globes are separated is that of A plus
that of B. When in transit, as in Fig. 1, the total light
is proportional to area of A, plus half area of B, minus
area of lune D E F G. This has been worked out for
different positions, and the fifth light curve obtained.
All these five curves are similar in character, and the
light curves of all possible varieties of binary systems can
be thus represented. The amplitude of the curve will
vary according as the size of the occulting body is varied.
Again, the speed of the occulting body may vary, and the
transit be accordingly fast or slow ; also it may occupy all
positions when in mid-transit, from being exactly concentric
with A to just touching it externally.
With regard to the smaller globe passing behind the
larger, if B is perfectly opaque and dark, the light of A
is not affected. If B is luminous, and of same albedo as A,
then the total light of the system will be diminished by
B passing behind, exactly to the same amount as when B
transits in front of A. If the albedo, as in Case V., is
half that of A, then when B is partially behind A (Fig. 1)
we get the total light proportionate to area of A plus 'half
area of D G F H (the portion of B outside A). Hence
with an albedo of B differing from A we get a different
light curve for a transit of B in front from a transit
behind A. In the latter case the light at minimum is
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-Theoretical Li^lit Curves of Different Binary Systems.
simply that of globe A ; in the former it is A-B + ^B :
that is, area of A minus half area of B. Hence the light
curve for a back transit is not so deep as for a front transit.
The question now arises, Is it possible to observe and
record the light changes in a star with sufficient accuracy
to mark the distinguishing features of the curves as given
above ? All observers of variable stars know the great
difficulties and sources of error attendant on visual obser-
July 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE,
155
vations. The change in position angle, change in altitude,
varying transparency of the sky, and other causes conspire
to prevent us determining brightness accurately to one-
tenth of a magnitude, let alone anything less than this.
Yet if we want to get a light curve with accuracy, we
ought to have it to the one-huudredth of a magnitude.
Wiih the photometer there seems more hope and greater
promise. Fig. 3 is a reproduction of a diagram by Prof.
Pickering, showing the light curves of four variable stars
as resulting from photometrical observations. In the case
of W Delphini it will be seen that the dots representing
the observations are exceedingly close to the curve, the
average deviation being between one and two hundredths
of a magnitude.* However, in none of the four stars is
the curve absolutely flat at minimum. I think we may
conclude that for Algol type stars the shape of the light
curve can only be thoroughly determined by continued
observations made with some form of photometer.
■i>4
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W-nf2},Tratt .
Fia. 3. — Light Curves as observed with Photometer (Pickering).
In the above notes we have supposed each star to have
a sharply defined limb. In nature this may not always
be the case. If we could see our sun projected on the
blackness of space, the corona with its streams and wisps
of light would appear to surround it, and the limb would
not perhaps be so sharp as we see it through the glare of
our illuminated atmosphere, which cuts ofi" the corona.
Again, some stars, for all we know, are in an earlier stage
of existence than the sun, and only partially condensed
from the primitive nebulous matter. So their limb or
boundary would be of a cloudy, nebulous nature. In such
cases our hard-and-fast light carve would be considerably
modified ; the change of light would be more gradual,
and there would be a tendency to a rounded curve at the
central depression.
Again, the bright globe might have an absorbing atmo-
sphere, so that the light faded away towards the edges and
the centre would be brighter than the limb. This might
modify the typical light curve, as the eclipsing body would
stop out more or less light according to the different
* Astrophysical Journal, Yul. IV., Xo. 5.
positions occupied on the disc of the larger globe, irre-
spective of the actual area covered.
We have only referred to the period during which the
light changes markedly ; but there has been much dis-
cussion of late years as to whether Algol varies when in
full light, and the matter seems at present more or less
sidi judicc. When we read, however,* that under Prof.
Pickering's direction, one thousand eight hundred and
fifty-six photometric observations have been made of
W Delphini, three thousand two hundred and ninety-six
of I' Cephei, two thousand five hundred and ninety-two
of S C'ancri,one thousand five hundred and eighty-four of
S Cephei, etc., etc., we may be quite certain that the subject
will sooner or later be thoroughly thrashed out, probably
long before the telescope is made which will reveal to
direct vision the occulting globe passing in front of its
primary.
♦
THE RECENT ECLIPSE.
THE LICK PHOTOGRAPHS OF THE CORONA.
By E. Walter Maunder, f.r.a.s.
THE two photographs of the corona which are
reproduced in the accompanying plate are copies
of transparencies which were most kindly pre-
sented to us by Prof. W. W. Campbell. It will
be remembered that the late Colonel C. F. Crocker,
who had on two previous occasions provided the funds for
eclipse expeditions organized from the Lick Observatory,
had undertaken the cost of one to observe the late eclipse
in India. The astronomer in charge of the expedition
was Prof. W. W. Campbell, the spectroscopist of the
Observatory, and he was accompanied by Mrs. Campbell
and Miss Eowena Beans as volunteer assistants, travelling
at their own private expense. Prof. Campbell was also
assisted in India by Captain Fleet and Mr. Garwood of
the Royal Navy.
Prof. Campbell's chief instrument was the great photo-
graphic telescope of five inches aperture and forty feet
focal length. This was firmly fixed, and the sensitive
plate was made to follow the sun. With the sun more
than fifty degrees high at mid-totality, the mounting of
such a monster was a very serious business ; the more so
as Prof. Campbell was by no means satisfied with such
native carpenters as he could procure. To support the
object-glass end, he built a firm wooden tower — well seen
in the accompanying photograph — some twenty-three feet
in height, whilst the camera end was received in a pit
some eight feet deep. The plates used with this great
telescope were seventeen inches long by fourteen wide, and
the image of the moon was very nearly four and a half
inches in diameter. The larger of the two photographs
in the plate is copied from one of these, and was given an
exposure of one second.
Beside this great telescope, two other photographic tele-
scopes— the Dallmeyer and Floyd — were also employed,
with focal lengths of three and five feet. With these two
smaller instruments eight beautiful negatives were obtained,
and the smaller photograph in the plate is an enlargement
from one of these taken with the Floyd telescope with an
exposure of ten seconds. The forty-foot telescope gave
twelve negatives, of which nine were extremely satisfactory.
The exposures varied from an " instantaneous " one up to
sixteen seconds.
Beside the photographic cameras. Prof. Campbell had
a number of spectroscopic cameras, his principal objects
* Fifty-second Annual Report of the Harvard College Obserratory.
156
KNOWLEDGE
[July 1, 1898.
being to photograph the changes in the spectrum due to
the " reversing layer," and also to secure photographs of
the 1474 K line for the purpose of determining the question
of the rotation of the corona. The two smaller photographic
telescopes, together with the spectroscopes, were all carried
on the same mounting, which was practically one of the
English form, and may be seen in the centre of the photo-
graph just beyond the base of the great telescope.
Speaking generally , the recent eclipse has been specially re-
markable for two classes of photographs — those of the corona
on a large scale, ami those of the spectrum of the " flash."
Mr. Evershed's photographs are well entitled to stand as re-
presentatives of the latter, and we may well take Prof. Camp-
bell's beautiful picture as a representative of the former.
These
Prof. Camjibell's Obserrmg Station at
January
scale photo-
graphs were
undertaken a t
three stations :
at Sahdol, where
Prof. Michie
Smith used a
forty- foot camera
like Prof. Camp-
l)ell's, rigidly
fixed and pointed
directly to the
sun ; and where
the Astronomer
Royal used
the nine-inch
Thompson pho-
tographic lens of
Greenwich Ob-
servatory, in
combina t ion
withaDallmeyer
telephoto lens,
by which the im-
age was enlarged
from a diameter
of one inch to
one of four.
This, the most powerful photographic instrument in use in
the echpse, was fed by a ccclostat. Prof. Copeland, at
Goghli, also used a lens of forty-foot focus, but mounted
it horizontally and used a heliostat. There was, therefore,
a wide range of method, though the resulting photographs
were approximately on the same scale.
In the March Number of Knowledge we pointed out
that of coronit, as seen directly, there were three well-
marked types. In the May Number we drew attention to
the correspondence between long-exposed photographs
and the visual appearance. In the present case we wish
rather to speak of those details of the lower corona which
are probably common to all types, and which are very
well exemplified in the present photographs.
1. Pdliir Bays. — These are seen with exceptional clear-
ness in many of the photographs of the late eclipse. They
seem to spring almost from an actual point on the sun's
surface, and to diverge nearly in straight lines, but with
a tendency on the part of those diverging the most widely
to curve over towards the equator. Generally speaking
the corona gives the idea of a flat picture, not of a body
based upon a sphere and having depth as well as extension.
But, on the present occasion at any rate, the polar rays
seem distinctly placed at difierent distances, and some
appear foreshortened while others are seen in their full
length. It might be added here that Prof. Campbell's
photograph shows better than any other with which we
are acquainted a pretty little group of prominences near
the north pole.
2. Ile-cntering Curves, — A prominent feature of the 1893
eclipse I at sunspot maximum) was the number of in-
stances in which a bright group of prominences was arched
over by a bright coronal line which formed a complete
bridge above it. Not only so, but the coronal structure
was distinctly less brilliant below this arch and round the
prominence. The prominences appeared, therefore, as if
they were covered by glass shades or bell jars, and it
would seem as if the prominence exercised some repulsive
efifect upon the corona matter. In some cases arch suc-
ceeded arch, the prominence group being enclosed beneath
a succession of
^^ more or less per-
• feet re-entering
curves.
3 . Radial
Linrs. -The
great streamers
or extensions of
the outer corona
are usually bor-
dered by bright
lines of a very
peculiar and
characteristic
form, lines of
double curvature
which give those
streamers their
well-known
lobed or leaflike
shape. These
lines often start
almost tangenti-
ally to the disc.
In the present
echpse there are
several marked
cases in which
these curves,
starting thus tangentially, and curving round almost
concentrically with the sun, become caught by a vehement
repulsive force, and are swept outward in a straight line
radial to the sun. The triple ray in the north-west is,
perhaps, the most striking instance of this.
Jeur, India, during the Total Eclipse of
22nd, 1898.
Notices of ISoolts.
Thermo - Gtoyrapkical Studies. By C. L. Madsen.
(Williams & Norgate.) This general exposition of the
analytical method applied to researches on temperature
and climate, gained for the author both an honourable
mention and a sUver medal in the competition for the
Hodgkins prizes offered by the Smithsonian Institution,
Washington, in 1898. Equations are deduced for the
determination of the normal mean yearly temperature of
the parallels, of the mean yearly temperature of places
of given geographical latitude and longitude, and of
the yearly movement in the temperature of places in
the northern temperate and polar zone. A comparison is
instituted between the actually observed and calculated
mean yearly and monthly temperature of one hundred and
twelve places situated in the middle Atlantic zones of the
northern hemisphere. There is, in addition, a mass of
observations and data dealing with other branches of this
r\NUWLtUL.L
The Solar Corona. I898. January 2z
Taken at Jeur, India, by Prof. w,W. Campbell ,
of They Lick ()h,s'(/\'ff loi'V , Mf tlumi I tori
(■<tl if'oi-iiia . VjS\A .
July 1, 1898.1
KNOWLEDGE.
157
interesting branch of natural knowledge. The volume
will be a most valuable work of reference for future inves-
tigators iu meteorology and physical geography, and we
congratulate the author upon his worthy contribution
to science.
The Flora of Perthshire. By Francis Buchanan W.
White, M.D., F.L.S., F.E.s. Edited, with an Introduction
and Life of the Author, by James W. H. Trail, a.m., m.d.,
F.R.S., Professor of Botany, Aberdeen University. (Edin-
burgh : W. Blackwood & Sons.) Dr. Buchanan White was
an enthusiastic investigator in the realm of natural history,
and most of his work as a botanist was done with a view
to the publication of a "Flora of Perthshire." It is,
therefore, a matter of congratulation that the materials
he collected during a number of years have been brought
together in the present volume. The book is a worthy
memorial of an esteemed naturalist, and its value is much
enhanced by the introduction and memoir from the pen of
Prof. Trail, whose expert knowled^'e of the subject and
personal regard for Dr. White have together given a wider
interest to this publication than is usually possessed by a
local tlora.
A Student's Text-Book of Zoolof/i/. ]'ol. I. — Protozoa to
Chator/natha. By Adam Sedgwick, 5i..\., f.r.s. (London :
Swan, Bonnensehein, & Company, Limited. New York :
The Macmillan Company.) 18s. It is now generally
admitted that to successfully study zoology the studeut
should begin by making a thorough examination of the
structure of individual animals, learning the functions of
their several parts as well as their relation to the external
world and to one another. This constitutes what is known
as the " study by types," which method owes its popularity
in this country to the pioneer efforts of Huxley, who,
planning courses of instruction at the old Normal School
of Science, now called the Royal College of Science,
adopted this plan. In this way a basis for more extended
studies is secured, and it is to assist such extended studies
that Mr. Sedgwick has prepared this first volume of his
book, which will be completed by a second volume. But,
as the author says in his preface, the book should have an
additional use. It makes an admirable and handy book
of reference to others interested in natural history, who
wOl here find the general nature and habits of a large
number of animals described in a readable style. When
we add that the volume is provided with four hundred and
seventy-two illustrations, is liberally supplied with refer-
ences to original papers and other sources of information,
and has all matters in dispute printed in small type, it
will be seen that no efforts have been spared to make the
path of the young zoologist as easy and pleasant as
possible. Mr. Sedgwick tells us that he originally intended
to publish a new edition of Claus's Lehrbueh, but sub-
sequently departed from his intention. We think the
student of the subject in this country has hereby reason
to congratulate himself. The book is, beyond question,
one of the best volumes on zoology at present available.
Theoretleal Mechanics. By A. E. H. Love, it.a., f.r.s.
(Cambridge University Press.) 12s. This recent addition to
the excellent series of mathematical treatises published by
the Cambridge University Press is intended for students
who have some acquaintance with the elements of the
differential and integral calculus and some knowledge of
plane co-ordinate geometry. The book is divided into
three parts : the first is preliminary in character, and is
intended to accustom the student to the idea of accelera-
tion, and to the fact that a precise description of any
motion can be given by a statement of the accelerations
involved ; the second part is devoted to an explanation of
the principles of dynamics ; the last part is taken up with
exemplifications of the ways in which the general theory is
applied. The book is attractively printed, the subjects of
the paragraphs being boldly defined by Clarendon type and
the chief theorems by Italics. It is altogether an admir-
able treatise and will take a high place among modern
works on the subject.
The First Philosophers of Greece. By Arthur Fairbanks.
(London : Kegan Paul, Trench, Ttiibuer, & Co.) 7s. 6d.
Mr. Fairbanks has, in this most interesting book, prepared
for the student a Greek text of the fragments of the early
philosophers which represents, as accurately as possible,
the results of recent scholarship ; he has also added such
critical notes as may be necessary to enable the scholar
to see on what basis the text rests. From this text Mr.
Fairbanks has prepared a translation of the fragments
into English, and along with this a translation of the
important passages bearing on these early thinkers in
Plato and Aristotle. The reader is thus enabled to see
exactly the views held by early Greek philosophers as to
natural objects and phenomena, and the book will be of
great value as a concise epitome of the early history of
scientific opinion. It is well known that many correct
ideas were held by these Greek philosophers. Thus,
Thales, the founder of the school (G40 b.c. — 548 b.c),
taught that the moon reflects the sun's light to us, and
that " eclipses of the sun take place when the moon passes
across it in direct line, since the moon is earthy in char-
acter ; and it seems to the eye to be laid on the disc of
the sun " (p. 7). Similarly, Empedokles (494 k.c. — 484 b.c.)
speaks of the moon as " a borrowed light, circular in form
— it revolves about the earth, as if following the track of a
chariot " ; and of night, " solitary, blind-eyed," as being the
result of the earth " coming in front of the lights " (p. 177).
Now that the idea of a gradual evolution of human thought,
as well as of organic forms, is universally recognized, such
a book as Mr. Fairbanks has compiled will prove of the
greatest value to all intellectual readers and workers, and
we are confident they will experience keen pleasure in
consulting it.
SHORT NOTICES.
The Miner s Arithmetic and Mensuration. By Henry Davies.
(Chapman & Hall.) is. net. Although the appearance of this book
is at first rather forbidding, a closer inspection will reveal to tbe
mining student who liappens to look into it what a Taluable treatise
it is. Arithmetic and mensuration are here subordinated to the
actual requirements of the practical miner — that is, examples are
given which apply to mining and mine engineering, such, for example,
as the calculation of the available coal in various seams. !N umerous
problems of tliis kind, with full solutions, form a conspicuous feature,
and the many examinations in connection with mines and public
bodies are represented bva large number of fully worked examination
papers. Many of the questions, Iiowever, on the steam engine and
other branches of mechanics and pliysics cannot be solved by the aid
here given, but the examples thus brought together will be usefid iu
classes where the several sciences required by mining students are
taught ; and that, presumably, is the intention of the author.
The Process Year-Book for 1S9S. Edited by Wm. Gamble.
Price 3s. 6d. (London : Penrose & Co.) The editor is certainly to
be complimented on the general excellence of this book. He has
obtained a great niuuber of beautifid illustrations and a long list of
articles from eminent photographers, full of information. The whole
is a splendid residt of present-day skill in book illustration.
French Self-Taught. By C. A. Thimm, F.R.a.s. (Marlborough &
Co.) Is. Mr. Thimm has compressed a great number of , 'phrases into
this little book, which will minimize the student's labour in acquiring
just sufficient knowledge of the language to enable one to get through
a tour in France with tolerable comfort as regards making inquiries,
shopping, the conversation at hotels, and so on, the useful and
necessary idiomatic expressions and phrases for this purpose con-
stituting a principal feature in the book.
15«
KNOWLEDGE.
[July 1. 1898.
BOOKS EECEIVED.
The Making of fi Dais(/, " Wheat out of Lilies," ami other Studies
in Platd Life. By E. Huglies-Gibb. (ariffin.) Illustrated. 28. 6d.
Bintx , in London. By W. H. Hudson, r.z.s. (Longmans.)
Illustrated. 128.
Essai Siinthetique sur la 'Formation ilu Si/sikme Holaire. G-al.
Lafouge. (Martin Freres, Chalons-sur-Mame.) Illustrated.
FreoH Self-Taughf. By C. A. Tliimm. (Marlborough & Co.) Is.
The IVonilerfnl Cenlnrti : its Successes and its Failures. By
Alfred Russel Wallace. (Sonnensehein.) Portrait. 73. 6d.
Creation Records. By G-eorge St. Clair. (David Nutt ) lOs. 6d.
Elemenlari/ Practical Zoologt/. By Frank E. Beddard, F.B.S.
(Longmans.) Illustrated. 2s. 6d.
Krom.fkoj) : Colour Photography. By Frederic Ives. (Pboto-
chromoscope Syndicate, Limited.) Illustrated.
English National Education. By H. Holman. (Blackie). 2s. 6d.
Elements of Descriptive Astronomy. By Herbert A. Howe.
(Philip & Son.) Illustrated.
Smithsonian Report: U.S. National Museum, ISDi).
A Catalogue of Earthquakes on the Pacific Coast, 1760 to 1897.
By Ed. S. Holden. (Smithsonian Collections.)
Ackworth Birds. By Major W. B. Arundel. (Gurney & Jackson.)
Eemarkahle Eclipses. By W. T. Lynn. (Stanford.) 6d.
Weather Lore. By Richard Inwards, p.b.a.s. (Elliot Stock.)
Illustrated. 7s. 6d.
A Text-Book of Entomology. By Dr. Alpheus S. Packard.
(Macmillan.) Illustrated. IBs. net.
Introduction to Algebra. By G. Chrystal. (A. & C. Black.) .5s.
Types of Scenery and their Influence on Literature. By Sir
Archibald Geikie. Romanes Lecture, 1898. (Macmillan & Co.) 2s.
By the death of Lord Playfair, which occurred on Sunday,
29th May, science — more particularly applied science —
has lost one of her chief ornaments. Lyon Playfair was
born in Bengal, in May, 1819, his father at that time being
Inspector-Oeneral of Hospitals out there. He studied
chemistry under Graham at Glasgow, and subsequently
in London, in the capacity of assistant, after that distin-
guished chemist migrated southwards. Playfair next
became a pupil of Liebig's at Geissen, in Germany, several
of whose works he translated into English ; and on his
return to England he undertook the management of a large
calico print works. About this time (1842) he travelled
through England on a lecturing tour with Liebig, and was
thus instrumental in arousing public attention to the
advantages of combining practical science — especially
chemistry — with operations in agriculture. The immediate
effect of this tour was to make chemistry a popular science,
and to induce colleges to open laboratories ; hence it was
that the Royal College of Chemistry was founded in 1815,
since known as the Royal School of Mines and Normal
School of Science, and, finally, as the Royal College of
Science. In the early days of the history of this college,
Dr. Playfair, as Professor of Chemistry, had to content
himself with a laboratory fitted up in the cellar-kitchen
of a house in Duke Street, Westminster. In 1851, after
the Great Exhibition, he became Gentleman Usher to the
Prince Consort — an appointment due to the Prince's desire
to have about him a sort of scientific adviser. Probably
no other man of the time was so influential in formulating
the scheme which was announced from the throne at the
opening of Parliament in November, 1852, when Her
Majesty stated ; " The advancement of the Fine Arts and
of Practical Science will be readily recognized by you as
worthy the attention of a great and enhghtened nation.
I have directed that a comprehensive scheme shall be laid
before you, having in view the promotion of these objects,
towards which I invite your aid and co-operation." Thus,
in the following year the Department of Science and Art
was born, and Playfair became one of the joint secretaries.
In 1S58 he was appointed Professor of Chemistry in the
University of Edinburgh, the Prince of Wales and Prince
Alfred being among his pupils. He published two lectures
in 1870 — ^" On Primary and Technical Education" — and
had the suggestions then made been carried into effect we
should not have had to wait twenty years for the adoption
of the technical education scheme. His lordship was
always prolific of advanced ideas relative to the practical
utility of scientific education ; indeed, but few men, if any,
have had a more direct and practical effect on at least the
physical well-being of their times. His writings have an
eminently practical trend ; thus — " On the Nature and
Causes of Decay in Potatoes," " On the Gases evolved from
Iron Furnaces," " On the Food of ]\Ian in Relation to his
Useful Work," "The Disposal of the Dead," " Petroleum
as the Light for the Poor"; and among the subjects he
was appointed to inquire into in the interests of the public
may be mentioned the herring fisheries and the cattle
plague. He was one of the early Presidents of the Chemical
Society ; became associated with the Civil Service by what
is known as the " Playfair Scheme '' ; he was a Privy
Councillor ; and served in the capacity of Postmaster-
General, Chairman of Ways and ]\Ieans in the House of
Commons, and Vice-President of the Council. Among the
numerous honours showered upon him from nearly all the
learned societies of Europe, in addition to those of our
own country, may be mentioned. Commander of the Legion
of Honour, Commander of the Austrian Order of St.
Joseph, Knight of the Portuguese Order of Conception,
Knight of Wurtemberg, and Knight of the Swedish Order
of the Northern Star.
Mr. Osbert Salvin, f.r.s., who died on the 1st June,
will be greatly missed among ornithologists, for there were
but few naturalists whose opinions were more frequently
sought on controversial points in his line of study. He
was born in 1835, and educated at Trinity Hall, Cam-
bridge, where he graduated as Senior Optime in the
Natural Science Tripos of 1857, after which he undertook
several exploration expeditions in Algeria, Guatemala,
Central America — localities which will always be asso-
ciated with his name. In 1874 he accepted the Strickland
Curatorship in the University of Cambridge, and filled that
office till his father's death in 1888, to whose estate at
Hawksfold, near Haslemere, he succeeded. Mr. Salvin
will be perpetuated in literature in connection with
" Biologio Centrali Americani," " Catalogue of the Strick-
land Collection, ' and his numerous papers on birds, par-
ticularly humming birds and petrels.
We regret to record the death of ;\Ir. Herbert Sadler,
F.R.A.S., who was for many years a very useful contributor to
this magazine. Born on the 14th of May, 1856, he was the
eldest son of the Rev. Prebendary Sadler, and he died on
the 1st of June at the comparatively early age of forty-two.
His education was commenced at Sherborne School and
completed at Cambridge, where he distinguished himself
as a linguist — particularly in Hebrew. His astronomical
work was mainly connected with double stars, on which he
was an authority ; and, in collaboration with Mr. Latimer
Clarke, he compiled a book on this subject. Mr. Sadler
was elected a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society in
November, 1876. The deceased gentleman fully appre-
ciated the beauties of nature, and was devotedly attached
to animals and flowers. As an instance of his enthusiasm
for astronomy, it may be mentioned that Mr. Sadler
learnt the Russian language for the sole purpose of availing
himself of astronomical literature in that language.
[Mr. A. Fowler, k.k..\.s., Demonstrator of Astronomy in
the Royal College of Science, has kindly undertaken to
supply matter for the column, "Face of the Sky, ' which
Mr. Sadler sustained so long and so well.!
JtJLY 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE
159
%tttttn.
[The Editors do not hold themselves responsible for the opinions oi
statements of correspondents.]
TITE SUXS STELLAR irAGXTTCDE.
To the Editors of Knowledge.
Sirs, — Mr. Holmes had evidently not seen Mr. Gore's
article in Knowledge for June, 1895. The method adopted
in that article seems to me an improvement on the earlier
ones.
But now that the spectra of stars are being carefully
studied, I think another method has become available.
Select the binary stars with pretty certain orbits whose
spectra approach most closely to that of the sun. If the
surface brilliancy of these stars appears to be pretty nearly
the same in all cases, we shall have a fair measure of the
surface brilliancy of the sun. If, then, we can get one of
these stars whose parallax as well as its orbit (in angular
measure) is ascertainable, and whose stellar magnitude is
known, we have the requisite data for comparison. The star
best suited for this purpose is, I think, Procyon. At present
the orbit is not certain, owing to the very recent discovery
of the satellite whose existence had previously been only
a subject of computation. But the photometric measures
and determinations of parallax in the case of Procyon are
remarkably concurrent, and the type of the spectrum
appears to be decidedly solar. If the spectrum approaches
that of the sun as closely as I believe it does (1 have no
spectroscope of my own), a good orbit for Procyon is pro-
bably all that we require in order to make a better estimate
of the sun's stellar magnitude than has hitherto been
accomplished. We have got so much into the habit of
calling stars hri'/lit that give a large quantity of light that it
seems useless to attempt to use the word in any other sense.
The word hi-illiant seems less appropriated to this use,
and we might therefore, perhaps, employ the word lirif/htne^s
with reference to the magnitude of the star (or quantity
of its Ught). and the word luilliiiucy with reference to its
intrinsic luminosity. Though there may be little difference
in the popular use of the two terms, it is desirable to have
two different words to express these qualities when we are
dealing with them scientifically. But the brilliancy of a
star, as thus explained, only represents the luminosity of
the surface unit on the assumption that all stars have the
same density. A diminished density wiU have the same
effect as an increased luminosity of the surface unit, and
as long as we are unable to measure the disc of the star
we can hardly form a decisive opinion as to which of these
causes a high or low degree of brilliancy is to be ascribed.
The phenomena of Algol and some other stars of the same
type, however, seem to indicate a low density in the Sirian
stars, and it is, therefore, not unlikely that their high
brilliancy is due rather to their great extent of surface
than to the great luminosity of the sui-face unit. Mr.
Gore's figures were based on this supposition of greater
surface, or, in other words, greater diameter. In a
paper which I contributed to the British Astronomical
Association nearly at the same time, I proceeded on
the assumption of greater brilliancy of the surface
unit. Most probably both causes combine. As a star
cools and condenses the surface shrinks and becomes
less luminous at the same time. But figures worked out
on either theory can be easily translated into the other.
They represent facts which may be interpreted in different
ways ; but different modes of interpretation cannot change
facts to fictions.
W. H. S. MONCK.
To the Editors of Knowledge.
Sirs, — In reply to Mr. Holmes, I beg to say that if he
will again refer to my paper in Knowledce for March,
1898 (bottom of first column), he will find that I refer to
my paper in Knowledge for June, 1895, in which I have
computed the sun's stellar magnitude as - 27, and this is,
I think, a more probable value than -25'5, which was
formerly adopted.
With reference to the term " brightness," Mr. Holmes
is right in thinking that I mean " quantity of light." If
he will read my paper again he will find that when I refer
to bri'ihtness of surface, I use the term " intrinsic bright-
ness," or " brightness of surface." In the case of Sirius,
I have shown that, taking its mass as 2-3(3 times the sun's
mass (as computed by Dr. See), and assuming its density
and liriijhtness of xurfuce to be the same as that of the sun,
the i/uantitij of lii/ht which it would emit would be only
1-773 times what the sun would emit at the same distance
as Sirius ; but its apparent '■ magnitude " shows that it is
17-38 times brighter than the sun would be at equal
distances. Hence, the " quantity of light " which Sirius
emits is about ten times greater than it should be, con-
sidering its mass. I think the sentence quoted by Mr.
Holmes expresses this with sufficient clearness. The
term " brightness " used alone, always, I think, means
" quantity of light." Thus a first magnitude star is said
to be 2-512 times brighter than a second magnitude
star, etc. Mr. Holmes speaks of y Leonis, but this star is
not mentioned in my last paper, as its orbit has not been
accurately determined. J. E. Gore.
Dublin, June 10th, 1898.
Experiments are in progress, under the Essex Technical
Instruction Committee, having for their object the de-
struction of charlock in barley and other crops : and it
appears that a two per cent, solution of copper sulphate,
applied at the rate of twenty-five to fifty gallons an acre,
by means of a " knapsack strawsometer," during dry
weather, and at an early period of growth, has been found
completely successful in suppressing the charlock without
injuring the barley.
During the past month the South-Eastern Union of
Scientific Societies has held its annual congress (the third)
in Croydon, the president elect being Prof. G. S. Boulger,
and the retiring president the Rev. T. R. R. Stebbing, f.r.s.
The place of meeting for next year is Rochester. The aim
of the Union is "to win for science such benefits as are
found to accrue in manufactures from division of labour ;
and in trade, commerce, and finance from co-operation."
A perusal of the local reports of the papers read by the
members in the Town Hall, where the congress was
graciously received by the Mayor and Mayoress, indicates
that the scope of study and research extends to every
branch of natural history ; and the mutual enthusiasm and
goodwill which prevailed among both hosts and visitors
augurs weU for the future of the Union.
Experiments in wireless telegraphy are, we understand,
in progress under newspaper auspices by Mr. C. Dolbear,
son of Prof. Dolbear, and messages, it appears, have thus
far been successfully transmitted over a distance of some
fifteen hundred feet. Prof. Slaby has also devoted some
attention to the subject, and is said to have sent intelligible
Morse signals thirteen and a quarter miles, using two
balloons filled with hydrogen to elevate the ends of the
conductors to the height of one thousand feet in the air.
160
KNOWLEDGE
[July 1, 1898.
450
440
430
420
410
400
i30
iSO
ax
a
A very ingenious contrivance has lately been devised by
Mr. Edwin Edser, a.r.c.s., and Mr. C. P. Butler, a.r.c.s.,
■which may be utilized for the purpose of facilitating the
reduction of prismatic spectra in terms of wave-lengths.
Two pieces of plate-glass, each thinly silvered on one
surface, are arranged with
these surfaces parallel and
nearly in contact. This
simple combination is ad-
justed in front of the slit of
a spectrometer, so that a
ray of slightly convergent
white light, when passed
through, gives a spectrum
consisting of white bauds
separated by dark intervals
due to the interference of
the direct ray with that
twice internally reflected.
If the wave-lengths corre-
sponding to any two inter-
ference bands be known,
that corresponding to any
other band can be calculated
or determined graphically
with extreme accuracy. In
order to adjust for parallel-
ism, a spot of light, or the
filament of a glow lamp, is
viewed through the silvered
surfaces. A long train of
images, of course, is visible,
and these must be brought
into coincidence. If a so-
dium flame is now viewed
through the air film, inter-
ference bands appear, which
must be regulated by pres-
sure to a maximum width,
an arc lamp being employed
for illuminating the colli-
mator slit. The chief ad-
vantage of this system of
caUbrating spectra consists
in the enormous saving of
time which it will effect. A
simple graphic method thus
serves to determine wave-
lengths— corresponding to
an immense number of spec-
tral lines —by mere inspec-
tion. When once the ob-
server has photographed
the spectrum, with the
accompanying scale, all he has to do is to index the scale,
and then he can commit it to the care of an ordinary
attendant devoid of scientific knowledge, who may perform
the reductions mechanically, in a manner somewhat
comparable to the way in which a carpenter measures his
boards and planks.
441 s-i
- 3/0
Xsco
-2SO
-Z3C
-\-zio
- ^oa
. /90
SB90-,
i
Comparison Scale for reduction of
Spectra.
Crypton, or the " hidden stuff," is the name given by
Prof. Ramsay to the recently discovered atmospheric
element — a gas — the existence of which was suspected
when argon was eliminated from air three years ago. The
principal lines of the spectrum of crypton are green and
yellow, but although heavier than argon ics atomic weight
has not yet been worked out. Minute in quantity, it was
at first exceedingly difficult to obtain air in suflSciently
large volumes as to reveal any appreciable trace of the
new gas. Thanks, however, to Prof. Dewar — who can now
supply gallons of air, in the liquid form, within the com-
pass of a test-tube — in the hands of Prof. Ramsay the
potency of liquid air as an instrument of research has
been manifested, and one of the first chemial products
obtained by its aid is, it would appear, nothing less than
a new element ! Its proportion in the air is about one in
twenty thousand. The brilliant yellow-green is believed
by Sir Wm. Huggins to be identical with the green auroral
line.
" The Microbe in Agriculture " forms the subject of an
article in the June Number of the Nineteenth Century by
Dr. Aikman, in which he dwells at some length on nitirif/in*
and more particularly alinite — a pure culture of the bacillus
mefiHtlurium — designed for inoculating the soil with nitrogen-
fixing bacteria. He says : " When we reflect that in a
phial barely a couple of inches in length, and less than a
quarter of an inch in diameter, there may be contained the
means of enriching an acre of ground in its most valuable
of all fertilizing constituents, we realize the great advantage
such a process possesses over the more costly and trouble-
some mode of strewing large quantities of artificial
manure." It would appear that a system of co-operation
obtains among these minute soil workers. While some
are instrumental in initiating the first stages of decom-
position, others carry on its development through succes-
sive stages, and the microbic inhabitants of the soil are
classified according to the nature of the products they give
rise to.
Messrs. Seeley & Co. will shortly publish a short popular
account of wireless telegraphy by Mr. Richard Kerr. It
explains in simple language the methods devised by Mr.
Preece, Signor Marconi, Dr. Oliver Lodge, and others who
have worked on this marvellous discovery. Mr. Preece
will contribute a preface.
SELF-IRRIGATION IN PLANTS.
By the Rev. Alex. S. Wilson, m.a., b.sc.
ABSORPTION of water in terrestrial plants takes
place almost exclusively through the roots ; very
little of the rain or dew that falls on the foliage
finds its way into the interior of a plant directly
through the leaves or other aiirial parts. The
bark of the stem and branches prevents loss of water by
evaporation ; so does the impervious cuticle which covers
the leaves ; but any covering which hinders the passage of
water outwards must necessarily offer a corresponding
resistance to the entrance of water. For this reason those
portions of their surface which plants expose to the air
are, as a whole, ill adapted for imbibition. The freshening
effect observed when the leaves of a parched plant are
damped, arises not so much from absorption as from
diminished evaporation ; the water supplied by the roots
to the leaves does not escape so rapidly, and the leaf-cells
are in consequence kept distended.
Quite other conditions obtain in plants which grow
submerged in water ; the cuticle is but slightly developed,
and imbibition takes place through the general surface.
Aquatics accordingly quickly dry up and shrivel when
* See Knowledge, Vol. XX., p. 201.
July 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE
161
exposed to the air, the thin cuticle affording little pro-
tection against loss by evaporation.
At a certain depth in most soils underground water
exists ; in some cases this approaches the surface, but land
plants, as a rule, do not thrive where the soil is in this
over-saturated condition : they depend mainly on water
precipitated from the atmosphere percolating through the
upper porous layers of earth in which their roots are
situated.
From what has now been stated it will readily be under-
stood that to plants growing in a region subject to occa-
sional drought, any arrangement by which rain falling on
the leaves can be quickly transferred to the neighbourhood
of their roots must necessarily be highly advantageous.
Many provisions of this kind exist. The rain caught by
the leaves is not generally allowed to disperse at random,
but is led along specially prepared courses. Were the
water to lie on the leaves till it evaporated, or were it spilt
irregularly, loss and miscarriage would result ; but so accu-
rate is the adjustment of plants to their environment that
even this apparently insignificant loss is safeguarded by a
variety of contrivances.
The first of these we shall mention is the general inclina-
tion of foliage. Many of our readers must have noticed
how on a wet day in winter the rain runs down the leafless
branches and descends the trunks of trees ; the bark, in
consequence of being kept constantly moist, assumes a
green tint from the development of mosses and lichens.
During summer, on the contrary, the surface of the trunks
and branches of most of our trees is quite free from
moisture, and the groimd underneath the branches is dry.
The foliage, in fact, forms a kind of thatch : the leaves
slope outwards and overlap like tiles on a roof, so that the
water drips from the outer extremities of the branches,
producing a moist zone on the ground around the tree.
Now, as the roots commonly extend in a horizontal direction
as far as the branches, it is quite obvious they must benefit
by this arrangement ; and on extending our observations
we find this principle to be of very general application.
The relative positions of the foliage leaves and absorbent
roots are in most cases such as to secure to a greater or
less degree the benefits of self-irrigation. The drainage
of the foliage may be either centripetal or centrifugal.
As examples of the latter, where the slope of the foliage
most plants with tufted foliage, have the drainage cen-
tripetal. The radical leaves of the rhubarb, plantain,
dandelion, thistle, and many others, are arranged like a
rosette, and the rain llows down towards the central root-
stock. In these cases the stem is either prolonged down-
wards into a tap-root, or the roots form a central mass of
no great horizontal extent.
With centripetal drainage several secondary adaptations
usually appear. Where the inclination of the foliage is
outwards, as a rule the leaf-stalk is not channelled ; in
plants, on the other hand, which have central roots, there is
usually a very conspicuous groove on the upper surface of the
petiole. The common cow-parsnip is an exceedingly good
example of this ; its long petiole has a deep groove above.
The raised edges of the groove almost close over it, and
practically convert the leaf-stalk of Heracleum into a
Fig. 1. — Centrifugal and Ceutripetal Irrigatiou
is outwards, may be mentioned the lime, birch, apple, pear,
plane, maple, ash, horse-chestnut, poplar, and alder. The
needle-like leaves of the pine and larch are also so arranged
that nearly all the rain is conducted outwards, the ground
underneath the branches remaining in consequence remark-
ably dry. The drooping or weeping habit of many trees
admits of a similar explanation.
Palms, bananas, tree-ferns ; bulbous monocotyledons
like the tulip and hyacinth ; the turnip and beetroot, and
Fig. 2. — Noddiug aud Auriculate Leaves.
pipe down which the rain tlows towards the stem. An
instructive contrast is seen on comparing an aroid, such
as Callocasia or Calladium, which has widely spreading
roots and leaves sloping outwards, with the rhubarb, which
has a central root-stock, grooved petioles, and inward-
sloping leaves.
The lamina or blade of the leaf in numerous instances
exhibits a further pecviliarity. The surface of the veins
and midrib may be depressed, as in the primrose, below
the general level of the leaf, giving rise to a series of
shallow converging channels, which conduct the rain into
the grooved petiole. As the raised portions of the leaf
have a thin coating of wax, which renders them practically
waterproof, the rain falling on these parts assumes the
form of globules, and readily rolls off into the courses
prepared for it. The wax-coated parts repel water ;
but the channels, being entirely free from wax, are easily
wetted, so that rain soaks into them and speedily finds
its way. Wax or bloom is seen on the leaves of the
pea, woodbine, poppy, fumitory, pink, and is present
more or less on all leaves. From the leaves of the cabbage
water rolls off" as from a duck's back, without wetting the
surface. Roots are devoid of wax. On herbaceous plants
with an erect stem the leaves diminish in size from below
upwards ; the upper ones are either sessile or but slightly
stalked ; they may be expanded at the base into auricles
or decurrent with a fringe running down each side of the
stem. The course followed by the water in its descent
depends to some extent on the phyllotaxis. With the
opposite arrangement the rain collected by each pair of
leaves escapes between the bases of the petioles, and is led
down by a groove on each aide of the stem into the axils
162
KNOWLEDGE,
[July 1, 1898.
of the leaves below. In the dead-nettle, centuary, pimpernel,
and several St. John's worts, this occurs. Grooved, fluted,
or ridged sterna are also characteristic of such plants as
the bedstraw, violet, ragwort, groundsel, knapweed, dock,
wild mustard, shepherd's purse, pennycress, horsetails,
umbelifers, and others ; and it is interesting to observe in
some of these how one cauline groove is made to serve a
number of leaves. In the laboratory it is often important,
when pouring a solution from one vessel into another, not
to lose a drop ; the chemist eflects the transference easily
by using a glass rod to guide the liquid. Grooved and
striate stems act in the same way. The rain sometimes
takes a spiral course, as in the sow-thistle. The stem of
BRITISH
Fig. 3. — Rain-condueting Cliaimels: 1, Dead Nettle; 2, Tetcli
Stem; 3, Bedstraiv; 4, Carex; 5, Pennycress; 6, Ligule of Grass;
7, Leaf-stalk of Cow-parsnip.
this plant is round, smooth, and coated with wax. There
are no grooves, but each leaf on the stem is sessile and has
large auricles at its base, which shoot the water over on to
the leaf next below. Some splashing results from the
falling water — grooved stems are designed to avert this —
but in the sow-thistle there is little loss, for the large
leaves at the base of the plant form a capacious basin, in
which most of the spray is caught. The water is projected
in this instance upon the next lowest leaf, and, therefore,
in its descent follows the genetic spiral ; but the rain may
be thrown on a leaf more remote, and then there are
several spiral streams circulating round the stem.
The foxglove and muUein have nodding leaves ; one
portion of the rain drains inwards, but as the upper part
of each leaf slopes outwards, some water flows to the apex
and drops down on one of the lower leaves, where it is
again deflected towards the stem. As the lowest leaves are
much larger than the others, the great proportion of rain
falling on the plant is ultimately collected in the vicinity
of the root, and the loss through splashint; is reduced to a
minimum. But it must not be assumed that this is the
end of all the grooves which occur on leaves and stems ;
many of the narrower furrows resist the entrance of water,
and are probably of use in preventing rain from gaining
access to the stomata. Furrows of this description are
found in a number of grasses. There are also some grasses
with an arrangement which prevents water lodging between
the sheathing petiole and the haulm or stem ; the ligule
acts as a kind of dam, which forces the water that flows
down from the leaf-blade to escape at the sides of the lamina
and descend on the outside of the sheathing petiole. On
the leaf-stalk of the Nile lily, whose white trumpet-shaped
spathes are familiar objects in florists' windows, there is a
similar contrivance.
The absence of wax and a peculiar smoothness of surface
enables one easily to distinguish those channels which act
as rain conductors. They recall irresistibly the shallow
gutters of clay employed for the distribution of water, seen
in Egypt and other lands where from time immemorial
artificial u-rigation has been practised.
a!«<@S>
t^-^
ORNiTHOLOGIC/'tL
" ^ NOTES
Conducted by Harby F. 'Witherby, f.z.s., m.b.o.u.
A British-taken She.vbwater identuied for Fobty-fi\te
Years as Pii/Hnus obxcurus, now found to be P. assimilis.
— In the 1880 edition of Mr. Howard Saunders's well-
known " Manual " will be found, under the heading of the
Dusky Shearwater {Pii/finus obscurus), a description of a
bird which was brought to Yarrell by ^Ir. B. Blackburn,
who said that it was caught on a small sloop off Valentia
Harbour, in County Kerry, on May 11th, 18-53. This
specimen was exhibited at a meeting of the Linnsean
Society. Another specimen was found dead in Suffolk
about April 10th, 18-58, and was exhibited by Mr. Osberfc
Salvin at a meeting of the Zoological Society. At a
meeting of the British Ornithologists' Club, held on
March 16th, 1898, Mr. Howard Saunders exhibited the
Valentia specimen, and remarked that " recent investiga-
tions by Mr. Ogilvie Grant in the islands near Madeira, as
well as Mr. Boyd Alexander in the Cape Verde Archi-
pelago, had aroused a suspicion that there might be an
error in the identification of the Irish specimen. The
authorities of the Science and Art Museum of Dublin,
having kindly forwarded the example in question, for com-
parison with the specimens of P. obscurus in the British
Museum, it is clearly established that this is not P. obscurus,
but the closely allied P. assimilis of Gould. This may be
distinguished from P. obscurus by its smaller size, by the
white or pale centres to the inner webs of the primaries,
the white under tail-coverts, and a more decided white line
on each side of the neck. The identification is confirmed
by Mr. Osbert Salvin. P. assimilh breeds in the islands
of the Madeira and the Canary groups, as well as in the
Cape Verde Islands, while P. obscurus breeds in the Ber-
mudas and the Antilles. Both species have a wide range."
E.VRLY ArRH AL OF THE SwALLOW (//. rUStico). 1 SaW the
first swallow this year on March 14th. This is to me a
record date for swallows, my previous earliest date being
March 2.5th. Perhaps the general mildness of the season
may account for this. Has anyone else seen one so early ?
— E. SiLLENCE, Church Street, Komsey.
White Waqlail in Coirniy Mai/o (The Field. May 21st, 1898).—
Mr. Robert Warren reports that Mr. Kirkwood found a party of five
iif tlie*e birds on Bartragh Island, County Mayo, on April 30th, and
ii flock of fifteen on May 10th. Mr. Kirkwooi seeured in all six
specimens. Mofarilla alha has uow been recorded only six times for
Ireland, and it is a curious fact that five of these occurrences have
been on Bartragh Island, the other being on Achill Ishind. Further
search along the west coast of Ireland, which has been much neglected
by ornithologists, may result in establishing the White Wagtail as a
regular spring visitor to Ireland.
All contributions to the column, either in the way of notes
or photoyraphs, should he forwarded to H-ABRY F. Witherby,
at 1, Eliot Place, Blackheath, Kent.
Note.— The first issue of Knowlbdok containing British Ornitho-
logical Notes was that for October, 1897.
Jdly 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE
163
BOTANICAL STUDIES.-IV.
MNIUM.
By A. Vaughan Jenninos, f.l.s., i'.g.s.
IN our last study '■'■'■ we examined the reproductive
process and life history of a .lunin'imannia as a type
of the lower mosslike plants which are grouped
together under the name of Ilepatiae or Liteniurta.
It was observed that in these forms — among the
lowest of truly terrestrial plants — the oosp/ieirs or egg-cells
are contained in special flask-shaped structures or an-ln-
ijonia : that the fertilized egg-cell gives rise to a sporophyte
consisting of a globular spm-e nm,- or cup.iuh , borne on a
colourless stalk or st'ta which has its base embedded in the
tissues of the parent shoot ; that the whole contents of the
capsule break up into spores and elastic filaments (i-loter^),
which are liberated by the bursting of the capsule wall
into four segments ; and that the germination of these
spores produces a more or less developed cell filament
(protonema), from which buds a new Jun<iermiinnia plant to
bear when mature the reproductive organs in its turn. It
is now proposed to compare with this story the life cycle of
one of the true mosses.
We may safely start with the statement that the life
history of a moss resembles in its main features that of a
Liverwort, though there are important differences in detail.
In selecting a type for study one looks for a form that is
at once abundant and widely distributed, easy to recognize,
habitually fertile, and large enough for easy manipulation.
The genus Mniiiin is less universally obtainable than
Funoriii or Poh/tiicJium, but it combines a typical sporo-
phyte borne on a leaf-bearing plant which is at once
conspicuous, beautiful, and easy of study, even with a lens
and knife if a microscope is not at hand. It is one of the
forms with hanging bell-like capsules, and was formerly
included in the wide generic type Bri/um. The species of
Mniuiii have stems from one to three inches in height, and
broad, dark green, large-celled leaves. They may be found
on wet banks in woods, and especially in the shady hollows
among the rocks of our mountain districts. Taking any
of the species, we may start our story, not with the anatomy
of the plant, but with the single cell from which the plant
has arisen.
M. punctatum is perhaps the commonest and best for
study. It has large, wide, entire leaves, blunt at the tip;
while M. hornuiii has the leaves longer, narrower, pointed,
and toothed at the margin. M. latdidatiini (Neck) is the
largest and most beautiful species, with long, narrow, wavy
leaves, but is only rarely fertile. The specimens used for
this article were collected in Switzerland in May last, and
I am not sure of the exact species. Probably the first
(E and F) is a small-leaved variety of M. honium .- the
other seems nearest to M. aiiine (Schwaeg). The question
of species is, however, of no importance for our present
purpose.
When the moss spore falls on a suitable spot under
conditions favourable for germination, its protoplasmic
contents, covered by the delicate inner spore wall, protrude
through an opening in the outer wall and grow out in the
form of a thread, which soon becomes divided into con-
secutive cells by transverse walls, gives off' side branches,
and develops root filaments or rhizoids. This cellular
thread is, as in the Liverworts, known as the protonema.
The cells which are exposed to light develop chlorophyll
granules, and the whole can thus live for a time as an
* KsowLED&E, May, 189t?.
independent plant. Repeated branching of the filaments
and the interlacing of their ramifications with those
developed from other spores frequently results in the
formation of bright green patches of felted threads, such as
may be commonly seen on moist clay banks. Apart from
characteristic colour, texture, and appearance under the
microscope, which soon become familiar by observation,
the most distinctive feature of the moss protonema is the
appearance on it of minute buds, which, as they increase
in size, are seen to be young moss plants.
At various points on the protonemal thread little side
outgrowths appear, which become divided into upper and
lower cells by oblique partitions. From the lower cells
new threads grow out like those of the protonema, but
they remain colourless, penetrate the soil, and develop
into " root " filaments or rhizoids. The upper cells, by
continued elongation and repeated subdivision by longi-
tudinal and transverse walls, grow up into atrial shoots,
giving off leaves in succession behind the growing apex and
constituting the moss plant. The protonema, by spreading
over a relatively wide area, living and assimilating food,
and then producing numerous buds at different points, is
evidently of great importance in increasing the chances of
survival.
It is with the reproductive processes of the plant that
we are at present concerned. Almost everyone knows by
sight the graceful capsules carried on slender stalks which
rise from the moss tufts of walls and woodland banks,
tree-trunks, and mountain rocks ; and almost everyone ia
content to regard them as a " moss fruit," growing at the
top of a continuation of the stem. It is only by a careful —
though by no means difficult — study of the tips of the moss
stems that we can find out the real meaning and mode of
origin of the " moss fruit."
In the genus we have selected, fruiting is common
and conspicuous in most of the species. The antlieriilia
and aichi-gnnui occur on separate plants in the axils of
leaves at or near the apex of the stem. In the male plants
the tip of the stem is flattened out into a sort of " head "
or " capitulum," reminding one of the inflorescence of a
daisy or dandelion ; and on this will be found numerous
antheridia closely crowded together, but surrounded by
barren " hairs" or paniplii/ses — structures not met with in
the Liverworts. Looked at from above these give the
appearance of a round brown or black spot as large as a
pin's head, surrounded by a ring of spreading green leaves
considerably larger than those of the stem and often
differing in detail from them. In the female plants there
is no such marked modification of the tip of the stem,
though it is slightly enlarged in some species, and the
leaves round the archegonia may be slightly larger than
the ordinary leaves. It is best to select a tuft in the
early fruiting stage and examine those on which young
sporophytes occur, or the apparently sterile plants occur-
ring among these.
To study these organs more carefully it will be best first
to cut longitudinally through the middle of a male flower
with a sharp knife, and examine with a lens. Among the
bases of the terminal leaves the antheridia will be seen as
elongated, straight, or slightly curved sacs. Mixed with
them are the numerous club-shaped hairs known as para-
phi/si-s, which do not occur in the Hepatics, and the use
of which is doubtful. By cutting a thin section with a
razor from the surface already exposed, and examining it
under a microscope, further details may be observed. The
antheridia will be seen to possess a thin wall composed of
one layer of cells ; and their granular contents appear
divided, by vertical and transverse walls, into a vast
number of minute cells. If one of them is in a ripe
164
KNOWLEDGE
[July 1, 1898.
condition, the addition of a drop of water, or slight
pressure of the cover-glass, will cause part of the con-
tents to escape by an aperture formed at the apex. The
antheroioids, or spermatozoich, may then be seen coiled
up, each in a thin membrane, which soon bursts and
sets it free.
The female plants are, as has already been noticed, less
conspicuous. Tue top of the stem is not expanded to form
a "capitulum," and the surroundmg leaves are but slightly,
if at all, modified. A section through the end of such
a shoot will show numerous archegonia surrounded by
paraphyses, which in this cise have the form of long
jointed hairs, without the inflated terminal cells seen
in those of the male flower. The archegonia are long
and slender; the "venter" or chamber containing the
egg-cell is of an oval shape, narrowing below into a
cellular stalk of considerable length. The elongated neck
consists of the typical four rows of outer cells surrounding
the channel filled with mucilage through which the sperma-
tozoids reach the oo3phere.
When fertilization has been effected there is an
immediate increase in size of the oospore, followed by
division into several cells, forming the commencement of
the sporophyte. The latter soon comes to consist of a
cylindrical mass of cells, growing down for some distance
into the tissues of the parent stem, but growing more
rapidly upward. This physiological activity is not,
however, confined to the sporophyte proper. The walls of
the archegonium and the tissues round its base are also
wakened into fresh activity, and for a time keep pace
with the increase of the new generation. For a consider-
able time the developing sporophyte is thus surrounded by
a tissue of cells representing the original wall and part of
the neck of the archegonium, with others due to an increase
of the tissues round its base. In time, however, the up-
growth of the sporophyte is too rapid for its surrounding
wall ; the latter is torn across transversely, leaving a
basal portion as a sheath or " vaginula " round the base
of the new plant, while the rest is carried upward as a
cap or "calyptra" covering the tip.
The sporophyte grows on as a long slender rod, often
till it equals in length the stem of the parent plant before
there is any marked appearance of the capsule at its apex.
In time the thickening of the terminal portion of the
sporophyte indicates the development of the sporangium,
and in this instance the successive stages are accompanied
by gradual change of position ; the original vertical apex
becomes oblique, then horizontal, and finally pendent.
Daring these changes the little cap or calyptra is dropped
or carried away by the wind. It is only slight in this
genus, but is seen at its best in the silky bells of
Polytrichum and the long "extinguisher" of Eucalt/jita.
When it has fallen the end of the capsule will be seen
to be closed by a distinct circular lid, the operculum
sharply separated by an annular ridge from the capsule
wall.
The capsule changes from green to yellow and then to
brown as the spores within it are ripening. In time the
operculum is thrown off, and with its removal may come a
burst of gold dust as the spores scatter to the winds.
I say "may come" because, though the fall of the
operculum probably coincides in nature with favourable
conditions, yet nature has provided a second safeguard
against premature dispersal of the spores. This is the
peristome, one of the most remarkable and beautiful
structures in the cryptogamic world. Originating as a
series of thickenings on the walls of the cells internal to
the annulus, and stretching over the end of the columella,
the struoture finally takes the form of a membrane divided
radially into a number of wedge-shaped teeth. In some
cases only one layer of cells is thus modified — one set of
" teeth " produced^and the peristome is then said to
be " simple." In others, such as the type we are
considering, there is an inner and an outer layer, so that
the peristome is double. The outer peristome consists of
sixteen triangular teeth, marked by transverse thickening
bars. In the dry state their tips meet at the centre, and
close the opening of the capsule ; when moist they separate
and curve upward or backward. The inner peristome is a
continuous membrane in its outer half, but toward the
centre is radially divided into sixteen forked teeth opposite
those of the outer circle, and sixteen pairs of jointed
hairlike threads alternating with them. These inner
structures are also " hygroscopic," or sensitive to changes
in the moisture of the air ; and their consequent expansion
or contraction causes the escape or retention of the spores,
according to atmospheric changes.
If a fair-sized capsule which has not yet begun to turn
dry and brown is selected, it wUl ba found possible,
though not without some trouble, to cut a thin longitu-
dinal section through the middle, and examine it under
the microscope.
Fig. B in the illustration is a somewhat diagrammatic
representation of the more important features to be
observed. There is an outer rpiitmnal cell-layer and two
or three rows of cells internal to it, forming the capsule
uall : a solid cylindrical tissue of cells, the columella,
occupies the centre, and is separated from the wall by an
<iir space crossed by irregular strings of cells. The outer
layers of the columella, the inner layer of the wall, and
the threads crossing the air space are all green, from the
presence of chlorophyll granules in them. Internal to
the outer green cells of the columella is a specialized
layer which will vary in appearance according to the stage
of development of the specimen examined. This is the
archesporium, or layer from which the spores are developed.
In an early stage it appears in section as a single row of
large, square, dark, and granular-looking cells with large
round nuclei. At a later stage the cells will be found in
a condition of active multiplication, dividing into two and
four by walls at right angles to each other. The new
cells thus formed are termed the spore mother-cells .- they
subsequently become free within the capsule, lying in a
semifluid material formed by the degeneration of sur-
rounding cells and their cell walls. In this position they
divide again, and the resulting cells assume a spherical
shape, develop an outer covering of two layers (endospore
and exospore), and ripen into spores. As they ripen the
other contents of the capsule dry up and disappear ; a drop
of water on the ripe capsule causes the cells of the annulus
to swell, the operculum is thrown off, the peristome
teeth rise up, and separating from one another give the
spores free exit to the air. Spores falling on favourable
spots commence to germinate, and we thus return to the
stage in the life history with which we started.
The result, then, of our study of the moss plant may be
summarized somewhat as follows :• — (1) The general struc-
ture and life history of a moss is similar to that of a
leafy Hepatic like Junnermannia : but (2) there is far
greater specialization in detail than in any members of
the latter group, both in the oophyte and sporophyte
generations. In the sporophyte the chief differences are :
((() that only part of the cells of the capsule — a special layer
or archesporium — develop into spores ; {h) that no elaters are
formed ; {c) that the sporophyte grows up, protected by
the calyptra, before the development of the capsule ; {d) that
the capsule wall does not split into four segments, but
remains entire, the spores escaping by a terminal opening
July 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE
165
which is closed in early stages by a lid, and subsequently
by a special structure, the peristome.
From a physiological point of view the stomata and
chlorophyll grains of the moss sporophyte are of no less
importance. Knowing, as we do, that these structures
are constantly associated with active and indepcndnit
plant life — its respiration, nutrition, and metabolism — it is
evident that the sporophyte of the moss has advanced much
of a moBS. Again, in the curious minute mosses such as
Epiiemerum the protonema persists throughout the life of
the plant — an apparently archaic character.
The strange Bu.rbnumia, with its rudimentary leaves and
partly persistent protonema, its reproductive organs rising
(as Prof. Goebel has shown) almost direct from the pro-
tonema, suggests at first sight a very primitive type of
moss. Yet its capsule is large and specialized in structure,
A. — The Spore. B. — Commencement of germination of the Spore, c. — Later stage; the Spore is throwing out a green
protonemal Filament on the left, and a colourless Bhizoid on the right. D. — Protonema of Mniitm, with a lateral Bud which
will grow into a Moss Plant. (Magnified.) E. and f. — Male and female Plants of Milium hornum, var. (Natural size.)
G. — Section through the male ■' Flower." (Enlarged.) H. — Antheridia and Paraphjses of Milium afflne. The Antheridium
on the left is empty ; that on the right is discharging its contents, Spei-matozoids in their Capsules, embedded in mucilaginous
material. I.— Spermatozoiil enclosed in Capsule. K. — Free Spermatozoid. L. — Archegonia and Paraphyses of J/n!'Ki« c_^«?.
The Archegonium on the left is not vet fertilized ; that on the right has been fertilized, and the Cospore has begun to divide
to form the young Sporophyte. ir. — Plant of Mniuin ajfiiie, yar., shoning young Sporophyte. N. — The same at a later
stage, showing the Calyptra carried up. o. — The same, showing deyeloped Capsule shedding the CaWptra. p. — The same at
the ripe stage dropping the Operculum. Q. — Diagrammatic section through the apex of the stem and the base of the Sporophyte,
showing the latter embedded in the parent tissue, and the withering Archegonia and Paraphvses round its base. B. — Diagram-
matic longitudinal section of the Capsule, showing the Columella (c) ; the Archesporium (ac); the Air Space (<z-«) ; the
Annulus («) ; the Peristome (jl>) ; and the Opercidum (o). s. — The Peristome seen from above, with the sixteen outer teeth
turned back. The mouth of the Capsule is still closed by the inner Peristome, consisting of an outer or basal membrane,
sixteen pairs of teeth opposite the outer ones, and sixteen pairs of cilia alternating with tliem. T. — Teeth and cilia of the
inner Peristome, u.— One of the outer Peristome teeth.
further than that of the Liverwort towards establishing its
claim to be a separate plant. We have no evident link
connecting the Liverworts and the mosses. The little
mountain moss, Amlncea, is peculiar in possessing a
capsule which bursts into four segments. Unlike the
Junijermanniii, the segments remain joined at the apes,
and the general structure and habit of the plant are those
and may be a degeneration from some higher form rather
than a representative of an ancestral stage. It is, in
fact, impossible to say what is the lowest and simplest
type of moss ; and it is safer to regard the Liverworts
and mosses, with their several aberrant relatives, as
separate modifications descended from some type we have
lost.
106
KNOWLEDGE.
[July 1, 1898.
NOTES ON COMETS AND METEORS.
By W. F. Denning, f.r.a.s.
Encke's Comet. — This comet will be comparatively near
the earth, but quite invisible to observers in this country.
Early in July moonlight will prevent observation, and at
the middle of the month the comet will have reached a
southern declination of nearly fifty degrees.
Wolf's Comet. — The brightness of this object is slowly
increasing. It is situated in Taurus, and moving eastwards
at the rate of about forty minutes of arc per day. In the
Obscriatoni for May, Mr. Crommelin points out that the
comet will be only twenty-seven minutes of arc distant
from Mars on July 18th.
TnnpeVs Comet (LS(i7, 11.). — Gautier computes that the
perihelion passage will occur on October 4th, but the
prospect of redetecting the comet is a slender one, on
account of its great distance. It has not been observed
since 1879, and the comet's orbit appears to have suffered
considerable disturbance in the interim, from the action
of Jupiter.
Pcrrine's Comet (Marc/i ir/f/i).— Rapidly increasing dis-
tance from the earth will probably soon render this object
a difficult one. In regard to its position, it is, however,
favourably placed for telescopic observation, as it is
traversing the northern borders of Auriga, and remains
visible during the whole night. Mr. Perrine, from observa-
tions at the Lick Observatory, Mount Hamilton, on March
19th, April 8th and 28th, has computed elliptical elements
for this comet. He finds the period three hundred and
five years, and points out that there are some suggestive
orbital resemblances between the comet and those of 1684
and 1785, I. His conclusion is that these several bodies
probably belong to the same family, but do not represent
an identical object.
The following are ephemerides : —
Comet
Wolf.
Distance in
Date.
B.A.
Declination.
millions of
1898.
h.
m. s.
o /
mile?.
July 9
3
23 22
+ 20 4-6
183
„ IH
3
85 7
+ 19 54-9
181
., 17
3
46 44
+ 19 40-9
179
„ 21
8
58 15
+ 19 22-7
177
„ 25
4
9 35
+ 19 0-2
175
„ 29
4
20 45
+ 18 83-4
173
Comet Tempel (1867, II.).
July 9
12
20 57
+ 5 43-1
206
o 13
12
26 25
+ 4 46-4
209
„ 17
12
32 4
+ 3 48-9
212
., 21
12
37 55
+ 2 50-9
215
„ 25
12
43 57
+ 1 52-3
218
„ 29
12
50 10
+ 0 23-6
221
Comet Perrine
(March 19th).
July 3
4
59 25
+ 54 49-4
250
„ 7
5
9 10
+ 54 81-1
253
,- 11
5
18 19
+ 54 12-6
256
„ 15
5
26 47
+ 63 54-2
259
„ 19
5
84 29
+ 53 35 8
262
Cometary Discovery. — It is a little remarkable that during
the last eighteen months only two new comets have been
discovered. Several periodical comets have been redetected,
but these objects being well-assured members of the solar
system their orbits and positions were known, and re-
observations of this character, though important in their
way, cannot be considered in the light of new discoveries.
The apparent rarity in the recent visits of unknown comets
is probably to be attributed, not altogether to a real scarcity
of these bodies, but to the fact that they have not been
thoroughly searched for by a suilicient number of observers.
There is no doubt that many small comets come to perihelion
and pass beyond the limits of visibility without being de-
tected. This is evident from the fact that some of these
bodies have only been first discerned long after perihelion,
and when near the vanishing point, owing to their great
distance from the earth. The best period for efifecting
cometary discoveries is in July and August, and it is to be
hoped that more observers will apply themselves to this
work, so that comparatively few of these interesting objects
may be permitted to elude suitable record.
April Meteors. — Mr. E. R. I)lakeley, at Dewsbury, ob-
served four Lyrids on the night of April 19th, and the
paths indicated a radiant at 268^ + 36°, which is nearly .
identical with his position for the same shower on 1895,
April 19th, viz., at 269° + 37° (nine meteors). These
positions for April 19th, when compared with Mr. W. E.
Besley's, obtained on 189H, April 21st-22nd, at 273' + 33 ,
strengthen the idea of a shifting radiant, in accordance
with similar observations at Bristol in 1885 and 1887.
The comparison of various lists of paths by Prof. A. S.
Herschel at Slough, Mr. Besley of Westminster, Mr. A.
King at Leicester, and myself at Bristol, has proved that
nine meteors, recorded during the April period, were observed
at two stations ; and I have computed their real paths as
follow : —
Date.
1S!»«.
(i.M.T.
h. 111.
Height Height
at at
first. end.
Miles. Miles.
Path.
Miles.
Velocit
per
see.
Miles.
April ir;
'■'
4G
72
55
52
April lu
in
48
60
48
91
24
April 17
9
■W
«
71
81
41
April 17
<)
.5.5
.57
.55
24
20
April 17
10
28
72
70
M
23
April 17
11
12
G7
41
24
2.1
April 17
11
28
65
61
25
36
April 18
11
.55
fi5
.5S
19
.12
April 22
10
30
72
•,J
Jii
Observers
Q e
212 - 11
A. S. H.
A. K.
189- .-il
A.S. H.
A. K.
201 + 14
A. S. H.
A. K.
256 - IS
A. S. H.
A. K.
176 - 35
A. S. H.
W. F. D.
194 + 40
A. K.
VV. F. D.
291 + 13
A. S. H.
W. F. D.
2-4 + 11
A. S. H.
W. F. D.
2.i2 + 49
A. S. H.
W. F. D.
The average heights were 68-8 miles at first appearance,
and 57'1 at disappearance. These extremes are less than
that usually found, but the difference is readily explained
by the low altitudes of the majority of the radiants, and
the nearly level flights of the meteors directed from them.
July Perseiih. — The well-known shower of Perseids
commences at about the middle of July, but the exact date
has not yet been ascertained. Its radiant point on 1887,
July 19th, was definitely observed at 19" -t- 51°, and this
represents the earliest position hitherto determined. There
will be little moonlight to interfere with observation this
year between July 12th and 80th. The radiant moves
to the east-north-east, and its position on successive nights
in July, as determined from observations at Bristol during
the last thirty years, is as follows : —
July 19
19 + 51
July 26
29 + 53
„ 20
20 + 51
„ 27 .
30 + 54
„ 21
22 + 52
„ 28
31 + 54
„ 22
23 + 52
„ 29 .
32 + 54
„ 23
25 + 52
„ 30
.S3 -t- 55
„ 24
26 + 58
,, 31
34 + 55
„ 25
27 + 53
It is to be hoped that clear weather will enable the
July 1, 1898,]
KNOWLEDGE
167
ensuing shower to be fully recorded during its earlier
stages, and allow the radiant point to be accurately fixed
on several dilTereut ni,i,'hts of observation. Meteors are
always plentiful during the second half of July, for, in
addition to the Perseids, there are meteors from Aquarius,
which often become strikingly numerous towards the close
of the month.
THE FACE OF THE SKY FOR JULY.
By A. Fowler, i-.r.a.s.
ALTHOUGH there now seems to be a decline in sun-
spot activity, small spots may frequently be de-
tected, and occasionally one may be seen which
will repay minute examination. Even in the ab-
sence of spots, faculiP are often well worth careful
observation. On the 18th there will be an annular eclipse
of the Sun, which, however, will not be visible in this
country.
Mercury will be an evening star, but as it does not
reach its greatest easterly elongation until August 9th, it
will not be well seen until the latter part of the month.
The planet will be in conjunction with the Moon, 4 lii' to
the north, on the 20th, at 7h. p.m., the Moon being then two
days old ; this circumstance may assist the observer in
identifying the planet. On the 27th, at 10b. a.m., the
planet will be in coDJunction with Regulus, and will be
close enough to appear in the same telescopic field of view.
The movement during the month is from Gemini, through
Cancer, to a little east of Regulus in Leo.
Venus is an evening star throughout the month, the
easterly elongation and brightness both increasing. She is
now a very conspicuous object in the western sky after
sunset, and in the telescope presents a phase like the Moon
a few days from full, three-fourths of the disc being illumi-
nated. She will be in conjunction with the Moon, 5° 55'
to the north, on the 22nd, at llh. a.m., the Moon being a
little more than three and a half days old. The apparent
diameter of the planet increases from IH 0"to 15-6" during
the month. On the 10th she sets at 9h. 57m. p.m., and
on the 30th at nh. 15m. p.m.
Mars, during the greater part of the month, does not
rise until after midnight, and will be of no interest to
amateurs.
Jupiter, in Virgo, continues to be well situated for ob-
servation in the early evening. During the month his
apparent polar diameter diminishes from 33'2 to 30'8".
On the 20th he sets at lOh. 21m. p.m.
Saturn, in spite of its low declination, is a fairly con-
spicuous object in Scorpio. The northern surface of the
ring is visible, the apparent major axis of the outer ring on
the 19th being 41-25 , and the minor axis 1789'. The
apparent polar diameter of the planet itself diminishes
from 16-8" to lG-2'' during the month.
Uranus, with its southerly dechnation of about 20 , is
not well placed for observation in these latitudes. It is a
Uttle east of A Librse. The apparent diameter of the
planet is 3-8".
Neptune, in Taurus, cannot be observed.
The Moon will be full on the 3rd at !)h. 12m. p.m.; enters
her last quarter at 4h. 43m. p.m. on the 10th ; is new at
7h. 47m. p.m. on the 18th ; and enters her first quarter at
Ih. 40m. P.M. on the 26th. She will be partially eclipsed on
July 3rd, and the phenomena will be partly visible at
Greenwich. The first contact with the shadow will take
place at 7h. 4Gm. p.m., fifty-eight minutes after contact with
the penumbra, and the last contact with the shadow at
lOh. 49m. P.M., finally passing clear of the penumbra at
llh. 47m. p.m. The eclipse wiU be almost total, its
magnitude (Moon's diameter = 1) being 0 034. The
Moon will rise, partially eclipsed, at Greenwich at
8h. 18m. P.M. The first contact with the shadow takes
place at 49° to the east of north, and the last at 70" from
north towards west.
>. Sagittarii, magnitude 3, will be occulted on July 30th,
the disappearance occurring at 7h. 31m. p.m., 98^ from
the vertex, and the reappearance at 8h. 41m. p.m., 283°
from the vertex, reckoning eastwards.
a^tns Colnmn.
By C. D. LooooE, b.a.
Oommunicationa for this column should be addressed to
C. D. LooocK, Burwash, Sussex, and posted on or before
the 10th of each month.
Solutions of June Problems.
No. 1.
(By A. C. Challenger.)
R to Esq, and mates next move.
No. 2.
(By J. T. Blakemore.)
Key-move.— 1. R to Kt7.
. . K to K4, 2. B to B3ch, etc.
. . K to B4, 2. R X Pch.
. . B to B2, 2. B X Bch, etc.
. . Kt to B2, 2. Q X Bch, etc.
Correct Solutions of both problems received from
Alpha, W. de P. Crousaz, H. le Jeune.
Of No. 1 only from W. F. Denning, J. M'Robert, H. S.
Brandreth, W. Clugston, Capt. Forde.
[Evidently a difficult pair, judging from remarks and
results.]
G. G. BeazLey. — 1. Q x Kt is met by R to Q7.
G. A. Forde.— In No. 2, if 1. R to KR7, K to K4 ; 2. B
to BBch, K to B5, and there is no mate.
II'. /•'. Dinning. — Kt to B3 is probably answered by
1 B to B2.
Ifl.
1.
1.
1.
PKOBLEMS.
No. 1.
By A. G. Fellows.
White mates in two moves.
168
KNOWLEDGE
[July 1, 1898.
No. 2.
By A. C. Challenger.
White (S).
White mates in three moves.
CHESS INTELLIGENCE.
The Vienna tournament is now in full progress. The
most remarkable feature at present is the conspicuous
success of M. Alapin. At the conclusion of the tournament,
a match between two old opponents, Messrs. Showalter
and Max Judd, is probable. The latter was formerly a
resident in the United States, but now lives at Vienna.
The Vienna Club have won one of their two corre-
spondence games with St. Petersburg, an Evans Gambit,
in which the brilliancy was on the side of the defence.
The other is adjourned till after the Vienna tournament.
The Sussex championship has been won by Mr.
Shoosmith, of Brighton, who did not lose a game in the
contest. Mr. Reed, a former champion, was second.
Game played in the Vienna tournament :—
Caro-Kann Defence."
Whits.
(H. N. PiUsbury.)
1. P to K4
2. P to Q4
3. Kt to QB3
4. KtxP
5. Kt X Ktch
6. Kt to B3
7. B to Q3
8. P to KR8
9. P toKKt4 (a)
10. Kt to E4
11. Kt to B5
12. BxB
18. Q to K2ch
14. B X Ktch (b)
15. B to KB
16. P to Q5 !
17. Q to Kt5ch
18. Castles QR
19. E to Q3
20. R to B3
21. Q to QH
22. B X P !
23. B to K
Black.
(H. Caro.)
1. P to QB3
2. P to Q4
8. PxP
4. Kt to B3
5. KPxKt
6. B to Q3
7. B to Kt5
8. B to R4
9. B to KtS
10. Kt to Q2
11. BxKt
12. P to KKt3
13. Q to K2
14. KxB
15. QR to Ksq (c)
IG. P to QB4 {<!)
17. K to Bsq
18. Q to B2
19. R to K5
20. P to QR3 (e)
21. KR to Ksq
22. K toQ2(/)
23. Q to R4
24. P to R3
25. R to B6
26. K to Ktsq
27. PxB
28. Q to Q4
29. K to R2 !
30. Q to R7ch
24. P to QKt4 (^)
25. B to B5
20. BxB
27. R X KP (h)
28. R to K8ch
29. ExR
10. Resigns (i)
Notes.
(») A bold course, but no harm seems to come of it.
(i) In order to avoid the exchange of Queens, but the
game should be drawn now.
(c) Q to K3 or K to B2 are alternatives. The move
made weakens the Queen's side, a fact which Mr. PiUsbury
is not slow to perceive.
(d) Q to K5 has some points. The move chosen gives
White a passed Pawn, and something else.
((') There is no apparent objection to 20. R to QKt5 ;
21. Q X E, P X Q ; 22. Ex Qch, K x E.
(/■) If22. ... BxB : 23. P to Q6, Q to B8 ; 24. Rx
B, etc.
(g) A desperate attempt to get some attack : but his
opponent sees a little further than expected.
{Ii ) This is fatal, but having regard to the dominant
position of the White Rook, there is really nothing to be
done.
(i) Mate following in two more moves.
KNOWLEDGE, PUBLISHED MONTHLY.
Contents ol No. 151 (May).
9-
A Valley on Sao Nicolau, Cape
Verde Islands. By Boyd Alex-
ander, m.b.o.u. {Illustrated) ... 100
Deserts and their Inhabitants.
By E. Lydekker, B.A.F.R.s. ... 101
The Karkinokosm, or World of
Crustacea.— III. By the Eev.
Thomas B. B. Stebbing, m.a.,
P.R.S., K.L.s. (Uluslrated) 101
Nebulae and Region round y Cas-
siopeias. By Isaac Eoberts.
DSC, K.R.S. 106
The Eeceut Eclipse. By E.
Walter Maunder, P.R.A.s.
ilUustratedl 107
Notices of Books 109
British Ornithological Notes 112
Science Notes 112
Letters 112
Nature's Finer Forces. — Some
Notes on Old Work and New
Developments. By H. Snowden
Ward, F.R.p.s 11+
Botanical Studies.— III. Junger-
mannia. By A. Vanghan Jen-
nings,f.l.s.,f. o.s. {Illustrated) 115
Notes on Comets and Meteors.
By W. F. Denning, f.k.a.s. ... 118
The Face of the Sky for May.
By Herbert Sadler, F.K.A.S 119
Chess Column. ByC.D. Locock 119
Plate. — Nebnlse near 7 Cassiopeia.
Contents of No. 152 (June).
PAGE
llie Mourne Mountains. By
Grenville A. J. Cole, h.r.i.a.,
F.G.s. {Illustrated) 121
The Petroleum Industry. By
Greorge T. Holloway, ASSOC.
R.C.S. (L0S1>.), F.I.C. (IlilU-
trated) 124
Economic Botany. By John B.
Jackson, A. L.S., etc 126
Weather Accoimts. By Alex. B.
McDowall, M.A. {Illmtrated) .. 12.*
The Prismatic Camera at the He-
cent Eclipse. By J. Evershed,
F.R.A.s. i:io
Occultation of 26 Arietis observed
Photographically. By Edward
C.Pickering. (JtllustraM) I33
Notices of Books 13^
Letters VSg
Science Notes 136
Africa and its Animals. By E.
Lydekker, b.a., f.e.s 137
The Vinegar Fly and the Vuiegar
Mite. By , C. Ainsworth
Mitchell, B.A., F.i.c. (fiius-
trated) 139
A Classic Legacy of Agriculture.
By John Mills 140
Notes on Comets and Meteors.
By W. F. Denning, F.R.A.s. ... 142
The Face of the Sky for June.
By Herbert Sadler, F.B.A.S. . . 14S
Chess Column. By C. D. Locock 143
Plate.— Eclipse Spectra.
The yearly boirad volumes of Knowledoe, cloth gilt, 8s. Od., post free.
Binding Cases, Is. 6d. each ; post free, Is. 9d.
Subscribers' numbers bound (including case and Index), 2s. 6d. each volume.
Index of Articles and Dlustrations for 1891, 1892, 1894. 1895, 1896, and 1897
can be supplied for 3d. each.
Knowledge'
Annual Sabscription, throughout the world,
8s., post free.
Communications for the Editors and Books for Eeview should be addressed
Editors, " Knowledoe," 326, High Holhorn, London, W.C.
August 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE
169
Founded in i88i by RICHARD A. PROCTOR.
LONDON: AUGUST 1, 1898.
CONTENTS.
The Petroleum Industry. — III. By Cteobqe T. Hollowat,
ASSOC. K.c.s. (lo^d.), f.i.c. {Illustrated)
AnOld-World Highland. By GuE>-yiLLB A. J. Colb, ji.e.i.a.,
F.G.S. {Illustrated) ..."
Self-Irrigation in Plants. — II. By the Eev. Albx. S.
Wilson, m.a., b.sc. {Illustrated) ... ...
Celebes: a Problem in Distribution. By R. Ltdekkeb,
B.A., P.B 3
British Ornithological Notes. Conducted by Habby F.
WlTHBEBY, F.Z.S., JI.B.O.r
'• Insect Miners." Bv Feed. Enock, f.i.s., f.e.s., etc.
{Illustrated) ... '
Notices of Books
Shoet Notices
Books Rbcbited
Letters:— J. H. Jbxkinsox {Illustrated); W. H. S. Mosck;
II. Whichello; W. Wesche
Artificial Faculse. By the Rev. Abthur East. (Plate) ..
The Objective Prism, the Flash, and the Reversing
Layer. By E. Waltee Macndeb, f.e.A.s. (Illustrated)
Alexander Goodman More ... ...
How to Photograph through a Fly's Eye. By Fbed.
W. Saxby. (Illustrated)
Notes on Comets and Meteors. By W. F. DBNNiNa,
f.e.A.s
The Face of the Sky for August By A. Fowleb, f.e.A.s.
Chess Column. Bv C. D. Locock, b.a
PAGE
169
170
173
175
177
178
179
180
131
181
183
18i
187
189
191
191
THE PETROLEUM INDUSTRY.~III.
By George T. Hollow.\y, assoc. r.c.s. (lond.), f.i.c.
IT was not until 1S5'J that the use of petroleum for
illuminating purposes commenced to be general,
although lamps for burning the very similar coal oil
and shale oil had been introduced some sis or seven
years previously by Stobwasser. of Berlin, and by
Young's ParalSn Light and Mineral Oil Company of this
country. Prior to the introduction of these oils, only
animal and vegetable oils (excepting oil of turpentine,
which was employed to some extent under the trade name
"camphine ") had been used ; they possessed many of the
qualities of tallow, and were capable of being burned with
a small wick and with free exposure to the air. The
petroleum oils, however, are of an entirely different nature,
containing much more carbon and hydrogen than do the
animal and vegetable oils, and are far more volatile and
inflammable ; they must be supplied in a regulated
quantity to the flame, and with a proper amount of air, or
a smoky and objectionable flame results.
The enormous number of lamps which are now in use.
and the necessity for fixing an arbitrary limit for the
volatility and inflammability of the oil which may be used
in them, and the conditions under which the oil may be
stored, conveyed, and sold, has given rise to much legislation
in this and other countries. The differences in the laws of
various countries on this subject show how difficult it is
to decide on the standard which shall be at the same
time safe for the consumer and fair to those who produce
and supply the illuminant. As this matter is still under
consideration by a committee of the House of Commons,
it is not the intention of the writer to express an opinion
on the subject ; but it may be of interest to trace some of
the more important steps in the evolution of the mineral
oil lamp which have led to its present efficiency. It may,
however, be taken as an axiom that no oil is safe in a
badly constructed lamp, or when used by the careless.
The first important improvement which fitted lamps
for use with mineral oils was the introduction, by Argand,
of the chimney, by which the requisite draught of air
was caused to impinge on the flame, and thus produce
a greater efficiency as regards illuminating power and an
absence of smoke. This was followed by the invention of
Roberts, whose lamp, specially constructed for burning
camphine, was fitted with a disc known as the " Liverpool
button," which was fixed some distance above the circular
wick, so as to deflect the air current downward upon the
top of the flame. Next came the dome which fits over and
round the wick, and has a slit through which the flame
passes ; this appliance, which is now fitted to practically
all oB lamps, still further directs the air between the
dome and the wick so that it is applied at the point of
maximum efficiency. In the Wanzer, and certain other
lamps, air is blown by clockwork or other device upon the
flame. Finally, we have those lamps in which two or
more wicks are employed, as flames thus impinging one
upon the other give a greater light than when burned
separately.
The principal danger with oil lamps lies in a badly fitting
wick — which is liable to be dropped, while still alight,
into the reservoir — and in the use of breakable vessels.
Metallic reservoirs are now largely employed, and various
safety appliances are attached to the best forms of modem
lamps : for example, a flap or other appliance may close
over the flame and extinguish it when the lamp is over-
turned or unduly tilted ; and the cage of wire gauze,
suggested by Mr. Boverton Redwood, in which the wick is
enclosed so that no flame can pass from the wick to the
oil in the reservoir. While most accidents are not due to a
true explosion, but to the simple ignition of the oil through
the overturning or breaking of the lamp, explosions may
occur from the production of an explosive mixture of the
vapour of the oil with air in the reservoir ; and the question
which has been so much under discussion of late hinges
on whether this can be prevented by raising the " flashing "
point of oU, or whether it can best be dealt with by insisting
on the use of such lamps only as are properly suited for
burning the oil as at present sold.
Legislation in this and other countries is mainly based
on what is known as the " flashing " point, which means
the temperature at which the oil gives off an inflammable
vapour. This is, of course, lower than is shown by the
fire test, i.e., the temperature at which the oil itself wUl
take fire.
The Acts of 1862 and 1808 m the United Kingdom
included under the term "petroleum" such oil as gave
off an inflammable vapour at less than one hundred
degrees Fahrenheit by what is known as the open test —
that is, when warmed in a vessel exposed to the air ; but
as this test was found to give varying results in different
170
KNOWLEDGE
[August 1, 1898.
hands, it was replaced in the Act of 1879 by the closed
cup, or Abel tester, in which the oil is warmed in a closed
vessel, and is only exposed to the air at the moment that
the testing flame is applied. A series of tests made by
Mr. Boverton Redwood on a thousand samples of American
kerosene having proved that the Abel tester showed a
flashing point about twenty-seven degrees hirer than the
open tester indicated, a " flash point " of seventy-three
degrees Fahrenheit was decided upon, so that the actual
flash point now recognized may be considered as identical
with that originally decided upon over thirty years ago.
The Abel tester has been found so efficient and regular
in the results it has yielded in the hands of difl'erent
operators, that it has been legalized in many other
countries, either in its original form or with some slight
modifications. It is shown in Figs. 1 to 3, and consists
of the metal cup, Figs. 1 and 2, into which the oil to be
tested is poured up to a fixed point ; an outer metal cup
serving as a water bath, and an enclosing metal cylinder
forming an air jacket. A lamp swivelled on one leg of the
apparatus is also fitted to the tester (Fig. 3), and thermo-
meters indicate the temperature of both the oil aad the
water.
The oil cup has three square holes in its cover which
Fig. 1. Fig. 2.
Tlu' Abul Tester for the '
Fig. 3.
Flash Point.''
are normally closed by a sliding plate having three corre-
sponding openings. The slide is shown closed in Fig. 1
and open m Fig 2. It carries a pin, which, when the
slide IS opened, catches a small metal lamp swinging on
pivots and tilts its nozzle downwards over the surface of
the oil through one of the three openings, as shown in
Fig. 2. This test lamp consists of a bo.\ with a hinged lid
and a tubular nozzle, through which passes a tiny wick
from the body of the lamp, which is charged with cotton
wool saturated with oil. The wick is trimmed to give a
flame exactly the size of the small bead shown at the end
of a pin on the oil cup. All parts of the apparatus are
made to a standard size, and are tested by the Weights
and Measures Department of the Board of Trade before
they may be used officially.
In using the apparatus, the water bath is first charged
with warm water through the funnel shown, and the
temperature brought to one hundred and thirty degrees
Fahrenheit by the addition of hot or cold water or by use
of the lamp beneath the apparatus. The oil cup is then
charged with the oil to be tested, the little test lamp
lighted, the lid of the oil cup closed, and its thermometer
watched. A pendulum, twenty- four inches long, is then
set swinging, and wlien the temperature of the oil has
reajhed about sixty degrees Fahrenheit, the test is com-
menced. For each degree of rise in temperature the slide
is drawn open slowly by hand while the pendulum makes
three oscillations, and is closed during the fourth oscillation.
When the flashing point is reached, a slight blue flame is
seen to pass over the surface of the oil, and if this occurs
at a temperature not lower than seventy-three degrees
Fahrenheit, the oil is said to have passed the test.
In the application of this test everything depends on
adherence to the specified conditions. Tables for variations
in the atmospheric pressure must be used.
So many testers are or have been in use that it would
be impossible even to give their names here, and the Abe)
tester has been selected as the one most generally
employed.
For many technical and commercial purposes other tests
have to be applied. Thus the analyst must sometimes
employ chemical tests to ascertain freedom from sulphur
compounds, etc. ; distillation tests to ascertain the amount
of the oil which volatilizes between certain temperatures ;
colour tests, in which, by means of Lovibond's tintometer,
or Wilson's or Stammer's chromometer, the colour
according to the commercial standards between " water
white" and "good merchantable" is determined; vis-
cosity tests, in which the value of the oil as a lubricant is
ascertained ; photometric tests to determine the illuminating
power of the oil ; and, finally, the odour test, by which an
experienced operator can tell whether the oil has been
properly refined and kept.
AN OLD-WORLD HIGHLAND.
By Grenville a. J. Cole, m.r.i.a., f.g.s., Professor of
Geolrxiij in tlie Royal ColUije of Science for Ireland:
THERE is a corner of wilder Connaught, on the very
border of Galway and of Mayo, where the features
of the west of Ireland seem grouped together and
epitomised. In a brief season of summer it is
known to tourists as Leenane ; but, in the more
transparent and sunnier days of spring or autumn, the
lover of quiet will find it a haven of content. Before the
hospitable doorway, the sea stretches in gentle ripplings,
at the head of a fjord which runs down west to open water.
There is little suggestion here, whether the day be dark or
clear, of the great surge that beats ever on the islands,
on Inishbofin and lofty Inishturk, ten miles away in the
Atlantic. Northward lies the mountain-land of Mayo, a
district as large as Sutherland, over-populous on its sea-
board, yet wild and desolate within. Southward lies the
still finer highland of (lalway, a land of peaks, and
terraced moorlands, and abundant lakes, into which even
the broad Lough Corrib sends up romantic tongues of
water. Except for one encircling road, these fastnesses
east of the Twelve Bens, the barren valley of Bealana-
brack, or the deep grey hollow of Lough Nafooey, are as
little known to most of us as Corsica.
The remark has some appropriateness, for in these grim
surroundings, without communications, girt about by the
precipiced cirques of Formnamore, a race has grown up to
whom the law of vi'mldta has seemed nearer and far
simpler than the complex legality of the east. Cast down
by years of failure, weakened by the emigration of the
strong, driven by topographical details to repeated inter-
marriage, this population has presented the problem of an
island cut off within an island. Nowadays the railways
have crept nearer to the mountains ; ]5ublic bodies have
employed both men and women in turning the unfenced
tracks into some of the finest roadways in our islands ;
August 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE
171
and, when we are chatting at tea-time in the farms,
or exchanging a greeting with some qld peasant on the
W!iy, it is hard to recall or to realise the bitter stories
of the glens. When, however, we turn off the mail-
car routes, we perceive, even now, the isolation of
this old-world highland. The vivid colouring of the
costumes of the peasantry in itself shows lack of inter-
course ; English is but little spoken ; and the women
work out of doors, not only with the men, but for
the men, as in the primitive countries of this world. But
such scenes, and the strangeness of them, have high
attractions for those who view them from without. Here,
on a corner of the pass, comes a woman, her basket on
her arm, riding over to one of the villages on Lough Mask.
With her white cap, her deep red skirt, her shawl of
to the old " Caledonian ' chains ; that is to say, they
were upheaved and folded at the close of Silurian times.
Here and there, we have proofs that they sank in part
beneath the Carboniferous sea, and were again upraised
during the great " Hercynian " movements. One or two
patches of Carboniferous sandstone and conglomerate
remain as outliers on the heights around Maamtrasna,
that on Ben Wee now lying at an elevation of more than
two thousand feet.* The mountains that were lost for a
■time beneath the waves have reasserted themselves, and
have thrown off the covering of Carboniferous deposits ;
and we find exposed at their bases the still older surface
on which their own materials were laid dowu.f
The prominent stratified rocks on either side of the fjord
of Killary Harbour are the Ordovician conglomerates.
Fig. 1.— Tien- up the head of theljori . K;', II . . .; r. contmuitv with tlie >i i ; ' . I ■ n Ki',. ■.
The tide is running out. The terraced scarp ot the Formnauiorc group hounds the vallev ou -tlie right. (From a photograph
by Mr. E. Welch.)
brilliant hues, in which scarlet and crimson predominate,
she forms a vision of colour against the moorland, such
as one scarcely looks for short of the Hungarian east.
Down below, a sober distance in advance, we see her
master, also riding, and gathering the week's news by
calling to his friends, it may be a field or two away. Behind
us, a grey rain-drift creeps up across the Joyces' country ;
on the left, the huge wall of Maamtrasna rises so sheer
that it seems in the gloom to overhang ; while, in front
and below, the great lake stretches, white, like a sea, into
the plain.
Behind these obvious features lies a long geological
history ; and it is the history of the whole north-west of
Ireland. The rocks that are now laid bare belong mainly
These can be studied in almost every fallen block along
the shore for miles west of Leenane ; on the gentler slopes
of Ben Gorm across the water ; and, to name no other
region, in massive exposures, worn by glaciation, on the
steep descent to Lough Nafooey. Few recks are more
handsome in themselves ; few tell better the tale of long
waste and denudation, as the oldest Irish land gave way
before the breakers of an Ordovician sea. The great
* ITemoir to Sheets 73. 74, 83, and Si. Oeological Survei/ of
Ireland (1876), p. 53. The later annual reports of the Survey
include a considerable revision of the Killary district. See that for
1S96. pp. 49 to 51 (published in 1897).
t These older rocks are part of the conveniently named Dalrudiaii
group of Sir A. G-eikie.
172
KNOWLEDGE.
[August 1, 1898.
pebbles ofDen lie well separated in a dark green-grey
matrix of coarse sand. Among them are granites, and
quartzites, and compact flinty lavas — evidences of the
long gap that divides them from the underlying igneous
and metamorphic series. The beds below are more highly
tilted, and everywhere the unconformity is a marked one.
The ancient land, the floor of the country, at whatever
period it first arose, was pierced by igneous masses, and
was baked and altered ; its shales became slates and
schists, its limestones marbles ; and the invading rocks
had cooled down in the form of granite before the period
of denudation occurred that formed the conglomerates of
Killary Harbour. In this area, then, we have the old
land of unknown age, perhaps even a remnant of the
pre-Cambrian chains ; it comes rapidly into view as we
go south along the Joyces' Eiver, and culminates in the
quartzite ridges of the Maam Turk Mountains and the
Twelve Bens. Then we have the grand scarps and cirques
of Formnamore, and the impressive and close-set group of
summits that form the Mweelrea range on the north side
of the fjord ; these represent the thick deposits on the
Ordovician and SOurian shoreline, in a sea that lay open
to the north.* Then came the widespread Caledonian
movements. In Devonian times, our highland was thus
already well established, looking down into lake-basins
that lay many miles away on the north-east and the east ;
and then a second great subsidence brought it below the
Carboniferous sea, and for a time saved it from denudation.
We do not know when it made its next appearance ; but
probably the covering was worn away from its bolder
summits soon after the uplift of the Hercynian chains.
The complex details have even yet to be worked out ;
but the district is clearly one of those that hive remiined
highlands by the force, as it were, of pure tradition. Many
parts of the west of Scotland, the English Lake District,
the volcanic precipices and arrtef: of Wales, have similarly
proved their powers of resistance, and tbeir tendency to
reappear as knots through any covering forced upon them.
In this they resemble Suess's favourite " horsts " of
Central Europe ; and it is easy to predict that they will
remain as the bare skeleton of Britain, long after the films
of the London Clay, the Chalk, or the soft Triassic sand-
stones, have been washed away into the North Sea and
the Channel.
The vitality of Ireland similarly lies in the great ribs of
the west, holding their own against the Atlantic and its
warm soft air. Even if the oscillations of the continental
edge again submerge her, Connaught will still exist, a core
of mountains, in the depths.
At present, the stratification of the series of rocks out
of which the hills have been carved is still well marked
around us. The north scarp of the Formnamore group
is seen in Fig. 1, where the terraces of Ordovician and
Silurian strata form a feature of the steep hillside. In
Tonalee, again, above the Maam valley, the unconformity
between the old " Dalradian " series and the overlying
Ordovician conglomerates is traceable even at a distance.
North of Killary Harbour, a road traverses the Mweelrea
Mountains by a low pass, and brings us into the most
exquisite landscapes of the range. For two miles, along
the west shore of Lough Doo, the purple crags of Glan-
cuUin, ledged with green, rise some two thousand five
hundred feet above the water, and the steep southerly
dip of the beds adds to the serration of the mountain-face.
The scene is even finer if we turn up the valley td the
east, and view it from the moorland level, with Doo
Lough answering to its name, and lying black below us.
• See Sir A. Geikie, Ann. Sep. Oeol. Survei^ for 1896, p. 51
Siill further to the east, the Dalradian floor is met with
in the lonely bogland through which Lough Tawnyard
extends. Here the fine cirques and mountain-crests are
still formed of the upper stratified series, the masses of
which rise in great outliers upon the worn-down edges of
the older rocks.
We have already hinted at the proaiinence of the floor
itself, the " pre-Ciledonian " ridges, in the fine region of
the Twelve Bens of Connemira. If we follow the fjord of
Killary down to its mouth, we can look across thirty miles
of blue but restless water, until the eye is caught by the
huge cone on Achill Island ; this is cut in half on its west
side, where its cliffs drop more than two thousand feet into
the sea. Here, again, the older series still asserts itself,
bared from any covering of Silurian or Carboniferous
deposits.
As we return eastward up the inlet to Leenane, the
strange aspect of the fjord itself is impressed upon us,
and our thoughts are transferred to the most recent of
geological epochs. The deep groove-like nature of the
hollow that is occupied by the sea is well seen as we
climb the moors upon the south ; and thence we look,
down into the water, where the fresh tide has covered all
the sandbanks, and has pressed back the flow of the river
with a curving line of foam. This groove is ten miles
long, and is rarely more than half a mile in width. At
its head (Fig. 1) it passes continuously up into the
valley of the Erriff, which is bounded by the same steep
green or clifi'-set walls.
At the hamlet of Aasleagh, where we reach the actual
river, there is a pleasing little waterfall over a step in
the valley-floor ; and below it there is a second tumbled
fall, where the seaweeds and the wild-flowers meet, and
where the former clothe all the rocks out in the stream.
Here we see the excavation of the valley still going on.
But this is only a feature of low water. At high tide
the sea reaches the bridge of Aasleagh, and the clump
of fir trees looks down upon ephemeral waves. All
evidence of the activity of the river on its rocky bed has
disappeared.
There is at this point an obvious connexion between the
valley and the marine inlet. As the river, in the inter-
spaces of low water, erodes its bed, the sea can spread
further, though imperceptibly, inland at each successive
tide. Will not this cutting baik of the head of the fjord,
year by year, account for the long intrusion of the sea
upon the land ?
In this case, however, and still more strikingly in that
of other fjords on our coasts, examination of the Admiralty
charts will show that stream-erosion alone is not sufficient.
Killary Harbour happens to deepen fairly uniformly from
Aasleagh to the open water ; but its depth at its mouth is
twenty-two fathoms, while off Mweelrea and Salruck it is
still ten fathoms. The cutting action of the river cannot
be responsible for excavating a groove of this depth, a
great part of which lies below the level of low water.
But if the land were uplifted, the bottom of the inlet
would become a portion of the ordinary valley-floor. The
river would reach the sea between Inishbofin and Inish-
turk, and would be able, above this point, to deepen its
valley until a level slightly below low water was attained.
The history of Killary Harbour is no doubt embodied in
the reverse of this suggested process. The h;nd at no
distant time stood distinctly higher above the sea, and the
Errifl' River, from Aasleagh down, had a fairly rapid fall.
The great groove, in fact, severing Mweelrea from Ben-
choona, is an ordinary river-valley, cut by a stream that
started in pre-glacial times. The floor of this valley
gradually approached the sea-level, the level of no ex-
August 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE
173
cavating action ; and at last, in the ordinary course, the
sea would have crept up a little at the valley-mouth. But
then came the subsidence that has affected our islands
so profoundly, accompanied, doubtless, by considerable
warping of the old continental floor. Levels were every-
where disturbed, and disturbed irregularly ; but the main
result on the west coast of Europe, from the " rias " of
Spain to the peaked isles of northern Norway, was the
admission of the sea into the intricacies of the denuded
laud. The lower ten miles of the Erriff valley became
converted into Killary Harbour, while the deep clefts in
the braes of Bergen admitted the Atlantic for more than a
hundred miles.
It has often, however, been pointed out that, for the
production of a true fjord, with its sides free from debris
and going down like cliffs into the water, another agent
must be introduced. There was a time when fjords were
believed to have been excavated, to great depths below
sea-level, by the eroding power of glacier-ice. The physical
difficulties opposed to this view proved to be considerable ;
and dwellers in countries where glaciers are still common
have long set their faces against it. But the presence
of a glacier in any valley prevents it from becoming choked
by detritus from the mountain-walls. The excavating
action, which was begun before the ice spread down all
the hollows of the country, may still be carried on by the
subglaoial streams ; while the ice all the time moulds the
valley-walls as it moves forward, and converts each pro-
jection in the floor into a characteristic roclw moutonn.'e.
Hence, when subsidence occurs, the sea may for some
time be banked out of the valley by the presence of the
ice. As the glacier shrinks, the sea follows it up the well-
preserved groove, in which the only deposits are those of
the spreading terminal moraine. For a long period the
fjord may thus retain its most typical form ; but at length
a delta may spread down from its head, sandbanks may be
swept in by the sea, and ordinary taluses may descend
upon it and mar the smoothness of its walls.
Killary Harbour has reached this later stage ; but there
is no doubt as to the original prevalence of glacial condi-
tions in the district. The whole lower ground of Letter-
frack, Tullycross, and Salruck, is ice-worn and mam-
millated, and the peat forms as yet only a thin covering
across the roches tiioutonnt'cs. The larger of these stand
out bare and uncorroded ; and the strise on their surfaces,
whether the rock is slate or quartzite or conglomerate, are
still marvellously fresh. Probably, as the glaciers with-
drew, banks of mud and gravel, washed out from the
terminal moraines, covered this lowland in the place of
confluent ice ; and the coating that was thus formed helped
to preserve the bed-rock from denudation. But here, as
elsewhere in our islands, we are led to regard the retreat
of the glaciers as a very recent matter. The abundant
cirques in the high levels of the moimtains, though not so
bare and stern as those of Snowdon, still preserve their
outlines, much as when the last ice melted from their floors.
One of the latest phases of this old-world highland may
have been the most magnificent from a scenic point of
view, when the contrasts of crag and snow in Connaught
rivalled the glories of Norway or Alaska.
Even now, are these western mountains of necessity
doomed to obliteration: Though the breaches of Mweelrea
lie open to the Atlantic storms, and though the grass
creeps across the summits, helped by the soft summer rain,
may we not read in the long and complex history a tale of
regeneration, of vitality rather than decay '?
* See KsowiEDGB, Vol. XX., p. 210. (September, 1897.)
SELF-IRRIGATION IN PLANTS.-II.
By the Rev. Alex. S. Wilsox, m.a., b.si-.
THE arrangements possessed by plants for collecting
and conveying rain to their roots, described in the
previous article, derive their value from the cir-
cumstance that leaves have but little absorbent
power. If greatly parched they will no doubt
take up water, but the whole structure of an ordinary leaf
is that of an organ highly adapted to the function of
eliminating water. Not only are the superficial cells
provided with a cuticle through which water can only
penetrate very slowly, but moistening causes the stomata
to close, cutting off access to the cells in the interior of
the leaf.
Nevertheless, a limited amount of absorption by leaves
does occur, and in exceptional cases groups of thin-walled
leaf-cells exist which are specialized for this very end. It
is principally in species growing under peculiarly adverse
conditions, such as shore and desert plants, that marked
absorption through leaves occurs. The experiments of
Garreau show that the cuticle of many leaves is absolutely
impervious to water. This is so especially in old and
fully developed leaves. Young leaves, on the other hand,
in which cuticularization has not gone far, absorb to a
greater or less degree. Washing with soap and water
removes wax and increases the absorbent power of leaves.
Over the midrib and veins the cuticle is thinner than on
other parts of the leaf, and water can penetrate more
easily. By far the greater proportion of the absorption
takes place, however, at the base of the petiole — in the axil
of the leaf, in fact.
Some of the best established instances of imbibition by
leaves occur among plants such as the fuller's teasel, which
are provided with leaf-cups. The leaves of the teasel are
arranged in pairs ; the broadened base of each leaf unites
with that of its opposite neighbour, encircling the stem
and forming a receptacle in which a quantity of water
collects. That this source supplements the supply furnished
by the roots is shown by the fact that cut specimens retain
their freshness as long as the leaf-cups are supplied. Leaf-
cups of this description are seen in SUphium — one of the
gentians — and in a number of other plants. Many epiphytic
Bromelias, Tillandsias, and others of the pineapple family
retain considerable
quantities of water
in their expanded
leaf-bases, and of
this a portion is
absorbed by means
of certain thin-
walled cells.
These examples
have an important
bearing on the case
of the chickweed,
now to be consider-
ed. The rapidity
with which this
plant spreads over
garden soil must be
attributed in large
measure to its very
complete system of
self- irrigation.
The sheathing bases of each pair of leaves on the chick-
weed form a kind of leaf-cup where the rain collects.
Particles of dust and earth are also washed down into
the leaf-axils. Hairs on the margins of the petioles
Fis. 1. — Leaf-cups of Teasel.
174
KNOWLEDGE.
[August 1, 1898.
Fio. 2— Irrigation of tlie Chick-
weed. B, Kootlet.
help to retain the water, so that the quantity detained
at the nodes is greater than one would expect ; indeed,
these little reservoirs, relatively to the size of the plant,
have, perhaps, quite as large capacity as the leaf-cups
of the teasel. The leaf-stalks are channelled, but instead
of grooves the chickweed stem has a line of hairs placed
on one side, which conducts the overflow from one leaf-
cup down to the next, so that after a shower all the
leaf-cups are replenished. These hairs on the stem are
deflexed, easily wetted, and are evidently arranged to act
as rain conductors.
Each hair consists of several cells which still retain
their protoplasm. In a dry
condition the walls of the
basal cell present a striated
appearance, and this has
led Kerner to assign to the
hairs an absorbent function.
But this explanation is un-
satisfactory. In the first
place, precisely similar
striations appear on the
leaves and stem if the plant
be somewhat dry. Again,
the hairs have no direct con-
nection with the vascular
system, from which they
are separated by a thick
cellular cortex. Cut ofl'
from the internal circulation their power of transmission
must be very limited, and whatever water they absorb is
quite likely to be lost again on the air becoming dry. The
evidence of special adaptation is, at least, not conclusive ;
moreover, a circumstance overlooked by Kerner seems to
render such special adaptation superfluous. From many
of the leaf-axils of chickweed one or two little rootlets,
emerge. Even where none are visible a transverse section
of the stem reveals their presence beneath the epidermis.
It is a very reasonable supposition that the arrangement
of conducting hairs and leaf-cups in the chickweed, by
which its nodes are kept moist, is designed to promote the
formation of these lateral rootlets. Gardeners, at least,
when they wish to induce the formation of roots, often
adopt a similar expedient. In propagating certain plants
recourse is had to iiunrotiiq/e, or the application of moist
earth to the base of a branch to stimulate the development
of roots. Sir Joseph Hooker, in his llintalaijitn .loumnls,
states that the roots which descend from the boughs of the
banyan tree are induced to sprout by wet clay and moss
tied to the branches, underneath which a little pot of water
is hung. So dense is the foliage that the ground beneath
the branches gets very dry and hard, the descending roots
are unable to penetrate it, and the natives assist matters
by conducting the roots through bamboo tubes and by
breaking up and moistening the soil at the points where
they enter it. At first these roots are very slender, but
they soon swell and tighten from the rooting part dragging
down the airial.
The water and particles of earth that accumulate in the
leaf-cups of the chickweed not only conduce to the
formation of roots — the conducting hairs serve to water
them after they are developed. Each rootlet is most con-
veniently placed to catch the rain descending from the
leaves ; indeed, were it placed under a running tap the
position of the rootlet could hardly be more favourable.
On the whole, therefore, it seems much more probable
that the use of the hairs is to conduct water to the roots,
where it is absorbed, than that the hairs themselves are
absorbent organs.
-Transverse Section of Chickweed Stem.
H, Hairs.
If we remove a quantity of chickweed from ground
where it has been growing luxuriantly, we are often struck
by the remarkable dryness and hardness of the earth. On
reaching the soil its rootlets would, therefore, experience
difficulty in penetrating were it not that there is an
additional point of resemblance to the banyan. The water
which drips frequently from the tips of the rootlets keeps
the earth soft
and moist just
at those spots
where the
rootlets enter
it. When they
have estab-
lished them-
selves they
drag down the
stem ; each
internode and
each young
shoot become Kir. .s.
practically in-
dependent ;
hence the rapidity with which this weed spreads.
Another circumstance worthy of mention is the obvious
relation between the conducting hairs and the axillary
buds. Although the hairs are difi'erently placed in suc-
cessive internodes, they are always on the same side
as the axillary bud below. The latter is consequently
drenched from time to time by rain descending along the
conducting hairs. As young leaves are to some extent
capable of absorbing, the developing shoots must, therefore,
participate along with the rootlets in the benefits of this
system of automatic irrigation.
The special necessity for this curious arrangement in
the chickweed may possibly arise from the small amount
of lignified tissue possessed by the plant. Its rapid growth
does not, indeed, admit of much lignification, which is a
process requiring time. Not only is the vascular cylinder
running up the centre of the stem of small dimensions,
but the four lignified strands (dark coloured in the figure),
through which the water rises from the roots, are very
slender relatively to the thickness of the stem. We
might almost compare the chickweed to a house where the
pipe from the main is of
narrow cahbre, and an
additional supply has to
be obtained by collecting
the rain from the roof into
cisterns. As the tendency
of cultivation is to render
soil dry, this double water-
supply is also advan-
tageous, no doubt, in
relation to the peculiar
habitat of the plant.
Aqueducts consisting of
lines of hairs simUar to
those of the chickweed
occur in a number of
plants. The Germander
speedwell has a line of hairs on both sides of its stem,
and in allied species there may be three or more such
lines corresponding in position exactly to the grooves
by which rain is led down the stems of so many plants.
Those speedwells which occur as garden weeds emit root-
lets, and have the same creeping habit as the chickweed.
Their delicate transparent rootlets are often exquisitely
beautiful, being covered with microscopic fibrils so exceed-
Fio. 4. — Vertical Section of Chick-
weed Stem, with two Rudimentarv
Rootlets. The Spiral Vessels sliow
the course of the ascending Sap.
August 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE
175
ingly sensitive that they contract at once if exposed to
dry air.
The spiderwort, commonly ^rown as a hanging plant,
has sheathing leaves capable of retaining water, and emits
rootlets in the same way. There are a few hairs at each
node, but they are not continued down the stem. The
spiderwort has, however, a special provision against desic-
cation ; the upper layer of the leaf consists of aqueous
tissue, composed of clear prismatic cells filled with water.
A piece of this plant may be carried about in one's pocket
for more than a week without quite losing its freshness.
Leaf-cups, however, occur chiefly on plants growing in
places where there is little risk of desiccation ; hence it is
supposed by some that in aerial absorption the object is not
so much water as to obtain a supply of nitrogen. Nor is
it at all improbable that the rootlets of the chickweed take
up nitrogenous compounds and other substances dissolved
in the rain-water which accumulates in its leaf-cups. But
this question must be reserved for future consideration.
CELEBES: A PROBLEM IN DISTRIBUTION.
By E. LVDEKKKR, II. A., K.R S.
PROBABLY at least nine out of every ten of the
readers of Knowledc;e who do me the honour to
peruse the present article, would pronounce the
name of the island mentioned in the heading
with the second syllable short — Celebes ; and if it
were an English name they would be right in so doing.
But the Malays have a habit of accenting the middle
syllable of three-syllabled words, and we thus have
Sarawak, Basilan, Celebes, etc. In this respect Malay
names are the exact opposite of South American, in which
the accent falls on the third syllable, as in Panama,
Bogot;i, and Ecuador. Doubtless it is a small matter,
but it is well to be correct even in the pronunciation of
names.
Having put matters right in this respect, the next point
is to inform my readers why Celebes has been selected as
the subject of an article at all; and why Borneo, Sumatra,
or Java would not have done just as well. To render this
point clear I must refer briefly to the geographical position
of Celebes and the neighbouring islands. Borneo, Sumatra,
and .Java, as my readers are no doubt well aware, are the
three largest of the Malayan islands lying nearest to the
Malay Peninsula ; and although they possess many peculiar
animals — notably the orang, which is confined to Borneo
and Sumatra — yet their fauna as a whole is very similar
to that of the Malay mainland, and thus intimately con-
nected with that of India. Accordingly, naturalists are
pretty well agreed in including these islands in what is
called the Oriental region of zoological distribution, of
which the Philippine Islands likewise form a part.
Now, Celebes lies due east of Borneo, from which it is
separated by the Macassar Strait, and also nearly midway
between the Philippines on the north and the small islands
of Lombok, Sumbawa, and Flores on the south ; these
three latter islands forming the continuation of the line
of Sumatra and -Java, which evidently indicate an old
peninsula. Eastward of Celebes lie the Moluccas (or
Spice Islands) on the north, and Ceram (which forms the
lowest member of the same group) in the south ; both
these being nearly midway between Celebes and Papua,
or New Guinea. And when we reach the latter country
we are practically in Australia, the animals being quite
unlike those of the typical Malayan islands and the other
countries of the Oriental region ; we have, for instance,
in New Ouinca, tree kangaroos, cuscuses, flying phalangers,
bandicoots, echidnas or spiny anteaters, cassowaries, cocka-
toos, birds of paradise, and bower birds, all of which are
essentially Australian types, although some, like the birds
of paradise, attain their maximum development in New
Guinea itself. The little island of Ceram has also a fauna
of an Australian type, including, among other forms, a
cassowary. Accordingly, all naturalists are agreed that
Australia, New Guinea, Ceram, and the other Moluccas,
together with the Aru and some of the other small islands
in the neighbourhood, form one great zoological province,
which may be called the Australasian. But the problem
has been in which region to place Celebes, whose fauna is
in some respects intermediate between that of the Austral-
asian and Oriental regions. By Dr. A. R. Wallace, the
great authority on the geographical distribution of animals,
it was at first classed with the former, although subse-
quently given a doubtful position ; and his views have
been followed by most later writers. Quite recently,
however, Mr. W. L. Sclater, the Director of the South
African Museum, has come to the conclusion that it should
be included in the Oriental region.
A glance at the map will show that Celebes is an island
of very peculiar and unusual shape. It consists of an
irregular central region, from' which are given off four
still more irregular peninsulas, of which the one running
in the direction of the Moluccas is considerably the largest.
Its general outline is more like that frequently assumed
by an ama-ba than anything else, and it is quite clear from
this remarkable shape that the island is situated in a
subsiding area, and once formed a portion of a much
larger land mass. From the peculiarity of its animals it
is evident that Celebes has existed as an island since an
epoch comparatively remote ; and the question naturally
arises whether its last connection was with Borneo and
the other Malayan islands, or with Ceram and New (iuinea.
In a question of this nature the depths of the surrounding
seas have, of course, a most important bearing. There is
reason to believe that recent investigations will do much
towards clearing up this question, but as they have not
yet been published they cannot be further referred to on
this occasion.
Putting, then, the evidence of soundings on one side,
we may endeavour to find out how much light the animals
of Celebes are capable of throwing on the problem.
Those of my readers who have any acquaintance with
the subject of the geographical distribution of animals, are
doubtless aware that no marsupials at all are found to the
westward of Celebes, and that to the eastward of that
island monkeys are quite unknown, while hoofed animals
are represented only by a deer in Timor and a second in
the Moluccas, and likewise by a semi-wild pig in Ceram and
another in New Guinea. In fact, the quadrupeds of the
Australasian region, apart from bats and these exceptions,
consist exclusively of egg-laying mammals, marsupials, and
various peculiar kinds of rats and mice ; while, as already
said, their birds include cassowaries, cockatoos, birds of
paradise, bower-birds, and a host of other kinds more or
less completely unknown in the regions to the westward.
But, unfortunately, there is another element in the
problem which introduces a further complexity. The
Malays, as we know, are bold and clever sailors, fond of
voyaging from island to island in these summer seas.
And they are also wonderful adepts in taming animals of
various kinds. Many of these they carry about with them
in their voyages — some probably for food and others as
pets. When they land on a strange island some of these
animals may occasionally escape, or possibly may be turned
loose intentionally. Now there is a very considerable
176
KNOWLEDGE,
fArousT 1, 1898.
probability that the wild pigs of Ceram and New Guinea
have been thus introduced ; and if this be the case, the
fauna of the Australasian region is made more absolutely
distinct from that of the Oriental province. The deer of
the Moluccas and Timor present a case of greater diiSculty ;
but, as the Moluccas cannot well be separated from the
Australasian region, they would seem, in these islands at
least, to have been introduced, and, if so, the same will
hold good with certain smaller mammals of an Oriental
type, such as civets.
We are now in a position to consider how the animals
of Celebes compare with those of the neighbouring islands.
Now, the only mammals of a purely Australian type found
in that island are two species of cuscuses — sleepy creatures,
with beautifully soft fur, often very brilliantly coloured,
and showing great individual or sexual variation in the
markings. They are near relatives of the so-called
opossums (phalangers) of Australia, and are purely arboreal
creatures, passing the day comfortably coiled up in slumber,
and feeding at night. If these creatures were of a type
which might be regarded as near to that from which the
other marsupials of Australia might have sprung, they
might be considered as survivors from the migration of
marsupials which probably took place at a remote epoch
from Asia to Australia. But they are not so, and it is
therefore clear that this hypothesis will not account for
their presence in the island. As they are so completely
arboreal in their habits, they are, however, just the kind
of creatures which we might naturally expect to be wafted
from one island to another on floating timber ; and it is
far from improbable that it is to this mode of transport
they owe their presence in Celebes.
AH the other mammals are of an Oriental type, although
several of them are quite unlike their relatives on the
mainland and other islands. Among them one of the
most remarkable is the babirussa, a curious little pig, in
which the tusks of both jaws in the males attain a most
extraordinary development, the lower ones curving straight
upwards, while the upper ones grow right through the
skull to curve backwards in a bold sweep towards the eyes.
Although nothing definitely is known as to the origin of
this strange animal, yet it is evidently a highly specialized
offshoot from the ancestral pigs of Asia. Equally peculiar
is the tiny little black buffalo, or anoa, which is not much
larger than a good-sized ram, and has upright horns quite
imlike those of the ordinary Asiatic buffalo. In the island of
Mindoro, near the centre of the Philippine group, there
is, however, a considerably larger buffalo, known as the
tamarau, which serves to connect the anoa with the ordinary
Asiatic species. More important still is the occurrence in
the Tertiary deposits of Northern India of several species of
buffaloes intimately related to the anoa. Clearly, then,
this animal has originated from an Oriental stock, and
the occurrence of an allied species in the PhihppLnes tends
to show that these islands were connected at no very remote
epoch with Celebes. Now the Phihppines themselves, as
shown by their deer, have intimate relationships with
Borneo, and thus with the mainland.
The deer reported to occur in the island is a variety of
the rusa of Java, and apparently identical with the form
found in the Molu3cas. It is generally considered to have
been introduced, but as Celebes shows so many signs of
affinity with the more western Malayan islands in its
animals, this does not appear by any means certain.
Anyway, the Moluccan race may well have been exported
from Celebes by the Malays.
The next most noteworthy animals in the mammalian
fauna of the island are two species of monkeys, both
remarkable for their black colour. The first of these is
the short-tailed black baboon, a species representing a
genus by itself, and with relationships to the true baboons
of Africa and Arabia. Such relationship, from a geographi-
cal point of view, might seem difBcult to account for, and
to those who neglect the animals of a past epDch it would
appear well-nigh inexplicable. But it happens that extinct
baboons occur in India ; and as they doubtless also existed
in other parts of the Oriental region, there is no difficulty
in accounting for the origin of the Celebesian representative
of the group. The other species — the Moor macaque—
! belongs to a widely spread Oriental genus.
But the most curious of all the mammals of the island
! is a species of tarsier — a small creature with enormous
goggle eyes, slender lanky limbs, and toes terminating in
suckers — distantly related to the lemurs. Now, these
tarsiers are strictly limited to the islands of Sumatra,
Borneo, Java, Celebes, and Mindanao, together with some
of the neighbouring islets ; and are totally unknown to
the eastward of the Molucca Sea. Although, being
arboreal animals, it may be argued that, like the cuscuses
of Celebes, they have been carried about by floating timber,
it seems in the highest degree unlikely they should have
reached all the islands with an Oriental type of fauna, and
avoided all those where the true Australian type comes in.
Moreover, they are very delicate animals, exceedingly diffi-
cult to keep alive in captivity, and there is accordingly a
strong probability that they are native to the islands
where they occur. Like so many of its other animals, the
tarsier of Celebes is black — as, indeed, are the species from
the other islands.
So far, then, as their mammals are concerned, it seems
probable that at no very distant epoch Celebes, Borneo,
and the Philippines formed one land area ; while Borneo
itself was connected with the mainland, probably by way
of Sumatra, the orang and some other species being com-
mon to these two islands and unknown elsewhere. It is
further probable that Celebes, and most likely a portion of
the Philippines, became isolated before Borneo ceased to
be connected with Sumatra — or at all events with the main-
land. But the south-western portion of the Philippine
group, namely, the island of Palawan, shows evidence of a
closer connection with Borneo than with the rest of the
archipelago to which it belongs. On the other hand, the
mountains of Luzon, in the Northern Philippines, contain
a remarkable group of rats, some of which show affinity
to those inhabiting Australia ; and it therefore seems
highly likely that the Philippines mark a portion of the
line by which Asia was probably in communication
at a still earlier epoch with New Guinea and Australia.
Still, there are some difficulties in this view of the
case, because the more primitive types of marsupials
now found in Australia are at present unknown in New
Guinea. Possibly, however, some still remain to be
discovered in the unexplored mountains of that country ;
while, as the exploration of the Luzon Mountains by Mr.
John Whitehead has yielded such wonderful zoological
results, there is a hope that when the mountains of the
other islands have been as carefully worked we may find a
few marsupials still surviving. Should such a fortunate
" find " turn up, we should have almost conclusive evidence
that the ancestors of the present fauna of Australia travelled
from Asia by way of the eastern archipelago.
There are many other points connected with the present
distribution of animal life in this wonderful region, and
their bearing on the former relations of the various islands
to one another, to which the limits of this article forbid
* The mammals from these mountains have been worked out by
Mr. O. Thomas, of the British Museum.
August 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE
177
reference. A word may, however, be said in reference to
Timor, which, as already mentioned, forms the eastern
extremity of the line of the Sunda Islands — that is to say,
the line including Sumatra, Java, and Floras, which is
evidently a broken-up peninsula. By most writers that
portion of the chain lying to the eastward of Java and
Bali has been assigned to the Australasian region, and it
has consequently been assumed that the deer found in
Timor must have been introduced by man. Timor and
Flores also contain several other mammals common to the
Oriental region, notably a monkey, a civet, a porcupine,
and a palm civet ; and although it is quite possible that
they may have been introduced by the Malays (as some of
them appear to have been into the Moluccas), the absence
of any typically Australasian mammals except a cuscus
(whose presence may be accounted for in the same way as
in Celebes) is, to say the least, very remarkable. More-
over, the birds of Timor show at least as many Oriental
as Australasian features, and it accordingly seems more
consonant with the known faits to regard the whole chain
of the Sunda Islands, which are geographically one, as
having formed a part of the old Asiatic continent.
Bvttisf) 0vmrt)oIofficaI Notes.
Conducted hij Hakry F. Witiierby, f.z.s., m.b.o.u.
Pied Flycatcher in Caithness. — A pair of these birds
took up their quarters in our garden about the middle of
May. The male appeared first and remained four days.
Two days after it disappeared the female put in an appear-
ance, but did not remain. Messrs. J. A. Ilarvie-Brown
and T. E. Buckley, in their "Fauna of Sutherland and
Caithness," say : " The first known to have occuiTcd in
the county was obtained by ourselves in a very wild burn
some eight or nine miles from Brora on the 27th of May,
1872." Now this appears to be a mistake, because in
May, 1867, I shot and preserved a pair, male and female,
which they notice on the next page from Mr. Osborne's
MS. On May 10th, 1881, I again saw several specimens,
one of which I preserved. — James Suthekland, Wick.
Ked-backed Shkike IX Caithness. — A pair of these birds,
obtained in the neighbourhood oj Wick on the 20th of May,
has been sent to me for preservation. In the " Fauna of
Sutherland and Caithness " it is stated : " One is recorded
as being in Dunrobin Museum, but there is no history
attached to it." A young bird of this species is in the
Duke of Portland's collection at Welbeck Abbey, but there
is no precise date or locality given beyond the general
statement that all the birds in the collection were shot on
the Duke's property in Caithness. A specimen of this bird
is mentioned by the late Dr. Sinclair, of Wick, as having
been killed in the county. — James Sutherland, Wick.
Protection of Birds in Scotland. — The question of
the protection of birds by law has again been under
consideration. In Scotland, as was foretold in the
appendix to the last annual report of the Society for
the Protection of Birds, an excellent proposal by Lord
Balfour of Burleigh is now before the various County
Councils of that country. The suggestion is to divide
Scotland into two districts, northern and southern, the
dividing line being the southern boundary of Argyll and
Perth (Bute and Arran to be included in the northern
division), and for the County Councils in each of these
areas to seek identical Orders under the Wild Bu-ds Pro-
tection Acts, so that all concerned can readUy make them-
selves acquainted with the provisions of the Orders in force
for the protection of birds and their eggs.
A list of thirty-two birds is given, which shows what
species shoiJd receive protection in hnth districts, and also
lists of the additioniil bkds which should be protected —
fifteen species in the northern and eleven in the southern
district.
Bird lovers will be glad to note that some species are
recommended for protection all the year round. Cannot
some of our ornithological friends help to draw up a
similar scheme for the grouping of coimties in England ?
The Home Secretary would no doubt welcome such a
scheme, were it presented in a practical form. — M. L. Lemon,
Hon. Sec. Society for the Protection of Birds, July 15th,
1898.
The Loti'-taiUd DucJc in Killala Bay and ihe Estuary of the
Moif. By Robert Warven. (/rwAjVa/umZi.^, May, 1898, pp. 121-124.)
— We have liere detailed accounts of tlie various occurrences of this
duck (uncommon in Ireland) in tlio districts named.
Mr. Robert Patterson records in the Irish Naturalist for July,
1898, p. 170, the following rarities which he believes have not been
before recorded : —
Rouyh-ler/ged Buzzard. — A male was shot at Portaffery, Co. Down,
on November 8th, 1W95.
Grei) Phil larope.— One was picked up at Ballymonev, Co. Antrim,
in October, 1896.
ITawfinch. — A male was shot at Hillsborough, Co. Down, on
December 30th, 1897.
The Whinchaf, Ortolan Bunfinff, and Pied Flycatcher in Shetland
(Annals of Scottish Natural Itistory, July, 1898, p. 178).— Mr.
W. E. Clarke here records the capture of the above species by Mr.
Thomas Henderson, jun., in Shetland, during a remarkable visitation
of migrants. All three species arc new to the avifauna of Shetland.
Marsh Harrier in Dumfriesshire {Annals of Scottish Natural
History. July, 1898, p. 182). — Mr. R. Service records that a male
Marsh Harrier (a very rare species in Scotland) was shot in Carmichael
early in May, 1898.
Ring Dove nesting in the City of Edinburgh {Annals of Scottish
Natural History, j'uly, 1898, p."l83).— Wliile so much attention has
lately been directed to the nesting of Wood Pigeons in London, it is
interesting to hear from Mr. Arch. Craig that a pair of these birds is
nesting in Edinburgh.
Oil Birds olserred in the Island of Tiree. By Peter Anderson
{Annals of Scottish Natural History, July, 1898, pp. 153-161).— This
is a hst of one hundred and twenty-eight species of birds observed on
Tiree during the author's twelve years' residence in the island.
On the nesting of the Pintail {Dafla acuta} in the Forth Area.
By William Evans, F.K.S.k. {Annals of Scottish Natural History,
.July, 1898. pp. 162-164). — Up to the time of the publication of tliia
article there were only two or three reliable records of the nesting of
the Pintail in the British Islands. It is, therefore, very satisfactory
and of the greatest interest to learn from Mr. Evans, in this careful
and incontrovertible report, that several pairs (perhaps six or seven)
of Pintails have nested this year on Loch Leven, in Kinross-shire.
Mr. Evans carefully identified the bii-ds which rose from the nests
he found, and even went so far as to hatch two of the eggs in an
incubator.
Woodchat Shrike in Sussex (Zoologist. June, 1898, p. 267). — Mr.
Or. W. Bradshaw records the occurrence of a male Woodchat near
St. Leonards-on-Sea on May 1st, 1898.
Hawfinch in Midlothian (Annals of Scottish Natural History,
April, 1898, p. 114).— Jlr. W. Eagle Clarke reports that ou March 9th
au adult female Hawfinch was picked up dead at Arniston. lu
Ausust. 1894, a j'oung Hawfinch was captured at the same spot, and
Mr, Clarke jjoints out that these two records are of great interest,
since the Hawfinch was fo^'uierly only regarded as a rare winter
visitor to Scotland. Although large and conspicuous, the Hawfinch
is of a shy nature and retiring habits, and a little further search may
result in adding the species to the list of birds which are resident in
Scotland.
Melodious Warblers in South-Easf Derail (Zoologist, June, 1898,
p. 2G5). — The Rev. Murray R. .Matliew describes how he watched
and listened to quite a number of Warblers, which lie identified as
Hypolnis polyglotta, in a wooded undercliff at Ware, near L>ine
Regis, in the beginning of May this year. Clear views of the birds
were obtained at the distance of a yard. The Melodious Warbler
very closely resembles the Icterine Warbler (see note. Knowledge,
November, 1897, p. 257).
All contributions to the column, either in the way of notes
or photographs, should be forwarded to Harry F. Witherby,
at 1, Eliot Place, Elackheath, Kent.
178
KNOWLEDGE.
[August 1, 1898.
"INSECT MINERS."
By Feed. Enock, f.l.s., f.b.s., etc.
INSECT miners, though somewhat rare in the " Black
Country," are only too plentiful in the London dis-
trict. Being no respecters of persons, they invade
even Royal gardens, where we find whole families
of them working together in the most orderly,
systematic, and determined manner. I might truthfully
say that thousands of these insects are brought into
London every morning by ship, road, or rail.
Let us take one of the favourite flowers of the Londoner
— the white Marguerite— a flower to be seen in every
street from Belgravia to Whitechapel. When the first
crop of flowers begins to fade, and the leaves are thus ex-
posed to view, those of us who have eyes for such things
can at once detect a peculiar appearance about the leaves.
Many of them are disfigured
with variously shaped yellow-
looking markings. Some peo-
ple imagine the plant to be
dying, and hasten its end by
consigning it to the dustbin.
Others wonder what is the
matter with their Marguerite,
and frequently set to work
and wash the plant — which is
a very good plan, as it invi-
gorates the growth, causing
new shoots to form as well as
buds, but it does not prevent
the miners going on with
their work, and even extend-
ing operations to the fresh
growth.
Some few years ago I was
privileged to conduct some
lectures on economic ento-
mology for the Essex County
Council, and was much en-
Fia. 1. - Golden Marguerite couraged to find some of my
affected with " the Maggot," J [ audience bringing various spe-
cimens of insect and plant
life which had attracted their attention. The beautiful
yellow Marguerite was brought suffering from " the black
fly," which the grower could not get rid of from many of
his old stock plants ; and no sooner had he started a fresh
stock for the
coming season
than this " fly "
made its appear-
ance, and, in many
instances, com-
pletely ruined the
plants for sale.
Fig. 1 is from a
photograph of one
of these afflicted
yellowMarguerites.
The plant has
scarcely a sound
spray of leaves —
nearly all being
"eaten up" by the "fly," or rather maggot of this injurious
insect. I bred a large number of P. aj/inis (Fig. 2) from
the golden Marguerite. It is a minute, two- winged fly about
one-twelfth of an inch in length, slatey black, with black
bristles on head and thorax ; the head is pale yellowish
brown, legs dark, with yellowish tips and halteres. It has
Fio.
1. — The Marguerite Fly [Plii/totni/za
affinis). ( X 12 Diameters.)
a decided objection to being watched, and some patience
is required to overcome the " now on the upper, now
on the lower " surface of the leaf; then, just when you
think you have it settled, it hops right away out of sight,
and you must wait for its return or seek another.
Much patience an^ some gentleness of movement will
be required before you succeed in observing its method of
oviposition. After selecting a spot on the upper surface
it protrudes the rasped point of its telescopic ovipositor,
which it forces through the upper cuticle ; and then between
that and the lower (Fig. 4) it inserts an egg of an oval form.
Withdrawing its ovipositor it rapidly reverses its position,
and protruding its tongue proceeds to hermetically seal up
with saliva the aperture made (Fig. 5). Numbers of eggs
are so laid in each leaf, great care being taken to carefully
seal up each one. The next day minute blisters appear
over the egg, which hatches on or about the fourth or fifth
day into a tiny legless maggot, our first representative of a
" miner " (Fig. C). Nature has taught it that it must
work for its hving, and being provided with the necessary
muscular power it immediately commences to use its
excavating tools, which are in its mouth (centre of Fig. 6).
With these tools it obtains nutriment, and at the same
time levers its way between the cuticles, the "working"
gradually though slowly increasing in width and length.
In the yellow Marguerite it is straighter than is the case
in the broader leaves of the white Marguerite, where it not
unfrequently follows the serrated margin of the leaf for a
distance of an inch or more. At other times the insect
works a somewhat tor-
tuous course across the
leaf, and occasionally,
after making a narrow
mine, it seems to hit
upon an exceedingly
nice-flavoured piece of
leaf, around and about
which it lingers and
makes a well-formed
harbour (Fig. 7). The
course of the mining
larva is marked by the
minute pellets of frass
which are plainly visible
through the bleached
upper cuticle (Figs. 7
and 8). In less than a
fortnight the miner has
finished its excavation ;
its work, so far as yia. 3. -Leaves of Oolden Marguerite,
mmmg is concerned, is showing Larrs of rht/tomyza affinis.
done, and its tools are (Natural size.)
no longer required. At
the head of the larva (left hand of Fig. 6) will be noticed
Fig. 4. — Marguerite Fly ovipositing in Leaf. ( \ 12 Diameters.)
two short prominences. These appear to be used as
AuousT 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE.
179
holdfasts, and are driven through the upper cuticle, and
the pupal stage is reached (Fig. 8), though sometimes
the larva quits the leaf and falls to the ground to undergo
this change. The fly is soon matured, and, bursting
through the dry larval skin, it emerges to continue its
species ; and under the artificial though favourable con-
ditions of plants kept and propagated under glass, numbers
of broods emerge in the course of each year.
Like all other insect " pests," it has its parasites — minute
and busy Hymenoptera, quite black in colour, which hover
about the infected leaves (Fig. 6), ever ready to attack the
larva and insert one of their own eggs in the body of the
miner {sei- Fig. 8).
When the parasitic maggot has reached its full growth
(and of course destroyed the maggot of the Marguerite
fly) it passes on to the pupa stage within the dried skin of
FxQ. 5. — Marguerite Fly sealing up|the Egg. ( x 12 Diameters.)
its host, which is now bleached to a light colour. The
enclosed black pupa of the parasite is now a conspicuous
object to even an ordinary observer, and care should be
taken not to destroy these Mack coloured ones. If growers
of Marguerites and other flowers would just note a few of
these apparently slight differences, a great deal of good
might be done towards increasing these parasites, which
are the natural enemies of the injurious maggots.
Another favourite flower
mwith everyone, especially
Londoners, is the chrysan-
themum ; and yet how very
few growers, amateur as well
as professional, know the fly,
Tnjpt'ta chn/santliemi, which
is the cause of the mining
maggot that excavates be-
tween the cuticles, eating all
r, „ T TT J ,r J-.. the Ufe away, until the leaves
FlO. 6. — Larra, Head of ditto, u- •_ i~ i. • i j r ii
and Pupa of Marguerite Fly. J'^g'." *° '^'?' ^P »°,^ ^^1>
( X 12 Diameters.) " leavmg the plant totally un-
fit for exhibition. The finger-
and-thumb treatment is the quickest way of destroying
the miner, which can easily be felt, if not seen ; but the
perfect insect is generally overlooked altogether. I own
that it is not a particularly easy one to capture, but it is
worth the attempt, as one female is capable of laying a
great number of eggs, distributed over one or two dozen
plants, and can easily blight all chances of prize-taking at an
exhibition. I have noticed the fly all through the summer
months, for there are several broods. Before the heat of
the day is the best time for observing it, and it is worth
observation, as, apart from the advantage of knowing
enemies from friends, the fly is an exceedingly interesting
one to watch. It is smaller than the ordinary house fly,
and of an ochreous colour ; its eyes of the most brilliant
shining green, which at certain angles appear golden red ;
its wings are ample, with several diffused spots on them.
In graceful movements of the wings few ilies can equal
this one. The wings are gently raised and lowered
together, then suddenly one is twisted at a peculiar angle,
whilst the insect itself walks round in a circle. Sometimes
the wings are allowed to drag along the leaves, after the
manner of a strutting turkeycock ; then they are suddenly
Fig. ".— Ege (Cuticle raised). Part of Mine, and Parasite of
Marguerite Fly. ( x 12 Diameters.)
raised high up together, and the fly seems to take fright
and run under cover, only to return and indulge in other
strange movements. Should one of the opposite sex
approach, these movements are increased, and quite defy
description. Those chrysanthemum growers who really
wish to capture these flies should use a small net, made of
Fig. S.— Continuation of Jline and I'lipa of Marguerite Fly, in
which Parasite is ovipositing. ( x 12 Diameters.)
fine book muslin, fixed on a ring of cane four inches in
diameter, the net of the jelly bag from about eight to ten
inches in length. With a little practice many flies can
be caught without injury to the plants. Observation of
the mines will soon reveal the parasite peculiar to this fly.
{To he continual.)
Noti(ts of iSooits.
Electro-Phydology. Vol. II. By W. Biedermann,
Professor of Physiology in Jena. Translated by Frances
A. Welby. (London : Macmillan ..t Co.) 173. net. We
have here a good translation of the second volume of a
standard work. The range of subjects treated is the best
evidence of the progress which has been made in this
branch of science since the inception of the subject by
Galvani's experiment in 1790, when, working at Bologna,
he observed the curious convulsive movements in the
muscles of a recently killed frog when touched at different
points by iron and copper which were in contact. The
volume before us, beginning with the electro-motive action
in vegetable cells, goes on to deal, in separate chapters,
with such subjects as the structure and organization of
nerve, the conductivity and excitability of nerve, the
electrical excitation of nerve, the electro-motive action in
180
KNOWLEDGE
[August 1, 1898.
nerve, electrical fishes, and the electro-motive action in
the eye. While the book is full of interesting experiments,
such examples as that with the uninjured leaf of DioniEa,
or, as it is more familiarly called, " Venus's fly trap " —
where, electrodes being applied to the opposite ends of
such a leaf, and a galvanometer included in the circuit,
a regular current flows from that end of the leaf nearest
to the stalk to the other — will perhaps appeal most to the
ordinary reader. The wonderful physiological properties
of certain fishes have been known and dreaded from the
earliest times. Francesco Redi showed in 1066 that this
mysterious power was, at all events in the electric ray,
associated with special organs, situated symmetrically on
both sides of the head. In the present volume we are
given an exhaustive account, profusely illustrated and
extending to upwards of a hundred pages, of the present
state of our knowledge of all these animals. For the
results of these and many other equally fascinating studies
we must refer to the iiook itself, which in the style of its
production is quite up to the high standard of excellence
one always associates with the names of its publishers.
Willkirn ^foon, LL.D., and his Work for the Blind.
By John Rutherford, m.a., n.n. (London : Hodder iV
Stoughton.) 58. Of the many systems of embossed
characters by means of which the blind are enabled to
read, that invented by Dr. Moon is undoubtedly the
simplest and most easily acquired. Not only is it suitable
for educating children who are blind, but it is also admir-
ably adapted for older people who have lost their sight.
In fact, it is in this respect that the system elaborated by
Dr. Moon stands pre-eminent. More than half of the
total number of persons who are unable to see are over
fifty years of age, and in a large number of these cases the
fingers have become hardened by manual labour, and the
sense of touch has lost much of its acuteness. These facts
make it impossible for such persons to master the more
elaborate systems which were previously in vogue ; and
when it is remembered that often the loss of sight is
attended by a more or less complete nervous collapse, it
will be seen that embossed alphabets based upon systems
of phonography are altogether unsuitable because of the
degree of concentration required to master them. Dr.
Moon's alphabet consists of only nine characters placed in
various positions. Thus, the character A stands for
A. K. V, X. in the varied positions of A < V > ■ Dr-
Moon himself became totally blind at the age of twenty-
one, and from that time devoted his life to the work of
lightening the darkness of his fellow-sufferers. His
perfected alphabet was the crowning point of a series of
less successful experiments, and was soon applied to the
production of books for the blind in a variety of foreign
languages, including even Chinese. But the education of
the blind was, in the hands of Dr. Moon, carried much
further than mere reading, for by means of an embossed
atlas of geographical maps and drawings in relief showing
the constellations, the solar system, phases of the moon,
eclipses, tides, etc., he gave evidence alike of his perse-
verance and ingenuity, and provided the blind with sources
of instruction and enjoyment. After so useful a career
we can partly understand the spirit which prompted Dr.
Moon when he said : " God gave me bhndness as a talent
to be used for His glory. Without blindness I should
never have been able to see the needs of the blind."
Ethnological Studies nmonijthe Xorth-West Cfutral Qmens-
land Aborigines. By Walter E. Roth, b.a., etc. (Brisbane :
E. Gregory.' London : Queensland Agent-General's Office.
1897.) It is satisfactory to be given this further evidence
of systematic inquiry into the language, customs, and
habits of Australian aboriginals. The spread of civilization
in these new countries inevitably results in the elimination
of the native races, and it becomes a positive duty of the
invaders to gather and record accurate information con-
cerning the superstitions, beliefs, and ceremonial rights of
the races they displace. This duty is fully recognized in
the United States, where the Bureau of Ethnology is
continuously employed in collecting and publishing similar
facts about the North American Indians. We are, there-
fore, glad to see this officially published contribution to
the ethnology of the natives of (^tueensland. Of course,
the first essential in conducting such an inquiry is the
confidence and trust of the aborigines in the expert
observer. In this respect Mr. Roth had unrivalled oppor-
tunities, and he seems to have made the most of them.
The book is filled with details of interest to anthropologists,
but a particular value is to be attached to the chapter on
the expression of ideas by manual signs. These are not
only fully described in the text, but are also illustrated by
a profusion of figures on several plates.
Text-Bool.- of Pliijxieiil I lientistry. By Clarence L. Speyers.
(New York : D. van Nostrand Company. London : E. &
F. N. Spon.) 7s. Od. Physical chemistry, though a
subject of distinctly modern growth, has become a very
important branch of science, scarcely a day passing without
some new development of it. But though it is a com-
paratively new subject, there are certain fundamental ideas
in physical chemistry which will not suffer change, and
these Mr. Speyers has put into his book, thou|,'h some
theories have been included which will almost certainly
have to be modified. The book is intenderl for senior
students, and should prove useful in those advanced
chemistry courses where it can be fairly assumed that an
efficient mathematical knowledge is part of the student's
intellectual stock-in-trade. The non-existence of working
hypotheses connecting light energy and so-called chemical
energy, has decided the author to omit any reference
to Ught relations and crystallography. The historical
development of the subject has, we think wisely, been
disregarded whenever the clear presentment of the subject
has been thereby aided. The excellent series of problems
scattered throughout the volume will, if conscientiously
worked, prove of particular value to the student.
SHORT NOTICES.
The Arrangement of Atom's in Space. By J. H. Tan't Hoff. Second
Edition. (Ijongiuans.) 6s. 6d. Organic compounds of similar
formulae do not always possess the same properties. For example,
tartaric acid exists in different forms, yet the formula of each modi-
fication contains exactly the same number of atoms. To explain this
and similar cases, a new branch of organic chemistry has arisen,
called " sterco-isomerism." The author says, in the introduction to
the book before us, tliat " the facts compel us to explain the differ-
ence between isomeric molecules possessing the same structural
formula; by the different arrangement of their atoms in space " — a
conception of atoms which is essentially a continuation of Kekule's
law of tetravalent carbon. A preface is added by Prof. Wislicenus,
who, by the way, states that the opposition to the theory is directed
against special applications of the principle to explain particular facts,
and not against the general principle itself. A new section has been
added by Alfred Werner on nitrogen compounds, and the whole is
admirably presented in English by the translator — Arnold Eiloart.
Tlie Year-Book of British Columbia. By R. E. Gosnell. (British
Columbia Government Agency.) We have in this handy volume a
multitude of facts respecting the material resouives, and the historical,
political, and sociological character of British Columbia, the whole
forming a vade mecnm of information concerning the province, so
compiled as to anticipate all references of a practical nature. At
the present time many peo})le are anxious to obtain exact knowledge
respecting mining in the great Xorth-West, and it will, perhaps, be
welcome news to those who contemplate enteqirises of this kind when
we say that here are to be found mining statistics up to date, luining
laws — including the Yukon mining regulations— agi'iculture, trade
August 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE
181
and finance, outfitting and expenses, and so on, all well authentieated
in every pivrticulai- — explicit details, definite conditions, actual results.
Life Histories of American Insects. By Clarence Moores Weed.
(Macmillan.) Illustrated. 6s. net. Consists of a series of able
sketches of a few of the principal American insects, profusely illus-
trated witli lirst-rate diagrams and plates To entomologists this
booli will, we think, form a useful aciiuisition, and general readers who
occasionally indulge in light scieni-'e may liope for both information
and amusement by a perusal of these bright and stimulating pages.
Xatiire Studies in Ulemenfari/ Schools. By Mrs. Lucy Wilson,
rn.D. (lIaon\illun.) Illustrated. 3s. 6d. Mrs. Wilson has de-
signed a book which aims at imparting to teachers a method of
conveyin; instruction in a way that must prove both amusing and
interesting to all grades of children. The book is divided into months,
and for each month full particulars are set down as to the subjects
of instruction; the curriculum including weather, plants, animals,
fruits and stones, varying according to the period of the year at which
the lessons are supposed to be given.
BOOKS RECEIVED.
Practical Ori/anic Chemistry. Bv Samuel Rideal, D.sc. Second
K lition. (H. K. Lewis.) 23. 6d.
The Birds of Montreal. Bv Ernest D. Wintle. (John Wheldon
& Co.)
A Text-Booh of Zoology. By H. G. Wells and A. M. Davies.
(Clive.) Illustrated, tis. 6d.
Financial SietcJtes. By Helene Gingold and Dudley Hardy.
(Columbus Printing, Publishing, and .Vdvertising Co.) lUustnited. is.
Stepping/ Stones to Literature. By Surah Louise Arnold and Chas.
B. Gilbert. (Sliver, Burdett, & Co.)'
IHreclorii (revised to June, 189SJ, irilh Segulations for establishing
and conducting Science and Art Schools and Classes. (Spottis-
woode.) tid.
On Sea Beaches and Sandbanks. By Vaughan Cornish, si.sc.
(Reprinted from the Geographical Journal.)
Archives of the SOntgen Sag. Edited by W. S. Hcdley, M.D., and
Sydney Rowland, M.A. Vol. II., No. 4. (The Rebman Publishing
Co.) Illustrated. 43. net.
Erttfrs.
[The Editors do not hold themselves responsible for the opinions or
statements of correspondents.]
SUNSPOTS.
To the Editors of Knowledge.
Sirs, — In a letter of Mr. Shackleton'a in the May
issue of Kno\vlei>i;e (p. 113), he quotes the late E. A.
Proctor as confirming a theory of refraction lately
advanced by Mr. East, and illustrateil by him by the
familiar old experiment of a bowl of water with a penny
at the bottom of it ; and in the concluding paragraph of
his letter he seems to consider that this theory is therefore
a settled matter, which ought to have found its way into
recent books treating on the subject as an accepted view
of one of the phenomena of sunspots.
I cannot help thinking that Mr. Shackleton attributes
rather too much importance to the few words said by
Proctor in the passage alluded to in " Old and New
Astronomy." He is not discussing the visibihty of the
umbra in a foreshortened spot ; he does not mention it or
allude to it in any way, here or anywhere else, except by
a few words in a short note, after he had made his draw-
ing for a totally different purpose. He is describing the
manner in which he imagines a sunspot to be formed, and
he gives a sketch of what he conceives would be the section
of a spot according to this view. It must have struck him
that, if this section was a true one, it would be impossible
to see the umbra at all when a spot was foreshortened ;
and he then suggested the idea of refraction as a means of
bringing the umbra into view. Surely this theory requires
a little more discussion and explanation than a few words
added casually in a note. It is hardly one to be accepted
as if it was the most obvious thmg in the world, which
only had to be stated to be received without a shadow of
doubt as to its truth.
I do not therefore think that Proctor intended to lay
down this theory for general acceptance upon bis authority,
as one thoroughly examined and deliberately adopted by
him. However that may be, it is clear that this theory is
only needed if the section of a spot drawn by Proctor is a
true one. Js the umbra something at the bottom of a
cavity, which requires, in a foreshortened spot, to be
brought into view by refraction like the penny in the bowl
of water ? I maintain that it is not, but that, on the con-
trary, the umbra ia more or less on a level with the outer
v_ ,^/
FlQ. 1. — Ideal Section of a Sunspot.
_J
edge of the penumbra. I did not adopt this view hastily,
or merely as a way out of a difficulty, but only after having
bestowed a good deal of attention to the matter. It was
only after having spent some time on every available day
for some months, carefully observing and drawing every
spot that occurred, that the conclusion forced itself slowly
and irresistibly upon me, in opposition to what I had
before imagined to be the generally accepted view — that
the umbra, instead of being a hole at the bottom of a
Fig. 2. — Changes in the Appearance of a Sinnmetrical
Spot due to foreshortening.
depression, was in reality on a general level with the top of
it. My idea is that at the edge of the penumbra there is at
first a considerable depression, which continues for a certain
distance towards the centre, and that the surface then rises
gradually into a cone, the open top of which is the umbra.
Fig. 3. — A Group of Sunspots on the First Day after
passing the East Limb. May 6th.
I take it to be impossible to draw any true section of a
sunspot, and the outline I have drawn is only intended to
show my meaning in the roughest and most general
manner. If, then, the umbra is, as I imagine, the open
stummit of a cone, its circumference would form a ring
with a dark centre (I am taking the case, of course, of an
ordinary symmetrical spot), while the edge of the penumbra
182
KNOWLEDGE.
[August 1, 1898.
would form an outer ring ; and as long as any portion of
the inside of one ring was visible, the same amount would
be visible of the other. It follows, then, from this view
that there is no necessity to fish up the umbra by refraction
from the bottom of a spot. As to its possibility, I am in
no way competent to form an opinion ; but as regards the
illustration given in support of the theory, I fancy that a
pair of bellows brought to bear upon the surface of the
water in the bowl would obliterate the image of the penny
at the bottom of it, just in the same way as a very slight
ripple coming upon the surface of calm water instantly
renders all objects invisible at the bottom : and, considering
what the eruptive force must be which produces a sunspot,
and the violence of the movements which must be going
on among the gases and vapours within its area, the con-
ditions do not seem favourable to the transmission of an
image by refraction.
There is, however, another point which has always
seemed to me to require some explanation, viz., the rapidity
with which a spot opens out when still but a short distance
from the limb — more observable in some cases than in
others. I have often been surprised to find that a spot
which was little more than a mere line on one day had
opened out within twenty-four hours to a degree that I did
Fig. 4.— a Group of Sunspote on the Second Day after passing the
East Limb. May 7th.
not know how to account for. It has sometimes occurred
to me whether refraction could have anything to do with
it ; not refraction, however, within the spot itself, but that
of the sun's atmosphere, as we are, in this case, looking
along the surface of the sun for an immense distance, and,
consequently, through the greatest possible amount of his
atmosphere. The two drawings are very rough copies of
drawings of spots showing the extent to which a spot
opened out from one day to another after its first appear-
ance on the east limb. J. H. Jenkinson.
Ocklye, Crowborough, May 23rd, 1898.
[The context of the passage from Proctor's " Old and New
Astronomy," quoted by Mr. Shackleton, fully supports Mr.
Jenkinson's suggestion that Proctor's reference to refraction
in sunspots was a mere casual incident in his argument.
The point he is really discussing is whether sunspots have
their origin from below or above, and he supports the
former view with all his usual insight and masterly grasp
of principles. On the other hand, as he works out his
idea, he shows how slight was his personal observational
experience. The sharp well-detined circular outline is far
more characteristic of the western than of the eastern
border of spots, and decay in spot groups, in the great
majority of instances, begins to the eastward and works to
the front. To my own mind a sunspot appears a region of
upheaval — an upheaval which results in a breach in the
glowing shell we call the photosphere, and a smaller breach
in the less brilliant shell below it which forms the
penumbriE of spots. I regard the photosphere in the
neighbourhood of a spot, the penumbra, and the umbra, as
probably all convex to the general level of the sun's
surface ; the amount of convexity probably varies immensely
in dififerent spots. — E. Walter Maunder.]
THE ECLIP.SE THEORY OF VARIABLE STARS.
To the Editors of Knowledge.
SiBs, — The title of Colonel Markwick's paper seems to
me somewhat misleading. The theory referred to does
not embrace all variable stars, but a class only.
My object in writing is, however, a dififerent one. Your
able contributor seems to assume that the surface-bright-
ness of stars is uniform. In the case of the sun we know
that this is not true. Near the edge the brightness is
not more than one-seventh of what it is near the centre.
This fact seems to be satisfactorily explained by the
assumption of a solar atmosphere, which there are other
grounds for believing. Assuming that Algol is similarly
constituted and that the satellite (Bi was quite dark, still
the light would not be constant from the time that the
whole of the satellite got in front of the bright star (A)
until it began to move oflf again. The minimum would
occur when the satellite occupied the most central position
in front of the bright star. If the eclipse was central it
would occur when the centres of both stars were in the
line of sight.
I think it very probable that in these cases the eclipsing
body is not quite dark. If the satellite of Sirius crossed
the face of the bright star, the phenomena would probably
be undistinguishable from those caused by the passage of a
dark satellite. One thing, at all events, seems certain.
"\\'e know of no instance in which the eclipse is total ; but
on the assumption of a dark companion, it would be natural
to expect that its surface would be smaller than that of
the bright star, and that therefore the eclipse would not
in any event be total.
Further, the eclipsing body may not be a star, but a
dense cloud of meteors. In many cases we are driven to
the conclusion that, if it be a star, its density is very small
in spite of its opacity and comparatively low temperature.
The sun's motion in space must ultimately afifect these
eclipse stars, though our periods of observation may not
hitherto have been long enough to detect the change. In
almost every instance the eclipse must be becoming either
greater or less. In the former case the duration of the
change will become greater and the difference between the
maximum and minimum wiU become greater also. In
the latter case the eclipse will become less and less until
it disappears altogether. Of course, where the eclipse is
now increasing it will ultimately decrease again after
becoming central ; and no doubt eclipses will hereafter
appear in the case of. stars whose light is at present con-
stant. Spica Virginis is very possibly such a star. Either
it has been an eclipse variable in the past, or else it will
become so in the future. WHS Monck
h'lioirledi/c.
ARTIFICIAL AND NATURAL FACUL^.
A. -Artificial raculfp with part of Overhanging Pulp removed,
showing an Ordinary Spot.
D. — FaculiB taken witli Prof. Hale's Speetro-heliograph, at Kenwood
Ohservatorv, July lltli. 1893, at 10 a.m.
.^4
B. -Large Patoli of Artificial Faculae.
E.— Faculic taken on Julv 13ch, 1893, at s a.m.
C.— Tlie same as li, but with part uncovered, showing Spot belo
F.— Faculn? taken August 7th, 1893, at :
August 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE.
183
To the Editors of Knowledge.
Sirs, — Colonel Markwick, in his interesting paper on
variable stars, is at pains to reconcile bis flat curves at
minimum with tbe real ones. This would be easily ex-
plained by supposing the nearer star imt to pass centrally
over the other, but so that its upper or lower edge
coincided or overlapped its primary. Then the slightest
movement to left or right would reduce the occulting area.
It would be interesting to calculate curves for bodies of
equal size, but only partially occulting one another.
The whole subject suggests in the future a wonderful
widening of the harvest of fact. Harold Whichello.
HOOKED PROCESS ON BEES' MANDIBLES.
To the Editors of Kno^nxedge.
Sirs, — In Knowxedge, October, 1895, appeared a letter
and sketch of a hooked process on the mandible of the bee
{Apis melirica). In the succeeding number, Mr. T. A.
Cowan wrote asserting that they were not hooks, but hairs,
and pointing out that they were correctly figured in his
book on the honey bee. This is rather ancient history,
but my excuse for referring to the subject after so long an
interval is that immediately after the publication of my
letter I was laid on my back by a long illness, which for
a long time after recovery prevented the use of my micro-
scope. I have now taken up the subject again. I have
asked the opinion of several gentlemen of authority as
entomologists — among others, Mr. Fred. Enock, whose most
interesting papers are now appearing in your columns — and
they endorse my view that the objects imder discussion
are hooks and not hairs. I have carefully examined
Mr. Cowan's book, and I find that they are not liijiircd there,
neither is any reference made to them, inclining me and
others to think that Mr. Cowan has mistaken the hairs
that fringe the mandible for the hooks that are placed on
the buttress of chitine that bridges the concavity of the
mandible. They are so specialized that Mr. Enock says
that they must have some very practical use (I suggested
in my letter that they might be used in clustering), but at
present that use is a mystery. Sir John Lubbock was
kind enough to inform me that he had not previously
noticed them, and had no idea of their utility ; so that
perhaps I may, though with the humbleness of the tyro, be
permitted to claim that I was the first to call attention to
these interesting microscopic objects, all the more remark-
able for having remained so long unnoticed on an insect
so closely studied as the hive bee. Walter Wesche.
ARTIFICIAL FACUL^.
By the Rev. Arthur East.
AN article appeared in the December and April
Numbers of Knowledge giving an account of some
experiments made with paper pulp in order to
illustrate a theory of the formation of sunspots.
It is proposed in the present article to apply the
same method to faculie.
It had long been almost necessarily supposed that the
facul», as the bright rifts and ridges seen on the edge of
the sun are called, extended really over the whole spot-
zone surface of the sun ; but it was reserved for Prof. Hale
actually to photograph them with his spectro-heliograph
in localities extending across the whole disc, where, tele-
scopically, faculse are invisible.
A delightful account of this triumph of photography is
given in Sir Robert Ball's " Story of the Sun"; and by the
kindness of Prof. Hale, now at the Yerkes Observatory,
I am enabled to illustrate this article with three of the
remarkable pictures of the solar surface taken with the
spectro-heliograph of the Kenwood Observatory in Chicago.
What will immediately strike anyone accustomed only
to the telescopic appearance of spots is the chiudij aspect of
the solar surface, and the absence of the clearly cut, crisp
outline of the spots to which he is accustomed, but an
aspect which the artificial spots (as may be seen) very
faithfully reproduce ; this cloudy appearance is not due, I
believe, to any imperfection of the photograph, but to the
faoulic being so much more evident. We seem to see here
cloudy masses of vast extent lifted high above the surface
of the photosphere, and bright because lifted beyond the
" fog or smoke stratum " of the sun (an expression of Prof.
Hastings, endorsed by Prof. Young, and most consoling to
the Londoner).
There is one most instructive feature in the spectro-
heliographs here given, viz., that there are several pairs
of spots visible — not circular, but elliptical, and with the
appearance of being, as it were, bafk to hack, as if the spots
were openings on opposite flanks of a vast tumulus ; and
looking as though, were the overlying mass to be removed,
a single orifice would be disclosed underneath.
And it also very clearly appears from these pairs of spots
that the penumbra being widest on the eastern edge of a
spot which is passing off the limb, is no argument against
the Wilsonian theory of depression, but may be due to
the spot being crateriform, or an elevated depression, as
suggested in a former article.
Now, this lifting of the photosphere into facul* is pre-
cisely what we frequently get with the artificial spots, as
Fig. B may help to show. When the heat is applied, often,
instead of any spot appearing, flooculent masses rise, and
are, moreover, remarkably permanent — a characteristic
feature of faculm according to Prof. Young : the heated
water meanwhile escapes at the sides of the upheaved
mass ; but, if the mass be removed, an ordinary spot is
found below (Figs. A and C).
There is probably no doubt now remaining that faculfe
are very closely related to spots ; spots are apparently
always accompanied by facuhp, although faculse often occur
without spots, but the particular nature of the relationship
is not known.
The behaviour of artificial faculas — as Figs. A, B, and C
wiU show — ^suggests that the faculse are really masses of
condensed vapour which ovirhawj ami conceal the spots, and
that in many cases, if not in most, if the faculm are
dispersed an ordinary spot will be disclosed. Thus Fig. A
shows two patches of faculae, but one is uncovered to
show the spot below ; Fig. B, again, is a larger mass of
artificial facuh^. After this photograph was taken, the
overhanging mass was gently removed in one place, and
Fig. C was taken, to show the ordinary spot below. The
relationship between facuLe and spots would thus be
exceedingly close, the suggestion being that wherever
faculfe are seen there also are corresponding spots below,
from which the vapours forming the faculre are being, or
have been, ejected ; that in certain conditions of the solar
atmosphere, as in our terrestrial atmosphere, these con-
densed vapours are reabsorbed or dispersed, and the open
spot (if it may be so termed) disclosed ; but that at other
times the vapours are not so dispersed, and continue to
overhang the spot from which they come, entirely con-
cealing it, and appearing as part of the photosphere, except
to the eye of the spectro-heliograph.
If this be so, and facul;^ in all cases have spots below
them, it would explain very simply the extreme rapidity
with which large spots at times appear ; they are, in fact,
uncovered. The telescope shows, perhaps, a disc entirely
184
KNOWLEDGE
[AususT 1, 1898.
plain and free from spots, ignoring faculje which it is
unable to show. Meanwhile the spots may be there con-
cealed by faculcB, until some violent disturbance scatters
the faculaQ and the spot is suddenly revealed.
Faculnc would be, according to the view here expressed,
identical with the photosphere, being only solar clouds at
a higher level, but distinct from the prominences, although
closely associated with them.
[Kindly allow me to say that, when writing the article
on sunspots which appeared in the April Number of
Knowledge, I was quite unaware of the passage from the
late R. A. Proctor's " Old and New Astronomy," and of
his ideal section of a sunspot, quoted by Mr. Wm.
Shackleton, or I should certainly have referred to it ; but
I am grateful to Mr. Shackleton for drawing attention to
the passage. — Akthcr East.]
THE OBJECTIVE PRISM, THE FLASH, AND
THE REVERSING LAYER.
By E. Walter Maunder, i-.r.a.s.
WITHIN the last few years a special form of
spectroscope has come largely into public
notice. Readers of Knowleuge need only
refer back to the number for March, 1897, and
they will there find, opposite page 78, six
beautiful photographs of stellar spectra. These, as Mr.
Fowler has fully explained in the article which accompanies
the plate, were taken with what is now usually called a
" prismatic camera " — that is to say, a photographic
telescope before the object glass of which a prism or train
of prisms had been placed. In effect this formed the
posterior half of a giant spectroscope, the anterior — the slit
and collimator — being absent. The slit was not needed, as
the star is itself but a point of light, as minute as the
narrowest slit ; the collimator was not necessary, as the
rays of light from the star were already parallel when they
reached the prism. The prism and view-telescope, there-
fore, were all that in this case were required.
The spectrum of a star with such an instrument is a
very narrow line ; a broken line whose vacant spaces
represent the dark Fraunhofer lines that we see in the
solar spectrum. Such a broken line would be too narrow
for useful work, but by causing the telescope to move at
a slightly different rate from that of the star the latter
can be made to " trail," and thus the spcitrum may be
broadened out to any requireil extent. As will be seen by
reference to the plate in question, a star spectrum so
obtained looks exactly like the spectrum given by an
ordinary slit spectroscope.
But this instrument is quite suitable for other kinds of
work, and its recent revival as an eclipse instrument, by
Sir Norman Lockyer, has shown it to be, taken all round,
our most powerful instrument for e<lipse research.
But the appearance of the spectra of an echpse with a
prismatic camera is quite different from the spectra to
which we are ordinarily accustomed. If we look through
a prism at the young moon when she first sets her thinnest
silver crescent in the western sky, we shall see a spectrum
like that which an ordinary slit spectroscope will give us,
but with one great difference : the dark lines would no
longer be straight, but would be semicircles. All the
chief lines so familiar to us in the ordinary I'raunhofer
spectrum would be there, but instead of each being an
image in negative of a straight narrow slit, each is an
image in negative of the slender arch of the moon itself.
Exactly in the same way, if we watch through a prism the
coming on of an eclipse of the sun, we shall see, shortly
before totality, when the encroaching dark disc of the moon
has reduced what is left of the sun to a thin crescent-like
arc, a spectrum with the Fraunhofer lines all circular arcs ;
images m negative, that is to say, of the little strip of sun
still uneclipsed, instead of the straight lines with which
the ordinary sht spectroscope has made us familiar. In
other words, we shall see spectra precisely like the first
and last of the splendid series of photographs which Mr.
Evershed gave us in the June Number.
So far the matter is very plain, but just before second
contact the state of affairs becomes much more complicated.
It may appear a very obvious truism to say that, at any
moment during the eclipse, the spectrum which we obtain
is the spectrum of that bright object which is exposed to
our view at that moment, but it is a fact which has to be
very clearly kept in mind. In a slit spectroscope, the slit
is the source of light, for no other light is admitted to the
spectroscope except that which comes through the slit.
The slit may not be fully illuminated, and, in such a case,
it is only the lighted part of the slit which is the source of
our spectrum. But here, with a prismatic camera directed
towards an eclipse in progress, the source of light is the
whole of the phenomena — sun, chromosphere, prominences,
and corona — that at the moment of observation remain
uncovered by the dark body of the moon.
The accompanying diagram (Fig. 1) may serve to show
just what it is which forms our source of light at the instant
before second contact. Let the arc C A B D represent the
dark approaching limb of the moon. The arc A K B
represents the limb of the sun, and, as we see, only a very
narrow segment of sunlight remains stUl disclosed. Be-
yond the sun's limb, however, there is a gaseous envelope
of which the chromosphere forms a part. For the sake of
distinctness I have supposed this envelope to consist of
two strata, an upper and a lower, and we may consider the
former as representing the chromosphere, the latter as
representing the " flash."
What is the appearance of the spectrum at this moment ?
The small arc of sunlight still remaining gives us, of
course, a continuous spectrum, and it will be seen that
this continuous spectrum must narrow very fast as the
actual moment of totality comes on. This narrowing strip
of continuous spectrum is of course crossed by the Fraun-
hofer lines, each of which is of the same general shape as
the little arc of sunlight. But above and below this arc
of sunlight we find the dark limb of the moon bordered
only by the gaseous envelope. At the point of the cusps,
and a little beyond, we have both strata, but the lower
becomes narrower and narrower, and terminates at C and
D. The upper stratum can be traced further still, until
it, too, is cut off by the lunar limb at E and F.
These arcs, then, AC, CE, and BD, DF, being arcs
simply of glowing gas, give us bright-Hne spectra. The
elements contained in each region will each give its own
spectrum of bright lines, and these bright lines will each
supply an image of the region over which that particular
element is found. Above and below the continuous
spectrum, therefore, with its arched Fraunhofer lines, we
find a bright-line spectrum of tapering horns of light of
different lengths, and we see at once that the length of any
j arc is an index of the height above the sun to which
that particular bright line can be traced.*
As the fateful instant approaches, the continuous spec-
trum narrows faster and faster ; the bright horns above and
* It does not, however, follow that the gas giving rise to the line
extends right from the sun's surface up to this height. It may simply
exist as a thin shell at the height thus determined. The different
effects in the two eases are not considered here.
August 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE
186
below multiply and extend ; and just at the last moment
before totality is accomplished the continuous spectrum
is invaded by a number of dark longitudinal lines, resem-
bling the "dust lines " in an ordinary slit spectroscope.
The edge of the moon is of course somewhat rugged, and
here and there a mountain peak or range will project right
across the thread of sunlight which remains, and interrupt
the continuous spectrum at that point. But the effect
is not quite that of an ordinary " dust line," for if
the mountain, as at G, cuts out the sunlight, it does
not cut out the gaseous envelope above. This is free,
therefore, to yield its own bright-line spectrum, and
consequently we see our " dust line " sparkling out here
and there into stars of coloured light. H is an instance
where a lunar mountain hides the lower gaseous spectrum,
and allows us only to see the upper. P, again, is the
summit of a prominence which appears quite detached
from the sun, since its base is hidden by the moon. It
— a most wondrous and beautiful sight, be its explanation
what it may.
The " flash " was first seen by Prof. C. A. Young in
the eclipse of 1870, with a slit spectroscope attached to a
telescope, the slit being placed as a tangent to the limb of
the sun at the point of second contact. As he watched he
saw the ordinary solar spectrum gradually fade away, and
" all at once, as suddenly as a bursting rocket shoots out its
stars, the whole field of view was filled with bright lines."
It win be seen, then, that this " bursting rocket " is but a
stage in a process that has been going on for some time.
It began at an early stage in the eclipse with the appear-
ance at the cusps of the bright arcs of H and K, of hydrogen,
and of helium, and these arcs have been multiplying right
up to the moment of totality ; but the final outburst is so
instantaneous, and brings so great a number of lines into
view, that it seems to stand out Uke a new phase in the
phenomenon. To vary the image, hydrogen, helium, and
Fig. 1. — Diagram to illustrate the appearance and meaning of the Spectrum of an Eclipse, just before totality, as obtained with
a Prismatic Camera. Tlie left-hand figure represents the portiou of the Sun and its Atmosphere still visible b';yond the black disc
of the advancins Moon ; the right-hand figure the corresponding Spectrum. Lines a and d are supposed to be lines common to the
Sun, the " Flash," and the Chromosphere ; lines h and c are common to the Sun and the " Flash " ; line e is seen only in the Solar
Spectrum as a dark line.
therefore shows itself in the spectrum by a row of tiny
colovired images of itself, shining like stars, quite detached
from the remainder of the spectrum. In most prominences
these will be the lines of hydrogen, helium, and the
celebrated H and K lines.
The crisis is at hand ; the interruptions, which I have
likened to "dust lines," multiply and broaden. The inter-
vening continuous spectra are worn down to thinnest
threads, then snap and vanish, and totality has come.
The tiny stars which broke up the " dust lines ' flash out
as a long sequence of little arcs of colour, and shine for a
second, or perhaps two, ere the encroaching dark limb of
the moon covers the stratum to which they belong and
hides them from us. That brief, brilliant glimpse of little
bright-line arcs is what is known as the "flash" — the
" so-caUed flash," as certain over-cautious writers have
termed it, in the spirit of him who censured the manners
of this "so-called nineteenth century." " Flash " it is
calcium might be likened to the three performers in a trio,
and now, as at the descent of the conductor's baton, they
have been joined by the complete chorus.
The "flash," then, represents a shallow stratum of
glowing gases immediately surrounding the sun. The
height to which any particular gas can be traced can be
determined in three ways. First, by the length of the
bright-line arc beyond the cusp which it shows at any
particular moment ; nest, by the length of time that the
moon takes to hide the stratum ; third, by the extent to
which a given lunar mountain may interrupt the lines of
the gas at a particular moment. In one way or another we
find that, roughly speaking, the " flash" corresponds to a
stratum of some seven hundred miles in depth.
When Prof. Young first saw the " flash " he considered
that the bright lines seen by him corresponded with the
ordinary Fraunhofer lines, and he remarks that though
" it would be very rash, on the strength of such a glimpse.
186
KNOWLEDGE,
[AufiUBT 1, 1898.
to assert with poaitiveness that these innumerable lines
corresponded exactly with the dark lines of the spectrum,"
yet that the general appearance and grouping of the lines
in the spectrum seemed perfectly familiar to him. Mr. Pye,
who observed the same eclipse and also saw the ■" flash,"
says that the effect was "as if all the dark lines were
converted into bright ones."
Spectroscopists have, as a rule, been content to accept
the "flash" as in ail probability practically a reversal
of the Fraunhofer lines. Sir Norman Lockyer, whilst
objecting to it, thus clearly states the ordinary view as to
the " reversing layer " ; —
(1) We have terrestrial elements in the sun's atmosphere.
(2) They thin out in the order of vapour density, all
being represented in the lower strata, since the tempera-
ture of the solar atmosphere at the lower levels is incom-
petent to dissociate them.
(3) In the lower strata we have especially those of
higher atomic weight, all together forming a so-called
"reversing layer," by which chiefly the Fraunhofer spec-
trum is produced. (" Chemistry of the Sun," p. 303.)
It follows that, on this view, the spectrum of the base of
the solar atmosphere should most resemble the ordinary
Fraunhofer spectrum {ibiiL, p. 306). In 1K73, however,
Prof. Lockyer was led to take an entirely different view,
and he was convinced " that the absorption took place at
various levels above the photosphere." (" Recent and
Coming Eclipses," p. 99.) " On this latter hypothesis, the
different vapours exist normally at different distances
above the photosphere, according to their powers of
resisting the dissociating effects of heat." It follows that
" the spectrum of the base should least resemble the
Fraunhofer spectrum, because at the base we only get
those molecules which can resist the highest temperatures."
The immense importance of the spectrum of the " flash "
becomes at once apparent. Upon its characteristics and
upon their interpretation stand or fall our whole con-
ceptions of the chemical constitution of the sun. For the
" flash" is the revelation of the spectrum of the base of
the sun's atmosphere within the limits of the powers of
our present instruments. A depth of seven hundred
miles is an enormous one in any atmosphere, and especially
in that of the sun, and must include a vast range of
conditions, both of pressure and temperature ; but we
are at present compelled to treat it as an indivisible
integer. Keeping this fact in view, that the seven
hundred miles of depth of the " flash " stratum must
include a great number of very distinct minor strata
of which only the lowest can, on the old hypothesis, be in
complete correspondence with the Fraunhofer spectrum, it
is clear that we can test the rival claims by watching
whether or no, as totaUty comes on, the ever-increasing
bright horns which appear above and below the con-
tinuous spectrum are the reversals of the dark Fraimhofer
arcs. On the old hypothesis, the multiplying bright lines
should ever be approaching complete correspondence with
the Fraunhofer spectrum up to the moment of commence-
ment of full totality ; on Lockyer's hypothesis, they should
ever be diverging further from it. The conditions of
observation preclude us at present from following out the
process to its minutest and final detail. All we can do —
and it is sutt'cient — is to mark in which direction the
tendency lies.
It is this question of the direction of progress which is
the crucial one — whether, as we get nearer the base of the
solar atmosphere, the bright-line spectrum becomes more
and more, or less and less, accordant with the Fraunhofer
spectrum. It is not a question of establishing a complete
and exact correspondence. That we could not expect.
Nor is it a question of the relative intensities of the
lines. With that question we are not 3^et competent
to deal. It has been generally assumed (Sir Norman
Lockyer asserts it nakedly ) that the relative intensity of
the bright lines of the spectrum of any element in the
laboratory ought to be the same as that of those same lines
when dark in the Fraunhofer spectrum. Dr. .Johnstone
Stoney has recently reminded us how wholly unwarranted
this assumption is ; for if, as he puts it, we observe the
spectrum of some source of white light through a sodium
flame, and therefore see the D lines dark in a continuous
spectrum, and then increase the brilliance of the sodium
flame, we diminish the intensity of those dark lines.
Dr. Stoney also points out that a diflerence of intensity
between the bright-line and the dark-line spectrum may
be due to the gas being present in but very small quantities.
Thus the D.j line of helium is very brilliant as a bright
line in the chromosphere, but is normally absent as a dark
line from the spectrum of the disc. We cannot tell cer-
tainly whether this is due to the helium being so bright
as to emit as much light as it absorbs from the sun, or
whether it is so tenuous as practically to absorb nothing
when we look at the sun through it, and only reveals itself
at the limb in consequence of the vastly greater depth we
look through ; or a combination of the two factors may
supply the complete explanation. For myself, believing
as I do that any true solar atmosphere must be limited to a
very few miles above the photosphere, and that chromo-
sphere and prominences, however magnificent in appear-
ance, are of the last degree of tenuity, I am disposed to put
much stress upon the second suggestion. The phenomena
of comets' tails might remind us how brilliant and far
reaching a body may be without any real substance.
Indeed, the corona itself is a case in point. We look down
upon the sun day by day through millions of miles of
depth of its strange, complicated structure, and are not
able to recognize the faintest sign of its presence.
The " flash " past, the nest stage of the phenomenon is
one in which the prismatic camera still asserts its pre-
eminent usefulness. The corona, prominences, and chromo-
sphere, so far as these still lie outside the dark disc of the
moon, are now our source of light. The two latter give
us a bright-line spectrum only. The corona gives us a
bright-line spectrum plus a faint continuous one. We have,
then, still a number of bright arcs of different lengths in
the spectrum, and of different shapes ; for there is no
prominence, there is no elevation of the chromosphere,
however small, that does not give its own separate spectrum.
We find the counterfeit presentment of each painted over
and over again in each several tint that the lines of the
gases which compose it yield. One such photograph,
therefore, supplies us not with one spectrum, but with
many ; not with one representation of the chromosphere,
but many. Thus in Mr. Evershed's beautiful photographs,
taken during the total phase and reproduced in the June
Number, there is no point of light that is not significant,
no dot or line that has not its story to tell.
I trust that I have in the foregoing paper succeeded in
impressing upon my readers some of the advantages of
the prismatic camera. A further advantage is that by its
extreme simplicity it is most economical of light. It is
not, indeed, theoretically a suitable instrument for the
determination of wave-lengths. Practically, so many of
the lines seen in an eclipse being thoroughly well known,
* " The line least intense in the photograph ought to be the least
intense in Thalen's tables, and if it existed in the sun at all it ought
to be the least intense among the Fraunhofer lines." — "• Chemistrv of
the Sun," p. 231.
Au(;usT 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE
187
no great drawback attaches to it in this respect. In one
point, however, it is inferior to the slit spectroscope. If the
lines, say from a prominence, are broadened by increase
of temperature or pressure, or distorted or displaced by
Fig. 2.— To illustrate tlie relative extcuts of tlie fielils of view
of a Slit Spectroscope and a Prismatic Camera during an Eclipse.
The Prismatic Camera embraces the whole area of the pheno-
menon outside the dark disc of the moon. The Slit Spectroscope
only tlie minute portion of it under the slit. For observation of
the " Flash " the slit must be most exactly placed as at S S.
If outside the limb of the Sun, as at R R, the " Flash " will
be entirely missed ; if within, as at T T, only a very small
portion of it will be seen.
motion in the line of sight, such change in the shape of
the line is detected in the slit spectrum : it is confused, in
the spectrum with the prismatic camera, with the shape of
the prominence itself. Where both forms of instrument
can be used, the slit form of spectroscope should therefore
not be neglected. If, however, only one form can be
employed, and a choice between the two is allowed, then
it would be simple folly to prefer the form of the slit
spectroscope — with its limited field of view, and the risk
that a minute error of adjustment may shut out from it the
most important stage of the phenomena (Fig. 2) — before
that of the prismatic camera, with its instructive detail,
and its grasp of the eclipse in its entirety.
ALEXANDER GOODMAN MORE.
On the 22nd of March, 1896, Alexander Goodman More,
F.K.S.E., F.L.S., M.R.I. A., etc, sometlme Curator of the
Science and Art Museum, Dublin, passed away, aged about
sixty-five years. His life had been one of much suffering
and disappointment, owing to constant ill health, but was
and is most fruitful to others who can reap where he has
sown by patient study in the world of nature. Friends
have eagerly awaited the volume of More's "Life and
Letters," which is now before the public,* and proves to
be a perfect treasury of interesting facts and information
about birds, beasts, and butterflies — such a book as every
naturalist may be glad to possess, and will find himself
constantly referring to. Of the man himself this bio-
graphy will tell a stranger little ; a fact to be regretted, as
More's personality was singularly attractive and original.
Those who knew him well will not soon forget hia quaint
dry humour, his royal disdain of "shams" and double
dealing in every form, and his determination to secure
accuracy in the minutest details. His kindness and for-
bearance towards young naturalists were imfailing, but he
never allowed them to rejoice in the triumph of a new
" find " until it was absolutely verified by careful exami-
nation. More's own name will be best preserved by the
book " ( 'ybele Hibernica , ' ' which he prepared in collaboration
with the late Dr. Moore, of (llasnevin Botanic Gardens
(Dublin). Prof. Babington wrote " Hints " towards such a
work in 1B59, and one of my friend's latest efforts was to
correct the proofs of a re\nsed edition in 1893. This is now
a standard work upon Irish botany, but More also wrote a
goodly number of important magazine articles : " Studies
on the Birds and Flowers of the Isle of Wight," " On
Migration, Distribution, and Habits of Birds," etc., while
keeping up correspondence with Darwin, Babington, Dr.
Gimther (on -fishes), De Candolle, Newton, and others.
Yet he was never too busy to reply to the letters of old
friends, and I well remember the patience with which he
studied and triumphantly verified the lesser water lily
(Xuphiir int'imi-Uiim), discovered in one of his rambles
beside our lake. We grew tired at last of sending him so
many specimens of the plant in different stages of growth ;
but he persisted with his usual caution : " Verify, verify.
Better take trouble and be quit, sure." In spite of ill
health, and, in later years, lameness. More was an enthu-
siastic collector, and his discoveries added the names of
many plants to the list of British flora. I think the little
Xt'otinia intiutu was among his most valued " finds," but
Chant alojwruroiJi's, identified by Prof. Babington in 1864,
was also a special treasure. From 1867 to 1887 More
worked in the Dublin iluseum, first as Assistant, after-
wards as Curator ; and the improvements made during
those years must have been very great. He had pre-
eminently the power of drawing out what was useful in
others, and had soon an earnest band of collectors labouring
for him all over Ireland. As an example of the above we
note that in 1885 a White's thrush, a wood sandpiper,
and a spinous shark were secured for the Museum — all
rare, and the second a first specimen found in Ireland.
To record here even the most interesting of Mr. More's
captures would be impossible. We must refer our readers
to the biography for details. He never paraded his know-
ledge, never boasted of his success ; but as years go on
one feels that his patient accuracy will make his work
permanent, when the memory of more brilliant men has
faded away. C. Maud Batteesby.
* Edited by C. B. Moffat, b.a. Pp. 6-H-. Published by Hodges,
Figgis, & Co. , Dublin.
HOW TO PHOTOGRAPH THROUGH A FLY'S
EYE.
By Fred. W. S.axby.
IN order to perform this delicate and interesting
experiment a photomicrographic apparatus will be
required, and the operator should have some ex-
perience in the mounting of microscopic specimens.
The object of the experiment is to obtain a multiple
photograph of the subject, the images of which are to be
formed by the lenticular facettes of an insect's compound
eye. V/ith few exceptions insects possess two of these
eyes, one on either side of the head. The outer covering,
known as the cornea, no longer functions as a single lens,
but is subdivided into a multitude of extremely small
188
KNOWLEDGE
[August 1. 1898.
closely packed facettes, of usually hexagonal contour and
convex surface. They are in some instances so numerous
as to occupy nearly the whole of the head.
A section through the eye of the drone-fly, Eristalis
tenax, gives a general idea of the structure of this organ.
The cornea, hyaline in shape, is a modification of the tough
exo-skeleton of the insect, and like it consists of chitine.
Behind, and in the centre of each facette, is a cone of
transparent gelatinous matter, with its base towards the
cornea ; this cone, which functions as a crystalline lens,
terminates at its apex in a nervous filament. The filaments
so produced converge as they proceed, and finally fuse into
an optic nerve which connects them with the great nerve-
ganglion or brain. Each lens with its nervous filament is
isolated from those adjacent by the opaque pigment with
which the intervening space is filled, so that no light passes
into the eye except at that point directly under the centre
of each facette. The pigment matter is variously coloured,
and is the source of that sparkling appearance often seen
in the eyes of living insects when viewed by reflected light.
We are at present concerned, however, with the cornea
and its tiny lenses, through which we are to obtain our
photograph. Each lens is a compound of two plano-
convex lenses, united at their plane surfaces. The corneal
mass does not follow any definite curve throughout, being
considerably flatter in the middle than at the margin. In
some of the larger dragon-flies parts of the eye may be
found nearly flat, and on that account will serve our
purpose the best. Having secured a specimen of the
common dragon-fly, LiheUxdn depresm, we can proceed to
dissect off the cornea. First remove the head, and embed
it in a cell of melted beeswax, so as to obtain a firm hold,
leaving one eye exposed. Take a two-edged scalpel, and
with the point of it make a series of stabs along the margin
of the cornea, going all round. The entire mass, like
a little dish with a quantity of pigment matter in it,
can then be lifted off. Next melt the beeswax, remove
the head, and float the separated cornea, with its contents
uppermost, upon the still fluid wax and allow the latter to
set. Pare a quill to the shape of a J pen, making the
point slightly rounded and thin, and with it scrape out the
contents of the eye ; the cornea, being extremely tough,
is not liable to injury from the point of the quill. Procure
a small camelhair pencil, cut down the hairs until only an
eighth of an inch long, and, having charged the stump with
turpentine, proceed to twirl it about in the " dish," so as to
remove the last trace of pigment. Examine under a pocket
lens, and, if clean, melt out the cornea, and with a pair of fine
scissors trim ofi'the turned-up edge of the " dish," retaining
only the flattest part of the bottom. Soak in turpentine
until any wax that adheres is dissolved, and you have the
lenses for your camera — but the disc is not flat. Select
the thinnest cover-glass you can get, clean thoroughly,
and place it upon the hot plate as for an ordinary balsam
mount. Melt a quantity of the oldest and hardest Canada
balsam obtainable, and upon the point of a needle apply
a small bead of it, not larger than a pin's head, to the
centre of the cover-glass. By the aid of the fine forceps
and the warm air, drive off the turpentine from the piece
of cornea, and then place it upon the cover-glass, concave
side down, with its centre over the bead of balsam. Cut
out a small disc of notepaper, rather less in diameter than
the " object " you are mounting, and place it centrally
over the disc of cornea. Have a three-by-one glass slip
handy, support one end of it upon the hot-plate, and allow
the other to press upon the object, with the disc of paper
in between. Proceed to load the middle of the three-by-
one slip with coins sufiicient to flatten the piece of cornea.
As soon as this takes place the bead of balsam under it
will spread out and make its appearance round the margin
of the object.
When this can be seen through the slip, remove the
spirit lamp and allow the whole to cool. The under side
of the flattened cornea wiU then be cemented to the cover-
glass and the " facettes " will be simple plano-convex lenses,
since their inner convexities, being embedded in the balsam,
will cease to exert their optical properties to any appreciable
extent. The mount, resting upon a three-by-one slip, can
now be examined under the microscope. Put in a half-
inch objective, and, if it has a screw collar, adjust for an
" uncovered " object. Use a low power eyepiece of about
three diameters and an Abbe condenser. Stop down the
aperture and bring the cornea into sharp focus. By a
solid cone of transmitted light an hexagonal figure will
be seen forming the boundary of each facette. A number
of hairs appear upon the eyes of some insects, and it is in
the angles of these hexagons that the hairs have their
origin. It will require some nicety of illumination, how-
ever, to disclose the "lens" in each of these divisions;
the solid cone of light as usually transmitted by the
condenser fails to reveal them. Remove the limiting
diaphragm from the back of the condenser and insert in
its place a patch-stop that will give dark-ground Illumination
with the objective employed, having previously stopped
out half the annulus with a strip of black paper. Use the
plane mirror, and, with the condenser in focus, this semi-
annular beam of light will fall obliquely upon the object
and the " eye-lenses ' will appear in bold relief (Fig. 1).
yyi'u
Fig. 1. — Group of '■ Eyp-lenses " ready for tlie Camera. ( x 200.)
To prepare the mount for the microscope, select a three-by-
one sUp of wood, through the centre of which a small hole
has been bored. Lay the cover-glass with the object face
downwards over the hole and fasten with a punched gummed
label, after the manner of a French paper-mounted slide.
Fix the shp firmly iu the stage of the microscope. The
cornea, being under the cover-glass, is protected from
injury, and the facettes, facing the condenser, are in the
right position for our experiment.
Next incline the microscope to a horizontal position, and
fix it in its place upon the baseboard of the camera.
Correct the objective to the thickness of the cover-glass,
remove the mirror, and the diaphragms and stops from
the substage condenser. Place a microscope lamp about
ten inches from the condenser, with its flame in the optic
axis of the apparatus and the bull's-eye turned aside.
Withdraw the camera /'Co tem., and proceed to focus up
the middle of the object. When the field is full of sharply
defined hexagons, and an image of the lamp-flame is seen
August 1, 1898.
KNOWLEDGE
189
in the middle of the field, the centreing may be regarded
as correct. Upon the next move depends the success of
the experiment. Eack down the substage condenser until
its front is about half an inch from the object, and then
proceed very slowly, by means of the coarse adjustment,
to rack the body tuba of the microscope back from the
object. The hexagons will go out of focus, and nothing
can be seen. Continue the backward movement a little
farther, and a number of points of light will appear,
disposed in rows across the field. Focus with the fine
adjustment until sharply defined, and it will be seen these
points of light are inverted images of the lamp-llame, each
one formed by a "lens" iu the cornea. By racking the
Abbe a Uttle nearer to the stage the image in each
facette will be seen to increase in size, and rice tvrsd.
The focus of the objective remains fairly constant for all
positions of the condenser, provided this latter is not too
near. Tracing the path of light (Fig. 2) we find an image
<r£>^^ixi\
C'Afi
C3
Fig. 2. — The " Kye-lenses," B, act as Telescopes
Aerial foci at A and C.
of the radiant is formed in the principal focus of the con-
denser, at A, which, being at a considerable distance from
the cornea, is practically in the indefinite (anterior) focus
of the " eye-lenses," B. An image is again formed in the
principal (posterior) focus of each '• eye-lens," at C, and
when this plane C is in the focus of the objective the observer
at the microscope can see an image of the radiant through
each facette in the field. The corneal convexities, however,
are not all of the same diameter and radius, so that where
a number will yield a sharp outline of the radiant, others
will produce a blurred and indistinct image ; but as the
area covered by a half-inch objective is very small, there
should be little difficulty in finding a group of facettea of
similar focus. The subject to be photographed may now
be considered ; it should be either self-luminous or white.
If the former, a window with open landscape beyond will
answer, but on account of its large size must be relatively
more distant from the instrument. By artificial light,
opaque figures pasted on a ground-glass screen illuminated
from behind may be tried, but the most satisfactory
photographs are those of white subjects by reflected light,
such as a bust or statuette. For the purpose of my
experiment I have chosen a small chalk bust of Her Majesty
the Queen, and is it not appropriate that the noblest and
greatest monarch the world has ever seen should be the
subject of a photograph through the most infinitesimal lens
known to science? Remove the lamp, and in its stead
place the object to be photographed in the optic axis of the
apparatus, and, say, eighteen inches distant from the con-
denser ; the exact distance will depend upon the amount of
subject it is intended to include. It will now be necessary to
bring to bear upon the subject all the available illuminating
power at our disposal. Two Welsback gaslights, being
easily obtained, will do. Place one on either side of the
subject in such a manner that their combined rays shall play
upon the surface to be photographed. Two curved pieces of
new tinplate, placed between the burners and the camera, will
improve the illumination and prevent any direct light from
entering the condenser. Both burners and reflectors should
be as near the object as possible, but must not trespass upon
the subjective field. Examine through the microscope,
using the substage pinion freely, until an image of suitable
size and definition is seen in each facette. Attach the
camera and fine focussing rod and see that all is Ught-
tight ; the bellows may be stretched twelve to eighteen
inches. Iq spite of the large amount of light reft acted
from the subject the rays transmitted by the facettes
will be extremely famt, owing to their minuteness.
They rarely exceed one-thousandth part of an inch in
diameter, and it will be found impossible to project
through them an image visible upon the ground-glass
screen, though the latter be most finely obscured. But
the photomicrographer will have more refined methods
at his disposal to meet the greater delicacy of his
work. Having removed the obscured screen from the
frame, insert in its place a piece of plain glass of the same
size ; a spoiled negative from which the film has been
stripped will answer excellently. A focussing eyeglass
will now be required, and it must be so adjusted that when
resting upon the plain glass screen the furthermost surface
of the latter is in focus ; this is best accomplished by
applying with the finger scales from a moth's wing, or
other minute particles upon that surface. Having arranged
the eyeglass to our satisfaction, we can return the plain
screen to the camera and proceed to locus the subject.
To do so the operator must retire a little fi-om the eyeglass
so that its lens is seen to be full of light ; this wiU occur
when his eye and the screen are equidistant from the lens
and in its principal focus. The writer uses a glass in
which both distances are determined by a tube. But the
images which appeared to the observer at the eyepiece of
the microscope will not be in focus at the screen. We have
lengthened the major conjugate focus of our apparatus and
must therefore shorten the minor. By means of the fine
adjustment rod, cause the objective to approach the object,
keeping a sharp look-out for images through the focussing
glass. It is not by any means easy to determine the exact
point at which the images are best defined, and probably
many " ins and outs " will be tried before a satisfactory
focus is established. Presuming the objective to be of the
usual achromatic type corrected for an optical focus, an iso-
chromatic plate — the most rapid obtainable — should be
employed, as the plates so designated are extra sensitive to
the yellow or visual rays within the C and E lines of the
spectrum. Exposure will depend, among other things,
upon the desired size of the images and consequent camera
stretch, and may be as much as, or more than, three hours.
I shall not here enter into details of development ; that
formula with which the operator has had most experience
is the best. Although the first plate nunj prove a success,
it is advisable not to remove any of the apparatus until a
satisfactory negative has been obtained.
In the distribution of visual organs nature has been
most lavish to the insects, and we are filled with astonish-
ment when we reflect that from a dragon-fly's head we
could obtain twenty-five thousand perfect lenses, so minute
that a million of them would not cover a square inch of
surface, and yet each be capable of yielding a recognizable
photograph. Had nature provided man with eyes in
simDar profusion, how much more could he have seen of
her wisdom !
'■ I. like Samson, would have eyes at every pore.
To see the light and learn of truth the more."
NOTES ON COMETS AND METEORS.
By "W. F. Denning, f.k.a.s.
The Discovery of Comets. — In the last number attention
was drawn to the relative scarcity of new comets discovered
190
KNOWLEDGE.
[August 1, 1898.
during the eighteen month3 preceding June. The latter
month, however, furnished a record, for three new comets
were discovered, while two known comets were redetected.
It will be found on searching through catalogues of comets
that no other month has ever yielded such an abundant
harvest of important observations in this branch of astro-
nomy. This is the more remarkable from the circumstance
that June, with its strong twilight, is unfavourable to the
detection of comets. The summary of recent discoveries
may be stated as follows ; —
Position
of Comet.
Perilieliou
Pas^asle
Discoverer.
G. M. T.
S
BerUn Me.m
Time.
1.
Coddington
.Tune 11-722
246 14
-25 14
Sept. 13 849
2
Tebbutt
June 11-844
103 22
+ 11 34
Mar. 25 0
3.
Perrine
June 14-974
m 15
+ .58 36
Aug. 16-338
4.
Hussey
June 16 967
34 5
+ 19 43
July 460
.5.
Giacobini
June 18.526
309 7
-21 14
July 24-894
No. 2 is a reobservation of Encke's periodical comet,
No. 4 of Wolf's comet. These, with Perrine's comet found
on March 19th, represent a total of six comets visible,
though they cannot all be seen on the northern hemi-
sphere. Encke's and Coddington's comets have a southern
declination of about forty-five degrees early in August.
The latter is the second comet discovered accidentally on
a photographic plate, the previous instance being that of
1892 v., which was similarly detected by Mr. Barnard.
There can be no doubt that astronomical photography,
when it comes to be more extensively practised, will afford
the means of revealing many new comets.
Dr. Schorr has pointed out that the elements of Perrine's
comet of June 14th exhibit a remarkable similarity of
elements with those computed for Pons's comet of 1812
and 1884.
The following are ephemerides of three of the comets
now visible : —
Comet Wolf.
Distance in
Date.
R.A.
Declination. millions of
Bright
1898.
h.
m. s.
°
' miles.
ness.
August 6
4
42 28
+ 17
27-4 170
2-42
„ 10
4
52 59
+ 16
48-8 168
2-44
,. 14
5
3 13
+ 16
60 166
2-47
„ 18
5
13 12
+ 15
19-6 164
2-49
„ 22
5
22 52
+ 14
29-5 162
2-50
„ 26
5
82 18
+ 13
35-7 160
2-53
„ 80
5
41 13
+ 12
39-5 159
2-55
Comet Perrine (March 19th).
Date.
K.A.
Deelinntion.
Bright-
1898.
li. m. s.
o ■ "
ness.
August 2
5 58 10
-f52 37 15
0 07
6
6 8 44
+ 52 22 31
006
„ 10
6 8 51
+ 52 8 45
0 06
„ 14
6 13 30
-f51 56 4
0-0(!
,, 18
6 17 40
+ 51 44 29
0-06
,. 22
6 21 22
+ 51 34 2
0-05
„ 26
6 24 85
-r51 24 43
0 05
„ 30
6 27 21
+ 51 16 32
0 05
The distance from the earth varies very little from two
hundred and seventy millions of miles during the month.
Comet Perrine (June 14th).
Distance in
Date.
R
.\.
Declination.
millions of Bright
1898.
h.
m.
0 '
miles. ness.
August 14
8
90
+ 11 56
135 8-4
30
9
17-2
- 9 14
134 7-0
September 15
10
360
-24 43
145 3-7
October 1
11
57-2
-37 44
166 1-8
17
13
11-7
-43 29
193 OO
At the middle of August this comet will be only about
twenty-three degrees west of the sun, so the conditions
affecting its visibility will be very unfavourable. It is
moving rapidly .southwards and will soon be lost to
observers in our latitude.
In addition to the various comets mentioned, astronomers
are expecting the return of Tempel's comet (1867 II.), but
its detection has not yet been announced ; and, in view
of the fact that its distance is increasing, and that it
escaped observation at the last three returns, there seems
but a slender prospect that it wiU be observed during the
present year.
A uffust Metrors. — With the return of the Pereeids, meteoric
observers have plenty of attractive work in hand. Meteors
are abundant, and the season is a convenient one for night
work of this kind. This year the moon will be full on the
morning of August 2nd, so that in the early part of the
month the sky will be very light, and only the larger
Perseids are likely to be observed. Moonlight will, in fact,
prove rather a serious hindrance to observation during
the first eight or nine nights, for our satellite moves so
rapidly northwards that she rises very little later on
successive evenings. Her age and times of rising, at the
most important period, are as follows : —
Age at noon. Time of riuing.
1898.
d.
h.
h.
m.
August H
20
16-2
9
36 p.m.
9
21
16-2
10
4 „
10
22
16-2
10
41 „
11
23
16-2
11
26 „
12
24
16-2
12
20 „
The last quarter occurs on the evening of the 9th, so
that on the night of the 10th, when the maximum of the
shower is usually attained, the light of the moon will have
declined so much as to be comparatively feeble. In the
last number an ephemeris was given of the Perseid radiant
to the end of July, and the following is a continuation of it
to August iHth, when the display will be nearly exhausted: —
August
1 .
. 85 + 55
August
10 .
. 45+57
2 .
. 36+55
11 .
. 46+57
3 .
. 37+56
12
. 47+57
4 .
. 88 + 56
13 .
. 49+68
5 .
. 39+56
14 .
. 50 + 68
6 .
. 40 + 56
15 .
. 51 + 58
7 .
41 + 57
16 .
. 53+59
8 .
. 42+57
17
54 + 59
9 .
. 44+57
18 .
55 + 59
It will be interesting to test the accuracy of this
ephemeris by careful observations made on the individual
nights mentioned. Notwithstanding the interference of
the moon the Perseids are usually so active, even at the
early part of August, that the radiant point may be readily
derived.
Bright Meteors. — On 'June oth, about lOh., a meteor
brighter than Vega travelled from /3 Ophiuchi to p Lyra?.
It was bluish white in colour, and left a trail of sparks.
Observer : Mr. Albert Ashby, West Croydon.
On June 2Cth, llh. 24:|m., a meteor, about as bright as
a first magnitude star, appeared in a barren part of the
sky, eight degrees north of the star cr Sagittarii. It pursued
an upward course, vanishing exactly one degree west of
9 Serpentis, and during its flight increased so much in
brilliancy that at the end it was equal to Venus at her
best. The meteor was bluish white in colour, and moved
slowly along its path in about five seconds. Observer :
Kev. S. J. Johnson, Bridport, Dorset.
August 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE.
191
THE FACE OF THE SKY FOR AUGUST.
By A. Fowler, k.r.a.s.
SUNSPOT activity is apparently approaching a mini-
mum, so that perhaps few spots of considerable
magnitude may be expected. Still, abnormal
conditions have been noted in the past, and careful
observation may not go unrewarded. Bright
faculie and coarse granulation of the general surface have
been recently noted.
Mercury will be an evening star, reaching its greatest
easterly elongation of 27° 22' at 3h. a.m. on the 9th. On
that day he sets at 8h. 13tn. p.m. — that is, only forty
minutes after sunset — so that the planet is not particularly
well situated for observation in this country. The
apparent diameter on the 1st is 6-6" ; on the 9th, 7'4" ;
on the 15th, 8 1'. At noon on the 1st the horizontal
parallax is 8 8", the distance of the planet from the Earth
thus being identical with that of the Sun.
Orbital Morements of Earth, Tenus, and Mercury during August,
189S. (The dotted lines represent the parts below the ecliptic.)
Venus is an evening star throughout the month, but
the southerly movement will render her appearance less
striking to the naked eye than might be expected. During
the month her declination changes from 4° 49' N. to
10' 10' S., and her apparent diameter increases from 15'6 "
to 20 0 ". On the 19th at 6h. p.m. she will be in conjunc-
tion with Jupiter, 1' 51' to the south; on the 21st at
8h. A.M. she wiU be in conjunction with the Moon, the
planet being 5° 3' to the north. The planet will set at
8h. .j2m. P.M. on the 9th, seventy-nine minutes after sunset,
and at 8h. 2m. p.m. on the 29th, seventy minutes after
sunset. At the middle of the month 0-G5 of the disc will
be illuminated.
Mars is atill so distant that only large instruments are
likely to reveal any detaO. As a matter of comparison it
may be of interest to note that at the favourable opposition
of 1892 his horizontal parallax was 'ioi ', corresponding
to a distance from the Earth of 31,935,000 miles, while at
the middle of August it will be 5-6 ', corresponding to a
distance of 115,980,000 mUes. At the middle of August
his apparent diameter is only 6-0". On the 1st he will
be 5° north of Aldebaran, and will travel eastwards, until
on the 23rd he will be about 2° north of :; Tanri. He
will rise shortly before midnight in the earlier part of the
month, and about llh. p.m. towards the end.
•Jupiter may be observed shortly after sunset during the
early part of the month. He passes eastward from near
1) Yirginis on the 1st, through a point less than 2" sonth
of '/ Virginis on the 20th. The polar diameter diminishes
from :!0'6'' to 2'.I0".
Saturn, in Scorpio, may still be observed in the early
evening. On the 9th he sets at llh. 21m. p.m., and on
the 29th at loh. 8m. p.m. He will be stationary on the
9th and in quadrature on the 29th. The outer major
and minor axes of the outer ring vary respectively from
40-02" to 38-71' and 17-37" to 16-87' from the 8th to the
28th ; during the same period the corresponding dimensions
of the inner bright ring vary from 25-47 " to 24-64 " and
11-06" to 10-74" respectively: and the apparent polar
diameter of the planet diminishes from KiO" to 15-4 "
between the same dates. The northern surface of the
ring is visible.
Uranua remains a little east of \ Librir, forming an
almost equilateral triangle with p and J Scorpii. The
planet is very low in the sky, and even at the beginning of
the month sets before midnight. The apparent diameter
diminishes from 3-s'' to 3-6 ' during the month.
Neptune describes a short eastward path in Taurus,
from about 1' to H^ north-east of J Tauri. At the
beginning of the month he does not rise until after mid-
night, but towards the end he will rise shortly before
11 P.M.
The Moon will be full on the 2nd at 4h. 29m. a.m.; she
will enter the last quarter at 6h. 13m. a.m. on the 9th ;
will be new at lOh. 35m. a.m. on the 17th ; enter the first
quarter at 8h. 82m. p.m. on the 24th ; and will again be
full at 12h. 51m. p.m. on the 31st.
A conveniently observable minimum of Algol is due
about 9h. 44m. p.m. on the 23rd. Other minima, at less
convenient times, will occur on the 3rd at 8h. 2tn. p.m.,
and on the 20th at 12h. 55m. p.m.
Ctjtss (l^olttmn.
By C. D. LooooK, b.a.
Gommonioationa for this column should be addressed to
C. D. LococK, Burwash, Sussex, and posted on or before
the lOth of each month.
Solutions of July Froblems.
No. 1.
(By A. G. Fellows. I
1. Kt to Q7, and mates next move.
Correct Solutions received from Alpha, W. de P.
Crousaz, H. S. Brandreth, J. M'Robert.
No. 2.
(By A. C. Challenger.)
Speaking from memory we beheve that the author's in-
tended solution was 1. R to B6. Oar trustworthy cor-
respondent " Alpha " claims that this attempt is frustrated
by 1. . . . B X P. We must apologize for our inability to
verify this, having unfortunately mislaid the current
number of Knowledge. W. de P. Crousaz also claims
" no solution."
B. G. Laws. — Many thanks for the problem, a copy of
which shall be sent you nest month. We congratulate
the problem department of the British Chess Mag(i::ine.
192
KNOWLEDGE
[August 1, 1898.
PKOBLEMS.
By J. Nield (Crompton).
No. 1.
Black (:;).
m m m.'
. ....... ..
White (7).
White mates in two movea.
White (9).
White mates in three moves.
CHESS INTELLIGENCE.
We much regret to have to announce the death of Mr.
James Rayner, the problem editor of the British Chess
Marjazinc, and for many years one of the strongest players
in the North of England. Mr. Rayner was also certainly
one of the finest English problem composers, and his death
at the early age of thirty-nine is a great loss to the chess
world. He is succeeded in the problem department of the
Britisli Chess M(i;iazi7ie by Mr. B. C. Laws, who formerly
conducted the problem department of the Chess Manthli/.
The Vienna international tournament still continues.
Messrs. Pillsbury, Tarrasch, Janowski, and Steinitz are
leading at present. Of the English representatives, Mr.
Burn is doing best. Herr Schwarz retired after playing
eight games only, and his score was cancelled. The
Congress of the German Chess Association begins at
Cologne on July 31st.
There is little chess of importance in England at this
season, but Messrs. Lee and Teichmann are engaged in a
short match.
The amateur tournament of the Southern Counties
Chess Union begins at Salisbury on Monday, September 5th,
and wUl be continued, if necessary, till September 14th.
All entries must reach Mr. C. J. Woodrow, 3, Castle Street,
Salisbury, on or before August 31st, and must be accom-
panied by entrance fees. Further pariiculars may ba had
on apphcation to the above address. Messrs. Bird and
Blackbume will probably be present during the meeting.
Game played in the Vienna tournament : —
" Kisseritzky Gambit."
White.
Black.
(C. A. Walbrodt.)
(A. Bum.)
1. P to K4
1. P to K4
2. P to KB4
2. PxP
3. Kt to KB3
3. P to KKt4
4. P to KR4
4. P to Kt5
5. Kt to K5
5. B to Kt2
6. P to Q4
6. Kt to KB3
7. KtxKtP
7. KtxP
8. BxP
8. Q to K2
9. Q to K2
9. P to Q3
10. Kt to K3
10. B to K3
11. P to B3
11. Castles
12. Q to B3
12. P to Q4
13. B to Q8
13. P to QB4
14, BxKt
14. PxB
15. Q to Kt3
15. PxP
16. B to Q6
16. Q to Qsq
17. PxP
17. R to Ksq
18. P to Q5
18. B to Q2
19. Kt to B3
19. Kt to R3
20. Castles (KR)
20. R to QBsq
21. R to B2
21. P to B3
22. QR to KBsq
22. K to Rsq
23. P to R5
23. Kt to B4
24. P to RG
24. BxP
25. RxP
25. BxKt2
26. R to B7
26. B to Q5
27. RxPch
27. Resigns.
KNOWLEDGE, PUBLISHED MONTHLY.
Contents of No. 15s (June).
Contents ol No. 153 (July).
The Moume Mouutams. By
The Karkinokosm, or World of
Greuville A. J. Cole, m.e.i.
F.G.s. {RlustraUd) 121
The Petroleum Industry. By
George T. HoUoway, assoc.
R.c.s. (lond.), p.i.c. (HIim-
traUd) 1*24
Economic Botany. By John R.
Jackson, A. L. 8., etc 126
Weather Accounts. By Alex. B.
McDowall, M.A. {Illustrated)... 128
Tlie Prismatic Camera at the Be-
cent Eclipse. By J. Evershed,
130
Occultatioii of 26Arietisobserved
Photograph ically. By Edward
C. Pickering. (Ulustraftrd) 133
Notices of Books 13t
Letters 136
Science Notes 136
Africa and its Animals. By B.
Lydekker, b.a., f.r.s 137
The Vinegar Fly and the Vinegar
Mite. By C. Ainsworth
Mitchell, B.A., F.i.c. {Illus-
trated) 139
A Classic Legacy of Agriculture.
By JohnMiUs 1-W
Notes on Comets and Meteors.
By W. F. Denning, f.r.a.s. ... 142
The Face of the Sky for June.
By Herbert Sadler, f.r.a.s. ... l^i
Chess Column. By C. D. Locock 143
Plate,— Eclipse Spectnu
Crustacea. — IV. By the Bev.
Thomas B. B. Stebbing, u.a.,
F.E.S., F.L.s. {Illustrated)
A Classic Legacy of Agriculture.
—II. By John Mills. {Ulut-
trated)
"Tlie Mimic Fires of Ocean."
By G. Clarke Nuttall, B.sc. ...
The Petroleiun Industry. — II.
By George T. Holloway, assoc.
R.C. S . (LOSD. ) , F. I.e. (lUue-
trated)
On the Eclipse Theory of Vari-
able Stars. By Lieut. -Colonel
E. E. Markwick, f.r.a.s.
(lUustrated)
The Recent Eclipse.— The Lick
Photographs of the Corona.
By E.Walter Maunder, F.R.A.S.
Notices of Books
Obituary
Letters
Science Notes {Illustrated)
Self-Irrigation in Plants. By
the Eev. Alex. S. Wilson, jj.a.,
B.sc. (Ilhistrut^d)
British Ornithological Notes
Botanical Studies. — IV. Mnium.
By A. Vaughan Jennings,
F.L.s. , F.G.s. (Illustrated)
Notes on Comets and Meteors,
By W. F. Denning, f.r.a.s....
The Face of the Sky for July.
By A. Fowler, f.r.a.s
Chess Column, By CD. Locock
Plate. — The Lick Photographs
the Corona.
The yearly bound volumes of Knowledge, cloth gilt, 8s. 6d., post free.
Binding Cases, Is. 6d. each ; post free. Is. 9d.
Subscribers' numbers bound (including case and Index), 2s. 6d. each volume.
Index of Articles and Illustrations for 1S91, 1892, 1894, 1895, 1896, and 1897
can be supphed for 3d. each. __^_^___
'* Knowledge" Annual Subscription, throughout the vorld,
8s., post free.
Communications for the Editors and Books for Beview shotJd be addressed
Editors, *' Knowledge," 326, High Holbora, London, W.C.
September 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE
193
lYERAT^MA^
Founded in i88i by RICHARD A, PROCTOR.
LONDON: SEPTEMBER 1, 1898.
CONTENTS.
Whale Models at the Natural History Museum. By
R, Ltdekkbr, B.A., F.E.3. {Illustrated)
Repetition and Evolution in Bird-Song. B.v Charies
A. WiTCHKLL
The Karkinokosm, or World of Crustacea.— V. By
tlie Kev. Ttomas R. R. Stkbbiso, m.a., f.r.s., f.l.s.
{Illustrated ami Plate)
Economic Botany. By John R. Jackson, a.l.s., etc. ...
British Ornithological Notes. Conducted by Habbt F.
WlTHEBBT, F.Z.S., M.B.O.TT
Letters :— David Flanbkt (Illmtrated) ; H. W. II.
Lagerwey, ll.d. ; Abthitb East
Science Notes
Variable Stars of Short Period. By Edwabd C.
Pickering. {Illustrated)
The Astronomy of the "Canterbury Tales. By E.
Walter Maunder, f.r.a.s
Notices of Books
Short Notices ...
Books Keckited
" Insect Miners,"— II. Br Feed. Enock, f.l.s., f.e.s., etc.
{Illustrated} .'
Botanical Studies. — V. Asplenium. By A. Vaushan
Jennings, f.l.s., f.o.s. {Illustrated)
Notes on Comets and Meteors. By W. F. Deitnino,
F.R.A.S
The Face of the Sky for September. By A. Fowxbb,
P.B.A.S
Chess Column. By C. B. Lococe, b.a
205
207
209
209
209
211
213
214
215
WHALE MODELS AT THE NATURAL HISTORY
MUSEUM.
By E. Lydekxer, b.a., f.r.s.
ALTHOUGH many of us have from time to time
witnessed the evolutions of a shoal of porpoises
from some seaside pier, or the deck of a coasting
vessel, while more fortunate individuals have
enjoyed the spectacle of a whale rising from the
water by the side of an ocean steamer, or have seen a
stranded specimen on the beach, to the majority of lands-
men the larger members of the Cetacean order have
hitherto been more or less mysterious creatures. Their
proper form and size have been but vaguely realized, and
their peculiarities of structure most imperfectly conceived.
Not improbably there are still in existence persons whose
knowledge of whales is mainly, if not exclusively, limited
to "whalebone" and sperm-whale teeth, and who have
some vague idea that the two are products of one and the
same animal. A year or so ago anyone who visited even
the most advanced and up-to-date museum would have
come away with little more idea of the external form and
dimensions of these mighty denizens of the deep than the
misleading and unsatisfactory impressions that can be
gathered from a study of their bare skeletons. It is true
that in some Continental museums, like the one in Paris,
easts of stranded examples of some of the smaller species
have for some time been exhibited, but the distorted and
" flabby " condition of the animals themselves when thrown
ashore rendered the resulting plaster-casts very far indeed
from affording a lifelike representative of the species,
while their comparatively small size precluded the realiza-
tion of the vast dimensions attained by the giants of the
group.
This unsatisfactory condition of affairs has been totally
changed by the opening on Whit Monday last of the new
Whale Gallery in the Natural History Branch of the
British Museum. Here, for the first time in the history
of the world, may be seen some of the largest representa-
tives of the Cetacean order modelled of the natural size,
and as lifelike in appearance as the resources of modern
skill and science can make them. The exhibition is indeed
a truly marvellous one, and its conception and successful
execution will remain as a permanent memorial of the
administration of Sir W. H. Flower, whose great aim
has been to make the great institution under his charge
as popular and instructive as possible, and under whose
immediate personal superintendence the present addition
was carried out from first to last.
From an educational point of view the value of the new
exhibition cannot be over estimated ; from a purely popular
standpoint, as a " show," it will be very hard indeed to beat ;
while even to the professed naturalist it is of the highest
interest, and presents several problems stiU requiring
elucidation as to details of form in one or two species.
Mystery in regard to our conceptions of the form of these
huge denizens of the deep is, however, practically at an
end ; and for the future there ought to be no misconception
as to the nature and position in the body of the substances
respectively known as whalebone and spermaceti, and the
animals to which they severally belong. Much importance
has been rightly attached by the Director to an adequate
supply of carefully-written descriptive labels, and these
have been placed in positions convenient for the study of
the groups or species to which they refer. The labels are
of two kinds — large and small ; the former referring to
groups and the latter to particular species. Of the large
labels, aU of which are affixed in conspicuous positions on
the walls of the buildings, the first gives in popular form
the leading distinctive features of the order Cetacea,
which, it is almost needless to observe, includes not only
the animals commonly known as whales, but likewise
porpoises, grampuses, and dolphins. The first point
necessary to a right comprehension of the mutual relations
of these animals is to thoroughly realize \p.e difference
between the whalebone whales and the toothed whales,
or those which produce whalebone, or baleen, and those
whose mouths are simply armed with teeth, of larger or
smaller size and number. To emphasize the distinction,
the whalebone whales, whether models or skeletons, have
all been set up with their heads pointing to the north end
of the gallery, while all the toothed whales are turned
in the opposite direction ; the distinctive features of the
two groups being likewise clearly set forth in large labels
on the walls. Yet another set of similar sized labels
enables the public to grasp the difference between right-
whales and rorquals ; while the characteristics of the
individual species exhibited are displayed on smaller labels
mounted on stands placed in front of the specimens to
which they refer.
Those of our readers who have seen the gallery (and it
may be hoped that those who have not will take the earliest
194
KNOWLEDGE.
[September 1, 1898.
opportunity of doing so) will not fail to realize how cleverly
economy of space and material has been effected in the
construction of the models. This has been done by taking
the mounted skeleton of the specimen to be operated upon,
and building upon one side of it a hollow half-model of
the external form. As the right aide of the body baa
been thua modelled in the whalebone whales, and the left
aide in the toothed whalea, it results from thia ingenious
plan that whereas the visitor on entering the gallery sees
the external form of the species that have been modelled,
when he moves to the opposite side he is confronted with
a view of the skeleton surrounded by the outline of the
bodily contour. By thia means not only are the skeletons
as accessible aa before for the purposes of anatomical study,
but the relationship of their component portions to the
bodily form is moat clearly diaplayed. Accuracy in the
modelling has been secured from the circumstance that
the skeletons of most, if not all of the specimens, are thoae
of stranded individuals, whose form and proportions have
been recorded while in the flesh from measurements and
drawings or photographa.
In its preaent condition the gallery containa models of
six of the larger apeciea, namely, the southern right
whale [Bnlmna mistratis), Eudolphi's rorqual { Bolmnoptera
horealis), and the common rorqual {fialcenoptera iinixcxdm),
among the whalebone whales ; and the gigantic sperm
whale {Plujseter macroceplialus), the killer {Orca gladiator),
and the white whale {Delphinaiiti nis li^ucas), among the
toothed whales. Of these, the killer differs from the others
in that it is represented by a complete model, alongside
of which is mounted the bare skeleton. The first of the
four larger models attempted waa that of Eudolphi's
rorqual, which was undertaken somewhat as an experiment
to see how the idea would work. As this is a comparatively
small species (scarcely reaching fifty feet in length at ita
maximum) it obviously did not give an adequate idea of
the huge dimensions attained by other membera of the
group, and, consequently, a model of the much larger
common rorqual was subsequently executed. This accounts
for the circumstance that while the rorquals are represented
in the gallery by two species, there is at preaent no model
of the allied but very different hump-backed whale
(Meijaptefd), for which room doea not now remain. But it
may be hoped that an extenaion of the limits of the
building may ere long admit of thia very important species
being added to the exhibition.
The finners, or rorquals, are noted among whalers for
their extreme speed, and, consequently (especially as their
short whalebone is of but httle value), escaped persecution
until the introduction of steam vessels and harpoon guns ;
and the models, in comparison with the one of the southern
right-whale, clearly show how their long slender bodies
are adapted fot the attainment of such rapidity of move-
ment. In these specimens the whalebone has been placed
in its natural position in the skull, and thereby exhibits
its characteristic shortness. Another feature shown almoat
for the first time in these models ia the capacious dis-
tensible pouch occupying the throat of the rorquals, the
flexible longitudinal bands in the pouch constituting the
characteriatic groovings seen in the akin of this part of
these animals. On the skeletal aspect of the common
rorqual the tiny bony nodule, which alone represents the
thigh-bone, or femur of ordinary mammals, can scarcely
fail to arrest attention, and affords a most interesting
example of a rudimentary, or, rather, vestigiary organ.
Although the common rorqual, which grows to sixty-five
or seventy feet in length, is not the largest member of the
group, being exceeded in this respect by the blue rorqual
(B. aihhaldi), which reaches eighty or even eighty-five feet,
yet the model in the gallery serves to show that very
exaggerated ideas of the dimensions attained by these
monsters formerly prevailed, and even yet do not appear
whoUy extinct. And it may be hoped that with the
opening of this gallery to the public we shall hear the
last of blue rorquals measuring a couple of hundred feet
in length.
Passing on from the model of the common rorqual to
that of the black or southern right-whale, the visitor will
have impreaaed on hia memory the esaential difference
between a rorqual and a right-whale in a manner never
to be forgotten. The contraat between the comparatively
abort and thick body of the latter, ita narrow and vaulted
upper jaw, the highly convex border of the enormously
deep lower lip, and, above all, the immense space left
between the upper and lower jaws for reception of the
huge plates of whalebone, and the corresponding pro-
portions of the rorqual are apparent at a single glance, and
appear more wonderful still on minute inspection. A few
of the whalebone plates belonging to the skeleton of the
model have fortunately been preserved, and are inserted
in their approximate position in the upper jaw; and it ia
probable that thia is the only idea that the public will ever
gain of what the fuUy-armed mouth of a right- whale looks
Uke in nature. Even if the present specimen possessed ita
full complement of whalebone, it would not come up to
a Greenland right- whale similarly provided, for in that
apeciea the head is considerably larger and the whalebone
plates are longer than in its southern relative. Plates of
both species are exhibited on the wall adjacent ; and an
idea of the leading differences between the two forms may
be gathered by comparing a small model, with the whale-
bone in position, of the Greenland species placed beneath
the head of the southern kind. This small model was
presented by Captain D. Gray, who, in the course of hia
numerous cruises, has done so much to acquaint ua with
the anatomy and habits of the Greenland right-whale. In
addition to the features already mentioned, the small
model shows the peculiar conformation of the lower lip,
the marked constriction immediately in advance of the
enormoua " flukes," and the white areas on the lower lip,
at the base of the flipper, at the root of the flukes, and
round the eye, which form such striking marks of distinc-
tion between the northern and southern right-whales.
Beneath the head of the model of the southern right are
placed the two halves of the lower jaw of a Greenland whale,
which was evidently a much more gigantic animal than
the specimen above. To this jaw a somewhat melancholy
history attaches. Captain Gray had the laudable intention
of procuring for the Museum the entire skuU of the finest
specimen of the fast-vanishing Greenland right-whale he
could capture. In " .JubUee " year he had alongside his
vessel the carcass of a splendid bull ; after the whalebone
and blubber had been removed, preparations for removing
and hoisting on board the head were about to be taken,
when, as Ul-luck would have it, other whales hove in sight,
and the boats' crews were of course in requisition. As a
result of the interruption all that he saved of the skull
was the lower jaw in the Museum. To make mattera worse,
neither of the whales which caused the diversion were
secured. It was, I believe, the ambition of Captain Gray
to see the skull exhibited with its whalebone in position in
the Museum, but as the " bone " yielded by this particular
specimen realized some two thousand pounds, financial
considerations might have interfered with the accomplish-
ment of his desire. There is, however, yet opportunity
for some millionaire to preaent such a specimen to the
Museum before the species becomes entirely extinct. And
here I am reminded that thoae of my readers desirous of
Sbptembsr 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE
195
becoming acquainted with the migrations of the Greenland
right-whale, and the localities whore it is still likely to be
found, cannot do better than read a very interesting paper
on this subject recently communicated by my friend Mr.
T. Southwell to Xatural Scieno'.
Having given so much space to the whalebone whales but
little remains for the toothed group. In this section, by
far the most striking exhibit is the model of a male sperm
whale, built upon the skeleton of a specimen stranded upon
the British coasts. In addition to its vast corporeal bulk,
as great if not greater than that of the Greenland right-
whale, the most remarkable peculiarities are the enormous
truncated head, at the front extremity of which is situated
the single blow-hole, the powerful teeth with which the
lower jaw is armed, the absence of a back fin, and the
peculiar tuberosities on the middle line of the back some-
what in advance of the flukes. On the skeletal side of the
specimen the visitor will be at once struck by the enormous
that the muzzle is much less truncated and more or less
pointed, it seems impossible to traverse the general accuracy
of the testimony of whalers, so far at least as old bulls are
concerned. And if there be any departure from this type it
remains to be proved whether it is not due to age. Another
moot point connected with the sperm-whale is its power to
raise the lower jaw into the horizontal position without turn-
ing over on its back. The mucous membrane of the mouth
is of a glistening white colour, and it has long since been
asserted that, when on the feed deep down below the surface
of the sea, the creature is in the habit of dropping its lower
jaw and thus attracting prey within its glistening mouth.
Whatever may be the truth of the latter part of the story,
there seems no doubt that these whales are very generally
in the habit of dropping the long lower jaw into a nearly
vertical position, and some modern observers say that such
is from necessity its habitual practice. Such a position
would, however, be extremely inconvenient to reproduce
View in the New Whale Gallery at the Natural History Museum, witli the skeleton an
Southern Right-Whale in the foreground.
size of the cavity containing the fine oil, which, on removal,
solidifies into spermaceti ; and will also wonder at the use
of such a receptacle and its contents. Probably the oil is
merely the most convenient material for filling a cavity
rendered necessary by the peculiar conformation of the
animal's head. Those of my readers who are intimately
acquainted with the natural history of the sperm-whale
may perhaps notice that the muzzle is made somewhat
less truncated than is the case in many of the pictures of
the animal ; and naturalists are somewhat at issue with
regard to the exact conformation of this portion of its
body. All the old whalers are, however, in accord in repre-
senting the muzzle as broad and truncate as the front of a
railway engine ; and this peculiar and characteristic contour
is shown in a rude sketch of the creature made by a whaler
on one of its own teeth exhibited in a table-case in the
gallery. Although some modern observers have stated
in a model, and therefore no fault can be found with the
restoration on the conventional lines. Here it may be
mentioned that although the sperm-whale has long been
known to feed on cuttles and squids, it has only recently
been ascertained that the species preyed upon were of
gigantic size. When harpooned these whales invariably
disgorge their last meal, and some of the matter thus
ejected has included portions of the arms of cuttle-fish
measuring fully six feet in cube.
Near by the sperm-whale model stands a mounted
skeleton of the lesser sperm-whale (Coi/ia breviceps), a
species differing from its larger relative by the much
shorter jaws and proportionately smaller spermaceti
cavity. It is, in fact, in one sense, a sperm-whale in course
of evolution, not the least remarkable feature in its
anatomy being the marked dissimilarity in the size of the
two nasal apertures in the skull. It may be hoped that
196
KNOWLEDGE.
[Septembek 1, 1898.
means will be found for making models of the bottle-nose
Hyperoodon and of one of the beaked whales, the latter of
which are now represented in the gallery by a series of
skulls.
Apart from a couple of porpoises, the models in the
dolphin family include those of the kUler and the white
whale ; the former species being remarkable for its bold
alternation of light and dark colours, while the latter is
unique on account of the pure creamy white hue of its
glistening skin. Why the white whale should have a hide
of this bridal hue, while its not very distant relation the
pilot-whale (Glohicephalus) is clad in deep sable, stands
urgently in need of explanation. A model of the latter
species is shortly to be added to the gallery ; and, both on
account of the spotted coloration of its skin and the
peculiar conformation of the head, one of the narwhal
would also prove an interesting addition to the series.
In the vestibule of the new gallery is a small case
containing representatives of the small family of freshwater
dolphins (Platiuiistichh), the few living types of which are all
creatures of comparatively small size. While the Indian
susu (Platanista) is represented chiefly by skeletons and
skulls, of the La Plata dolphin (Pontoporia) the plaster
model of a specimen killed during my first visit to
Argentina forms an attractive exhibit. Its peculiar light
brown colour seems to have been produced to harmonize
with the clear, but brown-stained waters of the Kiver Plate.
Till the new gallery was opened the Cetacean collection
of the Museum was exhibited in a low, ill-Ughted, and
crowded gaUery, where the incautious visitor was only too
likely to run the risk of cracking his own skull against
that of a whale, and where skeletons alone formed by far
the greater portion of the show. That gallery is now
closed to the public, but the contrast between its dismal
array of bones — almost unmeaning to all save the
anatomist — and the present light and interesting exhibition
will probably survive in the memory of some of my readers.
In a word, while the old style was exactly what a museum
ought not to be, the modern one is precisely what it
should be.
REPETITION AND EVOLUTION IN BIRD-SONG.
By Chakles A. Witchell.
THROUGHOUT the animal world we may find
numberless instances of acts being rapidly repeated,
with apparently only one sustained effort for the
series, which acts seem to have originaUy been
performed much less speedily and with separate
efforts. Repetition means facility. Facility generally
implies rapidity of repetition, and a series of acts for one
purpose.
In the cries and songs of birds, we not only find indica-
tions of a former progressive evolution through the
medium of mere repetition, but we may observe this
evolution in actual development. I have elsewhere sug-
gested that some prolonged alarms and songs of birds may
be considered to have been evolved from mere repetitions
of one cry. We may suppose that in some species a long
song was a desideratum, since it is unaccompanied by any
considerable variation in pitch. In the night-jar and grass-
hopper warbler there is practically no variation, though
the latter " drums " in about the interval of a minor third.
The cricket-like chirp of the chiff-chaflf may be heard
everywhere, and is occasionally given in autumn as well
as in spring ; but I have never heard it rendered in more
than three syllables ; and it almost invariably consists of
two only. It would be interesting to know whether readers
of KNo^^^:,EDGE have ever heard this uttered with four or
five syllables. If such a local variation were discovered
it might be considered as a survival of an earlier form of
cry, or as an advance upon the ordinary song. I incline
to the former proposition.
The turtle dove has a tremulous purring note, reminding
one of the croak of the common frog (not of the more
commonly heard " work, work" of the toad). It seems to
consist of a very rapid succession of little coos. If greatly
prolonged it would remind one of the note of the night-jar.
In the common pigeon, and some of the doves also, a
succession of little coos constitutes the whole song, which
is often somewhat elaborate — as in the common coUared
turtle dove.
There may, of course, be the change of retrogression or
reversal, as well as changes due to elaboration. The
great titmouse seems to afford an instance of the former.
The young (out of the nest) have a repeated cry with a
curious wryneck-like tone, which may be rendered " klee,
klee, klee." It is generally repeated from three to five
times. The old bird never repeats a cry of this tone, but
it utters a long single note as a cry of distress when a
hawk is in sight. The cry of the young is no doubt
inherited, and it may seem that the note may formerly
have been repeated often by adult birds where it is now
given only in single long cries.
On the other band, the adult great tit has an alarm (a
rapid " shashashasha ') which is absent from the young.
This is the most frequent danger signal of the old birds,
and it always contains many syllables, all given, however,
at the same pitch. How long it takes a wild titmouse to
develop a variation of an alarm cry I know not, but in
Western Canada I heard the marsh tits giving precisely the
same note as their British prototypes, though the birds of
the two countries must have been whoUy separated during
an incalculable period of time.
At Montreal, also, the house-sparrows (which were said
to have been introduced fifteen years earlier from the States
and not from England), had exactly the same cry, as well
as the same manners, as the British bird. The sparrow,
when bred in a cage, proves itself to have a strong tendency
towards mimicry ; yet these Canadian birds, like the marsh
tits in the Far West, and the sparrows that chirp on the
Bank of England, retained the ancestral tones of their
species.
An interesting instance of repetition, developed in one
strain to completeness, and in another not advanced beyond
an elementary stage, occurs in the wood-wren. This bird's
song consists of the simple repetition of a not musical
sound, slow at first, but gradually getting faster until the
song ends in an ecstasy. The whole may be rendered
" si-si-si-sisisisisi." The pitch varies only a little : but
there is a beautifully even accclerdndd in the strain. The
bird has another cry which might be taken for a song,
but this seems to be really a signal of danger. It is a full
brief whistle repeated two or three times at the same pitch,
and at about the rate of two per second. It may be written
" kew, kew, kew." I have listened, but in vain, for any
sign that even one of these birds had any inclination to
repeat this beautiful note more than four times in succession.
If that sound were somewhat prolonged, and given a few
more times, it would rival some of the sweetest strains of
the nightingale. But the wood-wren neglects this pure
tone, and throws all his effort into the sibilous strain which
falls to us from the tree tops, even as it fell on the ear of
Gilbert White long ago.
The cuckoo, like the wood-wren, has developed the
repetition of a note into a strain — a full-toned bubbling
cry which is uttered at least by the female — yet the well-
September 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE.
197
known "cuckoo" is given with apparently no suggestion of
a further development than the doubling of the first note.
The sedge warbler is much more inventive, for he
frequently creates an original strain by associating two or
three cries of other species, and repeating them m a certain
order and with a definite accent many times successively
in one song, thus proving what a single bird can do by
means of repetition, and indicating what mat/ he occurring
much less quickly in other species.
In the thrush a few notes, often borrowed, are very
generally re[ieated a few times, but never prolonged,
as in the song of the sedge- warbler. The thrush,
indeed, seems to repeat from lack of originality, and yet
without sufficient persistence to produce striking strains.
The nightingale is, however, the master of repetition in
song. The majority of his strains simply consist of one
or two notes repeated with varying speed, the whole song
including from two or three to twenty-five or thirty
repetitions of one note. I have counted as many as thirty-
three repetitions, given at about the rate of five per second,
and this number is probably often exceeded, though not
after the middle of May, when the song begins to wane.
The charm of the bird may be partly due to its repetitions,
for the ear is not so tired by them as by the rapid jerky
songs of the blackcap, and some other quick singers, but
may dwell on and enjoy each simple pure tone. The
nightingale has acquired a magnificent ci-esccndo : and one
cannot but surmise that human ideas of this grace in
singing may have been borrowed from the bird. The
sedge-warbler and blackcap, and perhaps the wood-wren
also, have imperfectly acquired it.
The origin of some of the nightingale's strains may pre-
sumably be found in single cries — a history which, in the
case of the well-known long notes of the bird , is occasionally
traversed at the present time. A little call-note, " tewy,"
is sometimes produced several times in succession, each
note more prolonged than the last, until the strain ends in
the ordinary long notes in all their sweetness.
The origin of certain prolonged strains may also be
indicated in the cries of young birds. The nightingale,
for instance, has a harsh " sisisisisi " which is quite unlike
its sweeter tones. The fledged young one, however, when
being fed, utters a similar long rapid cry. The ordinary
cry of the young is a croak similar to that of the parents.
The young greenfinch, ready to quit the nest, utters
when being fed, a rattling cry so like the " didititit " rattle
in the song of the parent that the only point of distinction
is that the parent gives the strain in several keys, and
interrupts it with other cries. The actual rattle is identical
with that of the young.
The young fledged nuthatch, when being fed, utters a
quick repetition of an almost toneless cry, with the same
general character, however, as the full, bubbling, song-
rattle of the adult.
It would, therefore, seem that when some song birds are
developing their strains by simple repetitions of cries, they
may be less inventive than at first appears, and be merely
returning to an infantile mode of expressing a want.
The following note may be of interest as indicating that
a bird whose habitat is remote from the range of our
nightingale has followed a similar method in developing a
song. The British birds have a rather short strain consisting
of three or four peeting notes given at the same pitch, and an
ensuing full rattling sound at a lower pitch, the whole sound-
ing something like a " pee pee pee boblobloble." This is
given throughout the season of song, though it is one of
the least noticeable of the usual strains. It is varied in
length of repetition very slightly, but is rendered in any
interval of pitch between a third and an octave. Three
years ago in Vancouver City, I was much struck with the
song of a common bush-warbler, a bird with the general
appearance and manners of our hedgesparrow. The bird
gave this strain of our nightingale perfectly, except that
the leading notes seemed to be very slightly inflected.
The strain was in all other respects the strain of our
nightingale, pure and simple. It seemed never to be
modulated by the Canadian bird ; and it was particularly
noticeable as being almost the only bird-song to be heard.
But so frequent was it that the canaries on the houses near
vacant " lots " had all" caught " the song, and included it in
their own strains, and so accurately, that often I should
not have known which bird was singing had not the sound
come from some lofty window and not from the low
bushes. I doubt not but that many of the canaries in
Vancouver still have this strain, and that any local
observer who has noticed the song of the warbler could
confirm my statement as to the canaries. Did the
Canadian bird borrow it from our nightingale or rice versa ?
Or did they, uninfluenced by each other, follow the same
course in elaborating their strains from simple originals ?
THE KARKINOKOSM, OR WORLD OF
CRUSTACEA.-V.
By the Rev. Thomas R. R. Stebbing, m.a., f.r.s., f.l.s.
THERE are many contrivances for moving through
water, but, few if any, are more handy than
rowing. Independently of any boat or implement
the human swimmer rows with his front legs,
commonly called his hands and arms. Birds,
beasts, fishes, insects, and crustaceans use various
appendages for the same purpose, and many of them might
with more or less propriety be called oar-footed. Among
crabs the genus Ermipes has monopolized the title in its
Latin form. In a Greek dress it falls to the Podocopa, a
division of the bivalved Ostracoda. But more suitably, in
another Greek derivative, it has been bestowed upon that
extensive branch of the Entomostraca, which are therefore
known as the Copcpoda. These oar-footed crustaceans,
individually considered, are a feeble folk, but in the mass
much worthy of respect. Unlike their little boxed-up
brethren the Ostracoda, they cannotproduce an interminable
list of fossils, or claim an unbroken record of representation
throughout the entire series of stratified rocks, to prove
the antiquity of their lineage. In this kind of documentary
evidence they are singularly deficient. But when regard
is paid to their extensive distribution, resourcefulness,
variety of structure, beauty of form and colouring, and
their indirect usefulness to mankind, they are found to
occupy no undistinguished place in the realm of existing life.
Of some of this order there are said to be thirty genera-
tions in three weeks. Such prolific accumulation may
seem incredible, but it harmonizes with the fact, repeatedly
recorded, of ships traversing miles of ocean coloured in
broad bands by dense masses of these small creatures.
Dr. G. S. Brady says, " There can be no manner of doubt
that the sea, from the Equator to the Poles, supports every-
where a profusion of Entomostracan life, chiefly of the order
Copepoda," and Sir John Murray, of the L'liaUenffer
Expedition, declares that " Copepoda were rarely, if ever,
absent from the tow-net gatherings when examined on
board ship," although the profusion was too great to admit
of more than a selection being preserved. Dr. Giesbrecht
describes a sort of fine drizzling rain that may sometimes
be seen close to the smooth surface of the Mediterranean.
It is a shrimpy shower, not from above, but from below.
There are swarms of certain Copepoda at the surface, and
198
KNOWLEDGE.
[Septbmbeb 1, 1898.
the vivacious animals springing oat of the water and falling
into it again produce the strange effect.
Now, albeit that these creatures are so incalculably
numerous, they had to wait long before attracting scientific
attention. In 1770 there was published at Copenhagen,
by J. E. Gunner, Doctor and Professor of Divinity, and
Bishop of Trondhjem, an account of " Some small, rare,
and mostly new, Norwegian sea-animals." Among these
was one to which Dr. Giesbrecht awards the distinction
of being the first of the marine free-swimming Copcpoda
that was ever described and figured. It is no little credit
to the bishop, under these circumstances, that not only is
his species clearly recognizable, but his description of it is
almost entirely free from error. It should not be forgotten
that " Cuf's magnifying glass," with which he examined
his specimens, was not precisely the same kind of instru-
ment which microscopists have at command in the present
day. The species is now known as Calamus finmarchkus
(Gunner), and is sometimes spoken of as " whale-food."
That Gunner includes it among rare animals could only
have been in regard to its novelty, for he himself says,
that " Off Hammerfest, in West Finmark, the sea was
teeming everywhere with these minute animalcules, and
that a good number could be caught by merely letting the
sea-water flow into a bottle." So far from being really
rare, it happens that this is one of the four cosmopolitan
species, ranging from north to south, indifferent to heat
and cold. There are some four hundred* other species of
marine free-swimming Copepoda, of which a comparatively
few brace themselves exclusively with frigid waters, the
majority preferring their bath decidedly warm or at least
with the chill off. To the hardiest of the hardy must
those belong, which are capable not only of existing, but
of shining in the difficult situation which Nordenskiold has
described. " Very singular," he says, " is the impression
experienced in walking on a cold, dark, winter's day (with
the temperature nearly at the freezing point of mercury)
on snow from which on all sides shoot at every step
sparkles so vivid that sometimes one is almost afraid of
seeing one's boots and clothes catch fire." The sparkles
referred to in this passage emanate from living, though
not, under the circumstances, free-swimming Copcpoda.
Without, however, tempting the perils of the sea, or
tramping over Arctic ice, the student, Uve where he may,
can rely on being able to obtain a fresh- water Cyclops from
the nearest pond. Little as it may seem to resemble crab
or cumacean, lobster orwoodlouse of the Malacostraca,
upon careful comparison the relationship will become
apparent. Examine the series of appendages. Observe
that the head, just as in the Amphipoda and Isopoda, is
supplied with two pairs of antennae and four pairs of
mouth organs. These latter are commonly spoken of as
mandibles, maxillfe, first maxillipeds, second maxillipeds ;
whereas in the Malacostraca we are accustomed to the
succession of mandibles, first maxill;?, second maxillae,
maxillipeds. The difference in naming came about in this
way. The celebrated naturalist, Professor Carl Claus, in
tracing the transformations experienced by young Copepoda,
found reason to believe that there was a loss of one pair
of maxilla, and, on the other hand, a severance of the
outer and inner branches of the maxillipeds to constitute
two distinct organs. Like the traditional origin of Eve
from Adam, this supposed making of two out of one has
not commended itself to all investigators. Dr. Giesbrecht
and Dr. H. J. Hansen agree in denying its validity, and,
as Nature generally prefers the beaten track, there is a
presumption that they are right. It is in the hinder part
of the body, rather than in the front, that the Copepoda
differ from the Malacostraca. Following the mouth organs
are five, or occasionally only four, pairs of limbs, attached
to as many segments. The first four pairs almost always,
and the fifth pair often, are two branched. Then comes
the pleon, or tail-part, without appendages, but like the
* More than forty of these were added in one batch from the Gulf
of Gruinea, by T. Scott, Eoq., r.L.s., in 1891. -See Trans. Linn.
Soc, London, Zool. See. 2, Vol. 6, Part 1,
Figure of Cyclops serrnlatus Fischer. From Uljania.
trunk consisting of five segments (the first two
usually coalescent in the female) and ending in the caudal
fork with its apical setae.
In one division, comprising the families Calanidse and
Pontellidfe, there is a well-marked separation between the
trunk and the pleon. This division Giesbrecht calls the
Gymnoplea, Copepoda with footless pleon, as opposed to
the Podoplea, comprising the Cyclopidse, Harpacticidse,
Peltidiidffi and Corycaeidas. The Podoplea, meaning
Copepoda with foot-bearing pleon, have indeed a footless
pleon, like all the Copepoda, but here the constriction
between trunk and tail occurs after the fourth pair of limbs,
and by that means the fifth pair of trunk-Umbs, such as it
is, often a very small affair, lends its support to the pleon,
or tail-part of the animal.
The Gymnoplea generally have a pulsating heart, almost
always lead a pelagic life, and have the joints of the
appendages in general more numerous and more variously
plumed than is the case in the Podoplea, The latter
scarcely ever have a pulsating dorsal vessel, and include,
besides numerous marine species, almost all that Uve in
fresh water.
As these papers have the insidious object of tempting
KnnulfHijf.
COPILIA VITREA (Haeckel)
CALOCALANUS PLUMULOSUS (Claus)
From (xIESBEKCHT.
From &IE3BBECHr.
September 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE.
199
the unwary reader to become a student, it would be wrong
to linger any longer on the dry and endless details which
belong to anatomy and classification. In the first chapter
Figure of Sutuplerophoi-its papiliu Hesse. From Brady.
mention was made of "Sotopteroplwrus papilio, to give a hint of
the profundity of learning of which the subject was capable.
The names of this truly remarkable Copepod species signify
"a butterfly which carries wings on its back." Most
butterflies have that privilege. But this is a crustacean,
member of a class which climbs the mountain and fathoms
the abyss, but which never made the least pretension to
have wings to fly with. Yet this wonderful species indicates
that Nature, if it chose, could even make a flying crab.
Dr. Giesbrecht's name has been more than once men-
tioned. To his monograph of the pelagic Copepoda {Fauna
tind Flora dis Golfes ton Xtapel, Mon. 19, 1892) those
should turn who are willing to be entrapped by the fascina-
tions of this branch of study. On seeing some of these
" ofl'-sconrings of the sea," as the eye of the microscope
and the eye of the artist have combined to reveal them, it
is probable that the most contemptuous will be surprised
into admiration. Dried specimens, and specimens preserved
in spirit, as they are seen in collections, are commonly
reduced to a imiformly pallid tint, so that few persons know
or ever behold the richness and variety, the gaiety and.
even splendour of colouring, of which these tiny denizens
of the sea are susceptible. Crustaceans brought up from
the gloomiest depths are frequently gorgeous in orange and
crimson. Of Copepoda which frequent the surface many,
as already explained, are either transparently hyaline,
brilliantly iridescent, or variously decked with points or
bars or splashes of brightly harmonious colours. Some of
them have ornaments which, when magnified to suit our
dulness of sight, appear quite astonishingly graceful. In
this respect the genus Calocalanut: seems to deserve the
palm, and within this genus the species Calocalamis puio
(Dana) may be held to compete in beauty with the bird
after which it is named, if our minds can be brought to
tolerate a comparison between the haughty fowl which
condescends to adorn our pleasure grounds and a little
ocean waif with a body the twentieth part of an inch long.
It is not easy to explain in words the quality of distinction
and the charm with which the marine organism is really
invested, although on a scale so infinitesimal. The body
is slenderly oval and colourless. Through the pellucid
segments of the back can be seen the mass of orange-
coloured eggs, for it is the female which is the more
exuberantly beautiful. In front, on either side of the
head, are extended with gracious sinuosity the twenty-five
jointed first antennse, nearly twice as long as the body,
which they help to keep steadily balanced in the water.
The bristles of various shapes, sizes, colours, and functions,
with which the several joints of these antenns are adorned,
are important in the animal's economy, as well as very
conspicuous features in its array. They shoot out in all
directions like a shower of rockets. But this remarkable
apparatus becomes almost commonplace by comparison
with that of the caudal extremity. Each branch of the
furca has four bristles. Such caudal bristles may be
simple, serrated, or plumose, but, in any case, they are
usually narrow and tapering. Here, on the contrary, from
a slender stem the feathering gradually widens till it equals
the breadth of the animal's body, passing from limpid
clearness at its base to a magnificent orange and brick red,
with a metallic gleam, over all its broadly-rounded distal
portion. When the animal is in repose, the furcal arms
are extended at right angles to the body, and then aU its
brilliant feathers are spread abroad in dazzling symmetry,
like the train of a Court lady wrought in satin of " old
gold."
Another species of this same genus, Calocalanm plunm-
losus (Clans), though inferior in charm, is even more
wonderful in appearance. Like its congener, it has four
caudal bristles on each furcal branch. These are bright
orange in hue, all of very moderate length and breadth,
with one exception. The exception is the innermost on
the left side. This attains a truly colossal magnitude,
being nearly twice the width of the animal's body and
about six times its length. The feathering extends over
almost the whole of this singular and very fragile orna-
ment, which, if regard be had only to proportions, may vie
with any single plume that the most wonderful bird can
boast of.
In some genera the brilliance of adornment is shown
rather at the middle of the body than at its extremities.
Copilia vitrea (Haeckel), by the glassiness which its name
implies, permits a facile study of its internal anatomy, and
accordingly it is able to exhibit attractions in a part of
the organism from which a display of beauty is not usually
expected. The stomach is a magnificent orange-red. On
either side, its four pairs of swimming-feet make a gorgeous
show by means of their conspicuous feathered bristles, not
exactly gleaming with purple and gold, but tipped with
violet, and in other parts lustrous with a hue that matches
the unwonted splendour gleaming from within the body.
Apart from the beauty of the Copepoda, there are many
points of interest, such as the strange forms developed for
special purposes in the antennw and fifth pair of limbs,
the peculiar eyes of Copilia and Coriiavus, the problems of
distribution, and others which remind us that, within the
compass of a few columns, nothing more is possible than
a little fluttering over the surface of so vast a subject.
The parasitic Copepoda may claim a chapter to
themselves.
ECONOMIC BOTANY.
By John E. .Jackson, a.l.s., etc.. Keeper of the Museums,
Pioyal Gardens, Keir.
ALVACE2E. — This is a large and important
economic order, marked by two distinct char-
acters which pervade the plants constituting the
order, namely, the fibrous inner barks and the
mucilaginous or gummy substances found in
the stems, roots, and fruits. None of the plants have any
M
200
KNOWLEDGE.
[Septembeb 1, 1898.
deleterious properties. Their geographical range is wide,
though they are most abundant within the Tropics. The
forms of the plants included in the order vary considerably,
from small herbs, as in the marsh mallow, to the baobab
{Ailansiiniit (Uijitntu), or the giant silk cotton trees [Erio-
denihon anfractunsum).
The order is divided into four groups or tribes. Malveae,
which includes the mallows and the species of Sirla and
AhutUon, well-known fibre plants of India and China.
Ureneae, of which the principal products are fibres furnished
by species of Urena, Malarlira, and Malrariscux. Hibiscefe,
containing the several species of Hibiscus, Gossupimn, and
Thrspesia : and Bombaceas, which includes Adamonia,
Bombax, Eriodendron , and others.
The following are the most important species of Hibiscus
from an economic point of view : — 11. esculentus. This is
a large annual herb growing to a height of five or six feet,
the native country of which is uncertain, though opinion
inclines to some part of Africa. At the present time it is
cultivated all over the tropical and warmer parts of the
world, chiefly for the sake of the mucilaginous fruits which
are known under the various names of okro, gombo, or
bendikai. These fruits are narrowly oblong or fusiform,
from three to ten inches long, and dehiscing, when ripe,
by longitudinal sutures. In the young green state the
fruits are extensively used as an article of food, particularly
for the purpose of thickening soups. In the very young
state they are sometimes pickled like capers. The seeds
contain oil of good quality, and is expressed in some coun-
tries and used for culinary purposes. They are also
roasted and used as a substitute for coffee. The fibre from
the stem is used for ropes and cordage. Another annual
largely cultivated in India, Ceylon, and in other tropical
countries is the roselle {H ibiacus snbdari^a) . This is grown
both for the fibre, used like the last-named, and for the
fleshy calyces of the fruit, which are of a reddish colour
when fresh, and are made into a kind of preserve. Other
species of Hibiscus yielding fibres of equal quality are
H. caniuddnu^, H. abelmoschus, and //. clattis. The first
named is an Indian species, while the two latter are West
Indian. //. abelmosclnis is known as the musk mallow, in
consequence of its seeds possessing a strong, musky odour,
for which reason they are frequently used in perfumery as
a substitute for animal musk. //. clatus is the tree from
which Cuba bast is procured, a substance better known
twenty years ago than at the present time. It consists of
the inner bark of the tree, and was at one time largely
used in gardens for tying up plants as well as for tying
bundles of Havanna cigars. In gardens, however, it has
long been superseded by raflia, and in the Cuban cigar
trade by ribbon. Even now Cuba bast occasionally finds
a use in this country, and not long since it was adopted,
after bleaching or dyeing, for the manufacture of ladies'
hats in consequence of its hghtness and lace-like appear-
ance.
By far the most important plants in the whole family
of Malvaceffi are those species of (rossi/pium which
furnish cotton of commerce, the chief of which is (J. barbn-
dense, a large herbaceous or shrubby plant growing to a
height of nine or ten feet, with numerous widely-spreading
branches, and bearing capsular fruits dehiscing into three
or five valves, and containing numerous closely-packed
seeds entirely ouried in a mass of long, very delicate white
hairs, varying in length from a quarter to an inch or more.
The commercial value of cotton is judged by the length
and strength of the fibres, or staple, as it is termed in
trade, and the clean separation of them from the seeds,
and it is these two essential qualities that cause the cotton
produced by G. barbadcnst to be of a much superior quality
to that produced by other species, or indeed by some
varieties of the same species. The separation of the fibre
from the seed is so marked in the different qualities that
in the Sea Island cotton of commerce the mass of fibres
can be readily removed from the seed by the fingers without
breaking the fibres and leaving the seed perfectly clean,
while in others, and inferior qualities, the fibres break
away, leaving the seeds thickly clothed with the woolly
bases. G. barbadense is supposed to be a native of the
West Indies, as its specific name would imply. Its culture
at the present time is spread over a large portion of the
warmer regions of the globe, and, as is commonly the case
with plants so long and widely cultivated, it has numerous
varieties, known in commerce under distinct names, such
as Sea Island, Kidney, Peruvian, Bahia, Brazil, and
others. These varieties are cultivated in the West Indies,
the Southern United States, Central and South America,
and other countries. G. herbarium and G. arhoreum also
furnish some of the cotton of commerce.
In a brief resume of the economic plants of the several
natural orders like the present it is impossible to detail the
processes employed in the preparation of cotton for the
market ; or even to speak of the numerous uses to which
this most important product is put, but as a proof of the
value of a single vegetable fibre we may quote the
following returns of the imports and value of raw cotton
into the United Kingdom during the year 1897 : —
Cnts. £
From I'nited States .12,323,090 value 24,5,=>7.513
„ Brazil 150,129 ,, 303.425
„ Egypt 2,-147,616 .. 6,4S4,450
„ British India ... 375,777 ., 636,267
„ Other Countries 97,5:2 „ 213,077
15,394,234
32,194,732
Besides the fibre another useful product is the seeds,
which at one time were considered of no value, and
were used as manure for the land ; for some time past,
however, they have been largely used for the expression of
oil, which has been applied for illuminating purposes, oiUng
machines, and in the preparation of woollen cloth and
morocco leather, also for soap making, and, when highly
purified, for mixing with olive or almond oils, or as
substitutes for them. After the expression of the oil the
cake is much used for feeding cattle.
The baobab, or monkey bread-tree (Adansvnia di/jitnta),
which belongs to the tribe Bombacefe, is a tree of consider-
able interest, if not of high value, from an economic point
of view. It is a native of west tropical Africa, but is
found cultivated in many parts of India and Ceylon. It
grows to a height of forty to sixty feet, with a diameter of
trunk of thirty feet, and attains a great age. Humboldt
speaks of it as " the oldest organic monument of our
planet.' The trunk is covered with a very thick fibrous
bark, from which the natives make ropes and nets. It
has been proposed as a material for paper making, and
paper of good quality has been made from it ; but as the
supply must necessarily always be limited, its future as a
paper material is very doubtful. On the other hand, where
the quantity required would be less — such, for instance,
as the plaiting for ladies' hats — it might, and indeed has
been found an useful article, for a few years ago it was so
used, after being bleached or dyed in various colours. The
remarkably large fruit of the baobab (often two feet long
and one foot diameter in the middle) contains a quantity
of pulp which is of an agreeable acid taste, and is used by
the people for making a refreshing cooling drink, besides
which the fruits are used as floats for fishing nets. Bomba.r
malnbfirieum, a large soft-wooded Indian tree, has a coarse
fibrous bark, from which rough ropes are made in India.
September 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE,
201
The seeds are buried in silky floss, generally known as
silk cotton, which, however, has little or no strength, and
is not capable of being spun into fabrics. Another kind
of silk cotton of very similar character is obtained from
the capsules of F.rimli lulrun inifnirtKnsiiiii, also a large,
soft-wooded tree, native of the tropics of the old and new
worlds. Under the name of '■ Kapok ' this substance has
been exported from Java to various parts of Europe for
many years past in large and increasing quantities, for the
purpose of stuffing mattresses, cushions, &c. Like the silk
cotton of Homliii.r, it is quite uusuited for spinning. One
of the most remarkable edible fruits of Malacca and the
Malay Islands is that known as the durian, the produce
of Ihtrio Zilnthinux. It is a large globular fruit, dehiscing
when ripe, and covered with strong spines or prickles.
The pulp is described by those who have become accustomed
to it as one of the most delicious of tropical plants, but
by those tasting it for the first time it is said to have a
flavour of civet, turpentine, and garlic.
Sterculiace i:. — The plants constituting this order are
trees and shrubs, mostly of tropical countries. The woody
stems, though soft, are for the most part stronger and
somewhat harder than those of the silk cotton group, to
the properties of which, in many respects, they are similar.
Thus, the inner barks are mostly fibrous, and ropes and
cordage are made from them in the countries where the
plants grow. More particularly is this the case in the
species of Shrculia itself; in three of the best known Indian
species, namely, Stcirulia urens. s. vHhisa and N. fn-tida,
the barks are used for cordage. The sterculias also yield a
quantity of gum of a light colour, very much resembling,
both in appearance and in their properties, gum tragacanth,
inasmuch as they absorb a quantity of water, and swell
before dissolving. The sterculia gums are much used
in India as substitutes for tragacanth, and are known
as Kuteera. Similar gums are produced in tropical
Africa, as well as in Australia from allied species of
Storulia.
The Kola Nut, which in a comparatively few years has
established itself as a regular and an important article of
trade, is the seed oii'ohi ucwnitiati', a tree of about forty
feet high, native of the West Coast of Africa. Amongst
the natives the kola nut has been long used as a remedy
for satisfying the cravings of hunger, and enabling tliose
who have to endure great fatigue to do without actual food
for a long period. During the last twenty years kola has
attracted considerable attention in this country, and the
plants have been introduced into most of the British
Colonies possessing a suitable climate for its success, and
in the West Indies it has become quite established. Kola
contains a large proportion of cafi'eine, and is much used
in the preparation of certain kinds of cocoa, as well as for
other purposes.
Another very important plant in the order is the cocoa
(Theobroiiia cac((o) , a moderate-sized tree, a native of Brazil
and other northern parts of South America, extending into
Central America and Mexico. Under cultivation the tree
is found in the tropics of both hemispheres, but especially
in Trinidad, Venezuela, New Grenada, Jamaica, and more
recently in Ceylon. As might be expected with a plant so
long and extensively cultivated, a large number of varieties
are known, distinguished by the size, shape, and colour of
the fruits and the quality of the seeds. For the preparation
of the seeds for the market they are first removed from the
pulp of the fruit in which they are embedded, washed and
slightly fermented, and when dry are ready for the market.
For the preparation of cocoa and chocolate they are slightly
washed and the outer husk removed, when they readily
break up into small, irregular pieces, and in this state are
known as cocoa nibs — the only state, indeed, in which they
were known in Europe forty or fifty years ago. To prepare
the soluble cocoas of the shops they are ground into a fine
powder, and often mixed with starch, sugar, and other
ingredients. Chocolate consists of the same seeds very
carefully pounded or ground in powerful mills, and sweet-
ened and flavoured with vanilla and various other spices.
In the preparation of pure cocoa nothing, of course, but
the seed is used, and a certain proportion of the oil, or
natural fat, which is contained in the seed, is first extracted
and forms what is known as cocoa butter. The seed con-
tains about half its weight of oil. This cocoa butter is
much used in pharmacy for suppositories, as well as an
ingredient in ointments and for coating pills for all pur-
poses, for which it is strongly recommended on account of
its agreeable bland taste and freedom from rancidity. The
uses of cocoa and chocolate in this country have greatly
increased of late years, the quantity of raw cocoa entered
for home consumption last year amounted to twenty-seven
millions, eight hundred and fifty-two thousand, one hundred
and fifty-two pounds against twenty-four millions, five
hundred and twenty-three thousand, four hundred and
twenty-eight pounds in ltS96.
TiLiACE.E. — An order of trees and shrubs, and very
rarely herbs, the species of which are most abundant
within the tropics, though some are natives of the more
temperate regions of both hemispheres. The trees are
noted for their even and close grained, yet soft and easily
cut wood, which is well represented in the common lime
(Tilia eurojica) a,ni the American bass Yiooi (T. americaHu).
The durability of the wood of the former and its adaptability
for carving is further exemplified in the lime wood carvings
by Grinling Gibbons in Hampton Court Palace, St. Paul's
Cathedral, and other public buildings. Another character
of the tiliacere is the fibrous barks found in most of the
species, notably in the lime tree, which forms Russian
bast from which mats are made, used for covering plants,
and by upholsterers for packing furniture. From the
fibrous point of view, however, by far the most important
plant in the whole order is that furnishing jute {Corchonis
capsulaiis). It is an Indian plant, cultivated to a large
extent in Bengal for the sake of the fibre which is con-
tained in the inner bark. For the purpose of increasing
the length of the fibre the seeds are sown thickly to cause
the plants to run up without branching. The stems,
which seldom exceed in thickness that of the finger, are
steeped to soften the fibrous bark, which is afterwards
removed and the fibres combed out and cleaned. The
rapid development of the trade in this fibre is remarkable;
fifty years ago it was scarcely known out of India, where
it was, and is still used for making rice and sugar bags.
In 1846 the imports of the fibre to this country amounted
to about nine thousand tons, which in 1897. had in-
creased to three hundred and thirty-six thousand, nine
hundred and nineteen tons. Jute fibre is now used
for various purposes, such as carpets, tapestries for cur-
tains, sacking, twines, and even for adulterating cheap
silks.
LiNE.E. — This is a small order of trees, shrubs, and
annuals well known for their bright but fugitive flowers.
Many of them, like the plants in the last-named order, are
marked by the presence of a fibrous bark, the most impor-
tant being the common flax [Linum imtatissimum), a stiff-
growing slender stemmed annual, the native country of
which is not known, the cultivation of the plant dating
from the remotest periods of history. It readily escapes
from cultivation, and is found in a half-wild state in almost
every country where it is grown. Its cultivation at the
I present time is widely extended in both temperate and
202
KNOWLEDGE
[Septembek 1, 1898.
tropical climates, as, for instance, in Russia, Egypt,
India, Holland, England, and the United States. Enor-
mous quantities of linseed are imported from Bussia and
India.
In tbis country the flax culture has been declining for
many years, though English-grown linseed is usually con-
sidered the best quality. The principal constituents of
linseed is a fixed oil, which it contains to the extent of
one-third of its weight, and a quantity of mucilage which
is contained in the testa. The oil is expressed and forms
the well-known linseed oil of commerce, so largely used for
mixing with paints, as well as for various other purposes,
and the mucilage causes the seeds to be valuable in the
preparation of linseed tea — a well-known demulcent drink
used in inflammatory conditions of the mucous membrane.
The imports of linseed during the year 1807 amounted to
one million, nine hundred and eight thousand, sis hundred
and twenty-eight quarters, the value of which was two
million, nine hundred and eighty-eight thousand, five
hundred and three pounds. Though this is a considerable
sum derived from one species of plant, it is not the largest
item in the total value of the flax plant, for besides linseed,
the flax fibre obtained from the stem shows a still greater
money value; for during the same year, 1897, tlax in its
various stages of preparation was imported to the extent of
ninety-eight thousand, eight hundred and two tons, of the
value of three millions, two hundred and three thousand, one
hundred and eighty-four pounds. Flax is so well known that
it is unnecessary to say more of it than that it is the cleaned
fibre of this slender- stemmed plant, the value of which as a
textile has been known from the very earliest periods, and
continues to the present day, for it is the strongest and
best vegetable fibre known capable of adaptation for the
finest fabrics, as delicate muslins, and the coarsest, as
tarpaulins, and, notwithstanding the introduction and
adaptation of numerous vegetable fibres in recent years, flax
still maintains its superiority.
Another important plant of the Linacest which has
come much to the fore in recent years is ErythroxyUm
Coca, from the leaves of which is prepared the well-
known Cocaine of the medical profession. The plant is
a small shrub, two to four feet high, cultivated to a very
large extent in the Andes of Peru, and in Bolivia and
Columbia, also in parts of Brazil, Argentina, etc. It is
considered to be a native of some of these countries,
though it is unknown in an actual wild state. It has
long been in use by the natives, who chew the leaves with
a little unslaked lime for the purpose of lessening the
desire for food, and enabling the chewer to undergo a large
amount of bodily exertion without fatigue. For this
reason it is a common practice to carry the coca leaves
about with them, together with a small gourd for holding
the lime. In gathering the leaves much care is exercised
by the people so as to ensure their absolute dryness, and
not to break them. In Peru, the plants begin to yield the
first crop of leaves in three years after planting, and in
some favoured localities two or three crops are obtained in
one year. The largest and most mature leaves are said to
contain the largest amount of cocaine. The leaves have an
agreeable and somewhat aromatic smell. Cocaine is now
very largely used as a local anesthetic, and in the prepara-
tion of coca wine. Under cultivation, several variations
from the specific type have arisen.
The announcement of the retirement of Sir William
Flower from the Directorship of the Natural History
Museum at South Kensington was received with great
regret. We learn that Prof. E. Ray Lankester has been
appointed to succeed Sir William Flower.
BRITISH
ORNITHOLOGICAI .^
^ <^ i'— ■
• NOTES.
Conducted by Habby F. Witherby, f.z.s., m.b.o.u.
Late Arrival ok Spring Migrants near Exeter. —
The current year has, so far, proved a most uninteresting
one from an ornithological point of view in this neighbour-
hood. It has been distinguished by the great scarcity of
most of our summer migrants, and the very late appearance
of some of them. Although daily on the look-out for Chiff-
chaffs and Willow Warblers, I did not see any till the 7th
June, when Blackcaps, Willow Warblers, Chiff-chaflfs,
Garden Warblers and Spotted Flycatchers all suddenly
appeared here, and were seen for a few days. Since then
I have noticed very few of them. No Blackcaps visited
the ripe berries of the ivy in April, as usual, and very
few have frequented the currant bushes. Whitethroats
were first seen on June 8th and 9th. Redstarts did not
show until June loth, but at the end of the month they
were numerous at Chagford. Only one Sedge Warbler has
been seen amongst the reeds here, and that was on the
10th of June. Common Sandpipers were first seen on
April 15th, when two were on the river, and many on
21st of the month. At the end of June, I saw a great
many on Dartmoor about the upper part of the
North Teign, where they nest. The first return from the
breeding grounds was on July 29th. The Cuckoo was
heard on the llth and 19th April, and afterwards became
very numerous. Swallows have been scarce. The first
was reported from the north of the county, near P>arnstaple,
about the 10th April, but I saw none until the 2l8t of the
month, when I observed some in the streets of Topsham.
A few Sand Martins were seen flying over the Exe on
April 2.5th. Although the Rev. M. A. Mathew observed
a House j\Iartin at Buckland Dinham, in Somersetshire,
on April 26th, I failed to see any here until June 19th,
and there were very few at Chagford (where this species
is usually very numerous) at the end of the month. It is
certainly much less abundant in South Devon than it has
been in most years. I noticed two Swifts on May 2nd,
apparently coming from the north-east, but there were
very few about until the 20thof the month, when numbers
arrived from a southerly direction. On June the
9th Mr. Mathew saw four Turtle Doves on the fore-
shore of the Exe estuary below Lympstone. None
now visit our marsh, where a small flock used formerly to
feed, in July and August, on the seeds of the plants growing
on the salt mud. We also saw a Red-backed Shrike near
Budleigh Salterton. I imagine that the cold at the end of
March and beginning of April, and the prevalence of cold
blustering westerly winds at the migration time, prevented
the arrival of our spring migrants by the ordinary route
across the Channel, and those that reached us probably
mostly came across England from the East. Hence they
were noticed earlier in Somersetshire than about Exeter.
— W. S. M. D'Urban, Newport House, near Exeter.
September 1, 1898.1
KNOWLEDGE,
203
Lesser BL.\rK-BACKED Gulls on the Exe. — On April
13th I watched a small flock of Lesser Black-backed Gulls
resting on the shingle outside our lawn wall at low water.
They were mostly immature birds of last year, but there
were a few adults among them. This gull is by no means
common on the Exe, and this is the first time I have ever
observed a flock of this species on the river. — W. S. M.
D'Urban.
Peregrines ant. Herring Gulls. — On March 12th, while
watching the Peregrine Falcons at Beachy Head, I was
surprised to see these birds chased by Herring Gulls ; yet
immediately afterwards 1 found the body of a Herring Gull
which had evidently been struck down by a Peregrine. —
C. J. Wilson, 21, Earlsfield Road, S.W.
On a lli/hnd Thrush found in Sorwaq {Tardus iliacus x Turdus
pilaris). By R. CoUett (Tiis. Jiilv, lS9S,'pp. 317-319). -Prof. Collett
here describes a specimen of a bird whicli be believes to be a hybrid
belween a Redwing and a Fieldfare. The bird was snared in Faaberg,
Norway, on December 11th, 1897, together with some examples of
the Fieldfare. Prof. Collett diagnoses the specimen as follows : —
"Size, half way between those of T. pilaris and T. iliacus ; eye-stripe
broad, of a buffy white ; upper parts most like those of T. pilaris ;
rump, greyisli brown, somewhat lighter than the back. Lower parts
most like those of T. iliacus ; the side spots somewhat triangular ;
under wing-coverts, rusty red mixed witli pale red.' A similar
specimen was caught near Stockholm on February 12th, 1859, and is
still preserved in the Riks Museum, Stockholm.
/(•eland Gull in Couiifi/ Sligo m Summer {Irish Naturalist, A.\xgast,
189S, p. 20J) — Mr. Robert Warren observed a bird of this species on
July 18th feeding in company with some Herring Gulls in a field.
At about a distance of ten yards, an! with the aid of field glasses
Mr. Warren made the bird out to be an immature one. This is only
the second time the Iceland Ci-ull has been observed in Ireland in
summer.
All contributions to the column, either in the tea;/ of notes
or photographs, should be forwarded to Harry F. Witherby,
at 1, Eliot Place, Blackheath, Kent,
[The Editors do not hold themselves responsible for the opinions or
Btatements of correspondents.]
' THE "QXAGGA. "
To the Editors of Knowledge.
Sirs, — In your May number, on page 138, Mr. R.
Lydekker calls the quagga an extinct animal. He says :
Zebras " and the now extinct quagga." He is mistaken.
At the moment of writing, the skin of a quagga is in the
backyard being salted and preserved. The quagga was
shot one month ago between Zwazieland and the Portu-
guese territory from a troop of four. Signs of larger
troops were seen then and there. Hunters report still
larger herds more to the north.
H. W. M. Lagerwey, ll.d.
Johannesburg, June 29th, 1S98.
[In reference to the above, it is a well-known fact that
the name " quagga " is now commonly applied in South
Africa to Burchell's zebra {E'/uus burchelli), although it
properly belongs to the apparently extinct E. quagga, which
is a very different animal. — E. L.J
PHOTOGRAPHIXG THROUGH A FLY'S EYE.
To the Editors of Knowledge.
Sirs, — If any readers of Knowledge wish to try Mr.
F. W. Saxby's interesting experiment, but are unable to
get " eye-lenses " (and dragon flies do not flourish in
towns), I have a good number of the cast nymph skins of
the dragon fly, Ana.c formosus, which I will very gladly
send to anyone who cares to send an address. The cornea
is facetted, hyaline, and, moreover, has the advantage of
being already almost perfectly clear. Arthur East.
Southleigh Vicarage, Witney, Oxen.
r ORIOXIS AXD S AND U CORON.E.
To the Editors of Knowledge.
Sirs, — A maximum of U Orionia was computed for
March 28th, 1898. It is an interesting star, and the past
apparition increased the desire to know more about it.
Being near the zenith most of the time, the opportunities
were more favourable for its observation than for other
stars.
It appeared to be on February 11th at about ninth
magnitude, and from that day forward as follows ; —
Feb. 22
„ 27
7-8
7-6
7-4
Feb. 28 ...
Mar. 2, 4, 5
,. 13, 15, 16
„ 19
„ 20 (max.)
„ 24 ...
„ 26
„ 31 ... .
April 1, 2
„ 6,7,9
,. 14, 16, 19
.. 24
„ 26
„ 27
„ 28
,, 28. 29
May 1 ...
7
Lost behind trees.
Except on a few nights
the seeing was imsteady,
and the light -curve ir-
regular.
Comparisons were made with the D.M. stars in the
field or close by.
When S Coronse rose clear of the eastern city
vapour and smoke on March 13th it seemed to be at
its brightest, 6'7 magnitude ; this apparition was
four days after the
S and U Coronse.
>m
SL
■■^:
f.
X
•a
0
b
*c
J. n'
1106
6-8 mag. e.
1110
6 00 ,. c.
1126
6-30 „ *.
1156
7-20 „ d.
1162
500 ., a.
7liO ., /.
7-3
7-2
6-8
6-0
5-9
5-9
6-1
6-3
6-4
6-5
66
6-8
71
6-7
6-8
6-7
6-6
6-8
715
computed maximum,
and, as usual.
it re-
mained on a
level
until the middle of
the following month.
The first and
snb-
sequent changes
were noted as fol-
lows : —
April U ...
6-8
„ 15 ..
6-9
„ 16 .
6-8
„ 19, 24
6-9
„ 25, 26
7-0
„ 27, 28
7-1
„ 30 ..
7-2
May 8 ...
7-5
„ 10 ...
7-4
„ 11, 15
7'7
„ 17 ..
7-8
„ 19 ...
7-9
„ 22 ...
8-1
■
'C
.
°S
•e
31^ 2719
7'0 mag
e.
., 272-t
"■3 „
d.
32" 2561
6-5 „
f.
„ 2569
tr var.
„ 2577
7-8 „
1
33° 2572
90 „
h.
„ 2573
8-9 .,
a
„ 2574
6-8 „
c.
Comparisons were made with the D.M. stars in the field
204
KNOWLEDGE
[September 1, 1898.
and close by. Tiie star was regular in its movements,
but the seeing was only occasionally good. The maximum ,
■which evidently was a bright one, seems to have been
passed on or about the computed date for that phase,
March Hth. David Flanery.
Memphis, Tenn., U.S.A.,
23rd May, 1898.
A THEORY OF EEFBACTION IN SUN-SPOTS.
To the Editors of Knowledge.
Sirs, — I do not find that Mr. Jenkinson's objection,
that the refraction (illustrated in the August number of
Knowledge) would be destroyed by a blast from a pair
of bellows, has any foundation in fact. I enclose a photo-
graph which will show that a current of air has but little
effect on the refracted bottom.
I have intentionally removed the " penny," as this has
but little to do with the discussion.
It is, of course, true that a very slight ripple will often
destroy refraction, but this is from a cause that we can
hardly expect to find reproduced on the solar surface. In
rippled water the refraction ia often destroyed by the
reflection of the sky or of bright objects ; but if the surface
be shielded from bright rejections, refraction will suffer
but little. Arthur East.
The report of the Select Committee on Museums of the
Science and Art Department has furnished abundance
of material for those who make it their business to criticise
the responsible agents of our State-aided institutions.
" The South Kensington King," the " Brompton Boilers,"
the " Poor Relations' Benevolent Institution," and such
like sly insinuations have for many years been the only
encouragement which the heads of departments at South
Kensington have received from some quarters. " The
work has in innumerable instances," says one of our con-
temporaries, " been bad to the extent of dishonesty, and a
gross waste of public money. Indeed, so extravagant are
the faults proved against the department, that one can
hardly credit the truth of them." Even if all this be true,
the fact remains that the Department has accomplished an
incalculable amount of useful work, the mature fruit of
which still remains to be gathered in.
A number of the cases of birds and their nests at the
Natural History Museum have been photographed by
Messrs. Newton & Co., and a series of coloured lantern
slides have thus been produced. Stuffed birds usually
look stiff and unnatural in a photograph, but the natural
surroundings in the cases photograph well, and the slides
are on the whole accurately coloured.
Mental fatigue — the most characteristic of the ills that
flesh, or at all events civilised flesh, is heir to — has
during recent years been made the subject of carefal
scientific observation. Though there is still much to be
learnt respecting the factors influencing it, a very great
deal has been added to our knowledge of the conditions
attending its occurrence, and the means necessary for its
dissipation. The investigations regarding mental fatigue
naturally fall into two divisions. There is, first, the effect
of intellectual effort upon the physiological activities of the
body ; and, second, the result upon the mental powers
themselves. It has been fairly proved that all intellectual
worli has an immediate effect upon the physiological state
of tlie various bodily organs. Thus, the earliest result of
the mind's activity is to quicken the heart beat, though
after half-an-hour a distinct slackening follows. This
is naturally accompanied by an increased blood pressure
on the brain. Similarly, respiration is quickened, though
the inspirations and expirations of air are not, individually,
as vigorous. The amount of tissue used up in the body
increases, too, as is shown by the larger absorption of
oxygen from the air, and the increased expiration of waste
product in the form of carbon dioxide. Such increased
wasting away of the material of the body has been found,
as one would have expected, to carry with it an increase in
bodUy temperature. A particularly important relation has
been made out between intellectual and muscular effort.
While a brief mental exercise of fifteen minutes or less
seems to increase the momentarily available muscular
energy, a longer mental exertion distinctly decreases it, .
though when it is accompanied by emotional excitement
this mind work may not be followed by the enfeebling of
the muscles until much later. Observations made in a
French school show that the amount of bread consumed by
the pupils, who were always allowed to have just as much
as they wanted, decreased with fair regularity until the
minimum was reached in July. This is interpreted to
mean that there is a gradual decrease in vitality as the
result of continued school work. Many other results of less
popular interest have been obtained and will be found
described in an excellent volume on mental fatigue, by
Professors Binet and Henri, recently published in Paris.
Many people believe that soon after death a peculiar
smell arises from the body. " There ia death in the
house," old women will say. So, too, it is well known
that in some coimtries ravens appear, oftentimes in large
numbers, almost immediately animals have expired. It ia
eaay to explain all such phenomena by changes due to
decay of the body ; but the smell before death, which ia
referred to as odor mortis, is not so easily understood.
This " death smell " attracts several species of flies to the
dying in certain seasons, and the approach of death in a
human being or animal, if it occurs at a time of the year
when these insects are in active life, is said by some to be
unmistakably heralded by the determined manner in
which such fliea settle on the skin, especially in the region
of the nostrils. According to many authorities the smell
is unappreciable to average nasal organs, though not a few
trained observers are without doubt of its existence. Of
numerous cases which have recently been put on record in
the Britiuli Medical Journal, one or two may be referred to
here, as they provide sufficient ground for further investi-
gation. An apparently strong, healthy nurse was suffering
from a severe attack of typhoid, and towards the end of
the first week a peculiarly heavy odour was noticed about
the patient by the doctor in attendance, and since he had
noticed a similar smell in previous fatal cases he felt
anxious. Shortly after the odour had been detected the
nurse developed other symptoms and died. Another
physician records that having remarked the smell in the
case of a child, who otberwise did not appear to be
seriously ill, he regarded it as a sign of most unfavourable
import, and sought a consultation. The consultant
thought there was no cause for anxiety, yet the child
died within forty-eight hours. These, and other cases
described by medical men, certainly give ground for the
belief that, in some cases at least, the approach of death
ia heralded by a strange odour, though it ia diflicult to
understand exactly the cause of its occurrence.
Septembek 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE.
205
VARIABLE STARS OF SHORT PERIOD.
WHOEVER will make a careful examination of
the brightness of a large number of stars,
either in the sky, or, better, as photographed
upon different plates, will be impressed with
the vast number which show no perceptible
variation. The discovery of variable stars is greatly aided
when we are able to make a suitable selection for examina-
tion, either from their spectra or from their presence in
clusters. Visually, we can never be sure that all the
variables in a given region have been found, however
carefully we may study them. Photography brings this
problem more nearly within our reach, and a partial
solution of it is illustrated in the accompanying figure.
A photographic telescope was constructed having as an
objective a Cooke anastigmatic lens with an aperture of
2-6 cm. and a focal length of 33-3 cm. This telescope was
mounted equatorially, and the lens was alternately exposed
and covered for intervals of exactly ten and fifty minutes
by an electrical attachment. The polar axis of the
mounting was displaced and the rate of the driving clock
was increased, so that the successive images should be
slightly separated. An eight-by-ten photographic plate was
exposed in this instrument on April 2l3t, 1898, and eight
successive images were obtained, the Greenwich mean times
of the middle of the exposures being 13h. 49m., 14h. 49m.,
15h. 49m., IGh. 49m., 17h. 49m., 18h. 48m., 19h. 48m.,
and 20h. 48m. The plate covered a region about thirty-
three degrees square, whose centre was R.A. = lh. 2m.,
Dec. = -f76'6^ The images of the stars in the corners
of the plate were sufficiently good when visible to show
very slight variations in light, but owing to their increased
size the faintest stars were not shown. The greatest loss
amounted to about one magnitude. If, now, any variable
star having a period of less than fourteen hours was con-
tained in this region, it is probable that at least one
maximum and one minimum would be photographed.
The figure represents a portion of the plate described
above, enlarged ten times to a scale of G0"=0'1 cm., and
covers about one square degree. It therefore represents
one- thousandth of the entire plate, the size of which on
this scale would be two metres, or nearly seven feet square.
The entire sky, from the north to the south pole, could be
covered by forty such plates, and it is proposed to do
this as soon as the best method of taking the plates has
been determined. The arrow indicates the variable star
U Cephei, and its photometric magnitudes at the times
the eight images were taken were 7*5, 8*1, 8-9, 9"1,
9'1, 8-3, 7-0, and 7-2. The three stars above it are
-f8r 30', +81 27', and +81° 29', which have the photo-
metric magnitudes 7'9, 8-.5, and 8-G. To separate the
successive images various methods have been tried. The
best of these seems to be stopping the driving clock for a
few seconds every hour. By the above plan we hope to
secure a complete list of all variable stars of short period
brighter than the ninth magnitude at maximum whose
variation exceeds half a magnitude and whose period is
less than a day. Doubtless, many other variable stars of
longer period, and stars of the .\lgol type, may also be
incidentally found.
Edwabd C. Pickering.
Harvard College Observatory.
CANTERBURY
THE ASTRONOMY OF THE
TALES."
By E. Walter Maunder, f.r.a.s.
THERE is one subject of which men never tire.
They are always willing to be told of the way in
which other men in different circumstances, in
other lands, or in past ages, lived ; of their habits
and thoughts. Those who can tell us with certainty
and vividness these things about other men will always
claim our attention, and because of aU such narrators he
is one of the freshest and most natural, old " Dan Chaucer,
the first warbler," as Tennyson so aptly calls him, will
never lack an audience.
There are other reasons for his popularity.
" Oh to be in EnjjlaiKl,
Xow that April's there,"
was Browning's wish, and Chaucer ever takes us to
England in the freshest, fairest blossom of a spring-time,
always young. A free-hearted contentment possesses him
at all times : —
■'SutBce thee, thv good, though it be small."
But more frequently this broadens out into a frank joyous-
ness that refreshes us stiU, five hundred years after he has
gone to sleep.
" Unto this day it doth mine hertS boote,
That I have had my world as in my time."
It is not, however, with Chaucer as a poet, or as a
shrewd, observant kindly man of the world, that I am now
concerned. Like one of his friars whom he scathes so
sharply, yet so amusingly, I have to keep within my
" lymytatioun," and to ask him, not for the sweet scent of
the hawthorn, nor for the joyous notes of the woodland
birds, but for any information which he may have to give
as to the astronomy of his time.
From a poet so natural, so absolutely unpedantic, living
long before the invention of the telescope and the revival
of learning, and in a poem, the subject of which is the
wayside talk, and free blunt banter of ordinary folk, one
would not naturally expect to find a single astronomical
allusion, nor, if we found any, that they should be
accurate. Yet even in Tennyson, by far the most scientific
of our modern poets, there are scarcely more astronomical
allusions than there are in Chaucer.
On the first day of the month just past — " Saint Lubbock's
Day " — a far greater pilgrimage than that which was " per-
sonally conducted " by the stout host of the Tabard Inn,
set out from London and spread itself through Kent, in
much the same direction as their forefathers, half a
millenium before. But it may well be doubted if any of
206
KNOWLEDGE
[Septembeb 1, 1898.
the modern company — nearer nine-and-twenty thousand
than nine-and-twenty — brought any astronomy into their
hoHday talk, or, if perchance a little science did leak out
in conversation here and there, that it was anything but
vague, uncertain, and at second-hand.
In spite of Board schools and University Extension
lectures, we are not in all things the unquestionable
superiors of our forefathers in the days of the Plantagenets.
The men who deal in Chaucer's trade to-day — the writers
of short stories — have multiplied as abundantly as our
Bank Holiday makers have increased over the Canterbury
pilgrims ; but astronomy is carefully avoided by them
unless perchance the hero has to be delivered from a tight
corner by a total solar eclipse lasting an hour and a half,
or the heroine to be treated to a sight of Venus between
the horns of the crescent moon.
Chaucer's astronomy is of course of quite a different
kind from any that would come into popular tales or con-
versation to-day. He knows nothing whatsoever of the
spots on the sun, of Jupiter's belts, or Saturn's ring. His
mind is vexed by no controversies as to whether the
" gemination " of the canals of Mars is a real phenomenon,
or a mere function of imperfect focussing, and the nebular
hypothesis, either in its gaseous or " meteoritic " phase,
passes him by untouched.
Still, astronomy, real astronomy, enters into his verse ;
the astronomy of the day and year ; it is familiar and
actual both to the poet and to his characters.
Never did any poem open with a fuller, fresher breath
of spring than the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales :
"Wbanne that April with liis slioiirrs sote
The droughte of March hath pureed to the rote,
And bathed every veine iu swiche licour,
Of whiche vertue engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eke with his sote brethe
Enspired hath in every holt and hethe
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours yronne.
And smale foules maken melodic."
It is Chaucer's habit to give his notes of time,
sometimes by reference to the calendar, sometimes,
as in the present passage, by the position of the
heavenly bodies, the sun in particular. The eighth line in
the above quotation has given rise to some unnecessary
discussion. For in Chaucer's day the sun entered the
sign Aries — not the constellation — about March 12th.
By the first of April, therefore, the sun would have passed
through more than half of the sign of the Ram. But the
first two lines seem to point to April being far advanced,
since its " sweet showers " have " pierced to the root," the
" drought of March." Later on Chaucer expressly tells
us in the Prologue to the " Man of Lawe's Tale," that it
was then the 28th of April when the pilgrimage had
nearly come to its close. We may therefore suppose that
it is quite the middle of April when the poem opens, and
that by the sun's " half course " in the Ram is meant the
latter half of the sign, the half he passed through in the
first fortnight of April, not the former half, which he
passed in the last fortnight of March.
For it is clear from other passages that Chaucer quite
understood when the sun entered Aries, for in the " Squier's
Tale " we are told that Cambuscan —
" He let the feste of his natiritee
Don crien, thurglioiit San-a, his citee,
The last Idus of March, after the yere.
Phebus the sonne ful jolif was and clore,
For he was nigh his exaltation
In Martes face, and in his mansion
In Aries, the eolerike hote signe :
Ful lusty was the wether and benigne,
For which the foules again the sonne shen-.
What for the seson, and the yonge grene,
Ful loude Bongen hir affectiona :
Hem semed ban getten hem prolections
Again the swerd of winter kene iind cold."
The Ides of March fell on the 15th. For the following
day we have a further note of time. The sun has entered
Aries four degrees, that is four days.
•' I'p riseth freshe Canace herselve.
As rody and bright, as the yonge sonne.
That in the Ram is foure degrees yronne
No higher was he, whan she redy wae,
And forth she walketh esily a pas,
Arrayed after the lusty seson sote."
So again in the " Nonne Preste's Tale " we have a day in
May marked out for us in two ways, first by the calendar,
next by the position of the sun in Taurus —
" Whan tliat the month in wliich the world began
That highte March, whan God first maked man,
Was complete, and ypassed were also,
Sithen March ended, thrittv dayes and two.
• » ■» •
Cast up his eyen to the bright sonne.
That in the signe of Taurus had yronne
Twenty degrees and on. and somewhat more :
He knew by kind, and by non other lore,
J hat it was prime, and crew with blisful Steven,
J he Sonne, he sayd, is clomben up on heven
Twenty degrees and on, and more ywis.
Madame Pertelote, my worldes blis,
Uerkcneth thise blisful briddes how they sing.
And see the freshe lloures how they spring."
Chaucer here evidently means that the sun entered
Taurus about April 11th ; hence it would enter Aries March
12th ; but the exact day would vary of course with the
position of the year with regard to leap year.
The knowledge of the sun's longitude day by day
throughout the year strikes us as strange and imusual.
But the above quotations, especially from a work so
entirely natural and descriptive as the " Canterbury Tales,"
shows us how very general was the knowledge at the time,
and is a clear indication that the sun's movements were
both followed observationaUy with considerable diligence,
and were published freely up and down the country in
works to which many had access. Probably the great
popularity of the Universities at the time, the attendance
at which was, relatively to the entire population, some-
thing like fifty times what it is at present, had much to do
with the wide diffusion of knowledge of this kind.
Another relation in which astronomy is introduced is a
more practical one. The need to be able to tell the time
of day has caused men in countries, and in times when
clocks and watches are unknown or little used, to pay
much more attention to the daily movements of the sun
than we do. He stiU, of course, remains our great time-
keeper ; but there are so few who now resort to him
directly for the information that his service in this con-
nection is quite forgotten by the great majority.
It was not so in Chaucer's day. Then the sun dial, or,
failing that, a rough estimation of the sun's altitude, was
the means for telling the hour. In the Prologue to the
"Persone's Tale, " Chaucer gives us the method by which
he concluded that it was four o'clock, and a little calculation
shows that he was sufficiently correct.
" By that the Manciple hail his tale ended.
The Sonne fro the south line* was descended
So lowe, that it ne was not to my sight
Degrees nine and twenty as of hight.
Fo\ire of the clok it was tho. as I guess,
For enleven foot, a litel more or lesse,
My shadow .was at thilke time, as there
Of swiche feet as my lengthe parted were
In six feet equal of proportion."
• The meridian, that is to say.
September 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE
207
Nor was Chaucer alone able to make such a calculation.
The host of the Tabard, though " not depe expert in lore,"
could work out a similar but simpler problem.
" Our lioste s:iw wel that the briglitp sonnc
The ark of liis iirtiiieial* diiv had ronne
■J lie t'ourthe part, and half an hoiire and more ;
And thougli he was not depe expert in lore,
lie wiste it was the eight* and twenty day
Of April, that is messager to May ;
And saw wel that the shadow of every tree
Was as in lengthe of the same quantitee
That was the body erect, that caused it ;
And therfore l>y the sliadow ho toke liis wit,
That Phebus, which that shone so clere and bright.
Degrees was five and fourty clombe on higtit;
And for that day, as in that latitude.
It was ten of the cIok,+ he gan conclude."
It is in these two particulars, the apparent progress of
the sun along the ecliptic during the year, and his course
across the sky during the day, that astronomy enter^
chiefly into men's lives in Chaucer's day. There was as
yet no suspicion that the earth was not the fixed centre of
the solar system, or that the apparent motion of the sun
along the ecliptic was due to the real motion of the earth.
Ptolemy was still the master-mind of astronomy.
" Of alle men y blessed mote he be.
The wise astrologien Dan Ptholomee,
That saytih this proverbe in his Almagcste : '
As with Dante, the planets revolved for Chaucer in
successive crystalline spheres, for Europe had still two
centuries to wait for Copernicus.
" And by his eighte speres in his working.
He knew fij wel how far Alnath was shove
Fro the bed of thilke fii Aries above,
That in the uinthe spcre considered is.'';!:
But though he gives us evidence enough that the
commonality believed in astrology more or less, he him-
self and the better classes had quite broken off from it.
The " Chanones Yemanne " tell us —
■' Sol gold is, and Luna silver we threpe ;
Mars iren, Merourie quicksilver we clepe :
Saturnus led. and Jupiter is tin,
And Venus coper by my fader kin."
But this is only the trade jargon of a confessed charlatan.
The wife of Bath gives astrological reasons why learned
men have little estimation for women, but is scarcely more
serious in her argument than in her quotations from St.
Paul.
" The children of Mercury and of \'enus,
Ben in hir werking ful contrarious.
Mercury loveth wisdoiu and science,
And Venus loveth riot and dispence,
And for hir divers disposition
Eche falleth in others exaltation.
As thus, God wote, Meicui'v is desolat
In Pisces, wher Venus is exaltat.
And Venus falleth wher Mercury is reised.
Therfore no woman of no clerk is preised."
But the Frankeleine disposes of astrology or " magike
* " His artificial day," i.e., his mean day, from six in the morning
to six in the evening, as contrasted vrith his natural day, from sunrise
to sunset.
t It woiUd be nearly a quarter to ten, apparent time, corresponding
to the " fourth part " of the daily arc, " and half an hour and
more."
X In other words, he knew the distance of the first star in Aries,
the actual constellation, from the first point of Aries, the zero point
of celestial longitudes. The actual stars sind constellations are con-
sidered to be in the eighth sphere ; the equal signs of the zodiac, the
divisions of celestial longitude, in the ninth ; the different planets
occupying the first seven.
natnrel " in a very off-hand manner, though he describes
the work of an astrologer in much detail.
" Which book spake moche of operations
Touching tlie eight and twenty mansions*
That longen to the Mone, and swiche folie.
As in our dayes njis not worth a flie.
• • » »
" His tables Tolctanest forth he brought
Ful wel corrected, that ther lacked nought,
Xother his collect, ne his eipans yeres,
Xother his rotes, ne his other geres.
As ben his centres, and his argumentes.
And his proportional convenientcs
For his equations in overvthing.
« » « ■ «
•' Whan he had found his firsto mansion.
He knew the remenant by proportion;
And knew the rising of his mone wel.
And in whos face, and terrae and every del :
And knew ful wel the mones mansion."
Such was astronomy in Chaucer's day, very narrow and
confined, without a hint of those wonderful revelations
which the telescope and the spectroscope have brought to
us, without a guess at that majestic order of which
Copernicus had the first faint vision, which unfolded
itself in three-fold stages to Kepler, and gave itself in the
fulness of its completeness to Newton.
Yet, narrow as it was, hampered as it further was by
its connection with the bastard science of astrology,
akeady falling into merited contempt, astronomy had a
real existence in Chaucer's time ; real because a science
of actual observation. Englishmen of that time lived out
of doors, they were cooped up in no great cities, the sun
himself was their great almanac and clock, and they were
obliged to learn how to read him. That which they were
able to learn from Nature may not have been much, but,
at least, they learned it first hand.
Exactly the opposite condition of things prevails to-day.
Immense volumes of Imowledge have been opened to us of
which our forefathers never dreamed ; and the Press
secures the ready and wide diffusion of every fresh advance.
Y'et there can be no doubt that in some respects a practical
personal acquaintance with Nature is less general now than
then. We may be quite sure that in Chaucer's day the
veriest clodpole knew that the stars rose and set. There are
probably millions in England who do not know it to-day ;
Sir George .\iry thought it not safe to assume that even
Cambridge undergraduates knew it.
There is a knowledge of science, of a sort, very widely
spread to-day, but the utter nonsense which is often calmly
printed in newspapers, and far more often inserted in
popular stories, proves how thoroughly second hand it is.
Such knowledge as that possessed by Tomlinson, of
Berkeley Square,
" This I have read in a book, he said ;
And this was told to me ;
And this I have thought that another man thought."
is indeed better than nothing ; but far better still is it to
base one's knowledge upon one's own observations, one's
own experiments, however crude, and to learn not from
books alone, but from the lips of Nature herself.
Nottota of Booltg.
A Sketch of the Naturnl Hixtoi-i/ [Vertebrates) of tlte Britiah
Isl/mds. By F. G. Atlalo, f.r.g.s., f.z.s. Blackwood.
Illustrated. 6s. net. The "unambitious" aim of this
book is that it shall serve as an "introduction to the many
excellent handbooks to county fauna.' For one man to
attempt this task seems to us very ambitious, and to
endeavour to write such an introduction in the space of
* Of the lunar zodiac.
+ . The Alphonsine Tables.
208
KNOWLEDGE.
[September 1, 1898.
five hundred small pages seems an insult to onr fauna,
which, if not very large, has been very closely studied. In
our opinion anyone would be bound to fail in such an
attempt, and certainly Mr. Aflalo has failed. It is not our
intention to criticise each portion of the book. As a sample
of the whole, let us take the largest division — the birds, to
which two hundred pages are devoted. We have first to
complain that, notwithstanding his acknowledged want of
space, the author fills many valuable lines with assertions
such as the following ; — " The wood-wren used to nest in
great abundance near Doberan, Mecklenburg, in May,
1890." Of what interest is it to those for whom this book
is intended to know that the wood-wren nested near
Doberan ? Unless the book is intended to be nothing but
a mere list, we presume that it would have for one of its
chief objects the means of identifying species. The author's
aim in this direction has been to enable the observer to
recognize the live bird rather than the dead one. If it
were possible to give suflicient information to be of any
value for this purpose in a few words, the author's want of
care — or is it want of knowledge — would prevent him
from attaining his end. 'We are told, for instance, that
the tire- crest may be distinguished from the gold-crest by
the deeper orange of its crest. We venture to affirm that
no one could distinguish the two birds by this means. The
chief distinguishing feature of the fire-crest is that it has a
black line through the eye. Again; we have to distinguish
the turtle dove from other British doves merely by the
" somewhat larger tail, which is edged with white, and by
the black and white patches on the neck." From this we
have to conclude that the turtle dove is, in general colouring,
the same as the woodpigeon, stock dove, and rock dove.
Of the statements that the common tern has the bill and
tail orange -coloured, and that the Arctic tern is apparently
n:<iile)it on the east side of Scotland, we can make nothing.
The many instances of this sort of slip-shod description
render the book practically valueless for purposes of
identification, and there is so little space for anything but
the very briefest description of species that we cannot see
on what groimds any value can be claimed for the book.
Birds in Limdim. By W. H. Hudson, f.z.s. (Long-
mans.) Illustrated. The birds of London have attracted
a considerable amount of attention during the last few
years, and Mr. Hudson's book is very opportune. The
author's first idea was to write a handbook, giving lists of
all the birds that are to be found in London, but this idea
was subsequently discarded, and wisely, for what are the
boundaries of London now, and who can tell what they
will be in a few years to come ? If we judge Mr. Hudson
rightly, his chief objects in writing this book have been,
first to show how badly wild birds are looked after in a
great number of the parks and open spaces, and secondly,
what a great delight and pleasure the birds are to the
Londoner. In describing the bird life in the parks and
open spaces, the author gives a great deal of sound advice
as to how these places could easily, and often with little
expense, be made enticing to birds, not only as visitors,
but as permanent residents. We agree with Mr. Hudson
in general on this point, but his arguments are sometimes
a little one-sided. The Londoner no doubt is very fond
of wild birds, and greatly enjoys seeing them in the parks,
but the author would apparently have all the rhododendrons
pulled up, and hollies and gorse planted in their stead,
and a portion of the money that is spent on the flowers
expended in providing for the accommodation of the birds.
From an ornithologist's point of view this is only right
and proper, but we should not care to say with the author,
that " a gorgeous bed of tulips that has cost a lot of
money is regarded by a majority of visitors with a very
tepid feeling of admiration compared with that which they
experience at the sight or sound, whether musical or not,
of any wild bird." Mr. Hudson deals at length with "the
cat question. " It appears that cats, chiefly stray ones,
swarm into the parks at night, and do incalculable damage
to small birds, which roost in low bushes. On this
subject again the author gives some good advice, and it is
a subject into which he has evidently entered thoroughly.
There are a number of amusing anecdotes about birds
ill the book, but we think one or two of them which bear
the marks of imagination, or exaggeration, might have
been omitted. It is always a pleasure to read Mr. Hudson's
well-written books, and we feel sure that the present one
will be found interesting, as well as instructive, by
Londoners and those who take an interest in London birds.
Das \V('Jt(i(iiaude : a Pojiulnr Triatise on the Hcairns. By
Dr. M. Wilhelm Meyer. (Leipzig and Vienna : BibUo-
graphical Institute. 1898.) The earth at present appears
to be passing through the nucleus of a swarm of text-books
of general astronomy. Now, a really magnificent specimen
has come to hand from Germany, and though it labours
under the disadvantage of being written in German, and
printed in black letter, even an Englishman can enjoy the
lucidness of Dr. Meyer's style, and the impartiality with
which he discusses the theories that are not yet proven.
Assuredly the book is not of the dogmatic type. Dr.
Meyer has perfectly realized that it is not the function ot
a text-book to formulate an astronomical creed, or to say
the last word on any point of doubtful doctrine. He does
not say, for instance, " I believe that Venus rotates on her
axis in two hundred and twenty-five days, and I count all
who believe not, schismatics ' ; neither does he assert that
she rotates in some twenty-four hours. The same spirit of
reasonableness attends him when he treats of the lunar
surface, and leads him to supplement his actual description
of the objects, hy descriptions of terrestrial objects seen
under similar conditions, and which they resemble or from
which they difi'er. Thus, in the case of the lunar
Apennines, he gives, beside it, a bird's-eye view of the
Island of Corsica to emphasize the fact that moon
mountains as a rule consist of single peaks arranged in a
ring form, but that earth mountains are ranges which
radiate in roughly parallel directions.
The arrangement of the matter is perhaps somewhat
unusual, but there is much to be said for it. In the
introduction there is a very full account of the optics of
the telescope, with which is incorporated a description of
some of the great telescopes of the world, others being
left until Part II. The introduction also includes a full
description of the photography and photometry of the
stars and heavenly bodies, and of their spectral analysis.
The rest of the book is divided into two parts, which
deal with the heavenly bodies. Ordinarily in text-books
these two sections are not distinct, but practically we
believe that Dr. Meyer's arrangement will be at once
more interesting and more intelligible to the general
reader. But it presents the historical anomaly of the
discussion of the results obtained from photographic and
spectroscopic observations of the sun and heavenly bodies
in the beginning of the first section, and the Ptolemaic
theory towards the end of the second ; the theories of
the Milky Way, of double stars, of comets' tails, and the
meteoritic hypothesis, some three hundred pages before the
discovery of the law of gravitation.
But, even more than with the text, the reader is struck
with the illustrations. These may be divided into three
classes. There are those which are beautiful reproductions
of drawings or photographs of the planets, sunspots and rice
grains,corona,prominences, comets, stars, and nebula?, and of
Sbptembkk 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE.
209
many other notable objects of interest. For such a collection
of illustrations, exquisitely reproduced, too much praise can-
not be accorded. There are, again, drawings or photographs
of what may be called the terrestrial or laboratory analogies
of celestial objects. Of such, we may mention a bird's-
eye view of the Colorado Cauon and the Yosemite Valley,
to illustrate lunar rills ; of the volcano Kilauea, to compare
with Jupiter's great red spot ; and of some artificial elec-
trical coronfe which bear a remarkably strong resemblance
to the solar ones. The third class of illustration is most
peculiar : it consists of highly coloured landscapes in
some of which the artist purports to be situated on the
planet Mars or Saturn, whence he views the setting sun
or the globe shadow thrown on the rings. In others he
views the giant Jupiter from one of its moons, or from our
satellite observes an eclipse of the sun. We are not pre-
pared to criticize the scientific accuracy of these observa-
tions, never having occupied these standpoints, though we
have grave doubts as to whether the sun appears so large to
an inhabitant of Mars, or whether Jupiter is so very like a
Dutch cheese cut in two, in the eyes of its satellites. Cer-
tainly it does not seem obvious why the scenery on the
moon, viewed in the light of its eclipsed sun, should present
such delicacies of shade and colour, even in its shadows,
when the moon in full sunlight is but black and white.
There are also two landscapes of the earth seen under the
illumination of the echpsed sun and of the eclipsed moon.
Here, indeed, there is a grave error, for in both cases the
diameter of the luminary is made to measure fully ten
degrees, and thus an utterly false idea of the magnitude of
the corona is given.
A Text-Book of Botantj. By Dr. E. Strasburger, Dr.
Fritz Noll, Dr. H. Schenck, and Dr. A. F. W. Schimper.
Translated from the German by H. C. Porter, Ph.D.
(London : Macmillan \ Co.) 18s. net. This handsome
volume is a complete treatise on botany, including as it
does sections on external morphology, histology, physio-
logy, and systematic botany. The translator has had the
good fortune to see his work undergo a general revision
at the hands of Mr. A. C. Seward, m.a., the Cambridge
University Lecturer in Botany, so that its suitability for
English students is quite assured. The whole style of the
book is admirable ; the type, illustrations, and general
arrangement leave nothing to be desired, while the coloured
pictures of typical cryptogams and phanerogams, which are
scattered throughout the text, are lifelike in their beauty.
Such plates, which are, we believe, a new feature in ordinary
test-books of botany, do more than any amount of verbal
explanation to supply the reader with information which
makes the recognition of the species in the field quite
easy. Though it is perhaps too much to hope, yet we
cannot but wish that somehow the introduction to the
volume could get into the hands of that omnivorous per-
son, the general reader. Showing as it does the relation
which exists between animal and plant life ; and making
clear that as the line of development of animals and plants
is traced back, through lowly and more lowly forms, the
points of difference between them gradually vanish, until
eventually it is found that they assimilate to one another's
characteristics, and it becomes impossible to say whether
the primitive organism is plant or animal ; it is difficult
to imagine a more fascinating piece of reading. In the
same interesting way the work of Darwin, Muller, Schwann,
and Pasteur is briefly reviewed , the part they each took in the
elaboration of thewhole subject being made quite simple and
clear. We have not the slightest doubt that this text-book,
like the German fA-hrbuch from which it has been trans-
lated, will be long regarded as a standard work, and we
wish it all the popularity it deserves.
SHORT NOTICES,
0)1 Laborafori/ Arts. By Ricliard Tlirelfall, m.a. (Macmillan.)
Illustrated. 6s. The student who desires to gain a practical knowledge
of mechanical work in the chemical and physical laboratory will find
in Mr. Threlfall's book a valuable auxiliary. The author aptly
remarks : '' It often happens that young physicists are to be found
whose mathematical attainments are adequate, whose observational
powers are correctly trained, and whose general capacity is un-
questioned. l>nt who are quite un:ible to design or construct tlie
simplest apparatus with due regard to the facility with which it ought
to be constructed." To such, this book forms a plank, so to speak, which
will carry tlu'm safely across the dilliculties generally encountered by
the indifferent manipidator. Glass blowing, the making of vacuum
tubes, glass grinding, and many other indispensable operations are
described in detail, and helpful diagrams are interpolated here and
there to illumine the text.
General Elementari/ Science. Edited by Wm. Briggs, M.A. (Clive.)
Illustrated. 3a. 6d. Designed to meet the requirements of the
modiBed syllabus of the I'niversity of London, this book is intended
as a giude to general elementary science for the matriculation course.
All aspirants for University honours, whether scientific or not, should
at least acquire a knowledge of the fundamental principles of natural
philosophy. Cramming, however, has attained the culminating
meridian, when an editor endeavours to compress the sciences of
mechanics, heat, light, electricity, and chemistry within the compass
of a single volume scarcely large enough to convey a fair notion of
any one of these sciences ; and, keeping in view this flimsy ground-
work, a smile might be tolerated when one reads that this meagre
introduction is '• to provide them (the matriculation candidates) with
the means of recording observations with some degree of exactness."
'* Some,** of course, is one of those elastic words which may represent
any magnitude between zero and the infinitely great.
The Sfori/ of Life in (he Seas. By Sydney .J. Hickson. f.b.s.
(Xewnes.) Illustrat«l. Is. With a thoughtful endeavour to in-
struct those who have not been trained in the alphabet of zoological
technicalities, Prof. Hickson has, in this little book, avoided all the
more intricate branches of marine zoology which, though of the
highest importance tD some, would not tend to encourage the general
reader. Xever losing sight of the goal he has set himself to reach,
he conducts the reader through the trackless sea, so to speak, and by
the help of a rich vocabulary — very slightly atllicted with unavoidable
long words — conjures up a wonderful picture of the inhabitants of
the great deep, including shallo^v-water fauna, surface-swimming
fauna, and deep-sea fauna, as well as chapters on oceanography,
commensalism and parasitism, and the origin of the marine fauna.
A Simple Guide to the Choice of a Photographic Lens. Is.
T. R. Dallmeyer, p. r.a.s. This booklet, written as it is in a clear
and concise style, forms, with its explanatory diagrams, an excellent
and trustworthy guide to photographers who wish to buy and use
their lenses »ith greatest satisfaction.
The Sfori/ of Photoqraphtf, by Alfred T. Story, is one of Messrs.
Xewnes' series of " Useful Stories." It answere its purposes very
satisfactorily. The infonnation given is plentiful and accurate.
BOOKS RECEIVED.
Astronomti for the Young. By W. T. Lynn, B.A., r.E.A.s.
(Stoneman.) Illustrated. 6d. net.
A Dictionarg of Bird Notes. By Chas. Louis Hett. (Jacksons',
Market Place. Bngg.) 2s. 6d.
A Classification of Vertehrata, Recent and E.vtinct. By Dr.
Hans Gadow-. (Black.) 3s. 6d, net.
The Plaq of Animals. Bv Prof. Karl Gross. Translated by
E. L. Baldwin. (Chapman i Hall.) 10s. 6d.
Outlines of Vertebrate Paltsontologii. By Arthur Smith Woodward.
(Cambridge University Press.) Illustrated. 14s.
Fortii-fifth Beport of the Department of Science and Art of the
Committee of Council on ]£di<cation. (Spottiswoode.) Is. lOd.
Chemical Analysis. By W. Briggs and R. W. Stewart. (Clive.)
3s. tid.
"INSECT MINERS."-II.
By Fred. Knock, k.l.s., f.e.s., etc.
A NUMBER of very interesting miners, together
with their parasites, may be observed in leaves
of sunflowers, carnations, columbine, etc., etc.;
and in the shoots of black currant bushes, the
larva of the pretty currant clear-wing moth,
Sesla tipuliformia, is found, but more frequently by
210
KNOWLEDGE
[September 1, 1898.
the blue tits than by gardeners, who attribute the broken
twigs to these useful birds. I know that the majority of
gardeners look upon anyone as insane who would say a
good word for the sparrow, but I am proud to own them
as friends, though they do pinch the crocuses and other
things. In my insect diary I have many records for good
as well as for e\il deeds. I have frequently watched
sparrows examining the lime trees in search of the brindled
beauty moth, Bi.ston hirtaria, and seen them kill and eat a
number of females — each of which would lay over six
hundred eggs. Again, that great miner the wood leopard
moth, Zemera ;€scitli (whose larv:c work such havoc among
trees of all kinds in our parks and gardens), is a favourite
morsel of the sparrow. I turn to my diary for 1873, and
find an entry to the effect that every ash tree (over thirty)
on the right side of Hanley Eoad, N., was infested with
wood leopards, which emerged about five o'clock in the
afternoon. On some trees over a dozen were to be seen
drying their wings. Further observation showed dozens of
sparrows " collecting " and eating these savoury insects.
I noted the same thing going on at Finsbury Park, where
I pointed out several infested trees to the late Mr. Thomas
Cochran, Superintendent, who had them immediately cut
down and opened, much to the wonder of the staff, who
had no idea such "miners " could bore through and through
Fig. 9. — Holly Leaf mined by Larva of Phytomj/za aquifolii.
(Natural size.)
the solid ash trunks. Where the wood leopard failed
the huge larva of the goat moth (C'oss-its liquiperda) took
up the work of destruction. In the year 1878, when living
near Finsbury Park, I noted a small willow tree in my
next-door neighbour's garden which appeared to be infested
with these caterpillars. Soon after we were astonished
to find a large larva in the kitchen one morning, but though,
according to Pliny, the Romans used to consider this
stinking goat moth larva a luxury of the table, I did
not feel disposed to prove it, though I could not under-
stand the visit. However, others continued to arrive
almost daily in various parts of the house, until I obtained
permission from my neighbour to examine the willow
before mentioned. It was not more than five inches in
diameter, and, when broken up, I found it full of larvfe of
C Uqiiiperda, varying fi'om an inch and a half to four inches
long! These, added to those which had visited us, aU
told, totalled up to one hundred and nine ! But how
many beside went over the walls the other side it is
impossible to say. What a feast for anyone so inclined !
I have seen a sparrow attack and destroy one of these
large moths. Only last week I foimd the mutilated
remains of a wood leopard in my own garden, where from
a small pear tree I cut out one of these larvic, but the
damage had gone too far, as the " miner " had bored
right up the central stem and the tree died.
We must not forget that sparrows kill great numbers of
" daddy longlegs " before most people are awake. We
all know how plentiful " green fly " has been on every
plant this dry season ; I, for one, have been much indebted
to the sparrows for their persistence in picking ofi' immense
numbers of this pest.
" Seeing is beheving," and I only write of the things
which I have seen, and feel it to be a duty to say a kind
word on behalf of the much-abused sparrow.
The holly leaves are sometimes sorely affected by the
Fig. 10.— Parasite of Hollv FIv
12 Diameters.)
larva of Phytomy^a ai/uitoUi (Fig. 9), a miner which, for
obvious reasons, has things pretty much its own way,
except for the industrious parasite (Fig. 10) which does
its best to check the advance of this disfiguring larva.
To those who grow raspberries " the maggot " ought to
be familiar, but it is astonishing how seldom the cause of
a bad crop is detected. This is owing to the fact that inquiry
is generally made too late, and should " opportunity be
neglected " sorrow is sure to follow.
The month of May is the best — I might say the only
time when any steps can be taken to destroy this miner,
which is, when full grown, a httle over a quarter of an
inch long — a chubby Uttle pink maggot — which has during
the winter been securely protected in a tiny covering
among the earth at the foot of the canes. In the spring
it ascends until it reaches the buds just breaking into
Fig. 11.
-Raspberry Shoot affected with " the Maggot " of
Lampronia rubiella.
growth. Into the bud it bores a minute hole (Fig. 12),
which is frequently hidden away by the scale. When
once inside it is safe from observation, and it quietly goes
on with its mining right up the centre of the fruit-bearing
shoot, the only outward indication of its presence being an
September 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE.
211
occasional darkening of portions of the leaves (Fig. 11),
and always the presence of minute pellets of frass, which
are forced out at the aperture at the tip of the shoot, and,
falling, rest in the axils of the leaves (Fig. 11). Directly
these signs are noted any of the shoots so affected, on
being split up, reveals " the miner " — plump and fat — with
plenty of room to move up and down. All shoots contain-
ing a maggot have (as shown at Fig. 12) the centre eaten
clear away, and all chance of fruit-bearing is gone. The
larva sometimes leaves its burrow and pupates among the
dead leaves at the base of the shoot, but it generally
remains inside to undergo its change. The pupa has rings
of minute spines around the margins of the segments, by
the aid of which it can lever itself up to the top of the
shoot, from which the raspberry moth emerges in the
course of a week or two.
The great point to bear in mind in connection with this
raspberry pest is that it remains but a few weeks in the
shoot, and that it is there the latter part of May. This,
I
BOTANICAL STUDIES.-V.
ASPLENIUM.
By A. Vaughan Jennings, f.l.s., f.g.s.
N the moss plant which formed the subject of our last
study '■ we found that, as in Junijermannia,f the life-
history consisted of two distinct stages. It was
observed that the leafy moss-stems of Mnium carried
more or less evident "flowers" at their tips.
Fia. 12. — Section of Raspberry Shoot showing larva of Laiiiproiiia
rubiella.
then, is the time to destroy it, which must be done at the
sacrifice of many canes, or even the whole crop. When
the moths have escaped — in early June— it is impossible
to prevent eggs being laid by them for the next season's
brood. Catching the moths (in exactly the same manner
as by entomologists) would materially lessen them if carried
out in a systematic manner, and untU some such work is
carried out these insect miners will go on increasing.
Fruit and flower growing has now been brought up to
great perfection, but we are still far behind in systematic
work for coping with insect pests.
Knowledse, July, 1898.
t Knowled&e, May, 1898.
containing either the egg-bearing Archegonia or the
fertilizing Antheridia ; and that from the former there
arose the slender stalk and drooping capsule which
we know as the " moss-fruit." In other words, that
there was a green, leafy Oophijte, or egg-bearing plant,
from which grew a distinct type of plant, the Sporophyte,
whose spores in turn developed the form of the parent
Oophyte.
Bearing this in mind, and looking among the higher
flowerless plants, such as the ferns and their relatives, for
a type to study in continuation of our series, we should
come to the subject with preliminary expectations that will
cause us some trouble. Naturally enough we shall expect
that a fern, say the little spleenwort here figured (common
in the crevices of stone walls), may be regarded as a plant
comparable to a moss-plant, though of much higher
development and greater complexity of internal structure.
We shall look at the fronds expecting to find something
equivalent to the moss " flowers," and showing under the
microscope more or less similar groups of Archegonia and
Antheridia.
It will be found that the only structures on a normal
frond which suggest a fructification, are the oblique lines
on the under surface of its pinnse ; light coloured in the
young plant, but larger, browner, and dust-like on the
older parts. If we cut a thin section with a razor across
one of the younger pinna?, we shall find something similar
to the central figure in the illustration. A number of oval
bodies borne on longer or shorter stalks, rising from super-
ficial cells of the leaf, though partly covered by a thin
irregular membrane rising from one side. The oval bodies
have evidently a distinct celliJar wall, and the older ones
enclose a mass of dark granular cells in a condition of
active division. There is evidently nothing that can be
compared to an archegonium. What, then, are these struc-
tures '? Are they antheridia '? It seems not improbable
from their appearance when young, but an examination of
the older ones will not confirm the idea. If we take one
of the older pinn.-e and scrape off the brown material from
the under side, we find the structures shown in Figs. M
and N. They are stalked, thin-waUed cases, with a dark
layer of thick cells running round some two-thirds of the
margin ; in the interior is a dark mass which, when a ripe
case bursts, resolves itself into a number of brown bodies
with thick, rough walls. There is, evidently, nothing here
like the minute, free -swimming bodies we saw discharged
from the moss antheridium ; but, on the other hand, these
bodies have a strong resemblance to the spores of the moss
and the liverwort.
It is, in fact, evident that the oval cases are Sporawjia ,
but are they equivalent to the spore-capsule of Mnium or
Junijermannia .' If so, they are very minute and simple
in structure ; and, further, should be found to arise from
fertilized archegonia. Referring again to the section, or
making new preparations, no trace of archegonia can be
found, and it is evident that some different line of study
must be adopted. Suppose we "plant ' the spores and
see what becomes of them.
If a number of the spores are scattered over a layer of
mould or on the side of a flower pot, and kept moist, it
will soon be seen that the surface is acquiring a green
colour, and a pocket-lens wiU show that this is due to the
growth of a number of separate little green discs. Under
the microscope these may be seen distinctly to originate
from the germinating fern-spores. At first they are
merely narrow plates of chlorophyU-containing cells, but
by the continued division of a triangular cell at the tip,
and by the rapid growth and division of cells at the side
of it, a heart-shaped or bi-lobed structure is ultimately
212
KNOWLEDGE
[Septembeb 1, 1898.
produced. This becomes thicker in the centre owing to
division of cells in a horizontal direction ; and from the
under side are developed slender root-hairs or rhizoids,
which serve both to anchor the plant to the soil and to
collect food material therefrom.
Thus the cell-plate is able to lead an independent
existence, feeding itself from the air and the soil like
other green land plants. Yet it shows no tendency to
differentiate into root, stem, and leaf, or to acquire any of
the characteristics of a fern. Longer observation will
show also that it does not continue to increase in size ;
many will dry up and disappear, but from some of them
new green shoots will be seen to rise growing upward from
by dark spots distributed more especially over two
regions. The more conspicuous -are small round bodies
scattered among the bases of the root-hairs ; while
another group occurs above, round the indentation at the
apex.
It will be found quite possible to get a good idea of the
form and nature of these structures by carefully focussing
the microscope, or even by dissecting them out with
needles ; but it is far preferable to harden some of the
plants in spirit and then cut thin sections through them.
The latter group referred to will be found to have all the
essential characteristics of Archegonia, a typical egg cell
lying in a rounded cavity, and above it a " neck " composed
A. — The Fern Spore, n. — Germination of the same, producing the young Oophyte or Prothallus. c. — One of the Cells
of the Prothallus, showing the Protoplasmic Contents, with Nucleus, Vacuoles, and Chlorophyll bodies. D. — The
Prothallus, seen from the under side. The small round bodies among the root-hairs toward the apex are Anfheridia ; those
below the notch arc the Archegonia. E. — An Antheridium as seen in Section, with the mass of developing Antherozoids n-ithin.
F.— One of the Antherozoids (or Sperniatozoids) set free. (Highly magnified.) o.— An Archegonimn ready for Fertilization.
H. — A withered Prothallus, witli a young Fern Plant (Sporophyte) growing from it. I.—Sporophgte of Asplenium trichomanes,
showing the creeping Stem (Rhizome) and young Fronds rising behind its apical growing point. J. K. — Younger and older
Pinnie of the Frond, showing the Sori on tlieir under surface, l. — Section througli a Pinna and Sorus, showing the Sporangia
in different stages of development, partly covered by the Indusinm. M. — A ripe Sporangium with enclosed Spores. >'. — A
burst Sjjorangium discharging the Spores.
their surface. These are evidently new structures, not
further growths, since the heart-shaped cell-plate still
remains, though shrinking and withering round their
base.
The explanation of these phenomena can only be arrived
at by a closer study under the microscope.
If a medium-sized disc, one about a quarter of an
inch across, is mounted in water and examined with a
moderate magnifying power, it will be seen that the
regularity of the cell arrangement is sometimes broken
of several rows oi cells surrounding a central passage.
The wall of the chamber round the egg cell is not so
distinct as in the moss, since the whole base of the struc-
ture is here embedded in surrounding tissues ; the neck is
also much shorter and wider, but these are mere detaUa,
the organ is evidently an Arche;ioniuni.
That the round bodies occurring among the rhizoids are
similarly true Antheridin may be readily proved if one of
the darker-coloured riper ones is selected and burst by
light pressure on the cover glass. A mass of small cells
September 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE.
213
will escape into the surrounding water, and shortly each
will be seen to take the form of a spirally coiled sperma-
to/.oid with a more or less defined disc at one end and a
tuft of cilia at the other.
It thus becomes evident that these little bodies, which can
be found in any greenhouse round growing ferns, though
not so easy to distinguish out of doors, are true egg-
bearing plants. They are, in fact, the real oGphyte statje
in the fem-plant's life-history, and we are forced to the
conclusion that we must look on them as the equivalent
of the moss-plant with its stem and leaves, and re,t,'ard
the familiar fern as the representative only of the stalked
capsule or sporophyte of Mnium and ■lumjcrnuinnia.
The two generations have, as it were, changed places in
respect of size, conspicuousness, and elaboration of
structure.
While it is impossible to exaggerate the importance of
this " alternation " in the life-history, it remains difficult
to decide whether we should regard the two stages as
fundamentally different, or look on them as extreme
specializations on distinct lines of a type with double
potentiaUty. Thus, we cannot overlook the facts that in
a few exceptional cases the formation of Archegonia can
be dispensed with, and the prothallus may grow out
vegetatively into a sporophyte (" Apiy/min/") ; while, on
the other hand, the tissues of a frond may, in rare cases,
develop prothalli without the intervention of spores
{" Apospory ").
We have, in fact, crossed a wide gap in the continuity
of vegetable Ufe. We have passed from a type in which
the sporophyte grows from, and is physiologically dependent
on, the parent egg-bearing plant, to one in which the
oophyte generation is small, inconspicuous, transitory, and
of simple structure. The sporophyte has become a highly
specialized growth, with complicated systems of tissues
like those of flowering plants ; ranging through an
infinite variety of forms, from the moss-like fronds of the
filmy ferns to the rigid tree trunks of the Cyatheas and
Alsophilas of the Tropics.
With the detailed structure of this sporophyte we are
not here concerned ; but to complete our summary of the
life-history the cycle of reproduction may be summarized
as follows : —
Division of the fertilized egg-cell produces a fern-embryo
which develops a primary root, leaf, and stem growing-
point long before the final decay of the Oophyte or
Prothallus. When the latter has dried up and disappeared
the stem of the fern-sporophyte is in active growth ;
producing successive leaves or fronds behind the pro-
gressive apex, and establishing firm connection with the
soil by its numerous roots. The fronds from the first
perform all the functions of leaves in the vital economy of
the organism, and in their older stages take their part in
the reproductive cycle by developing Sporangia. These,
in the case of the true ferns, are formed each from an
epidermal cell, though as numbers of such cells are active
together the result is usually 'a group or Sonisot sporangia.
The form of the sporangium varies, and special forms
characterize particular groups, but in all our common ferns
the type is that shown in the figure. The position and
shape of the suri, and the form of their membranous
covering or indusium when present are characters of great
importance to the systematic botanist. Through the
whole series of true ferns, however, whatever their variety
of appearance, the spores are of one kiwi onh/, and when
they germinate produce a free green prothallus such as we
have observed.
Having thus got some idea of the life-history of a fern,
it only remains to see if we can get any glimpse from this
standpoint, either backward or forward, along the lines of
plant evolution.
Looking downward, it is very remarkable that we can
see no evident links connecting the fern-type and the
moss-type. It is possible to imagine a moss in which
leaves mif;ht be formed on the seta, or in which the
sporophyte might root itself and live after the oophyte
had perished, but as a matter of fact we do not know of any
such types. It is also possible to imagine a moss-capsule
becoming complicated in structure by internal division into
chambers, owing to certain cell layers not forming spores;
and later by the separation of these layers so that the whole
sporophore became a compound structure. Prof. Bower has
shown how the various types of "fructification" in the
vascular cryptogams may in this way be compared with
one another, and with some relatively simple ancestral
type. It is, of course, neither necessary nor reasonable to
suppose the fern derived from a specialized moss-type, but
it is probable that the whole series of the vascular crypto-
gams— ferns and their relatives — might, if the intermediate
links were still existing, be traced back to some form
having relationship with both mosses and liverworts.
Looking in the other direction, the question arises, what
is likely to be the next stage in the series if the subordina-
tion of the Oiiphyte generation continues ? It wUl be some
plant in which the prothallus is still smaller, more
ephemeral, and less independent. In our next study we
may find that this link in the chain between the lower
and higher plants is also easily obtainable, and almost
equally easy to observe.
NOTES ON COMETS AND METEORS.
By W. F. Denning, f.b.a.s.
Comets. — Though we have recently had a numerous display
of comets they do not seem to have furnished any special
instance of brilliancy or peculiarity of appearance. The
positions of the objects referred to are, in the majority of
cases, unfavourable. Perrine's comet of March 19th is
now exceedingly faint, and during September will be
almost stationary in about R.A. 6h. 32m. Dec. fifty-
one degrees north. The comets of Coddmgton, Encke,
and Perrine (June 14th) are too far south to be favourably
seen. Giacobini's comet is becoming very faint. Wolf's
periodical comet, is still visible in the morning hours,
but it requires a good telescope to show it, as it is by
no means a conspicuous object. The following is an
ephemeris by Thraen for Berlin mean midnight : —
Comet Wolf.
Distance in
Date. R.A. Declination, millions of
1898. h. m. s. o ; mjgg_
September 11 G 6 7 +9 31-8 153
1.5 6 13 38 +8 24-2 151
19 6 20 45 +7 14-2 150
23 6 27 26 4-6 22 148
27 6 33 41 +4 48-4 147
During September its brightness remains practically
constant at 2-6. From the ephemeris it will be seen that
the comet moves slowly to south-east passing from the
north-easterly limits of Orion into the head of Monoceros.
On September 23rd the comet will be in conjunction with
the 6th mag. star 12 Monocerotis, and about one and
a-quarter degrees north of the star.
Meteors.— Fireball of July I4.th. — A brilliant fireball,
apparently as large as the moon, was seen on July 14th at
9h. 50m. by Mr. Murrell Dawnay from a position about
two miles off Beachy Head. The path of the fireball
214
KNOWLEDGE.
[Beptembeb 1, 1898.
waa roughly estimated as from 280'' - 14° to 310° + 8°,
but no other descriptions of it have come to hand.
Fireball of July 2Gth. — Mr. F. C. Dennett, of
Dalston, E., writes : " There was a remarkable meteor on
July 2Gth, at about 9h. 12m. It appeared from behind
houses and disappeared behind clouds about twenty degrees
N.N.E. of the zenith. Size a-quarter to a-third that of
the moon. The colour was green, very decided, and its
trail, perhaps four degrees in length, was red, Its motion
was fairly rapid, and its path was nearly south to north,
perhaps ten degrees east of the meridian." Mr. C. Grover
at Lyme Begis describes the time as 9h. 10m., and says :
" The fireball started from a point a little south of east at an
altitude of about fifteen degrees, and vanished in about
north-east, at a height of about ten degrees. At first it
appeared like a small star, but rapidly increased until it
was far brighter than Venus, and finally disappeared in a
shower of sparks. The colour was most remarkable — a
brilliant, dazzling green— so intense as to be quite startUng.
The sky was very hazy at the time." Mr. W. Lucking, of
Berden, Herts, reports, in a letter to Prof. Herschel, that
on .July 26th, 9h. 10m., a magnificent detonating fireball
passed over that village. There was a vivid illumination
of the landscape, and, on looking upwards to ascertain the
cause, a fireball with a red train was observed moving
northwards nearly from the zenith. The fireball burst
with a loud report, which was compared to that of a cannon
fired at a short distance. At Albury, Herts, a loud
detonation occurred, and is described as being simultaneous
with the disruption of the meteor. People indoors thought
there must have been an explosion at the Waltham Powder
Mills, and were much alarmed. The fireball was also seen
at Maldon and other places. From a comparison of the
various accounts the approximate real path of the object
appears to have been from above a point twenty-five miles
west of Dieppe, France, to March, Cambridge. The height
was seventy-three miles at first, and twenty-seven miles at
the end. The meteor had a long flight of about one
hundred and ninety-one miles from south to north, and a
probable radiant at 2G9° — 28°. It must have passed over
the zenith of Berden at a height of thirty-eight miles, so
that a detonation of the meteor would have taken three
minutes to reach observers there. This is, however, a
relatively short interval, and quickly passes when people
have been surprised by an unexpected phenomenon, so the
statement that the sound came simultaneously with the
meteor's explosion may not be quite correct.
Fireball of August 1st. — Mr. W. Lascelles-Scott, of
Romford, reports that just before lOh. 9m. p.m. he saw a
magnificent meteor about eight times the brilliancy of
Jupiter : " It passed directly overhead, and apparently
describing a curve upon a vertical plane in the direction
S.S.W. by S. to N.N.E. by N., descended imtil it quietly
disappeared, after traversing more than one-third of the
heavenly dome."
Tlie Perseids. — This long-continued shower commences
about the middle of July, and the sky being almost free
from moonlight at this epoch, an attempt was recently
made to observe a few of the earlier members of the display,
Prof. Herschel, at Slough, watched the north-west portion
of the firmament on July 13th, 14th, and 15th, and noted
nineteen meteors, which included two Perseids, one seen on
July 14th at lib. 25m., and the other on July 15th at
lOh. 59|m. At Bristol observations were commenced on
July 16th, when three small Perseids were recorded
amongst fifteen meteors seen during a watch of three hours.
On later nights of July a few other Perseids were registered,
both at Slough and Bristol, but they were not sufficiently
numerous on any particular date to indicate a good radiant.
On July Both a fine Perseid appeared in the moonlit
sky at lOh. 43m., and was fortunately observed by Prof.
Herschel and the writer. The real path of the meteor
extended over fifty-seven miles, from Northampton to
Burford, and it fell from a height of eighty-one to forty-
seven miles. Its velocity was thirty-six miles per second,
and the radiant point, from the combined paths, was at
23 + 53°, which is several degrees west of the normal
place of the Perseid centre on July 30th. At Slough the
meteor was observed at a considerable distance from its
radiant, and a slight inaccuracy in recording the direction
of flight would throw the radiant some degrees away from
its correct position. At Bristol the meteor was much fore-
shortened close to its radiant, and it left a dense streak,
broken in the middle, just south of a Cassiopeia.
Among the minor showers observed in July, there was a
prominent display of Cygnids from a radiant at 315" -I- 47°.
This is a well-known position, and furnishes quite a distinct
stream to that of the August Cygnids, which were very
active in 1893, from a radiant at 292° -|- 53°.
There was also a well pronounced radiant in Hercules
at about 249° + 37°, and very few Aquarids were recorded,
but there was a display of long-pathed meteors from a
centre at 338° — 25°, near Fomalhaut.
THE FACE OF THE SKY FOR SEPTEMBER.
By A. Fowler, f.r.a.s.
THE Sun has been free from spots for several days
together during the last two months, but several
spots of moderate size have been observed.
Bright facula- have been frequently seen. It
is, of course, impossible to say what may happen
during the present month.
Mercury will be at inferior conjunction on the 5th, and
will reach his greatest elongation of 17° 51' W. on the
2l8t. He will, therefore, be a morning star during the
latter part of the month. On the 2l8t he will cross the
meridian Ih. 12m. before the Sun, his declination being
8= 20' N., while that of the Sun will be 0' 36' N.
Venus is an evening star, and will be at greatest eastern
elongation on September 21st, 46' 27' E. of the Sun. She
is, however, so far south, and sets so soon after the Sun,
that her appearance is not very striking. On the 2l8t she
will set about an hour after the Sun. At the middle of the
month, a little more than half of the disc will be illuminated.
On the 19th it will be interesting to observe the planet in
close proximity to the Moon, the two being in actual
conjunction about 7 p.m., shortly before they set. At the
time of conjunction the Moon's age will be 3d. 19h., and
Venus will be 1° 28' north of the Moon.
Mars does not rise until between 10 p.m. and 11 p.m.
during the month, and he is too far distant for profitable
observation with small telescopes. It is, however, always
interesting to follow the apparent movement of this planet.
During the month he pursues a direct path in Gemini,
along a line running a little north of the star r,, south of e,
to a httle north of L His apparent diameter increases
from 6-4 ' to 7*2". There will be a daylight occultafcion of
this planet on the 9th, the disappearance taking place at
1.31 P.M., at a point 95' from the vertex, and the re-
appearance at 2.19 P.M. at 215' from the vertex. The
Moon will be twenty-three days old, so that the disappear-
ance will take place at the bright limb. A telescope will,
of course, be necessary to observe the occultation, but as
the Moon will probably be visible to the naked eye, an
equatorial wUl not be essential.
Jupiter will be an evening star during the month, but
he is too near the Sun for useful observation. He will be
SEPTEsrBER 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE.
215
in actual conjunction with the Sun on October 13th, and
the satellites will not be observable from September ISth
to November 12th.
Saturn is still an evening star, at the middle of the
month remaining above the horizon for about two and a
half hours after the Sim has set. He is in the constellation
Ophiuchus, but may perhaps be better recognized from his
position of about six degrees north of Antares.
Uranus passes from Libra into Scorpio, but is too tar
south and too near the Sun for convenient observation.
His path is from about one-third to one-half the distance
from \ Libra; to u> Scorpii.
Neptune, still in Taurus, rises about 11 p.m. at the
beginning of the month, and about 9 p.m. at the end. He
is a httle to the north-east of ':; Tauri.
The Moon will enter her last quarter on the 7th at
10.51 P.M. ; will be new on the 16th at 12.10 a.m. ; will
enter her first quarter on the 23rd at 2.39. a.m. ; and
will be full on the 29th at 11.11 p.m. At the full the
phenomena of the Har\-est Moon will be presented to us ;
that is, she will rise almost full at about the same time
on several successive evenings. This is illustrated in
Fig. 1.— lUustratiDg the Risirg of the Harvest Moon.
Fig. 1, showing the Moon's position on the celestial sphere
at the times of rising, from September 27th to October
Ist, as seen from outside. The direction of the diurnal
motion being indicated by the arrow, it is at once evident
why the times of rising vary so little. At the time of
setting, the ecliptic is no longer nearly coincident with the
horizon, as will appear from Fig. 2, and the intervals
Fig. 2.— Illustrating the Setting of the Harvest i[oon.
between the times of setting on successive days are longer
than the average. The following are the times of rising
and setting of the Harvest Moon at Greenwich : —
Eises. Sets.
September 27th ... 4.29 p.m. 2.38 a.m
28th . . 4.47 ,, ... 4.1
29th ... 5.4 „ ... 5.21 „
30th 5.22 „ 6.41 „
October 1st 5.42 ., 7.59 „
Conveniently observable minima of Algol will occur on
the 12th at 11.27 p.m., and on the ISth at 8.16 p.m.
Observers interested in variable stars may be reminded
that a maximum of Mira Ceti is probably not far distant.
(lE^css <!Eolumn.
By 0. D. LooooK, b.a.
Commonioations for this oolomn should be addressed to
C. D. LococK, Burwash, Sussex, and posted on or before
the 10th of each month.
Solutions of August Problems.
(By J. Nield.i
No. 1.
1. Q to QB2, and mates next move.
No. 2.
As pointed out by W. de P. Crousaz only, Kt to R2 will
not solve this problem, on account of the reply Kt to K7.
Correct Solutions of No. 1 received from Alpha,
W. Clugston, H. Le .leune, G. G. Beazley, J. M'Robert.
Mr. A. C. Challenger writes to say that the unsoundness
of his problem in the July number was due to the absence
of a White Pawn at KB2.
If. J. Bearne.—kfiet 1. QK2ch, K to Q5, 2. Kt Kt4 is
not mate.
ir. ClugUon, — July solution correct, as you will have
seen.
/•'. ir. Andrew. — Thanks for the problem ; it is marked
to appear next month, and a copy shall be sent to you.
./. Xi.hl. — Have posted copy as requested. Can you
account for the ditficulty in No. 2 ''
A. C. Challenger. — Many thanks for the explanation.
The original being no longer available, it is impossible to
say whether the omission was there or not. Judging by
the number of pieces, it seems perhaps probable that the
omission was made as you suggest. We shall be glad to
receive the substitutes.
PROBLEMS.
No. 1.
By B. G. Laws.
Black (:
White (h).
White mates in three moves.
216
KNOWLEDGE.
[Septembek 1, 1898.
No. 2.
By A. C. Challenger.
Blacx (ft).
i * ■
^ m
^ !S ^^
White {fi\.
White mates in two moves.
CHESS INTELLIGENCE.
The Lee-Teichmann match resulted in a victory for Mr.
Teichmann by three games to one, with five draws. Such
a score does not show any marked superiority on either side.
The final score in the ^'ienna tournament was as foUowB,
Herr Schwarz's score being cancelled: —
H. N. Pillsbury
S. Tarrasch
M. Janowski 2Gi
. . 24l
.. 221
21" )
.. 21 S
.. 20i }
.. 20i \
.. 19'
.. 18
.. 17i
. 17'
.. IG
.. 15i
.. 15"
. 13i
9"
6
W. Steinitz
C. Schlechter ...
A. Burn...
M. Tchigorin ...
G. Jfaroczy
P. Lipke
S. Alapin
E. Schiffers ...
G. Marco
J. H. Blackburne
-J. W. Showalter
C. Walbrodt ...
E. Halprin
H. Caro
D. G. Baird
H. W. Trenchard
28^ \ tie for first and second
28i ) prizes.
third prize,
fourth prize,
fifth prize.
< sixth prize.
"( seventh prize.
( eighth prize.
( ninth prize,
tenth prize,
special Chess Club prize.
special prize.
special prize,
special prize.
tie
tie
On playing off the tie for first and second prizes, Dr.
Tarrasch won the first prize (i:2oO) by two games to one,
with one draw ; Mr. Pillsbury taking the second prize
(il6G).
Dr. Tarrasch lost only three games out of thirty-six
played, a very fine performance ; Mr. Pillsbury lost five,
but drew considerably fewer games, this result bemg in
accordance with the styles of the two players. M. Janowski
lost both games against Lipke and Halprin. Mr. Steinitz's
only double defeat was at the hands of Janowski, but he
drew more games than usual, as also did Burn. Herr
Schlechter, as usual, drew about half his games, losing only
six. He was the only pla.yer to beat Mr. Burn in both
rounds. Probably the latter had resolved not to draw at
all costs, with the usual result. Tchigorin, hke his old
rival Steinitz, lost both games to Janowski, and to him
only. Maroczy hardly fulfilled expectations. He drew
more games than even Schlechter. Lipke also was
insatiable in the matter of draws, but he could not get one
against Steinitz. Alapin had an excellent score at the
end of the first round, but he failed in the second.
Schiffers, on the contrary, started badly, and altogether
failed to do himself justice, while Marco hardly played
as well as he has lately. Blackburne drew no less than
twenty games. When playing his last game (against
Caro) he found himself in the anomalous position of
standing to lose i'4 if he won the game. Naturally he
lost it, thereby winning the i;12 prize for the best score
against the prize-winners. Showalter again disappointed
his admirers, while Walbrodt has his own carelessness to
thank for his low position. He forfeited two games through
arriving late. The last three are representatives of London
and New York; evidently the Anglo-American cable match
is not quite up to the standard of a first-class international
tournament. Altogether, the present tournament is one
of the strongest ever known, the players on the whole being
superior to their predecessors in the Vienna tourney of
1882, though Lasker and Charousek were needed to make
it complete. The winner enhanced his already great
reputation ; of the others, the chief honour rests with
Schlechter and Burn.
Several of the Vienna competitors are now playing in
the tournament of the German Chess Association at
Cologne. Herr Cohn, the well-known Berlin amateur,
was leading at the end of the tenth round, closely followed
by Mr. Burn. Of the remainder, Steinitz, Charousek,
Tchigorin, and Schlechter were making the best scores,
and Herr Schallopp the worst.
KNOWLEDGE, PUBLISHED MONTHLY.
Contents ol No. 153 (July).
PAGE
The Knrkinokosm, or World of
Crustacea,— rV". By the Hev.
Thomas B. E. Stebbinj, m.a.,
F.a.s., F.L.s. (lUuKtrafed) l*.'i
A Classic LegiicT of Agriculture.
—II. By John MiUs. (Ulus-
(ra(cd) 148
•* The Mimic Fires of Ocean.*'
By G. Clarke Nuttall, B.sc. ... 150
The Petroleum Industry. — II,
By George T. HoUoway, Assoc.
K.e.s. (losd.), f.i.c. (IHus-
irnUi) 151
On the Eclipse Theory of Vari-
able Stars. By Lieut.-Colonel
E. E. Markwick, f.r.a.s.
{nXMsUaiii) 153
The Recent Eclipse.— The Lick
Photographs of the Corona.
By E. Walter Maonder.F.R.A.s. 155
Noticesof Books 156
Obituary 158
Letters 159
Science Notes (niH8(rat«d| 159
SeU.Irrigation in Plants. By
the Rev. Alex. S. Wilson, M.A.,
B.sc. (IWusUaUi) 160
British Ornithological Notes 1(2
Botanical Studies. — IV. Mnium.
By A. Vanghan Jennings,
F.L.S., F.G.S. (IZlusfrafed) 163
Notes on Comets and Meteors.
By W. F. Denning, f.e.a.s. ... 16S
The Pace of the Sky for Jolv.
By A. Fowler, f.e.a.s 167
Chess Column, By C. D. Locock 167
Plate.- The Lick Photographs of
the Corona.
Contents of No. 154 (August).
PAGE
The Petroleum Indnstry.- Ill,
By George T, HoUoway, *ssoc,
B.C.S. (LOXD.), F.I.C. (Iilu«-
trofed) 169
An Old-World Highland. By
GrenviUe A, J, Cole, m,b,i,a,,
F.ii.S. (I!lus«rtt(«d) 170
Self 'Irrigation in Plants.— II,
By the Eev. Alex. S. Wilson,
JLA,. B,sc, (niiMtrofed) 173
Celebes ; a Problem in Distribu-
tion. By R, Lydekker, b,a.,
175
British Ornithological Notes.
Conducted by Harry F.
Witherby. f.z.s.. x.B.o.r 177
"Insect Miners," By Fred.
Enock, F.L.s., f,e.s,, etc,
(IiIustrof«d) 178
Notices of Books 17ft
Letters 181
Artificial Faculse. By the Rer.
Arthur East (PXalt) 183
The ObjectiTe Prism, the Flash,
and the Reversing Layer. By
E. Walter Maunder, f.b,a,s.
(niustroted) 184
Alexander Goodman More 1:*7
How to Photograph through a
Fly's Eve, BvFred.W.Saibv.
(flluslr.itcdl .' 187
Notes on Comets and Meteors.
Bv W. F. Denning, f,k,a.8. ... 189
The' Face of the Sky for August,
By A. Fowler, f,e,a.s 191
Chess Column. By C. D. Locock 191
Plate.— Artificial and Natural
Faculse.
The yearly bound volumes of Knowledge, cloth gilt, 83. 6d., post free.
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October 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE
217
Founded in i88i by RICHARD A. PROCTOR.
LONDON : OCTOBER 1, 1898.
CONTENTS.
An Esker in the Plain. By Gbestiile A. J. Cole, m.r.i.a..
F.G.s. {Illustrated) ...
The Sea-Squirt By E. SxExnorsE, A.it.c s., b.so. ...
The Affinities of Flowers.— The Bladderwort and its
Relatives. By Feli.x Oswatd, b.a., ii.sc. (Illiislrateil)
Ethnology at the British Museum. By K. Ltdekkeb.
{Illustrated) ...
The Fourth International Congress oT Zoology
The Great Sunspot and the Aurora. By E. Waltee
MaUNDEB, F.B.A.S. (Illli.<tiraterl nnd PlafA
Letter:— J. M-R
Science Notes
Notices of Books
Shoet Notices
Books Received
British Ornithological Notes. Conducted by Haebt F.
WiTHEBBT, E.Z.g., M.B.O.IT
Sunspots and Life. By Alex. B. MacDowall, m.a.
{illustrated) "
Economic Botany. By John R. Jackson, a.i.s., etc. ...
Notes on Comets and Meteors. By W. F. DKNNiKa,
F.E.A.3
The Face of the Sky for October. By A. Fowxeb,
F.B.A.S.
Chess Column. By C. T>. Locock, b.a
217
220
223
226
228
229
2.'!0
230
233
233
234
235
238
239
AN ESKER IN THE PLAIN.
By Grenville A. J. Cole, m.r.i.a., fg.s., Professor of
Genlogy in tlw Eoyiil Collei/e of Science for Ireland.
THE gravel ridges of the Irish plain have been
already mentioned* as a welcome feature in its
landscapes. These " green hills," with their
pleasant grassy slopes, have often given a name
to groups of houses clustered near them ; and
here and there they, were seized on long ago as sites
for commanding forts. The Irish word eiscir means " a
ridge," and there is a hamlet called " Esker " to this day
on a gravel bank near Lucan. The term has, however,
become a scientific one, through the interest roused among
geologists by the characters of many of these ridges ; and
General Portlock.t Mr. G. H. Kinahan, and, finally, Mr.
Maxwell Close, J have distinguished between eskers proper
* Knowledqe, Yol. XXI., p. 75. (April. 1898.)
t "Report on Geology of Londonderry, Tyrone, etc.," 1843, p. 639.
X " General Glaciation of Ireland," Jour. H. Geol. Soc, Ireland
Vol.1. (1867), p. 211 and p. 212, footnote.
and the fairly parallel banks of drift, or dnimUns, which
are found so abundantly in glaciated countries.
We need not go far from Dublin to find a typical little
esker. Four miles south-west of the city, out in the lime-
stone plain, the main road to Tallaght makes a sudden
rise, and reaches the crest of a green ridge on which the
hamlet of Balrothery stands (Fig. 1). Gravel pits have been
opened on either hand, and a by-road turns off along the
ridge, which it follows for some three miles to Crumlin.
Such a road is in itself a feature of an esker ; these dry
raised causeways offered themselves to the ancients ready-
made ; and the fact that they seldom ran in a straight
line was not in those days of much importance. If we
start from Balrothery, we at once note that the esker is
formed of irregular beds of pebbles, with occasional yellow
sands. At the summit it is little wider than the road, and
falls with a slope of twenty degrees on either hand ; from
its base there is a gentler slope to the ordinary level of
the fields, doubtless due to the washing down of detritus
from the ridge. Before us, planted on the crest, rises the
tower of Tymon Castle, one of the defences of Norman
Dublin against the Irish ; and the road has to give way
and descend round about it. The west slope has here an
angle of nearly thirty degrees (Fig, 2). Soon we reach Green
Hills, where the inhabitants are engaged in quarrying,
and where large sections have been opened in the esker.
Here the ridge broadens and becomes less defined, and
finally breaks up into a number of mere mounds of gravel.
When once recognised, such a feature will be picked out
again and again in a traverse of the Irish plain. Gravels
are common on its surface, largely composed of limestone
pebbles, with a sprinkling of other rocks, which can gene-
rally be traced to the highlands of the country along one
or other line of ice-drift. The pebbles of the plain are
ground and striated on their surfaces, and clearly were
at one time under solid ice, or embedded in its moving
layers. When, however, we examine the material of the
eskers, we find the same pebbles, but with subsequent
signs of water-action. Here and there the old strife
remain ; but in most cases further rounding and abrasion
have gone on. The bedding, whether in the rough layers
of the gravel, which are seen to dovetail into one another
in the sections, or in the delicate stratification of the brown
and yellow sands, reminds us at once of the river-deposits
that are laid bare by Alpine streams. But in the esker
the form of a stream-deposit is reversed ; instead of an
alluvial mass, filling up the groove of a valley-floor, and
widening from below upwards, we have the narrower part
at the top, and a pebbly ridge has been heaped up without
visible retaining walls.
The sharp ridges formed by the lateral moraines, as a
glacier shrinks in its own bed, will come to the mind of
any traveller. But these occur in pairs, or series of pairs,
marking successive halting-points in the transverse shrink-
age of the glacier. They curve round, moreover, towards
the terminal moraine at the nose of the glacier, and are
altogether more systematically disposed than these eskers
of the Irish plain. Further, their materials are just
dropped off the edges of the ice, and are not specially
waterworn.
Elvers, again, do not form isolated ridges of detritus,
although they may raise their courses above a plain on
broad strips of pebbly land, which they themselves have
formed. For a long time, the movements of currents in a
shallow sea was invoked to account for the building of
eskers, and their various curvings and bays were held to
mark swirls of water along which the pebbles had become
accumulated. Marine shells, however, could not be found
in the esker-gravels, though they are plentiful in some
218
KNOWLEDGE
[October 1. 1898.
other deposits of the Ice Age. Nothing like a true esker
could be quoted, moreover, from the sea-banks now forming
off our shores. The North Sea, at any rate, should have
given us some clue to their formation ; in the absence of
such evidence, the marine theory was adopted with con-
siderable reserve.
Prof. SoUas,* in his valuable review of the history of
the subject, points out that Mr. N. 11. Winchell and Mr.
Warren Upham in America were among the first to show
how mounds and ridges of gravel could accumulate at the
base of crevasses in a glacier, and how they would come
to light on the final melting of the ice. But Mr. J. G.
Goodchild, on our side of the Atlantic, was at the same
time elaborating his views as to the distribution of
materials carried in the body of the ice — such materials as
we now call "englacial" or " intraglacial." In a paper
on the Eden Valley,! read in 1874, Mr. Goodchild gives
Fig. 1. — View from the road along the Esker at Balrothery,
showing the low GraTel Eidge, and the Dublin Mountains in the
distance.
the gist of the matter in this sentence : — " The angular
moraine-hke drift occasionally found in parts of the dales,
the upper and lower tills and the intercalated beds, the
deposits of sand and gravel that form the eskers, and,
finally, the numerous boulders that are left at nearly all
elevations, are each and all the results of the melting
of a great sheet of land ice that was charged throughout
with rock-fragments of all sizes and of all kinds occurring
within the area wherein the ice originated." Mr. Good-
child held that eskers were formed where materials in the
lower part of a melting ice-sheet were arrested by some
underlying ridge of rock. The water would run on either
side, and would leave a long bank of pebbles to mark the
line where scouring action was least, i.e., the line between
two adjacent subglacial streams. Simultaneously, Dr.
Hummel in Sweden was putting forward his view that
the eskers accumulated in the cliannels of such streams,
and that they are casts, in fact, of the grooves worn in the
bottom of a glacier by the streams that issue from it.
* " A Map to show the Distribution of Eskers in Ireland," Sci.
Trans. R. Duhlin Soc, Tol. V. (1896), pp. 788 and 794.
t Quart. Journ. Geol. fioc. Vol. XXXI. (1875), p. 99. See also
" On Drift," Oeo!. Uag., 1874, pp. 509 and 510.
Good accounts of Hummel's paper are given by Prof. Jas,
Geikie^' and Prof. Sollas, and the former practically intro-
duced it to English readers. Dr. Hoist, in IHTO, urged
that pebble-accumulations in the beds of rivers on the
surface of melting ice may in time be lowered, by melting
and excavation, until they are left as ridges on the glacier-
floor, when this' finally comes to be exposed. Like (iood-
child. Hoist lays stress on the amount of intraglacial
material, which would fall out into the stream-channels as
they cut more deeply into the ice.
In the last twenty years, as may be seen from Prof.
SoUas's review, opinion has favoured the explanation
given by Hummel rather than that of Hoist. Prof.
I. C. Kussell has, moreover, seen eskers in course of
formation in Alaska, t and to his account of the Malaspina
glacier we shall have occasion to return. His remark that
such deposits are typically associated with stagnant ice-
sheets which are wasting away, may account for the
disappointment felt by those observers who have failed to
find modern eskers under more normal types of glacier.
One might surely, however, have expected to meet with
sub-glacial eskers in Spitzbergen; yet Messrs. Garwood and
Gregory ; are obliged to report that evidence regarding
them is absent.
These two authors, in their crisp, condensed, and
unspeculative record, give strong support to Mr. Goodchild's
theory of the importance of intraglacial drift. The waste
material of the highlands round about a great glacier-
basin falls upon the ice, and is gradually incorporated in
the mass. It is transported laterally as well as vertically
in the body of the ice, and becomes spread out into sheets,
forming intraglacial strata. Here and there, by internal
surging movements, it may become mingled with detritus
that has already been ground against the floor. Ultimately
it is extruded to form part of the copious clays, or sands,
or gravels of the terminal moraine. The stones have
generally been rounded, and are now attacked by the out-
flowing waters, and are re-arranged by their action at the
glacier-foot. In periods of shrinkage of the ice, when
melting has thoroughly set in, the intraglacial drift comes
rapidly into prominence. " Stratified sands and gravels "
are left behind in all the hollows ; vaUeys are choked, and
the striated floor and the roches moutotine'es are concealed as
quickly as they are deserted by the ice. In steeply falling
valleys, it is unlikely that an esker-ridge would escape
destruction during this final period of flood and flow. In
open plains, however, the case is very different.
Let us picture Ireland in the lee Age — a time of
moderate coldness and abundant precipitation. The cold
was sufficient to cause all the moisture to be deposited as
snow ; the precipitation was aided, moreover, by the
greater height of the mountain-rim of the country, par-
ticularly on the western side. Above the town of Sligo
at the present day, the Carboniferous Limestone rises in
bold cliffs and plateaus ; and the enormous quantity of
limestone pebbles in the gravels of the plain shows that
such high masses must have been common at the opening
of the Glacial epoch. The plain itself was, however,
determined by the syncUnals of the Hercynian folding j ;
it had already assumed the character of a lowland, and
was no doubt covered in part by swamps and pools, on
* " The Great Ice Age," 3rd edition (1894), p. 170. See also 2nd
edition (1877).
+ Thirteenth Ann. Report. U.S. Geol. Surrey (1892), pp. 05
and 81.
J "Glacial Geology of Spitzbergen," Quart. Jour. Geol. Soc.
Vol. LIT. (1898), pp." 211 and 222.
§ Knowiedge, Vol. XXI., p. 78.
October 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE
219
which little icebergs began to float. Here and there, the
sea may have encroached upon it, bringing in marine
shells, which became broken up and mingled with terres-
trial gravels poured down from the glaciated hills.
The precipitation continued in excess. The lakes and
pools froze over throughout the year, and were lost beneath
the mantle of freshly-falling snow. On all sides, from the
slopes of the Kerry ranges, from the broad back of
Leiuster, from the high cirques of Mayo and Connemara,
and from limestone uplands now altogether lost to us,
glaciers crept down, spreading out in terminal fan-like
forms, and finally coalescing in the plain. When the
plain itself became full of ice, minor details of surface
would cease to exert an influence, and the great lines of
ice-movement asked for by Mr. Close in his memorable
paper may have been set up across the lowlands. The
old extension of land southward and westward, of which
we have so much evidence, may easily have provided
nooks and corners, particularly on its seaward border, in
which the early elements of the Irish fauna and flora could
find refuge from these rigours for a time.t
We are not now concerned with the climax of the
Glacial epoch, about which so much has been written,
and about which we know so little. It is of small moment,
moreover, in considering our eskers, whether part of the
striation of our rock-surfaces was due to the movement of
floating ice, J or whether it must be ascribed to ice-sheets
of the magnitude demanded by Prof. Jas. Geikie and
Mr. Close. The eskers belong to the latest phase, and
overlie the boulder-clays and gravels, about which con-
troversy is so often raised. It is now almost impossible,
at any rate, to suggest a marine origin for the eskers.
Prof. SoUas's map of the Irish plain, from Galway to
Dublin, shows the distribution of eskers over a wide area ;
Flo. 2. — The so\ith-west slope of the Esker at TTinon Castle.
and he reasons carefully, from their knots and confluences,
as to their resemblance to river-courses beneath ice. Similar
evidence has been gathered, both from North America and
* Op. cit., pp. 231, 238, and Plate VII [.
f See Seharff, " Origin of European Fauna," Proe. S. Irish Acad.,
3rd Ser., Vol. IV. (1897) ; and comments by Gr. C. Carpenter, Natural
Science, Vol. XI., pp. 382 and 385; and G-. Cole, Irish Naturalist,
1897, p. 240.
% Grarwood and Gregorr, op. cit., pp. 215 to 217 ; Seharff, op. cit.,
p. 494.
Scandinavia ; and Prof. Russell's* description of the Mala-
spina glacier supplies exactly what the followers of Ilutton
and of Lyell demand — an example of " causes now in
action," capable of explaining the phenomena left us from
the past.
The Malaspina glacier lies in south-east Alaska, between
the watershed that forms the Canadian frontier and the
Pacific. It is seventy miles wide, and twenty to twenty-
live miles long from front to back— (.c, its length, like
FiQ. 3. — Section in the Esker at Green Hills, Co. Dublin, sliowing
irregularly stratilied gravels and purer sand below.
that of so many " hanging glaciers " in the Alps, is con-
siderably less than its breadth. But it is not a hanging
glacier, cut ofl" in front along a line of clifl's ; it results from
the accumulation of snow and the confluence of normal
glaciers, which slip from the mountain -ranges to the north ;
and it lies, with a fairly level surface, on " the flat lands
between the base of the mountains and the sea." Hence
it has been styled a " piedmont " glacier— an unfortunate
term, when one thinks of the glaciers of Piedmont proper.
The moraine-material borne by it is covered with snow
in the higher regions, and hence becomes " intraglacial."
But it shows itself along the melting border of the ice, as
a dark band some four to five miles wide. Forests of
spruce firs and other vegetation, as shown in Prof. Russell's
photographs, grow on this exposed material, which itself
rests on the lower layers of glacier-ice. This dense wood-
land, rising from the surface of the glacier, is a fine
example of the contemporaneous occurrence of a north-
temperate flora and of continental ice. Animals similarly
find a home on the ice, and their remains must become
embedded in strata belonging to this local glacial epoch.
The area of the Malaspina glacier is one thousand five
hundred square miles ; but it is only fair to remember that
it is fed by some of the highest ground in North America.
Mount St. Elias, itself eighteen thousand feet in height,
supplies it on the north-west through the Libby and the
Newton glaciers. t The latitude of the district is sixty
« Op. cit., p. 67.
t See Russell's Map op. cit., PI. IV. ; and also Pis. V.. VII.,
220
KNOWLEDGE.
[October 1, 1898.
degrees north, about tbatof the Shetlands and Christiania.
Could we procure a similar climate, and similar means of
precipitation, along the west side of the Leinster Chain, a
glacier as large as the Malaspina would cover all the
lowland area of Kildare, Carlow, and Queen's County.
Indeed, our highlands, as they now exist, would have
gone far, at the close of the Glacial epoch, to keep the
plain of Ireland full of ice.
Whatever the cause, the means of precipitation were
actually provided ; but at last the modern epoch opened.
The sun shone on the ring of snow-peaks from Lough
Foyle to Galtymore, on the long moor of Leinster, and on
the white plateaux of the north ; but centuries may have
elapsed before the lowlands were free from the cold
burden thrust upon them. The ice of the plain was full
of intraglacial drift, shot into it by avalanches and land-
slides, or slowly incorporated with it by the glaciers
descending from the hills. As melting began, this
gravelly detritus would appear, capping, for instance, the
islands of Clew Bay, or streaming down as delta-formations
far out into the Irish Sea. Broad stratified deposits might
be formed by a union of marine and river action ; but in
Fig. 4. -Stratification of S;,imI ;,t li.-i- of tlip Grppii Hill- Esker,
( ... Ilul.lm.
the interior of the country the deposits would be more
hummocky and isolated, and would often represent the
courses of the last subglacial streams. The plain of ice
might in time become reduced to separate patches, each
with its fringe of hillocks, piled up from intraglacial drift ;
and, where melting was slow and steady, true eskers might
remain, sinuous and steep-sided, as casts of the more
permanent waterways. For a long time, the torrential
flow would have kept such channels open ; so that the
eskers represent the final accumulations, due to failure of
the water-supply, and are younger than many of the
distributed gravels, which originated equally from the
intraglacial drift.
Such appears at present to be the logical history of eskers,
like that of Lalrothery and Crumlin. The stratification
in the Green Hills of Co. Dublin is marked in the basal
sands, but is highly irregular in the gravels of the summit
(Figs. 3 and 4), and this is what might be expected from
the suggested conditions of formation, the material having
been washed down, at different times, with very different
rates of flow. The freshness of the esker slopes, and the
preservation of the ridge-like form, may be paralleled by
the undisturbed outlines of the extinct scoria-cones of
Auvergne. In both cases, the porosity of the material
allows the water to sink through it, and a few channels here
and there alone mark the attack of exceptional storms.-
We have, in conclusion, to go to the uplands of Tyrone
to see what a part the " esker- drift " may play in the
present conformation of the surface. Near Dunnamore,
for instance, we may see a giant esker running across
country, descending one side of the valley and climbing up
the opposite slope, with all the persistent air of the Great
Wall of China. In the hollow below us, the trend of which
is scorned by it, the esker is breached by the existing stream.
Clearly, its central part must have formed at one time the
barrier of a temporary lake. ^\'hen we ascend to the
moorland over against us, we find the gravel ridge lost in
a plexus of curving mounds, in the bays of which lakelets
lie gleaming in the western light. As the sun sinks, the
shafts pick out the soft green flanks of gravel domes,
sometimes isolated, sometimes clustered in all manner of
strange positions on the far hill-sides. Even on the high
spurs of Slieve Gallion, Lough Fea is bordered by them, as
if by the dihris of a landslide. We look back along our
grass-grown wall, the one side of which is now cold and
purple-grey, the other golden in the sunset. It stands out
before ua more sharply than ever, still more strange and
fascinating ; and we feel that we have a good deal yet to
learn with regard to the origin of eskers.
THE SEA-SQUIRT.
By E. Stenhouse, a.b.i.s., b.s.
THE sea-squirt has such a curious organisation, and
passes through so strange a series of changes in
its development, that it and its allies have long
been regarded with more than usual interest by
naturalists. For the sea-squirt is a living example
of degeneracy, of structural degradation so complete that
until recently it was universally supposed to be a mollusc.
Its shape is roughly cyUndrical or ovoid ; its colour a dingy
grey ; and it lives attached by its base to a rock on the sea-
shore. At its free end there is a hole, commonly sur-
rounded by eight small lobes, and a little less than half-
way down the side of the body is another opening, with
six encircling lobes. The upper aperture is the mouth,
and it leads to the digestive tube, which consists of a
spacious pharynx immediately following the mouth, a gullet,
a stomach, and an intestine. Completely surrounding the
digestive tube, except along one line, where the pharynx is
fused with the body-wall, is a chamber called the atrium.
The atrium opens to the exterior at the lower of the two
external apertures, which is hence called the atrial opening.
If the Ascidian be carefully watched under natural con-
ditions, a current of water wUl be seen to continually enter
the mouth and leave by the atrial opening. If it be
touched the creature wiU suddenly send out a stream of
water from each opening, and its common name is derived
from this habit of squirting when irritated. The inflowing
current of water is doubly useful to the Ascidian. It not
only washes into the digestive canal the microscopic
organisms which constitute its food, but it also carries in
solution a store of fresh oxygen, which is just as necessary
for the healthy life of the animal as it is for our own well-
being. The region of the pharynx which is fused with
* See Judd, "Volcanoes," p. l.")o; Lyell. "Principles of Geologv, "
Vol. II. (1833), p. 205.
October 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE
221
the body-wall forms a mucous secretion, by which the
food-particles are arrested and guided into the gullet, to
undergo digestion in the stomach. The water, on the other
hand, does not take this course, but passes through the
tiny slits of the delicate basket-work composing the walls
of the pharynx. The edges of these slits are beset by
little lashing threads, known to biologists as cilia, and the
result of their rhythmic motion is that a continuous
current of water is driven from the cavity of the pharynx
to the surrounding atrium. The slits in the pharynx-wall,
arranged in transverse rows, are very numerous. Now,
between each row of slits runs a little blood-vessel, and
tiny branches also follow the delicate partitions between
the slits themselves. The walls of the blood-vessels are
excessively thin, and the oxygen contained in the sea-water
is thus able to diti'use through the walls into the blood as
the water swlUs through the slits. Waste carbon dioxide
passes out from the blood into the water at the same
time. Hence we have here all the essentials of a breathing-
process.
The blood is constantly renewed by the beating of a little
heart placed ou one side of the stomach. The heart works in
a somewhat peculiar fashion. The contractions are for some
time in one direction, and then the motion is suddenly
reversed, the blood being propelled in the opposite direction.
In this manner does the adult creature live, if such an
uneventful existence can be called living. It spends its
days sedately rooted to the spot where, on abandoning
the wayward habits of youth, it first settled down, and its
obvious movements are limited to occasional contractions
of the outer coat or " tunic." If the animal has any
intelligence at all it is of the most rudimentary character,
and it is even problematical whether it possesses any special
sense-organs. There is a mass of nervous matter just at
the beginning of the pharynx, and this and some neigh-
bouring structures may be of use for testing the quality of
the water flowing in at the mouth, but organs of sight and
hearing are quite absent. The life of an oyster is in com-
parison one of pleasing variety.
It is one of the greatest triumphs of the still young
science of embryology to have shown conclusively that
this creature — little more than an automaton, and possess-
ing no obvious trace of vertebrate structure — is yet a
member of the great sub-kingdom to which all birds,
mammals, reptiles, amphibians, and fishes belong, and of
which we are pleased to consider ourselves the crowning
pinnacle and glory. A brief icsumc of the features which
biologists consider to be essential characters of vertebrate
animals may assist the reader to a better appreciation of
the masterly piece of research by which Kowalewsky showed
the Ascidian to be a fallen vertebrate, and gave to it a
position of quite unique interest.
In the first place, all vertebrates possess a supporting
skeletal rod running al«ng the main axis of the body.
This is usually the " backbone," but it may be represented
by a spinal column of cartilage or gristle, as is the case
with the sharks and their aUies. In the lowest vertebrates,
and in the embryos of all the higher ones, the skeletal axis
consists of a simple continuous rod called the notochurd,
which is of the consistency of stiff jelly. Secondly, the
central nervous system of aU vertebrates arises as a groove
along the middle line of the back or " dorsal " surface of
the developing animal. The edges of the groove arch over
and meet, converting it into a tube, which becomes the
spinal cord and brain. Moreover — and this is a fact of very
great interest to the evolutionist — every member of our
great sub-kingdom passes through a stage in which the
pharynx (already defined as the part of the digestive tube
immediately following the mouth) has its side-walls per-
forated by slits. These gill-slits are present throughout
the whole life of fishes. The water taken in at the mouth
escapes through the slits, a. rating the blood flowing through
the gills on the margins of the slits as it does so. Am-
phibians, which nearly all spend their infancy m water,
breathe during the greater part of their aquatic life exactly
as do the fishes. When, however, the tadpole attains his
froghood and leaves the water, his gill-slits close, and he
breathes by lungs. This early habit of water-breathing
probably indicates that frogs are descended from fish-like
ancestors, and that the tadpole repeats, to some extent, his
ancestral history in his own development, or, as Marshall
happily expressed it, cUmbs up his own genealogical tree.
Again, every bird and reptile, whilst in the egg, passes
through a stage with gUl-slits piercing the sides of the neck,
slits which are of no conceivable use to it as organs of
respiration, and which are only explicable as ancestral
features which have persisted through countless ages.
It IS clear, then, that no animal can justly claim the
proud title of vertebrate unless it possess at some period
of its existence ( a) a notochord, i i) a dorsal tubular nervous
system, (c) gill-slits in the wall of the pharynx ; and
Kowalewsky's famous research showed that the sea-squirt
passes through a stage in which all three are present.
As he watched the tiny egg develop, he saw the single
cell divide up until a hollow two-layered ball of cells was
formed. The cavity of the ball, the primitive digestive
sac, communicated with the exterior by a small pore.
Next one side of the ball became flattenetl and then
grooved. The groove was bounded by right and left folds,
which soon began to arch over and unite at the hinder
end. The union extended farther and farther forward on
the dorsal surface until a tube was formed, the rudiment
of the spinal cord and brain.
That a mollusc, as the sea-squirt was supposed to be,
should develop a hollow nervous system in this manner
was a very remarkable circumstance, and we can imagine
with what breathless interest the observer must have
watched the further growth of the little embryo. For what
followed was stranger stiU. A rod of cells between the
nerve-tube and the digestive sac became more and more
prominent, and soon acquired all the characteristics of a
veritable notochord. Then the hinder part of the embryo
began to grow out as a tail, carrying both spinal cord and
notochord with it. At the opposite end a mouth opened
into the digestive tube, and the enlarged front end of the
spinal cord developed an eye and an organ of hearing. The
embryo was now a free-swimming larva, which was in
appearance and structure curiously suggestive of a tadpole,
but it was of very minute size. Openings soon perforated
the walls of the pharynx-region, but the growth of an
atrium round the pharynx shortly afterwards shut off
these gUl-slits from communicating directly with the
exterior.
The tiny larva, which thus conformed completely with
vertebrate requirements, swam about vigorously for a
few hours by means of its fish-like tail-fin, and then — " 0 !
what a fall was there ! "—it fixed itself by some little
suckers which had appeared under the mouth, the tail
grew less and less, and eventually vanished altogether,
taking notochord and spinal cord with it ; the eye and the
organ of hearing disappeared ; and the front end of the
nerve tube, too, so hopefully suggestive of a brain, dwindled
until nothing remained but a little shapeless mass. Gone,
" like the baseless fabric of a vision," were all vertebrate
characters save a few poor gill-slits. These slits increased
in number, various changes in the relative size of other
organs occurred, and the animal stood revealed, a prosaic
and phlegmatic sea-squirt.
222
KNOWLEDGE
[OOTOBEK 1, 1898.
THE AFFINITIES OF FLOWERS.
THE BLADDERWORT AND ITS RELATIVES.
By Felix Oswald, b.a., b.sc.
IN wandering over some desolate moor in July or
August, we may perchance find a peaty pool aglow
with strange yellow flowers, somewhat like snap-
dragon, on slender stalks which rise from a green
feathery mass floating just beneath the surface of
the water. Let us lift out the whole plant and examine
it more closely ; we can then clearly see why it has been
named the bladderwort, for we find numbers of minute
pale-green bladders interspersed among the branching
feathery leaves. Observation alone will lead us to infer
that these little bladders are merely modified leaflets, for
they are set on stalks arising from the much divided leaves,
generally from a point of bifurcation. Moreover, they
still bear branching bristles at the apex, similar to the
leaf filaments. Some species indeed, (<'.;/., Utricularia
intermedia and U. i/ra liana), reach a further stage of
specialization in having the bladders restricted to separate
branches.
There is a total absence of roots, just as in many other
floating plants, such as the water-fern (Sdlrinia). Indeed,
the rootless condition has become so deeply impressed on
the constitution of the bladderwort that not even a pri-
mary root is developed when the embryo germinates. The
hair-like character of the leaves may perhaps be due to
their having to adopt the function of roots in absorbing
the nutrient salts contained in solution in the water.
But it may be also due (as Grant Allen has suggested in
regard to the submerged leaves of the water crowfoot) to
the necessity for searching out, so to speak, for the scanty
amount of carbonic acid in the stiU waters frequented by
these plants.
The bladders, however, form the chief interest of this
strange plant, for they have become differentiated into the
most efficient traps for catching small water animals.
The entrance to the bladder is firstly protected, by means
of branched bristles, from larger creatures, which might
damage the apparatus. When once past this chi'raH.r de
frise, an entrance is easily effected by pushing inwards the
elastic valve or upper lip, which closes tightly upon the
lower lip — a thickened cushion of tissue. But no return
is possible when the door has closed, and all hope of
freedom must be abandoned. Here the prisoners remain
in their dungeon until they die from suffocation or inanition,
victims to their own curiosity. Death usually overtakes
them in about twenty-four hours, although they sometimes
linger on for as long as six days. A close scrutiny of the
bladders will usually reveal a variety of small crustaceans
such as water fleas {Daphnia, Cypris, and Cycl/yis), larvfe of
gnats and midges, innumerable infusoria and diatoms, and
even small worms. The bladderwort, however, is not
always left in undisputed possession of its prey, for a water
spider sometimes finds it a profitable undertaking to spin
its silken silvery bell among the branches of the plant, and
to rifle the contents of the bladders.
No digestive ferment is secreted in these traps as on the
leaves of the carnivorous sundew and butterwort, but we
find special absorbent hairs arranged in groups of four,
studded at intervals all over the inner surface of the bladder.
A gradual transition may be observed between these peculiar
hairs and those outside,^' which secrete a kind of mucilage,
* Chodat has shown that these bail's arise from cells which in
laud-plants would have become stomata; a change of habitat necessi-
tating a change of function.
perhaps attractive to the deluded visitors. It is considered
probable that the nitrogenous products of decomposition
are taken up by the internal hairs into the system of the
plant for assimilation — a distinct advantage for the species,
since peaty soils are well known to be deficient in
nitrogen, which is so important an element of animal and
plant life. It is also possible that the carbon dioxide
exhaled by the animals during their imprisonment may be
of considerable service to the plant.
On the approach of winter the whole plant decays, with
the exception of the terminal bud, which is wrapped up
and protected by leaves closely crowded together, but
without any bladders. This resting bud eventually sinks
to the bottom of the pool, just as the frog-bit (/ii/i/roc/mr/s)
and many other water plants. The warmth of spring
rouses the dormant bud into activity, the leaves expand,
the stem grows, bladders are again developed in place of
leaflets, and the plant rises to the surface of the water.
Formerly it was considered that the sole reason for the ex-
istence of the bladders was to raise the plant from the bottom
of the pool after the long winter rest, and to buoy it up so as
to float in the most suitable position. It is possible, indeed.
Bladderwort plant in flower, one-third le«3 than natural size.
that their primary function was hydrostatic, and that the
habit of catching animals is secondary, and has induced
several modifications in structure ; yet it is clear that at
the present time the bladders cannot act merely as buoys,
in view of the fact that the small British Utricuhtria inter-
media does not float at all, but creeps along the bottom of
pools, anchored to the soft mud by the bladders, which, in
this case, are borne on separate branches of the stem.
Moreover, there are many purely terrestrial spacies of
bladderwort in the tropics which possess bladders essen-
tially similar to those of our aquatic species, although very
much smaller. They frequent, however, damp places, in
association with mosses and liverworts. A strange instance
of dependence of one plant upon another is afforded by a
Brazilian species [Utricularia jieliimhifoUa) \ it lives in the
reservoirs of water formed by theleaf rosettes of TiUandsia
plants (allies of the pineapple). This bladderwort spreads
abundantly, sending out long runners which grope their
way to another water receptacle of a Tillandsia, and even
to those cf neighbouring plants.
The bladderwort belongs to the small family Lenti-
bulariaceffi, represented in Britain by only one other genus,
viz., the insect-catching butterwort, which is not, however,
a very close relative. The characteristics which they possess
in common show a considerable degree of specialization ;
for instance, both calyx and corolla are irregular, with two
broad lips, somewhat like a flattened snapdragon. The
corolla is produced into a honey-containing spur ; the
stamens have become reduced to two ; the ovary is uni-
locular {i.e., it consists of a single chamber), with the
ovules arranged on a central pillar ; the fruit is a capsule
October 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE.
223
opening by two valves ; and the seeds contain no reserve
material or endosperm.
The flower of the bladderwort is particularly remarkable
for the extreme irritability and sensitiveness of its stigma ;
the two lobes close together immediately on being touched,
but open again after two or three minutes if no pollen
grains happen to be enclosed in their embrace. A precisely
similar device is to be found in the yellow monkey-tlower
(Miuiulus lutius) which is sometimes found floating in
golden masses on still and silent pools. A flower-haunting
fly, such as one of the hovering Syrjiltida, will alight on
the lower lip of the corolla, and in thrusting his proboscis
down the tube in order to reach the honey in the spur,
will first of all rub his back against the stigmatic lobes
which project beyond the anthers. Directly afterwards he
wiU be dusted with fresh pollen and will be ready to carry
it to the nest flower he visits. The sensitive folding
together of the stigmatic lobes is thus a safeguard against
self-fertilization, for when the insect, laden with pollen,
withdraws from the flower, the lobes will have their receptive
surfaces in close contact with each other. Yet, if the
flower is not fortunate enough to secure the advantages of
cross-fertilization by insect agency, it will take to self-
fertilization as a last resource, the stigma curling round
backwards so as to receive the pollen which at first it was
so careful to avoid.
The butterwort (Pinfjuicula) is in some respects more
highly specialized than its cousin the bladderwort — at least
from a physiological point of view — for its leaves can not
only catch insects with a greasy sticky secretion, but can
also digest them (just as in the sundew) by means of the
ferment pepsin. Moreover, the flowers of the butterwort
reach a higher note in the scale of colour ; Pinguicula alpina,
indeed, is yellow, and is fertilized by flies (Syrp/iidce), but
P. fuhjaris and P. ijraitdijlora are deep blue and adapted
for bees. ''
The butterwort on the other hand is provided with roots,
and still shows the primitive characteristic of a rosette of
simple undivided leaves, of which only a trace exists in the
youngest stage of the bladderwort, although this rosette is
more noticeable in the terrestrial species. The stigma of the
butterwort does not show auy sensitiveness to the touch ;
its lower lobe merely hangs down like a curtain in front
of the anthers so as to intercept any pollen which may
be brought by a winged visitor. Self-fertilization, how-
ever, may likewise occur if no pollen has been transferred
by insects from other flowers. Finally, the embryo of
the butterwort has not reached quite so low a state of
degeneracy as in the bladderwort, because it is still pro-
vided with a seed leaf.
We have to turn to the tropics in order to find
another member of the order, which will show inter-
mediate characteristics between our bladderwort and butter-
wort. This is the genus irenlisea of Brazil, which retains
the primary rosette of leaves : the stem is, however,
thickly covered not only with unmodified spatulate leaves,
but with others metamorphosed into curious insect traps,
long-necked bladders with a kind of spiral entrance, thickly
beset with hairs, pointing backwards and preventing any
escape. Genlisea is a land plant, but agrees with the
bladderwort in being destitute of roots.
The tropics, again, are the home of the Gesneriacefe, the
order with which the Lentibulariacere show the closest
genetic relationship, for although the flowers possess
external resemblances to some of the more distant
Scrophulariacece, such as snapdragon and calceolaria, yet
these similarities are no more than what all three orders
possess in common.
The Gesneriaceir form a family well known to gardeners
for the handsome and showy flowers comprised within its
2. Internal ab-
sorptive hairs,
still further
magnified.
1. Bladder of Bladderwort, in dia-
grammatic section, magnified.
limits, such as tlesnera. Gloxinia, Achimenes, .Eschynan-
thus, etc.
The Lentibulariacefe possess so many points in common
with the Gesneriaoese, especially with the subdivision
Cyrtandreiie that they might almost be classed with the
latter ; thus, in both oases the ovary is unilocular and the
seeds are without endosperm. Moreover, many of the
Cyrtandrese have only two stamens, and the genus Strepto-
riirpns agrees with Utricuhiria in the absence of even a
primary root.
It may be added that the parasitic family of broom-
rapes (Orobanchaceie) is also closely allied to the
Gesneriacene, and agree, too, with the bladderwort in the
embryo being totally undifferentiated, consisting merely of
an oval cellular mass.
In conclusion, the different relationships maybe graphi-
oally represented thus : —
Personatie.
I
^1. I . I
Cresneriaceae. Scrophulariacese. Solanacese.
Cvrtandreae. Gesnerieee.
Orobanchacete
(parasitic).
Lentibulariacese
(insectivorous).
• The small Lusitanian butterwort is, however, pale Ulac in colour,
and depends only on self-fertilization. This is, perhaps, a case of
reversion from the blue flower fertilized by bees.
ETHNOLOGY AT THE BRITISH MUSEUM.
By R. LVDEKKER.
SINCE, so far at least as his bodily structure is con-
cerned, man evidently forms but the highest develop-
ment of the mammalian type, it is evident in every
well-arranged museum he should take his proper
position at the head of the series, adjacent to the
man-like apes. And it is therefore in the highest degree
satisfactory that this has at length been recognized by the
authorities of the natural history branch of the British
Museum, where an ethnological series is now in process
of formation and arrangement in the upper mammalian
gallery. It is not, indeed, that this is an entirely new
departure, for ever since the transference of the natural
history collections from Bloomsbury to South Kensington,
human skuUs and skeletons were arranged in serial
position in the gallery of osteology, which formerly occu-
pied the whole of what is now the upper mammalian
224
KNOWLEDGE.
[OCTOBEB 1, 1898.
gallery. But no attempt was made to exhibit man's
external bodily form in its numerous racial modifications ;
and the specimens of his bony skeleton, like most of those
of his fellow mammals, were widely separated from the
mounted skins of the apes and monkeys.
In the new arrangement, now drawing to approximate
completion, of the mammalian galleries such skulls and
skeletons as are exhibited to the public are placed in proper
position among the mounted skins of ordinary mammals,
and man accordingly heads the series of exhibits. Although
the amount of case room devoted to illustrate the bodily
structure of the numerous varieties of mankind is com-
paratively small when contrasted with that in the new
ethnological gallery in the Paris Museum, it will probably
prove sufficient to exhibit examples of all the leading types
which are likely to prove of general public interest, and is
not disproportionate to the space given to other groups of
mammals. In Paris it appears to be the practice to
exhibit every skull and skeleton in the collection to the
public, whereas in the British Museum the rule is to show
only a limited number of examples, most of which ought
to illustrate some particular point or feature. And,
although to the specialist the former plan may be, and
probably is far more preferable, yet to the general public
there can be little doubt that the latter arrangement is the
more advantageous, since the exhibition of a large series
of duplicates is much more likely to confuse than to
instruct.
Bushman. Fr
tlie ilriti.-li iVusuuiii.
1. Ill-like Model in
That such an ethnographical series as is contemplated
in the Natural History Museum will do much to educate
the public on matters anthropological cannot for one
inoment be doubted, seeing that there is no other institu-
tion in London where a similar exhibition is displayed ;
and that, as a general rule, EngUsh people display a
remarkable lack of information concerning the relation-
ships and peculiarities of their fellow human races. With
our vast colonial empire, we, of all people, ought to make
mankind our especial study ; and we ought to be in a
position to make the national gallery of ethnology almost
unique in its completeness, so far as the allotted limits of
space permits.
In considering man from a purely zoological standpoint,
as it is necessary to do in an exhibition of this nature, it
is obviously imperative to take into consideration only his
bodily form and structure, putting entirely on one side
arts and manufactures of every description. To study the
weapons and dress of modern aboriginal tribes, and the
various implements of our prehistoric ancestors, the student
may visit the British Museum at Bloomsbury, while he
will find no inconsiderable series of specimens of pre-
historic implements in the palseontological gallery of the
branch establishment in the Cromwell Road. But, as has
been well remarked, to form a complete anthropological
series it is illogical in the extreme to stop at the implements,
manufactures, and arts of savage and prehistoric tribes.
Such a series ought to commence with the rudest drawings
on mammoth ivory, and the most primitive stone weapons,
and to conclude with a selection from the last Academy
exhibition, and examples of Krnpp and Maxim guns.
But whether such a splendid collection will ever be realised
or no, it does not really concern us here, and we may
accordingly revert to the gallery in the museum.
For such a gallery the selection and proper arrangement
of suitable objects is a matter of much greater difficulty,
than might at first be thought to be the case ; while even
when the nature of such exhibits has been decided, there
is often immense difficulty in procuring the requisite
specimens. In a gallery open to the general public of
both sexes and all ages there are obvious objections to
exhibiting models of the entire human form, and it has
accordingly been decided that busts are the kind of model
best adapted for display. At present the series of these is
very small, but we believe that steps are being taken to
augment it as rapidly as possible. Already several of these
busts attract general public interest. Among these atten-
tion may specially be directed to those of a male and
female Bushman and a Tasmanian man and woman, as
exhibiting two very characteristic types of the inferior
races of mankind. By kind permission of Sir W. H.
Flower we are enabled to present our readers with photo-
graphic representations of two of these life-hke models.
To those of the Tasmanians an especial and mournful
interest attaches, since they are taken from two of the last
survivors of a very remarkable pure-bred race whose ex-
termination was brought about by means reflecting but
little credit on our own character as a nation. Unfortu-
nately, the extermination of the Tasmanians took place
before sufficient care had been taken to secure abundant
examples of their skulls and skeletons, which are now of
excessive rarity in collections ; and the Museum is there-
fore to be congratulated on having lately secured a perfect
male skeleton. It may be added that the extermination
of the Tasmanian serves as a warning that no efl'orts
should be spared to obtain specimens illustrating the
bodily structure of other primitive aboriginal tribes while
there is yet time, since it is but too apparent that many
of these, even in spite of strenuous efforts for their pre-
servation, are doomed ere long to pass away for ever.
Possibly, too, in the years to come, when education has
advanced its sway over a still wider circle, the survival of
such races in their primitive form may even be regarded as
a blot upon the world's civilization, so that efforts may be
made to " improve " the survivors out of existence.
After models, the next best method of showing the
racial variations of man's external form is by photographs.
For the most part those exhibited in the Museum comprise
only the head and neck, and, where practicable, these
are enlarged to the natural size. These large-sized photo-
graphs have been executed in platinotype under the
immediate superintendence of Mr. H. 0. Forbes, the
Director of the Museum at Liverpool. At present the
series is richest in North American Indians and African
Negroes, but there are also numerous examples of
Melanesians and Papuans. As an example, a reduced
reproduction of the photograph of a Papuan girl, exhibiting
October 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE.
225
in great perfection the artificial frizzing-out of the hair, is
herewitli given. And it may be mentioned that in the
case of tribes who are in the habit of thus dressing their
locks, photographs have a decided advantage over busts,
in which it is impossible to reproduce the peculiar style of
capillary adornment.
As regards the exhibition of human skulls and skeletons,
it must be freely confessed that in a public museum these
have, at least at first sight, a somewhat gruesome and
Tasmanian. Woman. From a Photograph of a Life-like Model
in the British Museiini.
ghastly effect. Nevertheless, this is to a very great extent
undoubtedly due to early assoiiations and prejudices ; and
if we can but disabuse ourselves of these, such objects are
really very far from being repulsive, especially if artistically
arranged among the busts and photographs, and not
occupying the whole of the shelves to themselves. Apart
from all such considerations, the exhibition of parts of
man's anatomy is, however, of primary importance in the
formation of an ethnological gallery, seeing that many of
the most important racial characteristics are displayed
solely by the skull and skeleton. Moreover, in order
rightly to appreciate the marked cranial peculiarities
distinguishing even the lowest representatives of the human
race so broadly from the highest of the man-like apes, it
is essential that a large series of the skulls of both should
be on view.
Although there is stUl some difference of opinion among
anthropologists as to the number of primary branches
into which the existing members of the human race should
be divided, in the arrangement adopted in the Museum
only three such branches are recognised. These are (1) the
Negroid, or black branch ; (2) the Mongolian, or yellow
and red branch ; and (3) the Caucasian, or white branch.
Wherever and whenever these three branches first
originated, they are now so intermixed in many parts of
the world by crossing, that it is frequently difficult to
decide to which certain races belong, and it is consequently
in some instances impossible to draw a hard and fast line
between them. Nevertheless, the typical representatives
of each show very distinct modifications. Although the
colour of the skin forms one of the most marked points
of distinction between such typical representatives, it must
not be inferred that this character will hold good for all
the races included under each. The Sudanis, for instance,
many of whom are included in the Caucasian branch, are
often as black as the Negroes, partly no doubt owing to a
large infusion of Negro blood.
To give all the characteristics of each of the three
primary existing branches of mankind, and to enumerate
all the different races included in each, would obviously be
far beyond the scope of an article like the present, and
only a few of such points can be touched upon.
The Negroid branch is obviously the lowest of the three,
as is exempUfied by the projecting jaws, everted lips, and
the flat and broad nose, supported by flattened nasal bones
quite unlike the arched form which they assume in the
Caucasian branch. It is in this branch alone that the
so-called " woolly," or more correctly, " frizzly " hair is
met with ; the frizzly nature being due to each individual
hair being elliptical instead of circular in cross section,
and thus tending to twist on its own axis. But this
frizzly character of the hair is not common to all members
of the Negroid branch, being absent, for example, in the
Australians, although present in their near neighbours
the Tasmanians. And it is an interesting question to
determine whether the frizzly or the ordinary cylindrical
hair is the more primitive type ; a question closely con-
nected with the primitive coloration of the skin in the
human race — whether black, yellow, or red. Some
authorities, Monsieur de Salles for example, have attributed
red hair to the earliest representatives of the human race ;
which would apparently imply also a light-coloured skin,
although red hair and a leaden skin are associated in the
Orang-utan. Again, M. de Quatrefages urges that nothing
authorizes us to regard the Negroid branch as having
preceded either of the other two, and further suggests that
the ancestors of the modern Negro were of a much lighter
colour than their present representatives.
Of course this is just one of those questions about which
reams of paper might be written over without hope of a
definite conclusion. But it may be mentioned that all
anthropologists without exception recognize the projecting
jaws of Negroes as a primitive feature, and, secondly, that
the chimpanzee and gorilla, which come nearest of all the
apes to the human race, have black hair and skin. Con-
sequently, the onus of proving that the projecting jaws and
other primitive features met with in modern negroes were
ever associated with light-coloured skins and fair hair rests
with those who are objectors to what may be termed the
black theory of the human race. With regard to the
frizzly hair of so many representatives of the Negroid stock,
it is quite possible that this may be an acquired feature,
seeing that it is much more probable the hair of primitive
man was cylindrical, like that of apes, rather than elliptical.
And if this be so, the Australians would seem to indicate a
more primitive race than the Tasmanians.
The Negroid branch includes the typical Negroes of
Africa south of the northern tropic, the pygmy Negrillos
of equatorial Africa, the somewhat larger but equally
primitive Negritos of the Andaman Islands and certain
other parts of Asia, and also the great group of Melanesian
or Oceanic Negroes, among which are comprised the
Papuans of New Guinea, and most of the inhabitants of
the smaller islands of the western Pacific, such as New
Zealand, New Britain, New Caledonia, the Solomons, the
New Hebrides, Fiji, etc. The native Australians and
Tasmanians likewise pertain to this branch.
The true Negroes of Africa are the typical repre-
sentatives of this branch, and present its most character-
22G
KNOWLEDGE
[October 1, 1898.
istic features, including the frizzly hair. All such Negroes
are characterized by the elongated form of the skull, and
the slight development of the ridges above the eyes, so
that the lower part of the forehead is comparatively flat
and smooth. The Negrillos of equatorial Africa are
best known by the pygmy Akkas, so well described by
Schweinfurth and Emin Pasha ; one of the most valuable
objects in the ethnological series of the Museum being the
skeleton of an Akka woman, collected by the explorer last
named. These Negrillos, Hke the Negritos of Asia, diifer
from the typical African Negroes, not only by their greatly
inferior stature, but likewise by the shorter and more
rounded form of their skulls.
The Oceanic or Melanesian Negroes chiefly differ from
their African cousins by the much greater development of
the ridges on the forehead of the skull above the sockets
Head of Papuan Girl, showing the artificial frizzing out of the hair.
From a Photograph in the British Museum.
of the eyes in the male sex. The nose also is less wide
and depressed, this feature displaying itself more dis-
tinctly as we approach New Guinea and the neighbouring
islands. The culmination of this is displayed by the
Maories of New Zealand, whose features are so Caucasian-
like that some authorities have not hesitated to pronounce
these people, to a large extent at least, of Caucasian
origin. Their traditions, however, all point to a Melanesian
origin. The custom of preserving heads with the skin
attached among the Maories, renders specimens readily
procurable for exhibition ; although, for purely zoological
purposes the tatooing is a sad disfigurement, the examples
in which this so-called ornamentation is of the simplest
character being consequently the most valuable in a series
like that of the Museum.
The other two branches can receive but very brief men-
tion here. In the Mongolian, or yellow and red branch,
are comprised the typical Mongols of Asia, such as the
Chinese, Tibetans, Tartars, Japanese, etc. ; but to the same
great branch belong also most of the inhabitants of
Siberia, the Eskimo, the Malays, and the so-called brown
Polynesians of the eastern Pacific, although, among both
the two latter, there are often more or less pronounced
indications of an admixture of Negro blood.
The Finns and Lapps derive their peculiar characters
from a cross of Mongol blood with that of the dark
Caucasian type. Although by some writers the aboriginal
inhabitants of America previous to the immigration of white
races from Europe have been regarded as indicating a
fourth primitive branch of mankind, the general concensus
of opinion points to the propriety of including them in the
Mongolian group. And it is especially noteworthy that,
as we pass eastwards in Northern Asia in the direction of
Bering Sea, the native tribes assume a more and more
marked approximation to the native American type. The
general ]\Iongolian type of countenance is too well known
to require particular description ; the yellow leathery skin,
the prominent cheek-bones, oblique eyes, long straight
hair on the scalp, and the slight development of hair
elsewhere, being among the most conspicuous. American
Indians have a redder tint of skin. Curiously enough,
the Ainos, or primitive inhabitants of Japan, many of
whom still remain in Yezo, differ from this type by their
excessive hairiness, in consequence of which it has been
thought that they are of Caucasian rather than Mongolian
origin.
Of the Caucasians, or inhabitants of Europe, South-
western Asia, and Northern Africa, it must suffice to say
that they may be divided into a blonde, or xanthochroic,
and a dark, or melanochroic type ; the former being
found in Scotland, Scandinavia, Northern Germany and
Afghanistan ; while the latter embraces the inhabitants of
Southern Europe, the higher races of India, and many of
those of North Africa, where, however, there is a large
infusion of Negro blood. The Semitic (Arab) and
Hamitic (Egyptian and Jews) races are wholly Melano-
chroi, but the Aryans belong in part to the Xanthochroi
and in part to the !Melanochroi.
Did space permit, this article might be extended to an
indefinite length ; but it is hoped that what has been
written may suffice to awaken an interest among the
readers of Knowledge in the efforts now being made by
the British Museum to establish an ethnological series
worthy of the nation to which it belongs.
THE FOURTH INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS
OF ZOOLOGY.
CAMBRIDGE, 1898.
THE First International Congress of Zoology was
held at Paris in 1889, under the presidency of
Prof. Milne-Edwards. The second, which was
held at Moscow in 1892, was presided over by
Count Kapnist. The third took place at Leyden
in 1895, Dr. Jentink being the president.
The Fourth Congress opened on August 23rd, 1898, under
the presidency of the Right Hon. Sir John Lubbock, Bart.,
M.P., at Cambridge, a place eminently suited for such a
Congress, both on account of its historical associations, and
as the seat of a great zoological school.
The University and the Corporation gave the members
of the Congress a most hospitable reception, and every
comfort and convenience was provided for the large and
representative gathering.
Tuesday, August 23rd.
In his Presidential Address, Sir John Lubbock expressed
his profound regret at the absence of Sir William Flower,
October 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE
227
who had been nominated President, but had found himself
unable to accept the post owing to continued ill-health.
In the afternoon, in Section A (General Zoology), among
others Prof/ Mitsukuri, of Tokyo, read a paper " On some
zoological matters in Japan." He traced the gradual rise
of science in Japan from beginnings which could be traced
back as far as the ninth century. He then gave a sketch
of the present condition of zoological science in Japan,
referring amongst other points of interest to the beautiful
new marine zoological station at Misaki, near Tokyo, and
to the great richness of the marine fauna of the neigh-
bourhood.
Mr. Stanley Gardiner read a paper on " The building of
atolls,'' suggesting that the depths at which corals and
nuUipores live is due to the extent to which light can
penetrate sea water, the food of corals being derived
entirely from the commensal &\g:v. The atoll-reef was
then shown to have arisen from a pinnacle on the top of
a dome-shaped mound, formed on an elevation of the
ocean floor, wliich,had been built up by the remains of
deep sea animals. 'It was then urged that these pinnacles
broaden by the addition to their edges of buttresses, etc.,
on a talus slope supplemented by the solution of their
interior parts.
Wednesday, August 2iTH.
A general meeting of the (Jongress was held in the
morning (Prof. Dr. F. E. Schulze in the chair), when
Prof. Yves Delage opened a discussion on the position of
sponges in the animal kingdom. The discussion was
continued by Mr. E. A. Minchin, who remarked that there
was no group of organisms whose systematic position is so
much disputed, at all periods as well as at the present day.
Up to the end of the first half of the nineteenth century
it was still a matter of dispute if sponges were plants or ani-
mals ; this controversy was laid to rest by the discovery of
cilia by Dujardin (1841), and Dobie (1850), as well as by
the subsequent researches of Lieberkuhn and Carter. The
animal nature of sponges was thus established, but their
position in the animal kingdom was still uncertain. In
conclusion, Mr. Minchin said that the larval development
showed that sponges could not be considered Ca4ente-
rates. Such a comparison must start either from the
larv;r or the adults. If based on the larviu, then
neither the architecture nor the composition of the adults
were in any way comparable. If based on the adult
structure, then the larval development of sponges was
altogether anomalous, and not simflar to any other known
development, since the ectoderm assumed an internal
position, and became surrounded by the endoderm. The
most probable view was that sponges were descended from
Choano-flagellate Protozoa, since collar cells were not
known to exist except in these groups.
The discussion was continued by Prof. Haeckel, who
was in favour of the Ccclenterate theory ; Dr. Vosmaer,
who believed that " we cannot yet answer the question
about the position of sponges," but suggested that " if we
have to classify, we must either bring them to a separate
group of the same value as the Metazoa, or consider them
as Metazoa, but forming a separate class, like Ccrlenterates,
Echinoderms, etc." ; Mr. Saville Kent, who urged that
" this vexed problem of sponge affinities should be fairly
approached and examined from a protozoic as well as from
a calenterate basis, and that those undertaking the task
should familiarise themselves with both the collar-bearing
flagellates and the corresponding sponge elements in their
living state."
In the afternoon Prof. Ewart exhibited and made remarks
upon a very interesting series of slides, showing photographs
of Hybrids between the Horse and the Somali Zebra.
Mr. Durham, for Prof. Kanthack and himself, read a
paper on Tsetse Disease.
Tsetse disease, or N'gana, is one of the many scourges of
South Africa. Bruce discovered that the cause of the
disease is a parasite belonging to the flagellated protozoa
and the genus Tnipan-ixuma. According to Bruce's observa-
tion, the fly merely acts as a carrier. If it feeds on the
blood of an infected animal, and again feeds within two or
three days upon a healthy susceptible animal, it com-
municates the disease. .\ fact of importance in the
dissemination of the disease is Bruce's discovery that the
fly is viviparous ; the mother flies have to feed frequently
in order to nourish their young. Bruce has further shown
that the blood of certain of the wild^nimals of the " fly
districts' may contain the parasite (e.fi., the Koodoo).
At the instance of the Royul Society, the living parasite
was brought over to this coimtry, where a large number of
experiments have been made.
The inoculation with the parasite not only gives rise to
a fatal issue in the horse, ass, ox, goat, dog, and such
domesticated animals, but is also fatal to mice, rats, etc.,
including the hedgehog. The guinea-pig is able to with-
stand the infection for several months in some cases.
So far we have no means of curing the disease when it
has once begun, nor have we any means of preventive
inoculation or salting. Some drugs, like arsenic, help to
prolong the life of the animals, but the end is always fatal.
Prof. Cossar Ewart has, with the true scientific spirit,
allowed certain of his valuable zebra hybrids to be inoculated
with the tsetse disease in order to see whether they will
show a degree of refractoriness which the zebra must
possess, in that it is capable of living in the fly-infested
districts. It is too early to make any statement with
regard to these animals, since they have only been recently
inoculated. They have all shown signs of illness, and the
parasite has been found in their blood. Whether they
recover eventually must be left to the future to decide.
A question was asked as to whether man was refractory,
in reply to which Mr. Durham said that all the evidence
that we have in regard to the susceptibility of man is
entirely negative. Man is bitten by the fly, and accidental
scratches and cuts have been incurred during experimental
investigation, which would have been sufficient to have
communicated disease had man been susceptible.
Prof. Pelseneer, of the University of Ghent, expressed
his views on uniform orientation of the figures in zoological
papers, showing of what great advantage it would be if, in
papers treating on the same objects, all the figures could
be arranged in the same way, the left side of the animal,
for instance, being always on the left side of the figure,
and the same abbreviations being used for the same
organs.
Thcbsday, August 25th.
An interesting discussion was held in the morning on
the " Origin of Mammals." The debate was opened by
Prof. Seeley (London) and Prof. Osboin (New York).
Prof. Seeley showed that the Theriodont division of the
Anomodonts approached the mammalia in the characters
of the teeth and the very small size of the quadrate bone ;
while, on the other hand, they suggested affinities with the
Labyrinthodont reptiles in the presence of such cranial
bones as the supratemporal, and of intercentra in the ver-
tebra. Although the parts of the pectoral and peh-ic
girdles bore a close comparison with those of the Mono-
tremes, and although in many Theriodonts the skull was
typically mammalian in form, the mandibular ramus never
consisted of a single piece as in mammals. The Anomo-
donts were not the parents of mammals, but a collateral
and closely related group ; and the common parent of both
228
KNOWLEDGE,
[October 1, 1898.
might be sought in rocks older than the Permian, perhaps
in Silurian or Devonian strata.
Prof. Osborn said that in order to clear the way for a
successful attack upon the difficult problem of the origin
of mammals, it was necessary first to reject the hypothesis,
brilliantly formulated by Huxley in 1880, of a genetic
succession between Monotreme, Marsupial, and Placental
types, since neither paleontology nor comparative anatomy
supported this view. He concluded by saying that for
further developments of the problem we must probably
look to the rich fauna of the Karoo beds of South Africa.
A discussion followed, in which Profs. Marsh, Haeckel,
Adam Sedgwick, Hubrecht, and Newton took part.
In the afternoon in the Senate House, the honorary
degree of Doctor of Science was conferred on the
following: — H. P. Bowditch, A. Dohrn, A. Milne- Edwards,
C. Golgi, E. Haeckel, A. A. W. Hubrecht, H. Kronecker,
W. Kiihne, and S. J. Marey.
Dr. Sandys, the Public Orator, in the speeches in which
he introduced the above-named, adopted the reformed pro-
nunciation of Latin, which was greatly appreciated by the
large number of International visitors in the Senate House.
We have not space here to print the speeches in extemo.
Dr. Sandys referred, amongst the zoologists, to Prof.
Milne-Edwards as not only the first president of such
gatherings as these, but even their instigator and parent.
Prof. Haeckel was referred to as not only an indefatigable
investigator of the minute forms of marine animal life, but
also as a daring propounder of an imposing theory, through-
out which he had endeavoured to trace the origin of
animal life from its remotest source.
Prof. Hubrecht was introduced as a man who, born among
the Batavian fields, and gifted with the happiest of disposi-
tions, has won the hearts of all. There is scarcely a nation
in Europe whose language he has not claimed for his own ;
added to this, he has collected for accurate investigation
those most minute and microscopic sea monsters (if I may
use the expression) which are designated Nemertea. If we
may believe the Greek poets, those great beasts are, at all
events, sufficiently ancient in origin and worthy of notice.
I need hardly say, that Nereus himself was vriaepr/js ra
xa'i i/TTio.- (truthful and gentle), while Proteus, yipuiv .lAio?
vrjnipTi]s, " The old man of the sea who never told a lie."
However this may be, in extolling a man by whom those
marine monsters in all the various forms they assume have
been most veraciously described, nothing is easier than to
apeak the truth, nothing pleasanter than (to quote Homer)
yrjixcprio. ^u9t/o-ao-3ai.
Friday, August 26th.
Prof. Haeckel read an extremely interesting paper on
" The Descent of Man.' He said that the uionophyletic
origin of all mammalia from the Monotremata upwards to
Man is at present no more a vague hypothesis, but a posi-
tively established fact. All the living and extinct mammalia
which we know are descended from one single ancestral
form, which lived in the Triassic or Permian period ; and
this form must be derived from some Permian, or perhaps
Carboniferous, reptOe (alUed to the Progonosauria and
Theriodontia), and the latter from a Carboniferous amphi-
bian (Stegocephalia). These latter are descended from
Devonian fishes, and these again from lower vertebrates.
Much more difficult is the question of the origin of the
great vertebratt-stem, and its descent from invertebrates.
But these questions are not so important as the fact that
Man is a member of the primate-order (Linnc), and that
all primates descend from one common stem (Huxley).
Zoology may be proud to have proved this fact, based on
the theories of Lamarck (1809) and of Darwin (1859).
Several other papers were read during the day, amongst
which was one by Sir Herbert Maxwell on " Eecent Legis-
lation on Protection of Wild Birds in Great Britain," in
the course of which he pointed out the necessity of inter-
national protection as the only efficient safeguard against
the diminution of a great many of our migratory birds.
On Saturday morning, August 27th, a general meeting
was held, at which it was decided that the fifth Congress
should be held in Germany in 1901. The members of the
Congress then adjourned to London, to attend a reception
by the President and Council of the Zoological Society at
the gardens in the afternoon and a reception by Sir .John
Lubbock at the Natural History Museum in the evening.
On Monday a good number availed themselves of the
Hon. Walter Rothschild's invitation, and spent an enjoyable
and profitable day at Tring.
On Tuesday about forty members of the Congress jour-
neyed to Woburn Abbey, at the invitation of His Grace the
Duke of Bedford, and spent a delightful day in inspecting
his magnificent collection of deer, yaks, zebras, and other
wild animals.
THE GREAT SUNSPOT AND THE AURORA.
By E. Walter Maunder, f.r.a.s.
IT is almost two years since the occurrence of a most
remarkable sunspot, a series of photographs of
which were published as the astronomical plate in
Knowledue for November, 1896. That group was
remarkable as being the longest connected stream
of spots observed on the sun during the present quarter of
a century. It was no less remarkable that so great an
outburst should take place at a time when the mean solar
activity had already much declined. Three years had
passed since the maximum, and in the ordinary course the
minimum was expected in four years more. Since then
the further decline iu the solar activity has been marked
enough. The number of days on which the sun has been
wholly free from spots has increased rapidly, and yet now,
as if on purpose to entirely upset all our conceptions, we
have a fresh solar storm on a scale that would be note-
worthy even at the time of full maximum, two years after
the group we have just referred to, five years after the
maximum, and w'hen, according to rule, we have barely
two more years to wait for the minimum.
Our present group was one of an entirely different order
to that of two years ago. It probably might have been
observed as a notch on the limb of the sun on the after-
noon of Friday, September 2nd. By the following
morning it was well within the limb, a single large spot,
of area of nearly one thousand four hundred millions of
square miles, with dark nucleus, and lying amongst long
ridges of bright facula?. By Sunday, September Ith, it
was sufficiently advanced on the disc to show some of its
peculiar beauties with distinctness. The details which
perhaps drew most attention were the long tongues of
bright matter which invaded the spot from without. The
northern edge of the principal umbra, which was very
dark, was fringed with such tongues, and a brilliant one
invaded it on the south preceding side. This latter tongue
had adopted a most curious form by the following day.
A double spear of light pierced the darkness of the umbra
to its centre, and was then bent obUquely backwards. On
this day, Monday, the first elements of a following stream
of spots were seen, which increased rapidly day by day up
to the 10th, grouping themselves on the 8th and 9th,
principally in two very complex clusters. Wednesday,
September 7th, showed a great increase in the following
spots, and the bright photospheric matter appeared mixed
Knoidedi/e.
%
THE GREAT GROUP OF SUNSPOTS of September 3rd— 15th, 1898.
As Photographed at the Eoval Observatory, tTreenwich.
1. Taken 1898, September, Sd. lOh. 29m. 19s. Greenwich Civil Time.
2. ,. ,. 9d. 14h. 5ym. 2s.
3. „ „ lOd. lOh. -lOm. 6s.
{^Reproduced by permission of the Astronomer Soi/al.)
OCTOBEK 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE.
229
■with the northern portion of the great spot, in an intricate
lacework of light on the two next days. By the 11th the
middle spots in the following stream had begun to disappear,
and by the 13th only one small dot remained in that part
of the group, the rearward spot being then separated
from its leader by a broad belt of photosphere. By this
day a very fine bright bridge, which was in process of
formation on the previous day, had forced its way across
the gi'eat umbra from north to south. The northern
ii
:T
v^-
i^\
\/
/V/
Tracing of Vertical Force Pliotographic Kegister during tlie
Disturbance of 1898, September 9—10.
portion of the great spot was still full of complicated detail.
On the following day the bright tongues which invaded
the spot lay mostly on the east. By September 15th the
great spot was seen only as a notch on the limb, and one
spot alone followed it.
The accompanying plate shows the group at its fullest
presentation, namely on September 8th, before it had
reached the central meridian, and September 9th and 10th,
immediately after passing it. These were the days, too,
on which it attained its greatest area and extent ; the total
area of the group being then some two thousand seven
hundred millions of square miles, its greatest length nearly
one hundred and forty thousand miles, and its breadth
forty-four thousand miles. They are reproduced, by
the kind permission of the Astronomer Eoyal, from
photographs taken in the ordinary routine at the Eoyal
Observatory, Greenwich, with the photoheliograph pre-
sented by Sir Henry Thompson. This instrument has
an aperture of nine inches, stopped down to four inches
on the present occasion, and a focal length of eight
and a-half feet. The image in the primary focus is about
one inch in diameter, and is enlarged by a secondary
magnifier seven and a-quarter times. The resulting photo-
graph has been further enlarged some two and a-half
diameters, so that the present plate gives the spot on a
scale of eighteen inches to the sun's diameter.
A special interest attaches to a great disturbance like
the present when it occurs at a normally quiet time, for
it brings out into clearer relief the peculiarities of the
connection between these solar displays and the related
phenomena on this planet of magnetic storms and aurorae.
The accompanying trace, reproduced from the photo-
graphic sheet of the vertical force magnet at Greenwich,
shows that some fourteen hours after the great spot crossed
the central meridian of the sun, a sharp magnetic disturb-
ance set in, which was at its height from eight to eleven
o'clock on Friday evening, September 9th.
During these three hours an aurora of a specially
brilliant and beautiful character was ob-
served generally throughout the British
Isles, the official report of the Greenwich
observer, j\Ir. Beadle, running as follows: —
"At 20h. 15m. a bright light was observed
in the northern sky from which issued
several white streamers. These became
especially distinct at 21h. (when they at-
tained an altitude of about 45 degrees),
and remained visible, more or less brightly,
till about 21^h.
" By 22h. an arch had formed. This
was of bright yellow light and the ends
were separated by a distance of about 90
degrees ; it was most decided in form and
colour at about 23h. 15m. At this time
the summit of the arch was fifteen degrees
to twenty degrees above the horizon. By
23Jh. the phenomenon had quite disap-
peared."
A fainter display was noticed also the
following night, and in more northern
latitudes, as in Norway, the aurorie were
most brilliant for several successive nights.
It will be noticed that we have here,
again, a striking case of the quick answer
of the earth to a really great solar dis-
turbance, of which I gave several instances
in my paper on " The great Sunspot and
its influence," in Knowledge for May,
1892, and that the terrestrial disturbance
was at its height about twenty or twenty-one hours after
the sunspot had reached the centre of the disc. My own
experience fully confirms that of Signor Ricco, the great
Italian solar observer, that this is the relationship
that most generally prevails. Dr. Yeeder, on the other
hand, considers that the influential position for a sunspot
is when it is on the east limb, a view in which I am not
able to coincide. A spot like the present occurring at a
comparatively quiet time is even more useful for settling
such a point than one at maximum.
[The KditorB do not hold themselTes responsible for the opinioni or
statements of correspondents.]
THE AIRORA BOREALIS.
To the Editors of Knowledge,
Sirs, — As I was particularly well placed for watching
the very fine Aurora BoreaUs on the evening of the 9th
inst., I think you may possibly find some interest in com-
paring my observations with those of others.
I went out in the garden just after 8 o'clock, and was
immediately struck by curious flecks of light in the south,
suggesting luminous clouds, and on going out on to
Bramshott Common, where there is an uninterrupted
view for many miles, I saw that in the north there was a
pale yellowish-white light, which gradually increased in
230
KNOWLEDGE.
[OCTOBEH 1, 1898.
brilliancy. Meanwhile little gauze-like clouds in the
south and south-west caught gleams of light, flickered,
and quickly faded again.
About 8.80 bright shafts of light began to shoot up from
the northern horizon, and from then until past 9 o'clock
there was an almost continuous display, increasing and
diminishing in brilliancy alternately.
Magnificent great rays, like columns of light, shot up
far into the sky, some reaching as high as the pole star or
even higher. There were three, four, five, and at one time,
seven of these shafts, extending westward nearly to Arc-
turus and eastward occasionally as far as Capella. Those
near the centre were of a pure, clear, white, while those
on either side took a decidedly rosy-pink shade, and were
not so clearly defined at the edges. A friend who was
with me saw exactly the same difference in colour which
I noticed.
After 0 o'clock the display gradually ceased, but the
light was still lingering in the north-eastern sky at 11.80.
I may mention that at 8.10 I could see the time by my
watch easily and distinctly, but at 9 o'clock I could only
with difljculty distinguish the position of the hands.
Bramshott Common, Surrey, .1. M-R.
Sept. 12th, 1898.
Ebratum. — In Mr. Saxby's article, in the August number, on
"How to Photograph through a Fly's Eye," at page 188, column 1,
line 6,for " Ihe cornea.hyaline in shape," read " Ihe cornea is hyaline."
Sir William Crookes may possibly have sounded the
alarm a little prematurely with respect to a pending
universal wheat famine, and that " starvation must be
averted by the laboratory. " While it is a fact that at
present the United Kingdom grows only twenty-five per
cent, and imports seventy-five per cent, of its annual
consumption of wheat, it is also true that ours is one of
the best wheat producing countries in the world — the
yield per acre for the United Kingdom being 29-1 bushels,
whereas in the United States it is 12 bushels, in
Eussia 8-6 bushels, and in Australasia only G-8 bushels,
the average of the whole world being 127 bushels. Anent
the argument that by increasing the present average wheat
crop per acre from 12-7 to 20 bushels in order that the
world's supply may keep pace with the demand, we refer
our readers to the results of the Rotbamsted agricultural
experiments. There it will be seen that in 1863, with
the aid of mixed mineral manure and nitrate of soda, Soij
bushels per acre were grown on land which is not better
than the average as regards natural fertility. Sir Williams
presentiment of coming evil, though well-founded, need
not therefore alarm us if the cultivators of the soil will
only follow the example of those pioneers who have
elicited so much from the economy of Nature.
Professor Japp, in his Presidential Address on '• Stereo-
chemistry and Vitalism " before the Chemical Section of
the British Association, attacks the question whether the
phenomena of life are wholly explicable in terms of
physics and chemistry. The frank admission which he makes,
coming as it does from so great an authority on organic
chemistry, will be received with satisfaction by those who
do not regard science as the alpha and omega of opinion on
this much controverted question. He says : "I see no
escape from the conclusion that at the moment when life
first arose a directive force came into play — a force of pre-
cisely the same character as that which enables the intelli-
gent operator, by the exercise of his will, to select one
* Knowledge, p. 140. June, 189^, and p. 148, July, 16i)8.
crystallized enantimorph and reject its asymmetric opposite.
I would emphasize the fact that the operation of a directive
force does not involve a violation of the conservation of
energy." , , ,
M. de Rougemont's ordeal before the British Association
is reminiscent of other travellers who have brought home
strange stories of adventure in unknown lands. Bruce
was for some time regarded as a romancer, M. du ChaLllu
was suspected as a jierverter of the truth when he disclosed
his story of the gorillas, and even Mr. Stanley was, like
Joseph, believed by many to be a dreamer when news
came of the finding of Livingstone. Certainly the desirable
credentials to establish the truth of the traveller's story
are still wanting, but the ready, straightforward and un-
garnished narrative goes a good way to dispel doubts as to
the veracity of the forced exile. Much that M. de Rouge-
mont had to tell is merely confirmatory of other travellers'
narratives, but, taken as a whole, his story conjures up in
the mind, we think, a more vivid picture of life among the
aborigines of Australia than anything which has as yet
appeared in print. At the same time it is difficult to
understand why so responsible a body as the British
Association should have permitted the reading of a paper
of this character, without first clearing up all doubts as to
its veracity. ,, ,
Monium (from the Greek u.nvo; — alone i, the new
element announced by Sir Wm. Crookes in his presidential
address, affords another instance of the application necessary
in order to make headway in scientific research, the
veteran chemist having persisted for eighteen years in his
investigations since first suspecting a new member of the
rare earths, and only within the last few weeks has this
suspicion emerged into absolute certainty. Monium has
a well-marked individuality, enters readily into any number
of chemical alliances, and has an atomic weight not far
from one hundred and eighteen. The wave-lengths of the
principal lines are three thousand one hundred and twenty
and three thousand one hundred and seventeen.
According to Prof. Flinders Petrie s paper in the anthro-
pological section of the British Association, the starting
point of known history must be put backwards at If ast a
thousand years, a decision arrived at by the study of
remains excavated during the last five years. Some of
the objects found at Nagada were once attributed to a new
race, but they can now be safely assigned to the pre-
dynastic stock, about 5000 ii.c, and even earlier. It is
alleged that we have now before us the development of the
art of writing and the civilization of Egypt. The popula-
tion of the pre-dynastic age was different in type from that
of historical lines, and in the early monuments the presence
of diverse types is very clear.
A high-class microscope for the amateur, the student,
and the bacteriologist, at a sufficiently moderate cost to
come within the reach of all, or nearly all, would-be micro-
scopists, has long been a desideratum, and we are pleased
to find that the "Fram" — a newly-designed microscope by
Messrs. W. Watson A Sons — seems to us destined to meet
the requirements of the most fastidious. The instrument
is strong, solid, and rigid, steady at every angle, and there-
fore well adapted for micro-photography. In the coarse
adjustment provision is made for avoiding backlash, and in
Ihe fine adjustment compensating screws are employed for
eliminating slackness after prolonged use. Indeed, the
entire microscope is designed to yield the advantages that
have hitherto been associated only with the most expensive
instruments.
October 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE
2:U
Notices of Boolts.
AtKlubon ami His Journals. By Maria K. Audubon.
With Zoological and other Notes by Elliott Coues. 2 Vols.
(Nimmo.) Illustrated. Altbough nearly fifty years have
passed since the death of Audubon, this is the first published
account of his life, with the exception of that edited
by Robert Buchanan, which was both inaccurate and
incomplete. Audubon will be chiefly known by his great
folio work on the " Birds of America," the publication of
which was commenced in 1827. The authors drawings
(in the original edition the text to the plates appeared
separately as the " Ornithological Biography ") in this
magnificent work formed its chief feature, and, as has
been remarked, " it is one of the few illustrated books, if
not the only one, that steadily increases in price as the
years go on." With the many advances that have been
made of late years in the drawing of birds, as well, of course,
in the process of reproducing drawings, this is very high
testimony for the accuracy and beauty of Audubon's plates.
ArDUBOy.
F, Hie P,..t,;iil l,i( H.„,-,i l,imn„. Xow ui th,- p.>ss,ss...» ff the I'lmil,,.
When we look into his methods, as revealed in his own jour-
nals here published, we can better understand why Audu-
bon's drawings have stood the test of time and criticism. His
work was always first hand. Days and nights were spent
in the wilds of America, alone, in the company of savages,
or with a few fellow spirits watching, hunting, and procuring
wild creatures, and especially birds. When he ultimately
knew the habits and attitudes of a creature he would pro-
cure it, and as soon as possible, by means of wires, set it up
in the flesh, and draw it, adding a few leaves or flowers
which would be found growing in its habitat. It was thus
that Audubon made his drawings, the like of which
the world had never before seen, and it is exceedingly
interesting to find in this book the history of many of these
drawings written by himself. But this is not the only
interest we have in reading these simple pages. They
reveal the nature of the man — open-hearted, generous,
forbearing, good natured, and hard working as he un-
doubtedly was. Although often depressed and in very poor
circumstances himself, he was always ready to assist the
needy and comfort the distressed. Every great character
has his enemies, and Audubon was no exception, yet
he never had a bitter word for them. It is surprising
that he lived to such a great age, considering the
amount of hard and rough work that he underwent.
He would often work seventeen hours a day. Above
everything, Audubon was a man of the open air.
In the words of his grand-daughter (Vol. I., p. 48) :
" With them (the Osage Indians) he delighted to track
the birds and quadrupeds as only an Indian, or one of like
gifts, can ; from them he learned much woodcraft ; with
them he strengthened his already iron constitution ; and in
fearlessness, endurance, patience, and marvellously keen
vision, no Indian surpassed him." He was called the "Amer-
ican Back- woodsman," and was an ideal field naturalist.
The first of these volumes contains an account of the
life of Audubon by the authoress, the European journals,
the Labrador journal, and part of the Missouri River
journals ; while in the second we have the completion of
these journals, and a number of Episodes. The " life " is
an excellent and unvarnished biography. The European
journals deal with Audubon's visit to Great Britain and
France for the purpose of publishing his " Birds of
America." This was by no means an easy task. The
expense involved in the reproduction of the drawings was
enormous, and the price of the book therefore very high.
There were no means in those d-iys such as we have
now to get a book subscribed, and Audubon had to travel
by coach all over England to obtain sub^cribsrs for his
work. Besides the account of the immense labour he went
through in connection with the publishing of his great
work, the European journals are of intense interest for the
descriptions they contain of the meetings and conversa-
tions he had with many notable men of the period.
The Labrador and Missouri journals will be chiefly
valuable to naturalists, and especially, of course, to Ameri-
cans, but there is so much of general interest in them that
everyone who takes up the volumes will find them excellent
reading. The Episodes are varied, all are interesting, and
many very amusing. That entitled "The Eccentric
Naturalist ' is a most clever sketch, and we cannot refrain
from extracting a few lines —
" Wo had all retired to rest. ETerv person I imagined was in
deep slumber save myself, when of a sudden I lieard a great uproar
in the naturalist's room. I got up, reached the place in a few moments,
and opened the door, when, to mv astonishment. I saw my guest
running about the room naked, holding the handle of my favourite
violin, the body of which he had battered to pieces against the walls
in attempting to kill the bats which had entered by the open window,
probably attracted by the insects flying around his candle. I stood
amazed, but he continued jumping aud running round and round
until he was fairly exhausted, when he begged me to procure one of
the animals for him, as he felt convinced they belonged to 'a new
species.' "
The author goes on to say how he knocked down some
of the bats with the bow of his "demolished Cremona,"
and so satisfied the naturalist. He does not, however,
tell us how he must have mourned for the loss of his
violin, on which instrument he was an accomplished
performer.
The volumes are enriched by many valuable notes by
Dr. Elliott Coues. By way of illustrations there are many
portraits of Audubon and his sons, as well as three hitherto
uupubUshed drawings of birds. The authoress has pro-
duced an estimable and lasting memorial to her grandfather
Audubon, naturalist, woodsman, artist, and author.
232
KNOWLEDGE.
[OCTOBEB 1, 1898.
With Peary near the Pole. By Eivind Astrup, translated
by H. J. Bull. (Pearson, Ltd.) Illustrated. Although
M. Astrup died some time ago, no mention of the fact is
made in this translation, nor is the author's original
preface dated. These omissions are strange enough, but
that a translation of this book should be published a
month or two before the appearance of a full account of
the expeditions by their leader is still more remarkable.
Eivind Astrup accompanied Mr. Peary on his two
Greenland expeditions in 1891-2 and 1893-4, and this
book is a short account of these two expeditions.
By far the most interesting portion of the book is that
dealing with the remarkable and successful sledge journey
of 1892. Although by no means a practised writer, the
author describes this journey exceedingly well, the great
charm of the narrative being its simplicity. It will be
well to remind our readers of this journey, which was quite
as remarkable in its way as the crossing of the south of
(Greenland by Nansen, in 1885. Peary, Astrup, Gibson
and Cook, started on their journey across the inland ice
from MacCormick Bay, on the north-west of Greenland,
on May 14th, 1892. " On May 24th they reached Hum-
boldt Glacier, and here the party divided, Peary and Astrup
continuing the journey, and the other two returning to
winter quarters. On June 27th the two intrepid ex-
plorers reached the eighty-second degree of latitude, and
found themselves at the edge of the inland ice, while on
July 4th they arrived at the north-east coast, and so
practically proved that Greenland is an island and not a
continent stretching to the Pole as some have thought.
It was not until August 5th that, after innumerable hard-
ships and incessant toil, Peary and Astrup gained winter
quarters and comparative civilization. Besides the de-
scriptions of the expeditions and their equipments, the
book contains some valuable information on the customs,
dress, and language of the Esquimaux, and the manner in
which they live. This information is especially interesting,
since it refers to tribes about which very little is known.
The information, however, is scattered through the book,
and not being systematically arranged loses much of its
value. The translator has done his work well, and the
book well deserves reading.
Cantor Lectures on Gutta-Percho . By Dr. Eugene Obach.
(Wm. Trounce.) Illustrated. Gutta-percha is not, some
may think, a very entertaining subject for a course of
lectures, but a different opinion may be formed by a
perusal of the Society of Arts' course of three lectures
delivered by Dr. Obach nearly a year ago. The plant was
subordinated to useful purposes by Sir Wm. Hooker and
Dr. Siemens in the year 1847, and the Society of Arts
deemed it fitting to celebrate the jubilee of its introduction
into commerce by a course of lectures, which are embodied
here, and suitably illustrated with photographs and diagrams
of the processes employed in preparing the raw material
for the market and its subsequent manufacture into various
useful articles. The history, geographical distribution,
botanical structure, and cultivation of the gutta-percha
tree form the subject of the first lecture, while the second
and third deal with the processes for cleaning, hardening,
and so on. Among the many uses to which gutta-percha
has been put, that for making ice-boats, as in the case of
Lady Franklin when in search of her husband in 1850,
seems to us most curious. A useful series of tables is
appended at the end of the volume, giving analyses, imports
and exports, and so on ; indeed, we know of no work
where so much and varied information, in an equivalent
space, may be found on gutta-percha as in Dr. Obach's
lectures here reproduced in convenient form for reference.
The Wonderful Century : Its Swxesses ami its Failures,
By Alfred Russel Wallace. (London : Swan, Sonnen-
schein k Co.) 7s. Gd. That this book is from Dr.
Wallace's pen is guarantee sufficient that it is interesting
and well worth reading. In the hands of such an author
we expect that the subject will be dealt with in a fascina-
ting and invigorating style, and we are not disappointed.
As Dr. Wallace himself says, he has produced an appre-
ciation of the century rather than its history. But the
book is by no means full of jubilant expressions relating
to the many wonderful successes of the last hundred years ;
more than half the volume is concerned with what the
author regards as its failures. Among these the questions
of vaccination, phrenology and spirituahsm are discussed,
the first named occupying a very considerable portion of
the entire volume. The author has strong views on
these subjects, and does not hesitate to express his opinions
in vigorous language. This makes it advisable to offer a
word or two of caution to readers who propose to study the
book under notice. It by no means follows that because an
author has attained pre-eminence in any one department of
scientific knowledge, as Dr. Wallace has done in the realm
of natural history, he is thereby qualified to give a final
opinion on every controversial question which may arise
out of the advances that science has made. There are
many who are not prepared to accept Dr. Wallace as a
judge upon such matters as the value of vaccination, or
the claims of phrenology to be regarded as a science ; and
while admiring his manly English and his clear expression
of what he thinks, we must point out that his conclusions
are considered erroneous by numbers of equally eminent
men of science. Doubtless many of Dr. Wallace's sen-
tences will find their way into phrenologists' advertise-
ments and the pamphlets of anti-vaccinators, but that does
not constitute them deliberate expressions of the present
state of scientific opinion. Dr. Wallace himself must
recognize that he has no more right to decide these
questions than an eminent chemist would have to pass
judgment in matters of pure biology. If this is borne in
mind the reader will derive both pleasure and profit from
the perusal of Dr. Wallace's work.
Essays on Museums and othfr Sulject-s connected nth
Natural History. By Sir William Henry Flower, k.c.b.,
etc. (Macmillan.) Illustrated. 123. net. We have to
thank Sir William Flower for republishing these essays in
book form. The earliest of them was written in 1870, and
notwithstanding the great advance in scientific knowledge
since that date, all these essays, with the exception of a
few minor detaOs, have stood the test of time, and are aa
interesting and instructive to-day as they were when first
penned. The book opens with seven chapters on museums, a
subject with which the author is, of course, eminently fitted
to deal. If anyone requires advice as to how to build, plan,
and fill a museum to the best advantage, or should anyone be
at all hazy as to the true value of a museum, let him read
these chapters. The last forms a brief history of Hunter's
wonderful collection, now the museum of the Royal College
of Surgeons. The next section of the book, devoted to
biology, contains eight essays on various subjects. The
chapter on whales, past and present, and their probable
origin, is especially interesting. The chapters in the
section dealing with anthropology, that much neglected
science, should be read by everyone. The concluding
chapters are biographical sketches of Prof. Rolleston, Sir
Richard Owen, and Prof. Huxley, and an eulogium on
Charles Darwin. The book is a mine of information of a
very varied character conveyed in simple but eloquent
language, and our only criticism is that an index would
have rendered it more useful.
October 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE
233
h'letnitits of I'escriptire Astronomy . A text-book by
Herbert A. Howe, a.m., sc.d. (London: George Philip A
Son.) This is a delightful test-book, intended not onlj'
for students at college, but for those also who attend the
more comprehensive school of Nature herself. L)r. Howe
touches upon each of the widely varying subjects which
make what is to-day called the " new astronomy," and
he discusses reasonably and without prejudice the hard
questions that come up for answer on every side. Indeed,
when he comes to the nebular hypothesis he deprecates,
by a well-turned parable, the necessity of formulating any
answer, of making any prophecy as to what will be the
ending of the earth and sun.
But the "text-book" of the student should be his
reference book when he has become a working astronomer.
We once heard of a computer who could repeat Bottomley's
logarithmic tables, in whole or in part, from memory, but
unfortunately this power was exceptional, or rather unique,
among the astronomers of his day. We ourselves cannot
trust our memory to recall accurately the simplest trigono-
metrical rule or formula, and it is a question of time to
work all problems out from first principles. Therefore,
since the author says in his preface that he will welcome
any suggestions for a second edition, we believe that it
would still further add to the usefulness of this already
valuable work if he furnished appendices not only of
the " names of stars," the " astronomical constants," and
of the " planetary data," but also of the formuhc most
commonly used, say for the conversion of the altitude and
azimuth of a star into its longitude and latitude, or right
ascension and declination.
SHORT NOTICES.
Indastrial Electricitu. Edited by A. G. Elliott, B.Sf. (Wliit-
taker & Co.) Illustrated. 2s. tid. This volume is one of a series of
books on eleetro-mechamcs. Apparently recognizing the fact that we
have yet to learn a great deal from the French on matters scientific,
Mr. Elliott has planned his book from a treatise by Henry de
GratRgny. The principal applications of electricity in everyday life
arc popularly explained, that is to say, the non-mathematieal reader
may peruse it with profit, but the small size of the work does not
admit of much detail. However, the other volumes of the series —
some of which, by the way, have already appeared, whilst others are
in preparation — are intended to enter more minutely into the various
branches of applied electricity.
Xofes on Observations. By Sydney Lupton, ir.A. (Macmillan.)
38. 6d. An attempt is here put forth to make clear to the scientific
student the reasons for adopting the present system of mathematical
nomenclature. The introductory chapters are devoted to philosophic
reasoning, and the rest of the book is given up to i-ather abstruse
problems, which will appeal more to the higher mathematical student
rather than to physicists and chemists, for whom the book is really
intended. References are given at the end of each chapter for those
students who wish for fuller information. We think that there is
room for more books of this kind — books which in a sense control a
student's thinking powers somewhat after the manner in which the
governor-balls of a steam-engine regulate the action of that useful
mechanism.
Elementary General Science. By A. T. Simmons, B.sc, and L.
M. Jones, B.sc. (MacmUlan.) Illustrated. 3s. 6d. As an intro-
duction to natural philosophy this book will be found very usefiU.
Its chief merits rest upon the fact that all the fundamental principles
of the sciences are presented with exceptional clearness, and the
w'hole of the information is so thoroughly up to date as to form a
solid ba^is for more advanced work.
Practical Sadiography. By A. W. Isenthal and H. Snowden
Ward. Second Edition. (Dawbarn & ^V ard.) Illustrated. 2s. 6d.
Although only in its second edition, this work has been so thoroughly
revised that it may be almost regarded as new. All the recent
innovations in the infant science have been interpolated in their
proper places and minutely explained, more particidarly as regards
the practical aspects of the subject. Some very good photographs
illuminate the text here and there. As a handy guide to practical
work of this kind there is, as far as we know, no better book
available.
Elementarif Chemistri/. First Year. By T. A. Cheetham.
(Blackie.) Illustrated. Is. 6d. By way of supplementing elemen-
tary lectures on chemistry with practical work in the laboratory,
Mr Cheetham's book is admirable. The so-called " test-tubing " is
replaced by simple experiments which have for their object the
development of the student's reasoning powers, ample scope for
which is to be found in the resolution of chemical compounds into
their elements, or tice versd^ and so on.
Scientific Method in Biology. By Dr. Elizabeth Blackwcll.
(Elliot Stock.) The main theme of this book is the necessity for
practising more humane methods of medical research. It is main-
tained that truth, not curiosity, is the real aim of all scientific
investigation, and therefore medical research should be pursued on
strictly humanitarian lines. Many students can extract rare sport
out of the sufferings of dumb creatures, and this morbid passion may
retain its hold on the professional man in after years, when as a
surgeon he is called upon to minister to afflicted humanity. All those
who desire to maintain medical science at its highest level from a
purely moral aspect wiU find much here to sustain and encourage
them in their efforts to minimise human woe.
First Stage Magnetism and Eleetricifi/. By Dr. R. H. Jude,
M.A. (Clive.) Illustrated. 2s. Dr. Jude follows the syllabus of
the Science and Art Department, but it is not by any means a cram-
book — a result which too frequently obtains in books written for
examination purposes. The only other important points to notice
are the useful summaries at the end of each chapter, and the careful
attention bestowed on the all-important subject of potential— a slough
in which most students flounder hopelessly.
The Barometrical Determination of Seights. By F. J. B.
Cordeirs. (Spon.) 43. 6d. An essay originally entered for the
Hodgkin Prize Competition at the Smithsonian Institute, and men-
tioned as being good. Various formulic are tabulated which, according
to the author's idea, are more accurate than the old tables, these
being faulty in the formulfc rather than in the method. But why a
pamplilet of about thirty pages should cost four shillings and sixpence
is beyond our comprehension !
The Adcentitres of Rohinson Crusoe. (London : Seriew of
Seciews Office.) 6d. This is still another edition of the famous
novel, retold from Defoe's original, and edited by \X. T. Stead. It
is printed in large clear type, and illustrated throughout with a
number of new drawings. Some of these new renderings of old
friends are quite unintentionally humorous, notably that on page 89,
representing the reunion of Friday with his old father. Mr.
Stead has done well to reproduce a story which must always
appeal to Englishmen all the world over as reminiscent of the days
when all the world was young, and we first made the acquaintance
of Robinson Crusoe.
We have received from the Rerien- of Eecietcs olHce a selection of
the Penny Poets series, and we gladly direct the attention of teachers
in elementary schools to these most admirable books.
BOOKS RECEIVED.
Zoological Results based on Material from Seir Britain, New
Guinea, elj-ff.. 1S95, ISilO, and ISDT .—Part I. By Arthur- WUley,
D.sc. (Cambridge University Press.) Illustrated. 12s. 6d.
Catalogue of Scientific Periodicals. Vol. XL. (Smithsonian
Miscellaneous Collections.)
The Rutherford Photographic Measures of Stars. By Herman S.
Davis, PH.D. (Reprinted from the Annals of the New York Academy
of Sciences.)
Bird^ of the British Empire. By Dr. W. T. Greene. (Imperial
Press.) Illustrated. 5s. net.
The Fern World. By Francis George Heath. (Imperial Press.)
Illustrated. 5s. net.
Applied Geologg. — Part I. By J. V. Elsdeo, B.sc. (Quarry
Publishing Co., Ltd.) Illustrated." 5s.
Geologg for Beginners. By W. W. Watts, (ilacmillan.) Illus-
trated. 2s. 6d.
Tylar's Catalogue of Photographic Appliances. (High Street,
Aston, Birmingham.) Illustrated. 6d.
Stories of Starland. Bv Mary Proctor. (G. W. Bacon i Co.,
Ltd.) Illustrated.
The Unconscious Mind. By Dr. Alfred T. Schofield. (Hodder &
Stoughton.) 7s. 6d.
Outlines of the Earth's Sistori/. By Nathaniel Southgate Shaler.
(Heinemann.) Illustrated. 78. 6d.
Meteorological Observations for the Year 1S97. (Rousdon Obser-
vatory, Devon.) By Cuthbert E. Peek, m.a.
Wireless Telegraphy. By Richard Kerr, F.&.s.; with Preface bv
W H. Preece, c B., F.B.s. (London : Sceley & Co., Ltd.) Is.
234
KNOWLEDGE
[OCTOBEB 1, 1898.
BRITISH
<r,
~N
ORNITHOLOGICAL
NOTES
Conducted by Hakry F. Witherby, f.z.s., m.b.o.u.
Change of Nesting Sites ok Common Tern and Ringed
Plover. — Both the Common Tern and Ringed Plover breed
commonly in the sands and bents to the north of Peterhead.
The former bird is ever shifting its breeding grounds,
perhaps through annoyance from fisher boys, who are
persistent harriers of their nests. In former years I have
always come across small breeding colonies within five
miles of the town, either immediately above high water
mark or on the bents. This year I found none, but inland
I came across two colonies, one in the middle of a field of
rye grass, and the other in the middle of a turnip field,
where they certainly had more chance of raising their
young. Is this reasoning on their part, or what '? The
same change of breeding grounds I observed on the part
of the Ringed Plover. There were certain furrowed spots
on the sand or back a little on the bents where you could
always find their eggs, and where their piping was incessant,
but this year there were hardly a pair in these parts. Nor
had they mingled with the Terns in the fields, but they
were piping commonly all along where the bent adjoins
the cultivated land. Had two or three pairs been there it
had not been noticeable, but they seemed all to be there. I
wonder if they were going near the town so as to get their
protection when Crows were hovering about? — William
Socle, Peterhead.
Migrating Wagtails at Peterhead. — In years past, during
September, I used to notice Pied Wagtails numerously, some
nights in hundreds, near Fettes College in Edinburgh.
They are every year very noticeable birds all over this
region during the latter three weeks of August. In the
spring they are very numerous as they push northwards,
but nothing to what they are in August. They are just
now in family parties, though later you would think that
three or foui- families combine. They are in no hurry to
travel southwards, perhaps because they have abundance of
flies here during the herring season. There is always a
fair sprinkling of the Grey Wagtail, but they are a little
later in migrating. — William Scole, Peterhead.
Squirrels and Birds. — Squirrels are becoming very
common in the woods and plantations of Ireland, and
certainly form a charming addition to our somewhat
slender list of wild fauna. The price which we must pay
for the pleasure of watching them is, however, scarcely
understood. Not only do they rob our gardens and
orchards, but they are proving formidable adversaries to
the increase of bird life. Nests are robbed without scruple,
eggs and young devoured ; and a squirrel was lately seen
leaping triumphantly on the garden wall with a full-fiedged
Robin in his mouth. A neighbour of ours has proclaimed
a war of extermination against the marauders, which, not
content with stealing the food prepared for his young
Pheasants, proceeded to eat the precious chicks tbamielvea.
It seems that we cannot allow Squirrels to increase at
their own sweet will without making sacrifice for their
sakes of the birds which are equally valued. — C. Maud
Battersby, Cromlyn, Rathowen, Ireland.
Moorhen Chasini: Stoat. — -On August 16th I was in a
canoe on the River Derwent, floating down stream and
hardly making a sound, when I saw on the bank a Moor-
hen hunting a stoat. The stoat was galloping along, and
the Moorhen kept making short swift runs at it, but each
time striking distance was reached the bird stopped short.
I kept the canoe still and watched till pursued and pursuer
disappeared among some bushes. The Moorhen may have
had young ones — a second brood — and the stoat have tried
to rob her nest. The Moorhen uttered an alarm note
incessantly, and the stoat seemed to me to utter every now
and then a low short squeal, whether in anger or terror I
cannot say. — Basil W. Martin, Darley Abbey, Derby.
All contributions to tlie column, either in the way of notes
or photographs, should he forwarded to Harry F. Witherby,
at 1, Eliot Place, Blackheath, Kent,
SUNSPOTS AND LIFE.
By Alex. B. MacDowall, m.a.
IS there any connection between the sunspot cycle and
physical phenomena around us '? We may reply
with a confident affirmative, for the proof that
magnetic variations are related to that cycle is clear
and cogent. The same may be said about frequency
of auroras.
There can be little doubt that the electrical condition of
our globe with its atmosphere touches life at many points.
(A familiar example is the susceptibility of some people
to the influence of an approaching thunderstorm.) The
subject, however, is largely a terra incognita at present.
Does the sun give out more heat when spotted, or when
(comparatively) spotless ? And does our atmosphere
manifest such difference, if it exists? Have we more severe
winters, hotter summers, etc., during one phase of the
sunspot cycle than during the opposite phase ? and, if so,
what is the nature of the relation ? Such questions are
still (in the opinion of many) s«6 Judice.
There is reason to believe, I think, that we have more
winter cold about the time when there are few spots than
when there are many. Some months ago I gave, in these
pages,* two curves in illustration of this view ; one, of
frost days at Greenwich in the first quarter of the year,
the other, of days of northerly wind in the winter half of
the year. It would seem that the sun is hottest when
spotted. The cold of winter is mitigated. Some say that
the spotted sun gives us hot summers as well as mild
winters.
Now we know how a great deal of cold in the late winter
and early spring affects the life of plants, retarding their
growth, and the life of migratory animals, delaying their
return. If, then, this cold varies periodically in a cycle of
about eleven years, should there not be a con-esponding
variation in the data of phenology ?
This branch of science, jdwiiohniy, has not yet come
within the ken of " the man in the street." I hardly need
say here, however, that the practical phenologist notes, year
by year, the dates at which given plants come into leaf or
flower (or other phase), the dates at which certain animals
are first seen.
Do we, then, find that the variations in those dates
show any correspondence with the variations of temperature
and of the sun-spots in a period of eleven years ? To this
Knowledue, October, 1897. " Coming Cold.'
OcTOBEE 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE.
235
an affirmative reply has been given recently by the
eminent French astronomer, M. Camille Flammarion.*
Some time ago he commenced observing the chestnuts at
Juvisy Observatory, near Paris, recording the days on which
leaves ami flowers were first seen. He has now a uniform
series of thirteen years of such records (188(5 — 18il8). He
draws a curve to represent (say) the date of first flowermg
of the chestnut, in this way : The dates, ranging from
4th April to 9th May, are first changed into numbers,
caUing the latest No. 1, the second latest No. 2, etc. Then
the thirteen years series of these numbers is smoothed
with averages of four (averaging the first four, then the
■9 'li '!r '»
issc '3 ■& '9 "62 'i- 's 'Yi 'V y '»o '3 '<• '9 V^ '-T 's
A. — Sunspot Curve. B. — Smoothed Curve of first flowermg of
chestnuts, near Paris. c. — Smoothed Curve of return of Swallow to
Central France. D. — Smoothed Curve of average firet flowering of
five plauts in Hants. E. — Smoothed Curve of first flowering of Sibes
Sanguineum, Edinburgh. F. — Smoothed Curve of death-rate of male
persons, eighty-five and upwards, in England, (d, b, and F are
inverted curves.)
second to the fifth, and so on). These smoothed values
yield the curve B in our diagram.! The thing to be noted
is, that high points in it represent early dates, and low
points late ones ; and there is good agreement with the
* See Bulletin de la SociJU Astro nomique, for June, 1898.
t I should perhaps state that these two curves, B and C, are not
an exact copy of M. Flammarion's diagrams, but are drawn from his
figures. The four year average is in each case put down to the third
year of the group (with sUght want of symmetry). These two
curves should be considered independently ; they are da-awn with the
same vertical scale for convenience.
last sunspot wave (carve A), the earliest dates being near
sunspot maxima and the latest near minima.
These data are obviously too meagre, however, to base
much upon, and M. Flammarion has recourse to several
longer records, showing the dates of return of some
migratory birds (the swallow, the cuckoo, the nightingale)
tt a place near Moulins, in the centre of France (the Pare
de Baleine). The longest record is that of the swallow, and
the smoothed curve for it (drawn on the same principle) is
that marked C. A correspondence of the same kind, not,
indeed, absolutely perfect, is here apparent. The swallow
returns later, on the whole, near minimum suuspots than
near maximum. The dates here range from 19th March
to 11th April. Curves of the two other birds are given
by the author as pointing to the same influence.
With regard to temperature, M. Flammarion finds that
a smoothed curve of the mean temperature of March and
April (months of great importance to vegetation) corre-
sponds with the sunspot curve, and also fairly represents
the temperature variation of the whole year.
Coming to our own country, we may, if I mistake
not, find the same influence at work ; and I may be per-
mitted to recall, in this connection, some curves which
have appeared elsewhere.
D is a curve drawn from data in the Annual Keports
on phenological phenomena presented to the Royal
Meteorological Society. It represents the flowering of
plants in a district of Hants. The five annual dates of
first flowering of five plants (viz., coltsfoot, wood-anemone,
blackthorn, white oxeye, and dogrose) from 1878 to 1895,
translated each into the number of the day in the year,
are added together and an average taken. Then the series
is smoothed with averages of five (to get rid of minor
waves of variation). Here a high number represents the
opposite of what it does in M. Flammarion's curves, viz.,
a late date, while a low number represents an earlier date.
The curve is an inverted one, the numbers increasing
downwards. E is a curve got similarly from a record of
the first flowering of Ribes Sanijuineum (or flowering
currant), at Edinburgh, 18-50-75.
Both of these curves appear to indicate late flowering
about the time of sunspot minima, and early about the
time of maxima.
Cold retards the beginnings, the first signs of life ; it
often accelerates the end of life. We know that a sharp
snap is fatal to many of the aged and the weak. The
Registrar-General's reports give us an opportunity of seeing
how the death rate of old psople varies from year to year.
If we take the series for males eighty-five and upwards,
and make a smooth (inverted) curve of it (F), we find it
has considerable suggestions of a relation to that variation
in winter cold whose effects we have been tracing, and the
origin of which, as of much else, may probably be found
where —
" The very source and fount of day
Is dashed with wandering isles of night."
ECONOMIC BOTANY.
By John R. -Jackson, a.l.s., etc.. Keeper of the Museums,
Royal Gardens, Kew.
ZYGOPHYLLE-E. — A family usually known as the
Guaiacum order, consisting of trees, shrubs, and
herbs, found abundantly and widely dispersed in
the tropical and warmer parts of the globe, the
spiny species being characteristic of the desert
vegetation of Egypt and Western Asia. Many of the
* 6ee Lancet, January Ist, 1898.
236
KNOWLEDGE
[OCTOBEB 1, 1898.
species are characterised by the presence of resin, and the
woody species by their extreme hardness. The most im-
portant economic species of the order are Guaiacum
oj/iciiutir and ti. sancluiii, both of which furnish the well-
known hard wood, Lignum vit;e, of commerce. The first
is a tree of twenty or thirty feet high, crowded with
numerous, spreading, jointed branches, covered with long
green leaves and numerous bright pale blue flowers,
which give the tree a very handsome appearance. It grows
in most of the West Indian Islands, more particularly in
Hayti, .Jamaica, and Cuba, and is found also in Columbia
and Venezuela. The second species, a . sunvtuin, grows in
Cuba and the Bahamas, but is not found in South America,
though it occurs at Key West, in Florida. Guaiacum wood
or Lignum vitse is imported in large logs or billets,
weighing sometimes as much as a hundredweight. The
bark is removed before exportation. The wood is often
as much as a foot in diameter, and shows on a cross
section a marked distinction between heartwood and
sapwood, the former being of a dark greenish colour,
owing to the presence of resin, which is known commer-
cially as gum guaiacum, and the sapwood being of a light
yellow, containing no resin. The heartwood is one of
the darkest and hardest woods known, and is valued for
these qualities as well as for its great durability, for which
reason it is used largely for making ships' blocks, pulleys,
skittle balls and bowling balls, rules, pestles, etc., and
medicinally as a stimulant, diaphoretic, and alterative.
It was formerly much used in syphilitic and cutaneous
affections, chronic rheumatism, gout, scrofula, and similar
diseases. For these purposes it was seen in chemists'
shops in the forms of chips, shavings or coarse powder.
It is, however, seldom used medicinally at the present
time. The best kind of Lignum vitie comes from San
Domingo ; other qualities are imported from Hayti, Baha-
mas, and Jamaica.
Guaiacum resin occurs either in lumps or small round
pieces known as tears. Externally it is of a brownish-
green colour, breaking with a clean, glassy green fracture.
It has no smell, except when warmed or rubbed, when it
emits an aromatic odour. It possesses the same pro-
perties as the wood, and is used in medicine for similar
purposes.
A curious plant belonging to this order is that known as
the creosote plant {Lama mexicana), a shrubby plant of
North America. A resinous substance or lac covers the
twigs, which is scraped off' by the Indians and melted into
balls. It is considered by them as efficacious in the case
of rheumatism.
Geraniace.e. — A group of herbs or shrubs distributed
over the globe, the Pelargoniums being found abundantly
at the Cape of Good Hope. The characteristic properties
of the plants are astringent, aromatic and fragrant. They
are, however, more valued, horticulturally, for the beauty
of their flowers than for their economic properties. From
this point of view the most important is, perhaps, the
rose leaf geranium [PAunjoniuw rajiitntia/i), which is
largely cultivated in the South of France, Turkey, Algeria,
and Spain, for the fragrant oil which is distilled from its
leaves, and is used as a perfume, both by itself and for
adulterating attar of rose. Sanacaulon lleriticri, a fleshy
plant of the Cape, is peculiar in having a cylindrical stem
which, in its older stages of growth, becomes so highly
charged with a hard wax that all traces of vegetable tissue
are lost, and the stem breaks with a short brittle fracture.
It burns freely, and is sometimes used as a torch or
candle.
The acid character of the plants of this order is well
developed in the Blimbing of India {Averrhoa UUimbij,
belonging to the tribe Oxalideae. It is a small tree, much
cultivated in India for the sake of the fruit, which is
cylindrical in shape, about three inches long and one inch
in diameter, somewhat resembling a gherkin. It is
extremely acid in its fresh state, but is often preserved in
syrup, or candied, or used as a pickle. The carambola is
a closely allied fruit, native also of the East ; it differs,
however, in shape from the Blimbing as it is distinctly
marked with prominent ribs or wings running parallel
down the sides of the fruit. It is the produce of Aierrlwa
Caramhohi. From the wood sorrel (< ixalis acetosella) oxalic
acid is prepared, while the tubers of several other species
of Oj-alia are edible ; such, for instance, as O. crenaUi, a
native of Peru, but much cultivated about Lima. The
tubers are about the size and shape of large walnuts, but
are not unlike small potatoes in general appearance. Their
naturally acid flavour is dissipated by cooking when they
are eaten by the people, and are occasionally seen in the
markets of this country. At the time of the early potato
murrains it was thou;,'ht that the tubers of ttiis oxalis
might under cultivation become a regular substitute for
the better known tuber, but this has never been reaUzed.
Other species, the tubers of which are eaten in Bolivia
and Mexico, are ". ttderosa and O. Depjiei respectively,
both of which were recommended for cultivation with us
along with ". crenata.
KuTACE.Ti. — This large and very important order consists
chiefly of trees and shrubs, widely scattered over the
warmer temperate regions of the globe, being especially
numerous in Australia, South Africa, and tropical America.
The order is characterized by the presence of bitter,
aromatic, or fragrant oils, found abundantly in glands
covering the leaves or fruits, as in the rue and the orange
tribe, and in wart-like protuberances in the species of
Zanthojiiluin. The order is of much value from an
economic point of view in consequence of its including the
several species of ' itrus, furnishing the oranges, lemons,
and citrons of commerce. These fruits are far and away
the most important products of the order, notwithstanding
there are many others of very varied interest and value.
The sweet orange, which is also known as the Chinese
or Portugal orange, is the fruit of Citrus Auruntiuin, a
small, much branched tree of about twenty feet in height,
which is scarcely known at the present time in a wild
state, but which seems to have been originally a native
of Northern India or Southern China, and not intro-
duced into Europe till the middle of the fifteenth century.
At the present time the sweet orange is cultivated very
extensively in many parts of the Mediterranean district,
as well as in Spain, Portugal, Madeira, the Azores, and
many other countries possessing a suitable climate. In
the South of Europe the trees tiower in April and May,
and the fruits ripen about a year after. A very large
number of varieties of the orange have been described,
the most important being those affecting the size, form or
quality of the fruit. The more important varieties are
those known as the China orange, the St. Michaels, the
Blood or Malta, in which the pulp and juice are of a blood-
red colour, the Mandarin and Tangerine. Orange trees
are remarkably prolific fruitbearers.andit has been stated on
good authority that one tree has been known to yield twenty
thousand fruits fit for exportation. Enormous quantities
of fruits, which are ever increasing in bulk, find their way
into the English market, and when it is borne in mind
that each fruit has to be gathered separately, wrapped in
paper and packed, together with the cost of the boxes,
freight and labour throughout, and after all this the fruits
can often be sold in the retail market at twenty for a
shilhng, it seems very remarkable that the crops are made
October 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE
237
to pay even for the ground upon -which they are grown.
The orange is one of the most wholesome fruits known,
and a truly valuable refrigerant, and it is remarkable that
very few people dislike the orange. Besides the use of the
pulp as au edible, the rind of the fruit, known as sweet
orange peel, is valued for its aromatic, stimulant, and
slightly tonic properties. The essential oil contained in
such large quantities in the glands of the rind is extracted
in the South of France and at Messina both by the sponge
and ecuelle processes, which will be more fully described
when considering the lemon. Large quantities of oil of !
orange peel are used in Germany in the preparation of 1
perfumes and liqueurs.
From the flowers a volatile oil is distilled, known as oil I
of neroli, which is one of the mgredients in Eau de Cologne, I
and is also used in perfumery and liqueurs. Besides this,
the leaves and young shoots of the orange plant yield by
distillation another kind of oil known as Essem-e -If pHit
grain. The bitter or Seville orange, which is a variety of
the last named, is rather a smaller tree, and does not
seem to be cultivated in India except in gardens, but it is
extensively grown in the same countries as the sweet
orange. The chief distinction is that the rind of the fruit
has a bitter aromatic taste. It is used in making candied
orange peel. The flowers are also used in distilling for
oil of neroli. This variety, which is now classified as ( 'itnis
Auriintium, var. Biycirndia, was at one time considered
a distinct species under the name of C. vuhiaris. The
Bergamotte orange is another variety (C. Aunintium, var.
lit'ni(imia). Its chief distinctions from the sweet orange
are its smaller flowers, which are known by their delicate
and peculiar odour, and the paler colour of the fruit. The
Bergamotte orange is grown chiefly near Reggio, in
Southern Calabria, and more sparingly in Sicily, Southern
France, and elsewhere. The volatile oil obtained from
the rind of the fruit forms the Essence of Bergamot of the
chemist, the principal use of which is in perfumery, while
from the pulp is obtained, by expression, the acid juice
which forms a portion of the commercial lime-juice.
Citrus mcdica is the tree that produces the citron fruits.
The plant does not exceed ten or twelve feet in height,
and, like the species before mentioned, is not known in a
truly wild state. It is, however, to Northern India that it
is supposed to belong, and to have spread westward at a
very early period, being cultivated in Syria in the time of
Josephus, and probably introduced into Italy in the third
century, from whence it spread through the Mediterranean
regions. Its cultivation at the present time is chiefly
carried on in the neighbourhood of Florence, in Sicily,
Corsica, and the Riviera, and to a smaller extent in the
Azores, Madeira, India, and China. Citron fruits are
mostly of very large size, sometimes weighing several
poixnds, and measuring eight or nine inches in length, and
four or five in diameter. It has a thick rind and a very
small proportion of pulp. The rind is much used for
making candied citron peel for dessert or confectionery
purposes. Like all the orange tribe the rind is filled with
oil glands, which is extracted in the same way as is lemon
oil or essence, next to be described. Citron essence or oil,
usually known as essence of cedrat, is much valued in
perfumery on account of its agreeable odour. C. meilica,
var. Limonum, is the lemon, which is a straggling bush or
small tree, ten to twelve feet high. Under cultivation it
is now found throughout the Mediterranean region, and
in all tropical and sub-tropical countries. It seems to
have made its first appearance in Europe about the
latter part of the fifteenth century. Lemons come to this
country from Southern Europe, principally from Sicily,
but also from Spain, packed in boxes or chests, and, like
oranges, wrapped separately in paper. Lemon peel is
candied in the same way as citron when it is used in con-
fectionery and for culinary purposes. The dried peel is
used in medicine. In its fresh state lemon peel is studded
with numerous receptacles filled with a very fragrant
volatile oil, which, when expressed and purified, is known
as oil or essence of lemon. For expression two processes
are employed, one known as the ecuelle and the other
as the sponge process. For the purpose of expressing,
or distillation — for some oil of an inferior quality is
obtained in this manner — only the small or irregular
fruits are used, the best shaped being selected for exporta-
tion. The fruits are gathered before they are quite ripe,
as the oil is of a better quality than when they are
fully matured. The peel is first cut ott' by the workman
in three longitudinal pieces, and the portion containing
the pulp is placed on one side. On the following day
the pieces of peel are operated upon in the following
manner : the workman takes the ecnelle, which consists
of a shallow basin-like funnel, the spout portion
of which is closed at the bottom, the inside of
the basin is studded with sharp points against which
the rind is pressed by the workman, this ruptures
the oil vessels, and the oil trickles into the closed spout,
which, when full, is emptied into another vessel. The
sponge process is practically the same, except that in
place of an ecuelle a sponge is used, which becomes
saturated with the oil and when full is squeezed out.
Prepared by either process, oil of lemon is of a light
yellow colour, and has a very fragrant odour. It is
mostly exported in small cylindrical coppers. Lemon
juice is the concentrated acid juice of the pulp, which,
together with that of the bergamot and lime, are the
bases from which citric acid is made.
The acid lime, from which the bulk of the lime juice
is now obtained in the West Indies, is the fruit of
Citrm mi'dira, var. nciila, while the sweet lime is from
( '. iiieilica, var. Limetta.
NOTES ON COMETS AND METEORS.
By W. F. Denning, f.r.a.s.
Perrine's Comet (1898. I.). — Elliptical elements have
been computed for this object by Ilerr K. Pokrowskij from
observations between March 21 and May 21, and he finds
the period three hundred and twenty-two and a-half
years. This comet is possibly still perceptible in powerful
telescopes, and is moving very slowly westwards, in the
western part of the Lynx, its place on October 11th being
R.A. 6h. 24m. 59s., Dec. -f50^ 24-8', and on October 19th,
R.A. 6h. IGm. 53s., Dec. +50° 17-1'.
Wolf's Co:^iet continues visible, though it is a decidedly
faint object. It is situated in Monoceros, and at the
beginning of October will be at a distance of about one
hundred and forty-five millions of miles from the earth.
Its position on October 1st will be R.A. 6h. 39m. 283.,
Dec. -f 3° 33-2'.
Encke's Comet, and the comets of Perrine and Cod-
dington discovered in June are too far south for observations
in this country. (Hacobini's comet is probably too faint
to be seen in ordinary instruments.
The Perseids of 1898 certainly formed a stronger shower
than usual, and appear to have been very generally
observed. M. C. Flammarion reports that on August 10th
from lOh. to llh. HOm. they were watched from the
observatory at Juvisy, and that five hundred meteors were
registered and marked down on a map of the heavens.
At the Paris observatory Mile. Elumpe observed two
238
KNOWLEDGE
[October 1, 1898.
hundred, and it was estimated that altogether six hundred
shooting stars were seen here. In England the eky was
not so clear on August 10th as on August 11th, but many
meteors were seen on both nights. The very exceptional
clearness of the atmosphere on the latter date enabled the
best view to be obtained, and the progress of the shower
was watched by Prof. Herschel at Slough, Mr. Corder,
Bridgwater, Mr. Blakeley, Dewsbury, Rev. S. J. Johnson,
Bridport, Rev. T. E. R. Phillips, Yeovil, Mr. Besley,
Exeter, Mr. Townshend, Paignton, Mr. King, Leicester,
the writer at Bristol, and many others.
The display was sufliciently marked to attract the notice
of many people, who, though quite unaware that such an
event was expected, had their attention accidentally
called to it by the surprising frequency and occasional
brilliancy of the meteors. Though the maximum of the
shower must have probably occurred before the night of
August 11th, a single observer watching the sky inter-
ruptedly might have counted about fifty meteors per hour,
and of these about forty would have been Perseids. They
were characterized by the usual swiftness of motion, and
almost invariably left green streaks. In several cases the
streak would brighten up in a very perceptible manner
after the nucleus had vanished ; some of the meteors were,
in fact, only observed in the form of streaks, the nuclei
having been so faint as to elude observation. The whole
duration of the shower appears to have been from July
14th to August 17th, but it was very feebly manifested at
the opening and closing stages. The centre from whence
the meteors diverged was variously fixed by several ob-
servers as under : —
July 20 21 +51
28 32 +65
29 31 +54
August 10 45 +58
11 45 +58
11 45 +58
11 46-4 + 57-6
11 46 +58
(39 +60
11 ^45 +57^
(46 +53
11 40 +5G
14 54 +59
6
4
25
40
81
28
20
4
W. E. Besley.
E. r'.' Blakeley.
A. King.
E. R. Blakeley.
W. E. Besley.
W. F. D.
A. King.
T. E. R. Phillips.
H. J. Townshend.
A. King.
Fireballs. — In twilight, on August 11th, and before
observers had commenced watching for the Perseids, a
beautiful meteor, rivalling Venus at her best, and slowly
pursuing a long horizontal path in the southern sky, was
seen by many persons. Amongst those were, fortunately,
several astronomical amateurs who recorded the apparent
path very accurately. Descriptions were received from
Bridgwater, Slough, Bristol, London, Henley-on-Thames,
Stroud, Gloucester, Wimbledon, Clevedon, South Croydon,
Bengeo, Herts, Birmingham, Eastbourne, the English
Channel, and other places. The nucleus of the meteor
was white, and as it slowly travelled from east to west it
threw off a shower of yellowish sparks, and finally broke
up into fragments. A mere remnant of the meteor pursued
its course with an exceedingly slow motion about eight
degrees further ; it looked like a spark sailing along on
the wind and vanished suddenly without any train. On
examining the observations the meteor was found to be an
Aquarid, with a radiant at 339° - 10°. When first seen
its height was sixty-six miles over the mouth of the Seine,
France, and at disappearance its height was forty-one
miles over a point three miles south-west of Okehampton,
Devon. The length of its observed flight was one hundred
and ninety-six miles, and computed velocity twenty-two
miles per second.
On August 21st, at 9h. IGm., during a thunderstorm and
frequently vivid lightning in the West of England (when,
however, a part of the sky remained clear), a very fine
meteor was noticed at several places. An excellent view
of it was obtained by Prof. Herschel at Slough, who says
that at first the nucleus was yellowish and as bright as
Jupiter, then it expanded pretty rapidly until it equalled
Venus, and became of a splendid, light emerald green
colour, finally increasing to 1} x Venus after going a little
further. The course may have begun one and a half
degrees below •>) Aquarii, but it must have been thirty
degrees long from 330" - 61° to 303° - 20=. Duration of
flight five seconds. When as bright as Venus the nucleus
appeared to be globular, but afterwards assumed a crescent
shape with a tail of yellow sparks about two or three
degrees long, and some six or eight minutes wide. The
same meteor was observed by Mr. A. R. Schutz at
Worthing, sailing slowly from 345" + 10° to 318|° + 5°,
when it disappeared suddenly. He describes the colour as
pale bluish-green — the tail was red. At Cirencester the
meteor was obsers'ed by Miss E. Brown, who estimated the
nucleus as more brilliant than Venus. The direction was
from the square of Pegasus, north to south, below / Aquarii.
The colour was white changing to greenish-blue. The
meteor was directed from a radiant point at 5°+ 13", close to
y Pegasi. It began over France, about fifteen miles south-
east of Cressy, at a height of sixty miles, and its flight
being directed westwards, it crossed over a portion of the
English Channel, and disappeared over a point about
thirty-six miles south of Brighton. Whole length of path
ninety-five miles, and velocity about nineteen miles per
second. The meteor belonged to a tolerably well-known
minor shower, and it seems highly probable that the
splendid fireballs observed in Austria on August 25th, 1884,
and in Germany on August 2Gth, 1858, were members of
the same stream, as their radiants, determined by Von
Niessl, were in the same region.
During recent observations of the Perseids, a number of
the same meteors were observed at two or more stations.
The real paths of these have been computed, and the average
heights, etc., of fifteen of these were as follow : —
Height at
First Appearance.
74i miles.
Height at
Disappearance.
54 miles.
Length of
Patli.
47i miles.
The late somewhat brilliant return of the Perseids and the
success which attended the observations encourage the hope
that the year 189H will prove a memorable one as regards
the exhibition of meteoric showers. In November next,
on the morning of the 15th, and on about the 23rd, we
have the prospect of witnessing two brilliant showers if
the weather should prove favourable. In October many
meteors are often seen from about the 18th to the 20th,
from a radiant at 91°+ 15°, but the display is usually at its
best in the morning hours.
THE FACE OF THE SKY FOR OCTOBER.
By A. Fo^'LER, F.R.A.S.
THE state of solar activity about the present time is
very micertain, but large spots can scarcely be
expected, and one need not be surprised to find
occasional spotless days. Nevertheless, the
appearance of the great spot of last month warns
ns not to imagine that the actual sun-spot minimum is
close at hand.
Mercury is a morning star during the early part of
OCTOBEH 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE
239
the month, reaching the point of superior conjunction
on the 19th.
Venus is an evening star, and will reach her greatest
brilliancy on October 27th. Throughout the month she
sets about an hour after the Sun. On the 15th only one-
third of the disc will be illuminated, and as the apparent
diameter will then be 34-0'', very small telescopes will
sutBce to show the orescent phase. The apparent diameter
increases from 2S0" to 43-8" during the month.
Mars is gradually coming into a more favourable
position for observation, but the approaching opposition is
by no means a good one for telescopic work. His apparent
movement during the next few months, however, will be
well worth the attention of young observers, and as a
companion to such observations we give a diagram
illustrating his path. He will rise shortly after ten on
Conveniently observable minima of Algol will occur on
the 5th at 9. .18 p.m. ; on the 25th at 11.40 p.m. ; and on
the 28th at 8.29 p.m.
Mira Ceti is near a maximum.
€El)tss Column.
By 0. D. LooooK, b.a.
Commimicationa for this oolvmin should be addressed to
C. D. LococK, Netherfield, Camberley, and posted on or
before the 10th of each month.
Apparent Path of Mars, October Ut, 1898— June Ut, 1899.
the 1st, and about half-past nine towards the end of the
month. The planet will be in quadrature on the 17th,
and 0'H8" of the disc will then be illuminated, while the
apparent diameter will be 8 0". As wiU be seen from the
diagram, his path is in Gemini during October.
Jupiter is in conjunction with the Sun on the 13th, and
will not be observable.
Saturn is still an evening star, but is getting too near
the Sun to be well observed. At the beginning of the
month he sets about two hours after the Sun, and at the
end about one and a half hours after. The apparent minor
axis of the ring is still greater than that of the planet, the
respective values at the middle of the month being 10" and
14-4", while the major axis of the ring is 36'. He may be
found about 6 ' north of Antares at the beginning of the
month, and afterwards a little to the east of that point.
Uranus also remains an evening star, but is still nearer
the Sun than Saturn, and may be considered as not
observable.
Neptune, in Taurus, rises about 9 p.m. at the beginning,
and about 7 p.m. at the end of the month, his apparent
diameter being 2.G". He is a little more than 1^° north-
east of ? Tauri.
The Moon enters her last quarter on the 7th at 6.5 p.m. ;
is new on the 15th thirty- seven minutes after noon; enters
the first quarter on the 22nd at 9.9 a.m. ; and is full on
the 29th eighteen minutes after noon. On the 19th she
will occult the star B.A.C. 5878, Mag. 6|. The disappear-
ance wLU take place at 4.50 p.m., 73^ from the vertex, and
the reappearance at 6.1 p.m., 289' from the vertex, the
Moon's age being 4d. 4h., and the time of sunset 4.57 p.m.
On the 22nd, p Capricomi, Mag. 5, will be occulted ;
disappearance at 5.5 p.m., 28° from the vertex, and re-
appearance at 5.51 P.M., 303° from the vertex. The Moon's
age will be 7 days, and the time of sunset 4.50 p.m.
Solviions of September Problems.
No. 1.
(ByB.
G. Laws.)
Key-move
— 1. Kt to K6.
1 . . . K to B4,
2. Kt to Kt-'>, etc.
1 . . . RxP,
2. Kt to B2ch, etc.
1 . . . K to B6,
2. Kt to Kt5ch, etc
1 . . . K to Q6,
2. Kt mates.
1 . . . K to Q4,
2. Q mates.
1 ... Kt to B5,
2. Q to Kt2ch, etc.
1 ... R to Q6,
2. Q to B4ch, etc.
1 . . . PxP,
2. Kt to B5ch, etc.
No. 2.
(By A. C. ChaUenger.)
1. Q to B3, and mates next move.
Correct Solutions of both problems received from
Alpha, J. T. Blakemore, H. S. Brandreth, H. Le Jeune.
Of No. 2 only, from G. G. Beazley, J. M'Robert, W. de
P. Crousaz, W. Clugston.
Mr. J. Nield, the composer of the August problems,
points out that No. 2 is rendered sound by the addition of
a Black Pawn at K7.
W. Clw/ston. — Thanks for your problem, which is
marked to appear next month.
Notice. — Will contributors kindlyobserve the permanent
change of address notified at the head of this column.
The following problems obtained first prizes in the
recent Brighton Societi/ tourney.
• PEOBLEMS.
No. 1.
By Rev. J. Jespersen (Denmark).
Black (5).
White (11).
White mates in two moves.
240
KNOWLEDGE.
[October 1, 1898.
No. 2.
By Dr. C. Planck (Haywards Heath).
"m ^ -f?-'^ J <m'/.
White (s).
White mates in three moves.
CHESS INTELLIGENCE.
In the Cologne Tournament the leading scores were : —
A. Burn (First prize), \\\; Charousek, Cohn and Tchigorin,
10^ ; Steinitz, !»^ ; Schfechter and Showalter, 9 ; Berger,
8; Janowski, 7f ; Popiel and Schiffers, 7. There were
sixteen entries, seven of whom had just finished their
arduous struggle in the Vienna tourney. Mr. Burn was
again in iine form : we do not remember that an English-
man has won any international tourney since Blackbume's
famous victory at Berlin in 1881. Mr. Burn lost one
game only, to Showalter. Of the others, Charousek quite
maintained his high reputation, Tchigorin did much better
than at Vienna, and Janowski much worse.
The important Amateur Tournament of the Southern
Counties Chess Union began at Salisbury on September
12th. A very strong list of entries was expected in Class I.
me played in the
Cologne Tournament : —
" Falkbeer's Counter Gambit."
White.
Black.
(K. Charousoli)
[J. Bersor.)
1. P to K4
1.
P toK4
2. P to KB4
2.
PtoQ4
3. KPxP
3.
P toK5
4. P to Q3 (a)
4.
Kt to KB3
.5. Q to K2
5.
QxP
6. Kt to Q2
6.
B to KB4
7. PxP
7.
BxP
8. P to KKt4 !
8.
Q to K3 {V)
9. P to B5
9.
Q toK2
10. KtxB
10.
QxKt
11. QxQch
11.
KtxQ
12. B to Kt2
12.
Kt to Q3
18. B to B4
13.
Kt to Q2
14. Castles
14.
Castles
15. Kt to B3
15.
P to KR4 •?
10. Kt to Kt5 !
16.
P to KB3 (<•)
17. Kt to K6
17.
R to Ksq
18. P to KR3
18.
Kt to K4
19. BxKt
19.
PxB
20. KR to Esq
20.
PxP
21. PxP
21.
R to R.5
22. B to B3
22.
P to KKt3 (<\)
28. KtxB
23.
RxKt
24. PxP(«)
24.
RxB
25. P to B4 (/•)
26. P to B5
27. P to Kt5
28. RxP
29. ExP
30. R to Q3
31. RxR
32. R to Q5
33. Resigns.
25. P to Kt3 {ff)
26. PxP
27. R to Esq
28. R to Ktsq
29. RxP
30. R to B5ch
31. KtxR
32. Kt to Q3
(rt) This and the next move constitute the most fashion-
able modem defence. 5. Kt to QB3, on the next move,
would allow Black to pin the Knight, with opportunities
sometimes for P to K6 later on, if the White Bishop goes
toQ2.
(i) Probably the best answer to White's fine move.
There is no time for 8. . . Kt to B3 ; 9. B to Kt 2, Kt to
Q5 ; 10. Kt x B ! As it is, after the exchanges. White
with his two Bishops remains with the better game.
(f) An unpleasant necessity, unless he likes to give up
the exchange for a Pawn.
((/) All this is ingeniously played. White must now
exchange in order to avoid the Bishops of opposite colours.
(<>) A hallucination ; apparently he overlooked that after
24. . . RxB, 25. P to Kt7, the other Knight's Pawn ia
no longer guarded ; or, perhaps, the defence mentioned in
the next note.
( /■) If 25. P to Kt7, RxP; 20. R to Ktsq, R to Kt6 !
('z) 25. ..RxP should be fairly safe here ; if then,
26. P to B5, R checks ; 27. K to Ktsq, RxP ; 28. R to
Ktsq, B to Bsq. The remainder is plain sailing.
KNOWLEDGE, PUBLISHED MONTHLY.
Conteats of No. 154 (August).
The Petroleum Industry.— III. By
George T. Holloway, Assoc. B.C. 9.
(LOND.), F.I.C. {IXXviStrcAei.)
An Old- World Highland. By Gren-
Tille A. J. Cole, M.R.I.A., F.o.s.
(IWurtraW.)
Selflrrisnition in Plants.— II. By the
Kev. Alex. S. Wilson, M.A., B.sc.
(fllustrated.)
Celebes : a Problem in Distribution.
By R. Lydekker, b.a., f.e.s.
British Ornithological Notes. Con-
ducted by Harry F. Witherby,
F.Z.S., M.B.O.U.
** Insect Miners.'* By Fred. Enock,
F.L.S., F.E.S. , etc. (IUu5trat«d.)
Notices of Books.
Letters.
Artificial Facnlse. By the Eev. Arthur
East. (Platf.)
The Objective Prism, the Flash, and
the Eereri:ing Layer. By E. Walter
Maunder, f.e.a.s. (IIlu«trofed,)
Alexander Goodman More,
How to Photograph through a Fly's
Eye. By Fred, W. Saiby. (lilus-
trnted.)
Notes on Comets and Meteors. By
W. F. Denning, f.e.a.s.
The Face of the Sky for August. By
A. Fowler, f.e.a.s.
Chess Column. By C. D. Locock, b.a. |
Plate. — Artificial and Natural j
Faculae. '
Contents o! No. 155 (September).
Whale Models at the Natural History
Museum. By B. Lydekker, b.a.,
F.R.S. (niustratfd.)
Eepetition and Evolution in Bird-
Song. By Charles A. Witchell.
The Karkinokosm, or World of Crus-
tacea.—V. By the Eev. Thomas E.
E. Stebbing, k.a., f.b.s., F.I..S.
(Jlliutrated.)
Economic Botany. By John B. Jack-
son, A.L.S., etc.
British Ornithological Notes.
Letters. ( niustrated.J
Science Notes.
Variable Stars of Short Period. By
Edward C. Pickering, (fllusfratfd.)
The Astronomy of the *' Canterbury
Tales." By E. Walter Maunder,
F.E.A.S.
Notices of Books.
" Insect Miners." — II. By Fred.
Enock,r.L.s.,F.E.s..etc. (IJluiitra(«d)
Botanical Studies. — V. Asplenium.
By A. Vanghan Jennings, F.L.S.,
F.o.s. {UlM^iraiei.)
Notes on Comets and Meteors. By
W. F. Denning, f.s.a.s.
The Face of the Sky for September.
By A. Fowler, f.e.a.s.
Chess Colunm. By C. D. Locock, b.a.
Plate. — Copilia Vitrea (Haeckel) and
Calocalanus Plnmulosus (Claus).
The yearly bound volumes of Knowledge, cloth gilt, 8s. 6d,, post free.
Binding Cases, Is. 6d. each ; post free. Is. 9d.
Subscribers' numbers bound (including case and Index), 2s. Gd. each volume.
Index of Articles and Illustrations for 1881, 1S92, 1894, 1895, 1896, and 1897
can be supplied for 3d. each.
" Knowledge " Annual Subscription, throughout the world,
8b., post free.
No-\-EMBER 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE.
241
Founded in i88i by RICHARD A. PROCTOR.
LONDON : NOVEMBER 1, 1898.
CONTENTS.
The Beet-Sugar Industry in England. Bj John Mills
The Karkinokosm, or World of Crustacea.— VI. By
the Ri'v. T?ioji.\3 R. R. Stebbino, m.a., f.r.s., f.l.s.
(Illustrated)
Self-Irrigation in Plants.— III. By the Rev. Alex. S.
WiLsoy, M.A., B.sc. {Illustrated)
Progress in Radiography. By JAJtEs Quick
Handicraft in the Laboratory
The New Planet DQ. By A. C. D. Ceommelin (Illustrated)
The November Meteors. (Illustrated)
Photograph of the Nebulous Region round ';' V 37
Cygni. By Isaac Robebts, d.sc, f.b.s. (Plate)
Letters : — E. E. Mahkwick, CoL ; Ciias. H. Rockwell ...
Science Notes
British Ornithological Notes. Conducted by Habbt F.
WiTHEBBT, F.Z.3., M.B.O.U
An Irish Superstition. By Fbances J. Batiersbt
Notices of Books
Shokt Notices
Books Receivbd
The Smell of Earth. By Gr. Clabke IfrTTAn, ii.-ic. . .
The Hooks on the Mandible of the Honey Bee and
the Gizzard of the Ant. By Walter Weschk
(Illustrated) '.
Botanical Studies.— VI. Selaginella. By A. VAijGHAy
Jenxixos. F.L.S., F.G.3. [Illustrated)
Notes on Comets and Meteors. By W. F. Denning,
F.B.A.S
The Face of the Sky for November. By A. Fowlee,
P.B.A.S.
Chess Column. By C. D. Locock, b.a
PAGE
241
249
250
252
253
253
254
256
257
257
257
259
259
262
263
263
THE BEET-SUGAR INDUSTRY IN ENGLAND.
By John Mills.
AN equal appreciation of all parts of knowledge,"
says Humboldt, "is an especial requirement of
the presect epoch, in which the material wealth
and the increasing prosperity of nations are, in a
great measure, based on a more enlightened
employment of natural products and forces." This truth,
uttered half a century ago, is still applicable to our own
times, in face of the many innovations which scientific
men have introduced into everyday life. Obviously, if
large areas of land in England were devoted to sugar-beet,
in the localities most suitable, as to climate and other cir-
cumstances, for its growth, and factories were established
for the manufacture of sugar from it, there would be
greatly increased employment for the population. With
regard to the suitability of the climate of the British Isles
for the growth of beetroot in sufficient quantity, and, at
the same time, of adequate richness in sugar, Mr. Sigmund
Stein says : " The sugar contained in the home-grown
beetroot is not only equal to, but even surpasses that con-
tained in the beetroot grown on the continent of Europe."
Referring to the beet-sugar industry of France, the United
States Consul at Havre said, in a report last year, that
" the crop pays the farmer better than wheat or any other
agricultural product." England is often accused of being
the only European State which is blind to its own interests,
and certainly the sanguine supporters of the scheme for
initiating a British sugar-beet industry are fortified with
statistics and other evidence which, on the surface at any
rate, seem to indicate that we are, in this respect, under
the curse which ever cUngsjto those who stand still. While
other nations are thriving on a comparatively meagre
production of beetroot, England is starving, so to speak,
in the lap of luxury. Some idea of this state of things
may be gleaned by an inspection of the following tables
of results from the official statistics relating to Germany
and France : —
GKRMAN"/.
Number
Area
Produce
Boots
of
under
of Hoots
submitted
Raw Su^ar
per Cent.
Sugar
Sugar-
per
to Manu-
produced.
on the
Factories.
beet.
Acre.
facture.
Boots.
Acres.
Tons.
Tons.
Tons.
lS.10-1
401
824.825
130
10,623,319
1,. 336.221
1209
1891-2
406
861,583
11-4
9.488,002
1,198,025
12 06
1892-3
403
869,829
11-3
9,811,939
l,2.3a,a34
11-94
1893-4
401
954,993
111
10,644,351
1,366,001
1234
1894-5
1.090,801
13-3
14,,521,029
1,827,973
1215
1895-6
930,749
12-5
11,672,816
1.637,057
1.3-11
1896-7
399
1,019,881
13-0
13,721,601
1,821,223
12-66
Mean
-
-
(13-1)
-
-
12-06
1890-1 1
377
.'>47,808
11-8
6,499,906
683,602
. 10-52
1891-2
368
531,955
10-2
5,628,804
642,023
11-41
189-2-3
368
528,156
10 3
.5,472,891
531,517
10-63
1893-4 ;
370
543.645
. 9-G
5,250,192
571,987 .
10-89
1894-5
367
596,806
120
7,137,736
782,726
10-97
1895-6
356
505,858
10-7
5,411,484
639,007
12-19
1896-7
358
608,370
11-1
6,705,000
742,829
1108
Mean
-
-
11-2
_
-
10-46
It will be noted that in Germany over a million acres
were in cultivation in 1894-5, yielding an average of
13-3 tons of beetroot per acre, the mean produce for
the seven years given being about twelve tons per acre,
while the raw sugar obtained therefrom amounted to
twelve per cent. The results relating to France indicate
a poorer yield of roots, and a lower percentage of sugar,
and while the factories in Germany remain practically
constant there is a gradual reduction in their number in
France. Now let us glance at the results of sugar-beet
grown at Eothamsted, as set forth in the accompanying
table, showing the quantity of the produce of sugar-beet
per acre, with different descriptions and varying amounts
of manure : —
Standard Manures and Cross-dressings
each Year as under.
Series 4.
Series 1. [ Series 2.
Series 3. 400 lb.
Staudard Manures.
Standard 550 lb.
400 lb. salts of
Series 5.
manures nitrate
salts of ammonia
2000 lb.
ouly. 1 of soda
ammonia ,& 2000 lb.
rape-cake
' --8t)lb.
= 86 lb. rape-cake
= 98 lb.
1 nitrogen.
nitrogen. I = 184 lb.
nitrogen.
1
nitrogen. 1
tons cwt.
tons cwt.
tons 6wt.
tons cwt.
tons cwt.
14 tons farmyard mamixe
16 6.
23 16
■ 22 «
25 2
24 18
Superphosphate
5 18
19 11
13 9 1 17 13
16 5
Superphosphate and \
5 18 1 18 17 !. 14 19 1 22 3
17 17
Proceeding from left to right it should be observed that,
240
KNOWLEDGE.
[OCTOBKE 1, 1898.
No. 2.
By Dr. C. Planck (Haywards Heath).
Buck (12).
Whitk (»).
White mates in three moves.
CHESS INTELLIGENCE.
In the Cologne Tournament the leading scores were : —
A. Burn (First prize), 11^; Charousek, Cohn and Tchigorin,
10^ ; Steinitz, f»i ; Schlechter and Showalter, 9 ; Berger,
8; Janowski, 7^; Popiel and Schiffers, 7. There were
sixteen entries, seven of whom had just finished their
arduous struggle in the Vienna tourney. Mr. Burn was
again in fine form : we do not remember that an English-
man has won any international tourney since Blackburne's
famous victory at Berlin in 1881. Mr. Burn lost one
game only, to Showalter. Of the others, Charousek quite
maintained his high reputation, Tchigorin did much better
than at Vienna, and Janowski much worse.
The important Amateur Tournament of the Southern
Counties Chess Union began at SaUsbury on September
12th. A very strong list of entries was expected in Class I.
Game played in the Cologne Tournament : —
" Falkbeer's Counter Gambit."
Black.
(J. Bersor.)
1. P to K4
2. P to Q4
3. P to K5
4. Kt to KB3
5. QxP
6. B to KB4
7. BxP
8. Q to K3 (i)
9. Q to K2
10. QxKt
11. KtxQ
12. Kt to Q3
13. Kt to Q2
14. Castles
15. PtoKR4'?
16. P to KB3 (,)
17. E to Ksq
18. Kt to K4
19. PxB
20. PxP
21. R to K.5
22. P to KKt3 (-/)
28. RxKt
24. RxB
White.
(K
. Charoiiseli )
1.
P to K4
2.
P to KB4
3.
KPxP
4.
P to Q3 (a)
r
Q toK2
6.
Kt to Q2
7.
PxP
8.
P to KKt4 !
9.
P toB5
10.
KtxB
11.
QxQch
12.
B to Kt2
18.
B toB4
14.
Castles
15.
Kt to B3
16.
Kt to Kt5 !
17.
Kt to K6
18.
P to KR3
19.
BxKt
20.
KR to Ksq
21.
PxP
22.
B to B3
23.
KtxB
24.
P X P (e)
2.5. P to B4 (/)
26. P to B5
27. P to Kt6
28. RxP
29. RxP
30. R to Q3
31. RxR
32. R to Q5
33. Resigns.
25. P to Kt3 {<!)
26. PxP
27. R to Bsq
28. E to Ktsq
29. RxP
30. R to B5ch
81. KtxR
32. Kt to Q3
(n) This and the next lOve constitute the most fashion-
able modem defence. Ti Kt to QB8, on the next move,
would allow Black to pi the Knight, with opportunities
sometimes for P to K6 Irar on, if the White Bishop goes
toQ2.
(6) Probably the bee answer to White's fine move.
There is no time for 8. .. Kt to B3 ; 9. B to Kt 2, Kt to
Q5 ; 10. Kt X B ! As i is, after the exchanges, White
with his two Bishops renins with the better game.
(') An unpleasant ne^asity, unless he likes to give np
the exchange for a Pawi
('/) All this is ingennsly played. White must now
exciiange in order to av 1 the Bishops of opposite coloora.
(' ) A hallucination ; parently he overlooked that after
24. . . RxB, 25. P tclt7, the other Knight's Pawn is
no longer guarded ; or, irhaps, the defence mentioned in
the next note.
(/■) If 25. P to Kt7, x P ; 20. R to Ktsq, R to Kt6 !
('/) 25. . . RxP 8h< Id be fairlv safe here ; if then,
26.' P to B5, R checks 27. K to Ktsq, RxP; 2h. R to
Etsq, B to Esq. The inainder is plain sailing.
KNOWLEDGE, UBLISHED MONTHLY.
Contents of No. 154 (Aug^i .
Cont.
September).
The Petrolpum Industry.- II Bv
Wl.
■■ ,'nr.il Hiitory
(ieoree T. HoUoway. assoc. .s.
I >-i. tker, ».A.,
(loxd.), F.l.c. (JlliMtraUd.)
>M
An Old- World Highland. By -en-
«?:
.'!..:> iu Bird-
ville A. J. Cole, ■f.s.i.i., U.S.
\ W,!. bell.
(nius(ra(«d.)
SelMrriration in Plants.— II. ' the
Eev Alex. S. Wilson, x.a. .sc.
(flluitralcd.)
Celebes : a Problem in Distril ion
The K
tac.-,. - \ . By
H. Stebbing,
(IUiutra(»d.)
r World of Cnu-
be B«T. Tfaomu B.
i.a., r.«.B., r.L.s.
By R. Lrdekker, a.i., f.e.r.
British Ornithological Notes, .'on-
dncted by Hairy F. Wii rbv,
F.Z.8., M.B.O.C.
"Insect Miners." By Frc<l. .'.kV,
F.L.S., F.E.S.. etc. (VXiutrattA
r'. IVnod. By
Notices of Books.
ir:u*trot»<l.)
Letters.
Artificial Faculse. Bj the Bov. ■
East. (Plotf.)
■ • Hy K.
■ ■ .' •■i.'anterbniy
Walter Maander,
Tlie Objective Prism, the F
the Eever.':ing Layer. By h .
t Miners.'
— II. Bt Fr«L
Alexander Goodman More.
How to Photograph through iTr'ly's
Botanical Studies
— \ . A^pleninm.
Eye. By Fred. W. Saxby. Uiu-
By A. ^ nnrhan Jonnii.M, r.l.g..
(rnted.)
r.o.- '
Notes on Comets and Meteor By
Note-
! M.teor». By
W. F. Denning, F.E.i.s.
» .;.
The Face of the Sky for Augui By
The 1
A. Fowler, f.e.a.s.
By
Chess Column. By C. D. Locot b.a.
Che,.- .
II. T/.XWCk, B,A.
PL4TE.— Artificial and NatiU
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N0\-EMBER 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE.
Founded m iSSi by RICKRD A. PROCTOR.
LONDON: NOVE BEB 1, 1898.
CONTEITS.
The Beet-Sugar Industry in Ei land. By Joiin Mills
The Karkinokosm. or World t Crustacea.— VI. By
the Rev. T.-IOMAS U. R. Stbuno, m.a., p.b.s., p.l.s.
(Illustrated) ...
Self-lrrlgatlon In Plants.— III. By the Rer. Alex. S.
AViLsuN, M.A., B.sc. ilUtutrat
Progress in Radiography. By ames Quick
Handicraft in the Laboratory
The New Planet DQ. h\ A. C. D. lOMiiELlv (ZUustrated)
The November Meteors. (Illu ■•led)
Photograph of the Nebulous I gion round W V 37
Cygni. Hy Isaac RoiiEi:f>. u .. i.h.s. {Plate)
Letters :—K. K. Markwick, Col. ; a?. H. Rockwell ...
Science Notes
British Ornithological Notes, .nducted by Habey F.
WiTIIEEBT, E.Z.9., M.B.O.U
An Irish Superstition. By Fba:':s J. Battersbt
Notices of Books
SnoKT Notices ...
Bodes Received
The Smell of Earth. By G. Cl-ke NriTAiL, n.sc. . .
The Hooks on the Mandible o the Honey Bee and
the Gizzard of the Ant. By Waltee WesChl
{Illustrated)
Botanical Studies.— VI. Selaglilla. By A. Vattghan
Jennings. F.L.S., E.G. 3. (Illmtr ed)
Notes on Comets and Meteor; By "W. F. Denning,
F.B.A.S. ... ... ...
The Face of the Sky for Nove ber. By A. Fowlbb,
P.E.A.S.
Chess Column. By C. D. Lococki.a.
PAGB
241
245
247
2.«)
250
252
253
253
254
256
2.5G
257
257
257
259
2.->0
263
263
THE BEET- SUGAR INDUFRY IN ENGLAND.
By John J lls.
AN equal appreciation of 11 parts of knowledge,"
says Humboldt, " is a especial requirement of
the present epoch, in bich the material wealth
and the increasing pronrity of nations are, in a
great measure, based )n a more enlightened
employment of natural products nd forces." This truth,
uttered half a century ago, is s 1 applicable to our own
times, in face of the many ini vations which scientific
men have introduced into eveilay life. Obviously, if
large areas of land in England ■ re devoted to sugar-beet,
in the locaUties most suitable, a to chmate and other cir-
cumstances, for its growth, and ictories were established
for the manufacture of sugar om it, there would be
greatly increased employment f the population. With
regard to the suitability of the c nate of the British Isles
for the growth of beetroot in afficient quantity, and, at
the same time, of adequate richn s in sugar, Mr. Sigmund
Stein says : " The sugar contained in tho'
beetroot is not only equal to, but even surpas
tained in the beetroot grown on the continentj
Referring to the beet-sugar industry of Frano
States Consul at Havre said, in a report
" the crop pays the farmer better than wheaS
agricultural product." England is often acoi
the only European State which is blind to itfl (
and certainly the sanguine supporters of th
initiating a British sugar-beet industry are ]
statistics and other evidence which, on the i
rate, seem to indicate that we are, in this
the curse which ever clings'.to those who stan|
other nations are thriving on a con
production of beetroot, England iq sta
in the lap of luxury. Some idea of tlj
may be gleaned by an inspection of tlj_
of results from the olVicial statistics ro
and France : —
GKEMA>r/.
Number
Area
Produce
E...
of
of Boots
snl.ii.:
' ■ w
Sugar
Sugar-
per
to Manu.
rr..a
Factories.
beet.
Acre.
facture.
Acres.
Tons.
Tons.
Toil
1890.1
401
824,825
130
10,623,319
1891-2
406
881,581
11-4
9.488,002
'-''-at
189-2-a
403
889,829
11-3
I.-IBL
ISti-l
401
9M,99S
111
lS9t.S
405
1,090,801
133
14,.i21,029
ISO.i-fi
397
930,-40
12-5
lS9li-7
399
1,049,881
13-0
13,721.1)01
Mwu.
—
(12-1)
1890-1
377
.147,808
11-8
6,499,906
1891-2
368
.551,955
10-2
18S12-3
368
528,156
10-3
5,472,891
1893-1
370
54:i.fi4S
. 9-0
18845
367
596,806
120
7,137,736
1895-6
356
505,858
107
' ''.OOQ^I
1896-7
358
608,370
11-1
. l-.H-J^fc
Mean
-
-
i:-2
-
"^ 1
It will be noted that in Germany over a nulli
were in cultivation in 1891-5, yielding an ave
13-3 tons of beetroot per acre, the mean produi
the seven years given being about twelve tons per ,
while the raw sugar obtained therefrom amounted
twelve per cent. The results relating to France indica'
a poorer yield of roots, and a lower percentage of sugar,
and while the factories in Germany remain practica""
constant there is a gradual reduction in their number
France. Now let us glance at the results of sugar-be
grown at Rothamsted, as set forth in the accompanying
table, showing the quantity of the produce of sugar-beet
per acre, with different descriptions and varying amounts
of manure : —
Series 1.
Standard
manures
ouly.
Standard Manures and Cross-dressings
each Tear as under.
St.imlard Manures.
series 2.
5501b.
nitrate
of soda
= 8i>lb.
nitrogen.
, Series 4.
Scries 3. ' 400 lb.
4901b. , salts of
salts of : ammonia
ammonia & 20001b.
^= 86 lb. rape-cake
nitrogen. 1 = 184 lb.
nitrogen.
Series 5.
2OO0 lb.
rape-cake
= 98 lb.
nitrogen.
14 tous farmyard mannre
tons cwt.
16 6.
tons cwt.
•23 16
tons cwt, tous cwt.
23 6 25 2
tons cwt.
34 18
Superphospbatfc
Superphosphate and "^
potash >
5 18
5 18
19 11
18 17
13 9 17 15
.14 19 22 3
16 5
17 17
Proceeding from left to right it should be observed that,
242
KNOWLEDGE.
[NoTOMBEB 1, 1898.
as indicated in the first column, farmyard manure alone
gave an average of sixteen tons six hundredweight of roots ;
and the amount was raised to twenty-three tons sixteen
hundredweight by the addition of five hundred and fifty
pounds of nitrate of soda ; to twenty-two tons six hundred-
weight by four hundred pounds of salts of ammonia ; to
twenty-four tons eighteen hundredweight by two thousand
pounds of rape cake ; and to twenty-five tons two hundred-
weight by rape cake and salts of ammonia together. Thus
it is clear that by artificial means, as regards quantity, acre
for acre, our own farmers could produce double the amount
that either France or Germany have done in the past.
When we point out that the crops at Kotbamsted were not
grown with the purpose of using them in sugar-making,
the remarkable results given will appear still more worthy
of attention to those who hope to make the sugar industry
in England a means of resuscitating agricultural prosperity.
For direct application to practice in the growth of the crop
for sugar-making the amount of nitrogenous manures
used were too large, and the distances apart from plant to
plant were too great — conditions leading to over-luxuriance,
and to imperfect maturing of the individual plants. In
the face of all this it seems strange that the immense
quantity of sugar consumed in the British Isles should
reach us from abroad. Here are some figures relating to
sugar-producing colonies : —
1891.
1892.
1893.
1894.
cwts.
cwts.
cwts.
cwts.
Barbados
99t,960
1,186,960
1,336,160
1,3(M,(>«)
British Guiana
2,339,360
2,257,600
2,153,4-20
2,050,040
British Honduras
3,696
1,759
1,810
83 lbs.
Fiji ,
409,412
377,666
307,789
545,307
Jamaica
304,918
452,889
396,270
453,886
I-eeward Islands—
Antigua
241,820
306,040
291,240
304,840
Dominica
32,720
44,300
29,480
24,400
Montserrat
20,620
50,000
23,210
33,880
St. Kitts— Nevis
257.810
357,380
340,840
337,920
Vii'^n Islands
11 ii
160
80
60
Mauritius
2,44!i,734
1,831,176
1,693,020
2,723,057
Natal
52,272
210.769
240,713
265,680
Queensland
647,620
&«),380
1,102,520
1,349,020
Trinidad
907,160
987,340
903,040
937,380
Windward Islands-
Grenada
1,440
170
1.170
2,031
Rt. Lucia
70,762
114,928
88,746
89,698
St. Vincent
80,280
62,700
58,460
48,940
The value of sugar-beet roots depends not alone on the
percentage of sugar they contain, but also on what is called
the " co-efiicient of purity " of the juice. If the percentage
of dry matter in the juice were found to be sixteen, and
that of the sugar twelve, as indicated by the polariscope,
then the sugar would represent three-quarters, or seventy-
five per cent., of the dry substance. In the following
table is given Dr. Carl Stammer's data, in English terms,
as to the value per ton of roots of the different percentages
of sugar as shown at the head of the columns, each at the
six different degrees of purity of juice.
Sugar in the
Roots.
Quotient
of
Purity.
100 per
110 per
120 per
13-0 per
14-0 per
15-0 per
160 per
cent.
cent.
cent.
cent.
cent.
cent.
cent.
s. d.
B. d.
s. d.
s. d.
fi. d.
s. d.
s. d.
70
11 11
13 0
14 2
15 5
16 7
17 9
19 0
75
12 8
13 10
15 3
16 5
17 9
19 0
20 4
80
13 6
15 0
16 3
17 7
19 0
20 4
21 8
85
14 6
15 9
17 3
18 6
20 2
21 6
Zi 1
SO
15 S
16 9
18 3 -
19 10
21 4
22 11
24 5
95
16 1
17 7
19 4 "
20 10
22 7
24 1
25 8
And so the lesson to be learnt from this table is, How
great may be the difference in the value of the roots
according to their composition !
Here is a table by M. Georges, showing the value per
ton of roots for each percentage of sugar in the roots from
thirteen down to seven : —
A noticeable point in this table is the small proportion
of the total sugar in the roots that is obtained in the
manufacture; the amount being only 65-6 per cent.,
with thirteen per cent, of sugar in the roots, and as
little as 5 5 -.5 per cent., with only seven per cent, in the
roots.
One of the vital questions to consider in forming a
judgment as to whether success would attend an extended
growth of sugar-beet, and the establishment of factories
for the manufacture of sugar in this country is, at what
price of sugar is it probable that such an enterprise would
he profitable ? Mr. Stein estimates that four hundred
factories, each costing about fifty thousand pounds, would
supply all the sugar required for consumption in the British
Isles. Going into more detail he says : " A sugar factory
working forty thousand tons of roots, the crop of, say, three
thousand acres, would produce about five thousand (five
thousand two hundred) tons of sugar, and would cost to
erect about sixty thousand pounds." Giving a summary
balance sheet, he reckons there would be a profit of
over six per cent, on the sixty thousand pounds capital,
if the price of sugar were nine pounds per ton, of
fourteen and thi-ee-quarters per cent, if ten pounds, of
23-1 per cent, if eleven pounds, and of thirty-two per
cent, if twelve pounds per ton. The same authority
reckons the cost per acre of growing sugar-beet at ten
pounds, in return for which he will be able to turn out
fifteen tons of roots at eighteen shillings per ton delivered
to the factory, the roots themselves being estimated to
produce 13-3 per cent, of sugar at a cost price of nine
pounds per ton.
In any undertaking of this kind, a serious warning is
afforded by the fate of Mr. James Duncan, who attempted
this branch of industry between the years 1869 and 1873,
at Lavenham, in Suffolk. It is said that with a require-
ment of at least thirty thousand tons of roots to work his
factory profitably, Mr. Duncan finally could only obtain
about seven thousand tons, due probably to the farmers
not sufficiently modifying their rotations to secure an
adequate supply of roots. Sir .John Lawes and Sir Henry
Gilbert point out that it would require about six thousand
acres, or more, according to the rotation adopted, to ensure
the necessary supply to the factory lu Mr. Stein's scheme,
and " certainly not a step should be taken towards the
establishment of a factory until the necessary supply of
roots had been assured." Also for climatic and other
reasons these observers think that, so far as the production
of the roots is concerned, it could only be a success over
limited areas, not Great Britain generally. Great caution
should be exercised in the choice of the localities, Norfolk
and Suffolk, it is alleged, having the most suitable climate,
and the soils should be of a medium character — neither too
heavy nor too light.
* A Pamplilet — " The Growth of Sugar Beet and the Manufacture
of Sugar in the United Kingdom."
November 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE
243
THE KARKINOKOSM, OR WORLD OF
CRUSTACEA.-VI.
By the Rev. Thomas R. R. Stebbing, m.a., f.r.s., f.l.s.
IN the preceding chapter the Cope'poda were spoken of
as a resourceful group. No stories of preternatural
ingenuity on the part of individuals can be told in
support of this character. Seeing that they must
be welcome and easily obtainable food to almost
every kind of aquatic animal, and that they are massacred
wholesale to fill the maw alike of sardine and cetacean, no
humane person could wish them to be very highly endowed
with sense and sensibility. But their individual helpless-
ness is pretty solidly compensated by qualities which safe-
guard the existence of the community. They share with
many other animals, higher and lower, larger and smaller
than themselves, a surprising fecundity. But they are not
content with this sort of mildly domestic defence against
extinction. They turn upon their devourers. They take
up their lodgings in the enemy's camp. They infest his
skin. They invade his eyes and his very mouth. They
enter joyfully into the spirit of Samson's riddle, " out of
the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came
forth sweetness." They avenge the wrongs of their
ancestors and their cousins by sucking the blood of almost
every fish that swims.
In correspondence with the extraordinary variety of their
dwelling-places, the parasitic and semi-parasitic Copepoda
present a marvellously varied array of forms, ranging from
those which nearly or altogether resemble the independent
species, through countless gr^.rlations, to the eccentric, the
Sphi/rion lavigatum (Quoy and Graimard). M.A.S.
abnormal, the shapeless, the unrecognizable. The recog-
nition of the unrecognizable may sound mysterious. The
key to the mystery is this, that of father, mother, and
children, it is usually only the mother that is absolutely
self-sacrificing in her indifference to any thought of personal
vanity when the welfare of the race is concerned. In
return for this it is the mother that chiefly attracts the
attention of science by quaint peculiarities of form. The
mother, too, is distinguished by her respectable propor-
tions, being in some instances no less than thirteen times
as long as her diminutive husband.
According to the Danish writers, Steenstrup and
Liitken, the mode in which the eggs are carried furnishes
a useful classificatory character. There is one series of
genera in which the two egg-sacks are filiform, thread-like,
and the eggs in each are flattened and packed one over the
other like a long roll of minute coins. In the other series
the egg-sacks are much more sack-like, the eggs are more
or less globular, and, though the packing is always as neat
as possible, it is not limited to a single line.
Among the tree-living Copepoda, the Gymnoplea (noticed
in the preceding chapter) as a rule do without an egg-sack
or are content with only one, while the Podoplea, to which
the parasitic forms may be affiliated, generally have a pair
of these so-called sacks. The semi-parasites of the
family Notodelphyidse present a curious exception. There
is here no external ovisac, the ova being matured in a
pouch formed by the integument of the enlarged fourth
segment of the thorax. ^ Sometimes, it should be added,
the fifth segment of the trunk is utilized for this purpose.
These animals, which, as the family name implies, have the
matrix on the back, are found unattached and moving freely
about in the branchial vesicles
or body cavities of Ascidians.
for this reason one of the
genera has been named Ami-
dii-nhi. The Ascidians are an
accommodating set of crea-
tures. They take in lodgers
of many kinds, and especially
they are an important hunting
ground for those in search of
Copepoda. Even species
capable of living in freedom,
and carrying free ovisacs, are
not unfrequently found in
Ascidians. They also shelter
the Enteropsidfe, which are
not free living, but yet have
free ovisacs. Dr. C. Auri-
villius, who established the
family, found that in every
case the full-grown mother of
his Entfro]isis splii)i.r was,
along with its egg-bags, en-
capsuled, as it were, in folds
of the branchial sack of the
Ascidian. Thus the eggs are
protected by the host itself,
just as well as they are in
Xotoihlphi/s by transfer to the
mother's back. As Aurivillius
points out, this is but onemore
instance of Nature's inventive
genius applying to a single
purpose manifold means.
Enterucola cnica, Norman,
actually condescends to live
in an Ascidian's intestine,
which seems to be carrying condescension rather far, and
to be beneath the dignity of a crustacean. But odd
things happen in the competition for a livelihood. Other
species live in Mollusca. One, which abides in the
common cockle, is specifically known as "agile," though
* a. S. Brady, " British Copepoda," Vol. I., p. 123.
Ifotodelphys agilin, Thorell.
from Brady.
244
KNOWLEDGE
[NOVEMBEB 1, 1898.
JJomanoHcola insolens. from A. Scott.
the sphere of its activity is so limited." Another, I which
is at home with the horse mussel, is said to have both body
and ovisacs coloured of a brilliant red, thus pleasingly
harmonizing with the orange-coloured body of its red-
footed host, like a polite lady choosing her costume to
match the furniture of a friend. A species described by
Messrs. T. and A. Scott as residing in a nudibranch mollusc
is branded by them with the specific name of insolens.. It
certainly takes liberties with its host far beyond those
which the
commensal and
semi -parasitic
forms allow
themselves. In
this case the
authors tell us
that they found
the parasite
' ' entirely
buried in the
body of the
mollusc, with
the exception of
the last abdo-
minal segment
and the ovi-
sacs." Even
when it was dug
out,noantennii>
or mou th -
organs could be
discerned. The
clasping organs
of the embedded trunk are shown by the figure to be of a
quite unexceptionable tenacity, as little likely to let go
when once fixed as the teeth of any bulldog. Echinoderms,
annelids, sea-feathers and various other zoophytes, give
lodgings to the Copi'poda. The latter also readily take up
with other crustaceans, not on any terms of friendship, but
merely to suit their own convenience. One species lives
with a hermit crab, and is difficult to capture from the
wiliness with which it conceals itself within or underneath
the shell occupied by the hermit.
One of the most frequently described species is the little
Nirotho'e nstaci, Milne-Edwards and Audouin, so commonly
found on the gills of the common lobster. This, when
magnified, is seen to have the ordinary Cv<7o/i.s-like form,
only disguised at first glance by the enormous pair of
lateral expansions at the fourth segment of the trunk. Its
residence makes it more accessible to an inland observer
than most of the marvels in this branch of study. Its size
alone should endear it to the possessor of a good microscope.
Within a total length of two or three millimetres he will
find a series of appendages almost in all respects comparable
with those of the large fish-parasites presently to be
described. But while all this regular apparatus needs skill
and care and a good instrument for making out its details,
the most remarkable features of the animal are tolerably
plain even to unaided vision. Attached to the front
segment of the tail part are two relatively enormous baos
of eggs. It is with these that the monstrous lateral ex-
pansions of the trunk are deeply and doubly concerned.
Not only do they form a protecting arch over the ovisacs,
but it is from them that the rosy eggs as well as the bags
that contain them are derived. Inside each of the great
* Lichomolgus agilU T. Scott.
+ Modiolicola insignis, Auririllius.
X Lomanoticola imolens, T. and A. Scott
cylindrical outgrowths can be seen a faintly rose-ooloan
structure, which is the ovary, and below this a wbitii
gland, the source of the cement which forms the ovisa
The great carcinologists, Henri Milne- Edwards. Hem
Kroyer, and Heinrich Rathke, have all studied wi.
admiring care this minute but remarkable organism.
Far more diilicult to find and diflicnlt to examine are U
Choniostomatidx, which like Xlroilmr are parasitic .
Malacostracan crnstacea. Their name signifies that tb'
have a funnel-shaped mouth.
Eyes they need not. With
antennnc they are provided,
though the second pair is
sometimes missing. They
have mandibles, two pairs of /
maxilliP, and one of maxilli
peds. In the matter of
trunk-legs Nature has here
been thrifty, giving them ir
some instances none at all
in others two piiirs witli
occasional indication of a
third. The body shows no
segmentation. Trunk and .Vi™/
tail - part are compounded
into a sort of globular
mass, from which even the head
cisely distinguished. Therr -ro
capable of laying as m i ■
and of becoming a thn .a e
spouses. The female i,.i- .. i> -,.^w.-. ,a m r
known to be fully a quarter of an incn long. an<I in spe «
that are not gigantic, csm dwin<lle to about a twenty-) h
part of an inch. \Vhen such creatures have to be loc d
for in the branchial cavities of smiiU (umacea, or am g
the eggs of Amjihipoda, the patience and discemmei if
the naturalist are put to a high tc-^t. and the chief i-
couragement to a beginner for tackling the ('ho )-
stomatidir lies in the luminous English work on the sul 3t
by the Danish writer, H. .h Han«<>n. S->m«> idna of »
general form and the compar i ' ' ' ^ i le
may be gathered from the - .< :h
they do not pretend to rii.r. : f u
ori
•od .\udoiuii.
aot always very \ i-
"T»!e? in thi? fan y
Sphttronella rUgantula, HMftn. A. Fcin»lo. x 27 ; », Male, -'"
c, Another m»lc, x I43. Fn>ni Huuen.
Lest the reader should feel bis imagination crtmpc by
too long dealing with objects inordinately small, he »J
now be invited to explore a larger field, and. for lat
purpose, to provide himself with a few freshly-ca^l
sturgeon, thunnies, sharks, sword-fishes, conger eels, in-
fishes, and fishing frogs. Of the eo-called fish-lioethe
NOVEMDER 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE.
245
Califfus torpedinis.
From Holler.
majority of which are Copi'poda in disguise, some attain
to relatively large dimensions. Many of them are per-
fectly symmetrical, differing from the free-living types
most obviously by the flattened body with its diverse flaps
and skirt-like expansions, and by the suctorial month
which gives to the whole group its title Siphonostoma.
'Others carry bizarre monstrosity to such an excess that all
typical shape and structure are blurred or lost in a kind of
travesty and caricature.
I'or study, the species Cidi'jm curtus
(Miiller), common on the cod, and
Lejieoplulieiius sulmonis, Kroyer, from
the salmon, may be commended because
they are easily attainable. Viewed from
above they show two principal sections
separated by a more or less wasp- like
waist. The upper section is the cephalo-
thorax with three of the trunk segments
in coalescence. Behind this is the free
fourth trunk-ring, followed by the lower
section, which consists of the large
genital segment, the terminal segment,
and the usual setiferous caudal fork.
On the back of the cephalo-thorax are
two minute eyes, and at its top the
first antennas. Underneath will be
found the second antenna', hook-like.
There are supplementary hooks on
either side of the mouth, which is
made up of the two lips and the
nandibles, and goes by the name of rostrum or siphon.
Outside it are a pair of " palps." Then follow two
jairs of maxilLu and a horny "furcula." The three
runk-segments have three pau-s of swimming legs to
jorrespond, the broad flap-like expansions at the base of
he third pair being especially conspicuous. The fourth
legment has a slender pair of legs. To the genital aeg-
nent in the female are attached the long pair of egg-
itrings. Between the two genera above-mentioned there
3 a distinction easily perceived. In the Cali<iii.s only will
)e found a pair of sucker-disks, which from their brightness
,nd their position on the front margin were not un-
laturally at one time supposed to be the creature's eyes.
Such forms as the above can fix
themselves with tenacity ; can move
over their hosts with freedom ;
and can swim with vigour in the open
water. Under these circumstances, a
fish, having no hands, is deplorably
incompetent to decline or to dislodge
his unbidden and unwelcome guests.
Specimens of several genera batten on
the unwieldy sunfish. The parasite of
the sturgeon, Pu-liile^tiwii .stuiionis,
Hermann, is much segmented, and
has no leaf-like expansions. With it,
in the first respect, may be contrasted
the Straiiax iiwnstrosus of Nordmann,
which, in the female, has no segmen-
tation at all. ('hoiiilriiranthus honidus,
Heller, which resides in the Mediter-
ranean on Goltius joizo, 15 symmetrical,
if nothing else. On the other hand,
Diocm f/obinus (Fabricius) is so far
from pretending to symmetry that, but
for the long twisted egg-sacks, it might
■2:rF™orHeS:;: be supposed to be only a piece of pro-
toplasm dancing the Can-can.
As in all other parts of the subject, so here, only a
V
Chondrdcanihus hor-
selection has been possible of a very few out of many
competing topics of interest. Of the parasitic Copcpoda a
great number are known, but
probably a vast number remain
to be discovered, the chances
being that almost every new
fish, if properly examined,
would yield a new parasite.
It will not, perhaps, be easy to
discover a more singular form
than the Splii/rion lavujatum
of Quoy and Gaimard, which
has been taken from time to
time in the Southern Hemi-
sphere. In the earlier half of
this century so little was
known of its real character
that, so lately as 1843, it was
mixed up in a heterogeneous
group of " zoophytes " with
echinoderms and worms and
polyps and infusoria. It is now known to be one of those
"oar-footed" crustaceans which have neither oars nor feet,
and which live with their muzzles buried in their favourite
fishes. This epicurean existence seems to favour eccentricity
of structure, and for those who desire the grotesque and
the unfamiliar there may still be as good parasites in the
sea as ever came out of it.
Diocus gohinu-1 (Fabricius).
From Stecnstrup and Liitken.
SELF-IRRIGATION IN PLANTS.-III.
By the Rev. Alex. S. Wilson, m.a., b.sc.
RAIN in its passage through the air dissolves small
quantities of ammonia, nitric acid, and other
substances, and this is no doubt an additional
gain to plants which collect and accumulate rain-
water in proximity to their roots and other parts
where absorption occurs. The water that gathers in leaf-
cnps especially is likely to contain materials useful to
plants, since it is often quite brown with the remains of
insects that have fallen in and been drowned.
To creeping ants and beetles water presents an impas-
sable barrier. For this reason, when a gardener wishes to
protect a plant from their attacks he puts it on the top of
an inverted fiower-pot and places this in the middle of a
fiat dish containing water, where it stands, as it were, on
an island inaccessible to the ants, many of which perish in
their inefi'ectual attempts to reach it. Similarly, the water
in the leaf-cups of the teasle surrounds and isolates the
stem ; the leaves and flowers are protected as by a moat
from the attacks of creeping insects.
Although such protection is perhaps their original use,
leaf-cups in many instances appaar to have assumed an
additional function. Mr. F. Darwin has observed that
certain hairs in the leaf-cups of the teasle emit proto-
plasmic threads into the water ; this also occurs in the
case of Silphium. As filaments exactly similar are emitted
from certain cells in the little traps of the toothwort, now
regarded as a carnivorous plant, there can be little doubt
that leaf-cups serve to some extent like the pitchers of
Nepenthes and Sarracenia for capturing insects, and that
they consequently furnish the plant with an important
source of nitrogen. This view is confirmed by the frequent
presence of putrefactive bacteria in the water of leaf-cups.
It has been found that when a drop of water containing
carbonate of ammonia in solution is placed on a leaf, after
a time both water and salt disappear. Leaves as well as
roots therefore take up ammonia, and this explains why
244
KNOWLEDGE
[November 1, 1898.
Lomanoiicola insolens. From A. Scott.
the sphere of its activity is so limited.* Another,! which
is at home with the horse mussel, is said to have both body
and ovisacs coloured of a brilliant red, thus pleasingly
harmonizing with the orange-coloured body of its red-
footed host, like a polite lady choosing her costume to
match the furniture of a friend. A species described by
Messrs. T. and A. Scott as residing in a nudibranch mollusc
is branded by them with the specific name of insulens. ] It
certainly takes liberties with its host far beyond those
which the
commensal and
semi - parasitic
forms allow
themselves. In
this case the
authors tell us
that they found
the parasite
' ' entirely
buried in the
body of the
mollusc, with
the exception of
the last abdo-
minal segment
and the ovi-
sacs." Even
when it was dug
out.noantennffi
or mouth-
organs could be
discerned. The
clasping organs
of the embedded trunk are shown by the figure to be of a
quite unexceptionable tenacity, as little likely to let go
when once fixed as the teeth of any bulldog. Echinoderms,
annelids, sea-feathers and various other zoophytes, give
lodgings to the Coprpoda. The latter also readily take up
with other crustaceans, not on any terms of friendship, but
merely to suit their own convenience. One species lives
with a hermit crab, and is difficult to capture from the
wiliness with which it conceals itself within or underneath
the shell occupied by the hermit.
One of the most frequently described species is the little
Nicotho'e (istaci, Milne-Edwards and Audouin, so commonly
found on the gills of the common lobster. This, when
magnified, is seen to have the ordinary Ci/< /oyw-like form,
only disguised at first glance by the enormous pair of
lateral expansions at the fourth segment of the trunk. Its
residence makes it more accessible to an inland observer
than most of the marvels in this branch of study. Its size
alone should endear it to the possessor of a good microscope.
Within a total length of two or three millimetres he will
find a series of appendages almost in all respects comparable
with those of the large fish-parasites presently to be
described. But while all this regular apparatus needs skill
and care and a good instrument for making out its details,
the most remarkable features of the animal are tolerably
plain even to unaided vision. Attached to the front
segment of the tail-part are two relatively enormous bags
of eggs. It is with these that the monstrous lateral ex-
pansions of the trunk are deeply and doubly concerned.
Not only do they form a protecting arch over the ovisacs,
but it is from them that the rosy eggs as well as the bags
that contain them are derived. Inside each of the great
* Lichomolgus agilis T. Scott.
+ Modiolicola insignis, Aurivillius.
X Lomanoiicola insolens, T. and A. Scott.
cylindrical outgrowths can be seen a faintly rose-coloured
structure, which is the ovary, and below this a whitish
gland, the source of the cement which forms the ovisac.
The great carcinologists, Henri Milne-Edwards, Henrik
Kripyer, and Heinrich Rathke, have all studied with
admiring care this minute but remarkable organism.
Far more difficult to find and difficult to examine are the
Choniostomatidft', which like KicoOidi' are parasitic on
Malacostracan Crustacea. Their name signifies that they
have a funnel-shaped mouth.
Eyes they need not. With
antennse they are provided,
though the second pair is
sometimes missing. They
have mandibles, two pairs of
maxilliE, and one of maxilli-
peds. In the matter of
trunk-legs Nature has here
been thrifty, giving them in
some instances none at all,
in others two pairs with
occasional indication of a
third. The body shows no
segmentation. Trunk and yicothoc
tail - part are compounded
into a sort of globular
mass, from which even the head is not always very pre-
cisely distinguished. There are females in this family
capable of laying as many as twenty-eight packets of eggs,
and of befoming a thousand times as big as their amiable
spouses. The female herself, in giant species, is never
known to be fally a quarter of an inch long, and in species
that are not gigantic, can dwindle to about a twenty-fifth
part of an inch. When such creatures have to be looked
for in the branchial cavities of small C'amacea, or among
the eggs of Amphipoda, the patience and discernment of
the naturalist are put to a high test, and the chief en-
couragement to a beginner for tackling the Chonio-
stomatida; lies in the luminous English work on the subject
by the Danish writer, H. .T. Hansen. Some idea of the
general form and the comparative sizes of male and female
may be gathered from the subjoined illustrations, though
they do not pretend to reproduce the delicate finish of the
originals.
aslaci, Milne-Edwards
and Audouin.
Sphieronclhi eleganiula, Hansen. A. Female, x 27 ; B, Male, x 27 ;
c, Another male, x 143. From Hansen.
Lest the reader should feel his imagination cramped by
too long dealing with objects inordinately small, he may
now be invited to explore a larger field, and, for that
purpose, to provide himself with a few freshly-caught
sturgeon, thunnies, sharks, sword-fishes, conger eels, sun-
fishes, and fishing frogs. Of the so-called fish-lice, the
November 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE.
245
Caligus torpedinis.
From Hi-Uer.
majority of which are Copi'poda in disguise, some attain
to relatively large dimensions. Many of them are per-
fectly symmetrical, difl'ering from the free-living types
most obviously by the flattened body with its diverse flaps
and skirt-like expansions, and by the suctorial mouth
which gives to the whole group its title Siphonostoma.
Others carry bizarre monstrosity to such an excess that all
typical shape and structure arc blurred or lost in a kind of
travesty and caricature.
I'or study, the species Caliiim curtits
(Miiller), common on the cod, and
Lrpfiiphtlifiim siihiwnis, Kroyer, from
the salmon, may be commended because
they are easily attainable. Viewed from
above they show two principal sections
separated by a more or less wasp-like
waist. The upper section is the cephalo-
thorax with three of the trunk segments
in coalescence. Behind this is the free
fourth trunk-ring, followed by the lower
section, which consists of the large
genital segment, the terminal segment,
and the usual setiferous caudal fork.
On the back of the cephalo-thorax are
two minute eyes, and at its top the
first antenna;. Underneath will be
found the second antenn:c, hook-like.
There are supplementary hooks on
either side of the mouth, which is
made up of the two lips and the
mandibles, and goes by the name of rostrum or siphon.
Outside it are a pair of " palps." Then follow two
pairs of maxillte and a horny " furcula." The three
trunk-segments have three pairs of swimming legs to
correspond, the broad flap-like expansions at the base of
the third pair being especially conspicuous. The fourth
segment has a slender pair of legs. To the genital seg-
ment in the female are attached the long pair of egg-
strings. Between the two genera above-mentioned there
is a distinction easily perceived. In the Calii/us only will
be found a pair of sucker-disks, which from their brightness
and their position on the front margin were not un-
naturally at one time supposed to be the creature's eyes.
Such forms as the above can fix
themselves with tenacity ; can move
over their hosts with freedom ;
and can swim with vigour in the open
water. Under these circumstances, a
fish, having no hands, is deplorably
incompetent to decline or to dislodge
his unbidden and unwelcome guests.
Specimens of several genera batten on
the unwieldy sunfish. The parasite of
the sturgeon, Dichclestium aturionis,
Hermann, is much segmented, and
has no leaf-like expansions. With it,
in the first respect, may be contrasted
the Stiiilia.v inonstrosus of Nordmann,
which, in the female, has no segmen-
tation at all. ' hoiiilracantlius horridus,
Heller, which resides in the Mediter-
ranean on Goiiiujoijzo, ia symmetrical,
if nothing else. On the other hand,
f Hocus (/ohinus (Fabricius) is so far
from pretending to symmetry that, but
for the long twisted egg-sacks, it might
Tid«s. From HeUer. ^6 supposed to be only a piece of pro-
toplasm dancing the Can-can.
As in all other parts of the subject, so here, only a
Chondracanthus hor-
selection has been possible of a very few out of many
competing topics of interest. Of the parasitic Copepoda a
great number are known, but
probably a vast number remain
to be discovered, the chances
being that almost every new
fish, if properly examined,
would yield a new parasite.
It will not, perhaps, be easy to
discover a more singular form
than the Spln/rion lavifjatum
of Quoy and Gaimard, which
has been taken from time to
time in the Southern Hemi-
sphere. In the earlier half of
this century so little was
known of its real character
that, so lately as 1813, it was
mixed up in a heterogeneous
group of " zoophytes " with
echinoderms and worms and
polyps and infusoria. It is now known to be one of those
"oar-footed" crustaceans which have neither oars nor feet,
and which live with their muzzles buried in their favourite
fishes. This epicurean existence seems to favour eccentricity
of structure, and for those who desire the grotesque and
the unfamiliar there may still be as good parasites in the
sea as ever came out of it.
Dioeus gobiiius (Fabricius).
From Steenstrup and Liilken.
SELF-IRRIGATION IN PLANTS.-III.
By the Rev. Alex. S. Wilson, m.a., b.sc
RAIN in its passage through the air dissolves small
quantities of ammonia, nitric acid, and other
substances, and this is no doubt an additional
gain to plants which collect and accumulate rain-
water in proximity to their roots and other parts
where absorption occurs. The water that gathers in leaf-
cups especially is likely to contain materials useful to
plants, since it is often quite brown with the remains of
insects that have fallen in and been drowned.
To creeping ants and beetles water presents an impas-
sable barrier. For this reason, when a gardener wishes to
protect a plant from their attacks he puts it on the top of
an inverted flower-pot and places this in the middle of a
flat dish containing water, where it stands, as it were, on
an island inaccessible to the auta, many of which perish in
their ineflectual attempts to reach it. Similarly, the water
in the leaf-cups of the teasle surrounds and isolates the
stem ; the leaves and flowers are protected as by a moat
from the attacks of creeping insects.
Although such protection is perhaps their original use,
leaf-cups in many instances appear to have assumed an
additional function, ilr. F. Darwin has observed that
certain hairs in the leaf-cups of the teasle emit proto-
plasmic threads into the water ; this also occurs in the
case of Silphium. As filaments exactly similar are emitted
from certain cells in the little traps of the toothwort, now
regarded as a carnivorous plant, there can be little doubt
that leaf-cups serve to some extent like the pitchers of
Nepenthes and Sarracenia for capturing insects, and that
they consequently furnish the plant with an important
source of nitrogen. This view is confirmed by the frequent
presence of putrefactive bacteria in the water of leaf-cups.
It has been found that when a drop of water containing
carbonate of ammonia in solution is placed on a leaf, after
a time both water and salt disappear. Leaves as well as
roots therefore take up ammonia, and this explains why
246
KNOWLEDGE
[No\-EMBER 1, 1898.
Fig. 1. — Rotifer iuliabiting the hood
of a Scale-Moss. (After Keruer.)
plants which have no true power of digestion are yet bene-
fitted by capturing insects ; from the decomposing bodies
of their victims products are evolved which the plants are
able to assimilate.
The water-vessels of the Bromelias and allied epiphytes,
which often contain half a pint or more of water, are
particularly interesting. The hollow leaf-base in some
of this group of plants is a veritable aquarium. The water
which accumulates in these curious receptacles Fritz
Miiller found to be inhabited by caddis-fiies, entomo-
stracans, and aquatic
beetles belonging to
species not occurring
elsewhere. A small frog
even takes up its abode
among the bromelian
leaves. Species of Utri-
cularia also occur — small
aquatic plants which cap-
ture in their curious little
bladders the tiny crusta-
ceans inhabiting the
water in the bromelia
leaves where they grow !
r. nelumhifolia in this
way grows in the leaves
of Tillandsias, which are
themselves epiphytes on the branches of other plants.
The term symbiosis is applied to those curious relation-
ships in which we find two organisms of different kinds
living together in partnership for mutual benefit and
protection. A remarkable example of such symbiotic
association is afforded by certain rotifers which take up
their abode in the pitcher-like leaflets of some Junger-
mannias. One of these liverworts {Fndlania dilattita)
growing on the bark of species of Acer has hollow
appendages of this description in which the water is
retained by capillary attraction. In each of these pitchers
a rotifer (Callidina symbiotu-a) takes up its quarters, finding
in this retreat food and shelter. The association in all
probability is one of mutual advantage ; the rotifer is
supposed to make a return to the plant for its entertain-
ment in the shape of excrementitious products.
The case of these liverworts and rotifers is particularly
interesting in connection with some recent observations
made by the writer. In making sections of the chickweed
stem to examine the origin of the lateral rootlets referred
to in the preceding article, it was noticed that there
frequently appeared on the slide specimens of the slipper-
animalcule, ParamcBcium, for whose presence it was
difficult to account. So frequently did this infusorian
put in an appearance that at last the idea suggested itself
of its being a regular inhabitant of the water that gathers
in the leaf axils of the chickweed. The examination of a
number of specimens left little doubt as to the fact of this
organism as well as several others frequenting the leaf
axils of the plant in question. On submitting water from
the leaves of a number of other plants it became apparent
that leaf axils are rather favourite resorts for the minuter
forms of life. Rotifers or wheel-animalcules, infusorians,
monads, desmids, diatoms, micrococci and bacteria are of
common occurrence. Paramfficium appeared to be rather
characteristic of the chickweed, but was also present in the
leaves of the sow thistle. In the leaves of the latter we
also found that beautiful, lUy-like infusorian the bell-
animalcule, Vorticella cyathnia. Rotifer vulgaris occurs
more or less frequently in the axils of the self-heal and
ox-eye daisy. In none of the leaves examined could ento-
mostracans be detected, although Cypris and other
copeopods abounded in pools close to where the plants
grew. The absence of the latter may be due to their size,
entomostracans being very much larger than rotifers.
Although most of these organisms are to be found in all
sorts of places where rain-water collects, their abundance
in the tiny droplets that lurk in the leaf-axils of the plants
just mentioned affords an interesting illustration of how
Nature crowds her canvas, striving to utilize every nook
and cranny that offers to living things the least coign of
vantage.
Infusorians and rotifers, as is well-known, may be dried
and reduced to powder without losing their vitaUty. After
they have lain dormant for months the addition of a little
water at once recalls them to life and activity. It is,
therefore, in the highest degree probable that in their
desiccated state they get blown along with dust into the
axils of the leaves, and are revived by the water that
trickles down into their resting places after a shower.
Still, in the case of the rotifers, at least, there is another
possibility. The wheel-animalcules are exceedingly active
little creatures. Their mode of progression somewhat
resembles that of the worms, with which they have close
affinities. Mr. A. R. Wallace mentions in his "Travels
on the Amazon " the remarkable fact that in some parts
of Brazil, during the wet season, when the lands where
they live are flooded, the large earthworms ascend trees
and take up their abode in the hollow leaves of a species of
Tillandsia, where they are often found accumulated by
thousands. There is therefore nothing at all improbable
in the idea that a rotifer may reach its station in the axil
of a leaf, like these South American worms, by climbing.
Although only bearing remotely on the present subject,
we may recall the case of Rosa Banksia?, Acacia spadicigera,
and other myrmecophilous plants where the hollow leaf-
bases form the headquarters of the garrisons of ants by
which these plants are defended.
The facts now referred to go to support the view of
Kerner, that in those plants where aerial absorption occurs
the object may
be not so much
sec u r i t y
against
drought as to
obtain a sup-
ply of nitro-
genous mate-
rials. Both
ends are pro-
bably attained,
for leaves, as
we have seen,
are capable of
assimilating
compounds
of nitrogen.
But whether
the absorption
take place at
the roots or at the leaves it is evident that contrivances
for promoting self- irrigation are all the more important
on account of the nutritive salts which rain-water may
hold in solution.
The prevalence of micro-organisms in leaf-axils suggests
a probable origin of the carnivorous character ; and though
it may be difficult or impossible to estabhsh a truly
symbiotic relationship between any of them and the
plants on which they live, these observations, nevertheless,
touch the threshold of a large, inviting subject, practically
unexplored.
f lo. 2. — Animals inhabiting the axils of leaves.
1 and 2, Rotifer vulgaris ; 3 and 4, Tortieella ;
5, Paramcecium ; 6, Entomostracan.
November 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE.
247
PROGRESS IN RADIOGRAPHY.
W
By .James Quick.
HEX, at the end of 1h9.j, Rontgen reported the
results of his experiments upon the photo-
graphic action of those invisible rays he was
then working with, he could hardly, perhaps,
have anticipated the widespread interest that
was evinced upon the subject, or the extensive work that
■ has been done and is now being carried on, throuLfhouf
the world.
Probably few discoveries have been of so much service
to scientific workers in general, or have claimed such
universal attention, as that of the properties of the Kcintgen
rays.
The selective transmission of the rays being their
prominent feature, the most powerful aid was, of course,
given to the medical practitioner — especially to the surgeon
— in localizing accurately, and without the slightest pain or
inconvenience to the patient, any foreign body in the
system, especially if that body be of a dense nature, such
as lead or steel.
Radiography has, therefore, become quite a recognized
addition to hospital work and to surgeons, and in some
cases where the hospital has not been so equipped,
systematic work of diagnosis has been undertaken for its
physicians by the college or other scientific institution in
the same town. Two sets of Kdntgen ray apparatus were
also provided for the Sudan expeditionary force.
The benefit derived by ROntgen's discovery, both to the
doctor and to the patient, cannot be over-estimated. Many
a patient, having had a foreign body somewhere in his
system, or sustained a bone fracture, has afterwards left
the hospital showering blessings upon the surgeon for
having utilized the radioscopical or radiographical method
for extraction or coaptation.
Every part of the human skeleton has now been success-
fully dealt with radiographically, the amount of definition
obtainable depending upon the proximity of the part in
question to the skin, and therefore to the plate. As the
thickness of the tissues through which the rays have to
pass increases, so their transparency diminishes, but,
according to Batelli, not at an equal or uniform rate, while
Vandevyver has shown that the necessary exposure varies
as the cube of the thickness of the object, and also depends
on the distance (and not on the square; of the distance)
between the focus tube and the sensitive plate.
Not only have X-ray pictures of the various portions of
the body been taken at successive exposures and fitted
together, but Dr. W.J. Morton has succeeded in obtaining, at
one exposure, a life-size radiograph of the entire skeleton
of a full-grown living woman — a most remarkable achieve-
ment and a striking picture — eveu the heart and other
soft tissue organs being visible. The apparatus employed
was a twelve-inch coil, worked from a one hundred
and seventeen volt cu-cuit. The distance of the focus
tube from the plate was four feet six inches, and the time
of exposure, including stoppages, thirty minutes.
In reviewing the work done by medical practitioners in
this important and fruitful field for X-ray work, the
number of successful cases would make by far too long a
list to be adequately dealt with now. It is iu the treat-
ment of fractures and luxations, and in the detection and
removal of the various calculi and other foreign growths
and deposits that the most useful work has been done.
Under the best adapted working conditions of apparatus
for any particular case, the surgeon can examine with
ease the exact condition of a fracture, or caa ascertain how
far reduction and fixation have been satisfactorily performed
— even without disturbing any necessary splints or
bandages. No difficulty is experienced with the former
if they are made of wood or aluminium, or with the latter
provided they are not soaked with lead lotion, or dusted
with iodoform, both of which are impervious to the rays.
Until some twelve months ago, the accurate localization
of different foreign bodies in the system was a difficult
matter. This question, however, has been taken up —
particularly by Mr. Payne and Dr. Mackenzie Davidson — ■
and methods have been devised whereby the examination
of any case by the surgeon has been much simplified.
That of Dr. Davidson deserves attention as it is so simple
and ingenious. With the necessary apparatus the exact
position, to one hundredth of an inch, of an object can at
once be found, the complicated geometry required by some
other methods being simplified down by the apparatus
itself and reduced to the application of callipers and a
divided scale. Two exposures are made with the focus
tube shifted through a certain distance, and the mechanical
factors are reconstructed by the employment of fine threads,
the position of which corresponds to the path of the
X-rays. Fortified with this beautiful method the surgeon
can now deal with many cases in much shorter time than
was hitherto possible, and interesting reports have come
to hand of the localization of bullets in the brain and eye,
besides many other results.
With regard to the various calcareous deposits in the
system, localizing the vesical calculi has been from the
first a comparatively easy matter. Owing, however, to
the position of the kidneys — close to the vertebral column
— the depth of the cavity, and the thickness of overlying
tissue, it was thought, at the earlier stages of the work,
impracticable to obtain a radiograph of renal calcuh,
although, in the Laiurt for 11th July, 189G, a case is
reported by Dr. J. Macintyre of his having found, radio-
graphically, a deposit in the position of the kidneys which,
upon operation, proved to be a calcareous mass. A more
interesting case, however, of renal calculi is reported by
Dr. C, L. Leonard, the age of the patient being nineteen
years. The radiograph was made with a twenty minutes'
exposure, with the anti-cathode of the vacuum tube placed
at a distance of twenty inches from the plate. An eight-inch
spark coil was used. The successful operation performed
proved the correctness and value of the diagnosis.
Amongst the many advances that have been made in
radiographing the soft tissues, MM. Remy and Contremoulin
report having devised a process, based on the deposition
of chromate of silver within the tissues of anatomical
preparations, which gives striking results in respect of
mapping out the structure of the soft parts, while at the
same time the bones are more distinctly marked out than
they previously have been, so that sesamoid bones hitherto
unknown have been discovered.
The action of Rontgen rays, however, is not only
manifested in such cases as instanced above. Experiments
show that they exert an influence upon the epidermis
of the skin if exposed to them, sometimes causing local
inflammation, and this action may occur even deep-seated
within the tissues. The heart also, in some cases, appears
to be afi'ected when exposed to the action of the rays, in-
supportable palpitations and violent and irregular heart
beats being produced, necessitating the complete sheltering
of the heart by a thick metal shield.
In chemistry, botany, mineralogy, and other departments
their properties have been discovered and applied. Their
application to the detection of false gems is now weU known,
and a good deal about other allied results are obtained
which open up interesting fields for investigation.
246
KNOWLEDGE
[NONTMBEE 1, 1898.
Fig. 1. — Rotifer iuhabiting the hood
of a Scale-Moss. (After Kernor.)
plants which have no true power of digestion are yet bene-
fitted by capturing insects ; from the decomposing bodies
of their victims products are evolved which the plants are
able to assimilate.
The water-vessels of the Bromelias and allied epiphytes,
which often contain half a pint or more of water, are
particularly interesting. The hollow leaf-base in some
of this group of plants is a veritable aquarium. The water
which accumulates in these curious receptacles Fritz
Miiller found to be inhabited by caddis-flies, entomo-
stracans, and aquatic
beetles belonging to
species not occurring
elsewhere. A small I'rog
even takes up its abode
among the bromeliau
leaves. Species of Utri-
cularia also occur — small
aquatic plants which cap-
ture in their curious little
bladders the tiny crusta-
ceans inhabiting the
water in the bromelia
leaves where they grow !
V. mlumhifoUa in this
way grows in the leaves
of Tillandsias, which are
themselves epiphytes on the branches of other plants.
The term symbiosis is applied to those curious relation-
ships in which we find two organisms of different kinds
living together in partnership for mutual benefit and
protection. A remarkable example of such symbiotic
association is afforded by certain rotifers which take up
their abode in the pitcher-like leaflets of some Junger-
mannias. One of these liverworts (Fiullania dilatata)
growing on the bark of species of Acer has hollow
appendages of this description in which the water is
retained by capillary attraction. In each of these pitchers
a rotifer (' 'aUidina stjinhiotka) takes up its quarters, finding
in this retreat food and shelter. The association in all
probability is one of mutual advantage ; the rotifer is
supposed to make a return to the plant for its entertain-
ment in the shape of excrementitious products.
The case of these liverworts and rotifers is particularly
interesting in connection with some recent observations
made by the writer. In making sections of the chickweed
stem to examine the origin of the lateral rootlets referred
to in the preceding article, it was noticed that there
frequently appeared on the slide specimens of the sHpper-
animalcule, Paramrecium, for whose presence it was
difficult to account. So frequently did this infusorian
put in an appearance that at last the idea suggested itself
of its being a regular inhabitant of the water that gathers
in the leaf axils of the chickweed. The examination of a
number of specimens left little doubt as to the fact of this
organism as well as several others frequenting the leaf
axils of the plant in question. On submitting water from
the leaves of a number of other plants it became apparent
that leaf axils are rather favourite resorts for the minuter
forms of life. Eotifers or w'^ eel-animalcules, infusorians,
monads, desmids, diatoms, micrococci and bacteria are of
common occurrence. Paramcccium appeared to be rather
characteristic of the chickweed, but was also present in the
leaves of the sow thistle. In the leaves of the latter we
also found that beautiful, lily-like infusorian the bell-
animalcule, Vorticella cyathnia. Eotifer vulgaris occurs
more or less frequently in the axils of the self-heal and
ox-eye daisy. In none of the leaves examined could ento-
xaostracans bo detected, although Cypris and other
copeopods abounded in jols close to where the plants
grew. The absence of th latter may be due to their size,
entomostracans being ver much larger than rotifers.
Although most of thesetrL'anisms are to be found in all
sorts of places where rainvater collects, their abundance
in the tiny droplets that Irk in the leaf-axils of the plants
just mentioned aflfords an nterestmg illustration of how
Nature crowds her canva striving to ntUize every nook
and cranny that ofifers to ving things the least coign of
vantage.
Infusorians and rotiferfas is well-known, may be dried
and reduced to powder wiiout losing their vitahty. After
they have lain dormant fc months the addition of a little
water at once recalls tha to life and activity. It is,
therefore, in the highes degree probable that in their
desiccated state they get town along with dust into the
axils of the leaves, and -e revived by the water that
trickles down into theiiresting places after a shower.
St: 1 in the case of the re fers, at least, there is another
po- lility. The wbeel-a malcules are exceedingly active
litt< creatures. Their Qode of progression somewhat
resembles that of the wor s, with which they have close
aflSnities. Mr. A. R. Wt ace mentions in hie "Travels
on the Amazon " the ren rkable fact that in some parts
of Brazil, during the we season, when the lands where
they live are flooded, th( 'arge earthworms ascend trees
and take up their abode i the hollow leaves of a species of
Tillandsia, where they ; ) often found accumulated by
thousands. There is th afore nothing at all improbable
in the idea that a rotifer ay reach its station in the axil
of a leaf, like these Sout \merican worms, by climbing.
Although only bearing imotely on the present subject,
we may recall the case of )sa Banksi.t, Acacia spadicigera,
and other myrmecophilo plants where the hollow leaf-
bases form the headquar rs of the garrisons of ants by
which these plants are d jnded.
The facts now referrec to go to support the view of
Kerner, that in those pl:i s wbtrp aerial absorption ocean
the object may
be not so much
sec u r i t y
against
drought as to
obtain a sup-
ply of nitro-
genous mate-
rials. Both
ends are pro-
bably attained,
for leaves, as
we have seen,
are capable of
assimilating
compounds
of nitrogen.
But whether
the absorption
take place at
the roots or at the leave it is evident that contrivances
for promoting self-irrigaon are all the more important
on account of the nutrive salts which rain-water may
hold in solution.
The prevalence of micr-organisms in leaf-axils suggests
a probable origin of the oaiivorous character ; and though
it may be diiBcult or tipossible to establish a triJy
symbiotic relationship atween any of them and the
plants on which they Uvethese observations, nevertheless,
touch the threshold of a Jge, inviting subject, practically
unexplored.
Fig. 2. — nimaU inh&biting the aiils of leaves.
1 and 2,iotifer vulgaris ; 3 and 4, Vorticella ;
5, aramoeciam ,- 6, Entomo^trecan.
NOVKMBEB 1, 1898.]
PROGRESS IN R/JlO>.
By James tiicu.
WHEN, at the end of m, Rjntget m^.
results of his expiments npoc tk,
graphic action of tose invisibU b^_ ^
then working w::l he conld barii}.||^^
have anticipated t widespread mtm^^
was evinced upon the subject, o the extensile »^
has been done and is now bei? carried on, ttr
the world.
Probably few discoveries ha^ been of so nmct •■•.
to scientific workers in geneil, or have cUim^ t
universal attention, as that of tb properties of the
rays.
The selective tm" ;=^ .^^ of the rays b«ui^ uier ,
prominent feature, tl : al aid was, of «wm^, '
given to the medical l specially to the BumK.
— in localizing accural .y, and .thout the slightest pnii
inconvenience to the patient, any foreign body in
system, especially if tbut body i of a dense nature, = .
as lead or steel.
Radiography has, therefore, acome quite a recogui, •.,
addition to hospital work and ) surgeons, and in some
cases where the hospital hi not been so equipped,
systematic work of diagnosis la been undertaken for its
physicians by the college or oier scientific institution in
the same town. Two sets of Intgen ray apparatus were
also provided for the Sudan ex)ditionary force.
The benefit derived by R(in1en's discovery, both to the
doctor and to the patient, canncbe over-estimated. Many
a patient, having had a foreig body somewhere in his
system, or sustained a bone friture, has afterwards left
the hospital showering bless.gs upon the surgeon for
having utilized the radioscopies or radiographical method
for extraction or coaptation.
Every part of the human sketon has now been success-
fully dealt with radiographicall the amount of definition
obtainable depending upon th proximity of the part in
question to the skin, and therere to the plate. As the
thickness of the tissues throug which the rays have to
pass increases, so their trarparency diminishes, but,
according to Batelli, not at an (ual or uniform rate, while
Vandevyver has shown that th necessary exposure varies
as the cube of the thickness of \e object, and also depends
on the distance (and not on \e square; of the distance)
between the focus tube and theensitive plate.
Not only have X-ray picturesof the various portions of
the body been taken at succeive exposures and fitted
together, but Dr. W. -J. Morton hs succeeded in obtaining, at
one exposure, a life-size radiogjph of the entire skeleton
of a full-grown living woman — most remarkable achieve-
ment and a striking picture — yen the heart and other
soft tissue organs being visible. The apparatus employed
was a twelve-inch coU, workl from a one hundred
and seventeen volt circuit. he distance of the focus
tube from the plate was four fe^ six inches, and the time
of exposure, including stoppage thirty minutes.
In reviewing the work done ■ medical practitioners in
this important and fruitful lid for X-ray work, the
number of successful cases wou. make by far too long a
list to be adequately dealt withaow. It is in the treat-
ment of fractures and luxations md in the detection and
removal of the various calculi ad other foreign growths
and deposits that the most u^ul work has been done.
Under the best adapted workin conditions of apparatus
for any particular case, the s:geon can examine with
ease the exact condition of a fraure, or can ascertain how
alihrj-.
repor..
grapL.
upon .
interf: -
Dr. (
years,
exposure, »
at a distant-
spark coil W-,
proved the c-.-
Amongst ■.•_
radiograph ir.
report havin,
of chromate o( .
preparations, wL
mapping out tht =.
same time the bol^. ,
they previously hi, '
unknown have beet, -. !
The action of ; . .
manifested in such -:', "
show that they c
of the skin if exp ,■
inflammation, ami ii.
within the tissues,
to be affected when (,. ,,
supportable palpitation-
beats being produced, ne
of the heart by a thick meu..
In chemistry, botany, mine-,
their properties have been <i. '■
apphcation to the detection u\\,^
and a good deal about othei ,
which open up interesting fieidj \t^
.jut
3RY.
inches in
he tube a
'lisplay the
.■hemists or
iie specimen
1 a museum?
p than most
races of the
jnt of the
ohe glass to
in the
itrol of the
the glass
simpler
|on of the
3tassium
248
KNOWLEDGE.
[NOVEMBEE 1, 1898.
Turning to the practical methods of worldng, one
finds that, in the main, apparatus of the same principle as
that used at the first stages of the work is used now. The
improvements and modifications have been made principally
in the domain of constructive detail rather than by employing
different methods. The induction coil method of exciting
the X-ray tube is still used by the majority of workers —
some of whom use coils giving as much as eighteen or
twenty-inch length sparks in air, although this by no
means infers that successful work has not been done or
cannot be done with coils of far smaller magnitude. Coils
giving three or four-inch sparks in air are quite sufficiently
large for obtaining perfect radiographs of the extremities
of the body, such as the hand, the ulna and radius, or the
tibia, while the writer has produced several good pictures
of the adult chest with only a three- inch spark. In general
hospital work and practice, however, the average size coil
used is an eight or ten-inch one, and with this available
spark length all the necessary radiographic and radioscopic
work is done, and pictures of most of the deep-seated hard
and soft tissues are obtained. For photographic work a
small frequency of interruption at the contact breaker is
best, while high frequency is more advantageous for direct
fluorescent screen work. The question of adapting the
contact breaker of a coil to give the rates of frequency
required under different conditions of working has, there-
fore, occupied much time. Mercury contact breakers of
difi'erent forms have been devised, and with arrangements
to vary the rate of frequency of the make and break.
Undoubtedly this form of break possesses a great advan-
tage over the ordinary spring form, as with it there is no
danger of what is known as "jamming " between the two
connecting surfaces, which takes place sometimes in the
ordinary break, and which is so fatal to the primary of
the induction coil. Mercury breaks, however, are trouble-
some to work, and the resulting vapour very poisonous, of
course. A great point is to have the mercury and the
connecting platinum point perfectly clean, and to assure
that the latter enters and leaves the former with a perfectly
vertical motion. Sparking is much decreased by so doing.
The form of induction coil made by Apps or Apps-Newfcon
has probably up to the present been the most efficient
one in use, but it bids fair to be surpassed by a coil
recently patented by Mr. A. L. Davis, and which is now
about to be put on the market. By a special ebonite
disc plan for the insulation of the secondary coil, the
spark is considerably increased for the same amount of
wire. In an experimental coil there were from thirty
to forty sections, each about three-sixteenths of an inch
thick, making a total width of just over six inches.
With this coil, and using only three accumulators giving
six volts in all, a continuous thick spark of ten inches
was obtained. One advance with the above arrangement
of Insulation is that the secondary can be wound right
down upon the tube insulating the primary.
When working with an induction coil great care has to
be taken, of course, not to pierce the insulation, as that
would be fatal ; moreover the recharging of the necessary
batteries is always a trouble unless one is near a charging
station, or can get over the difficulty at home, and these
drawbacks are increased very considerably when military
field work or other expedition work is being undertaken,
and there is no possible chance of getting things rectified
once they go wrong.
The Wimshurst machine, as an exciter for X-ray tubes,
possesses many advantages over the coil in some respects,
and will probably be utilised much more in certain cases
and localities. That Wimshurst machines are quite
efficient for working X-ray tubes under all conditions
and for all purposes has been proved by several in-
vestigators. Through the courtesy of Mr. Wimshurst,
the writer has had the opportunity of testing the capa-
bilities of the many sized machines in the inventor's
possession. These results have shown that, provided the
diameter of the plates is not less than twenty inches, very
excellent and uniform fluorescent screen illumination is
obtained, the rays emitted from the tube in use being
of good penetrating value. A tube which previously had
been found to be best adapted for a six-inch coil, worked
'admirably on a machine with four plates of twenty inches
diameter. Using higher resistance tubes upon larger
machines, and inserting in the circuit a small spark gap
suitable to the exhaustion of the tube (the gap varying
from one-half inch to one and a-half inches) much better
results still were obtained. Further, the work with a
Wimshurst machine proceeds noiselessly and without the
flickering in the tube so often noticed with coils. The
working also entails no more trouble than the mechanical
turning of the plates.
At first sight the Wimshurst machine does not seem so
portable as the induction coil, but when one takes into
consideration the necessary important accessory of the
latter, viz. ; — the battery and the trouble it incurs — the
relative portability of the machine is much increased.
Furthermore, the Wimshurst with ebonite plates gives
better fluorescent screen results than glass, and ebonite
is practically unbreakable ; the prime conductors can
also be much reduced in size and capacity without
affecting the efiiciency for X-i-ay work. Considering,
then, that rapid radioscopic work upon the field of
battle is of much more importance than radiography,
there is no doubt that, so long as the minimum size
of plates is attained, and the machine made as compact
as possible, it should prove of very great value to the army
surgeon.
There only remains one more important practical item
to be considered, namely, the vacuum tube for exciting the
X-Rays. In principle this remains the same as the "focus "
form originally introduced by Professor -Jackson, of King's
College, in which the cathode rays, emanating from the
cathode, impinge upon the anode or anti-cathode and are
scattered out through the glass as Rontgen rays. Two
difficulties, however, presented themselves. Firstly, under
different conditions of working and different spark lengths,
the one tube with its one degree of exhaustion and one
value of resistance could not be adapted. Secondly, upon
lontinued working it was found that the exhaustion and
therefore the penetrating value of the tube increased, so
that, finally, in spite of repeated heatings by a flame so as
to increase the pressure inside, the resistance of the tube
was so high that discharge could not take place under the
same conditions it was originally selected for.
These difficulties have been overcome chiefly owing to
the persistent, patient work of Mr. A. A. C. Swinton,
whose results upon the modus operandi in the interior of
the tube and also upon the conditions affecting the
emission of X-rays have proved of very great importance
in the work. Among other things, !Mr. Swinton found,
with experimental tubes made in his laboratory, that if the
anode of the tube be so arranged that the distance between
it and the cathode could be adjusted, then a ready and
very simple means was at hand whereby the resistance
and penetration could be altered to suit the varied
conditions imposed. The nearer the anode is placed to
the cathode the higher the resistance and consequently the
higher the penetration of the tube, and liec t-ersil. In moving
the anode of a tube, however, the point of origin of the
X-rays is also moved for each adjustment, which is
November 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE,
249
certainly a disadvantage, especially when a difficult radio-
graph, requiring a lengthy exposure, ia being taken.
While, therefore, taking advantage of Mr. Swinton's very
useful principle of varying the distance between anode
and cathode. Dr. Dawson Turner, in conjunction with the
writer, has reversed the arrangement by making the
cathode moveable and keeping the anode fixed ; and has
added a further modification in that the cathode is adjusted
by magnetic means, so that movement may be made easily,
without disturbing the tube at all, while it is in any
desired position. If the tube is constructed so that the
cathode, in its movement slides in and out of the side
annex blown in the bulb, so as to keep it in proximity to
the glass throughout its movement, it is found that the
latter has a greater influence upon the resistance of the
tube than mere movement to and fro when the cathode is
quite out into the bulb space, and affects it in the reverse
way ; that is, the nearer the cathode is to the anode the
lower the resistance, and this increases as the cathode is
gradually drawn back inside the annex. The above modifi-
cations for the variation in the penetration in the tube are
certainly an advance over the older, uncertain methods of
potash tubes, &c.
Taking advantage of the fact, first suggested by Prof.
S. P. Thompson, that the higher the atomic weight of
the anode the higher the penetration of the tube, a further
advance has been made by Dr. Mackenzie Davidson, in
the use of osmium as an anode. The scarcity of the
metal, however, is the one great drawback to its use.
Little has to be said in regard to the fluorescent screen.
Potassium-platino-cyanide and barium-platino-cyanide are
almost the only salts used, as nothing has yet been found
to approach them in efliciency. The latter is preferred on
account of the ease in working it. The salt now obtain-
able is by far purer than that of two years ago, con-
sequently screens are made with much more uniform and
brilliant surfaces.
Mention must be made, however, of the great assistance
screens offer in shortening the time of exposure, especially
of the more inaccessible parts of the body. The salts
fluorescing green, however, such as barium-platinocyanide,
are by no means so active as calcium tungstate, which
fluoresces blue, and which has, therefore, a greater photo-
graphic activity. Placing the fluorescing surface of the
screen in contact with the film of the plate, the exposure
is, in some cases, reduced to one-fifth of the time otherwise
required. Special plates, however, give the best results,
and it is difiicuU to eliminate the granulation of the
screen.
What, now, is the mechanism producing Riintgen rays '?
Do they consist of molecular streams, or are they of the
nature of vibrations — transverse or longitudinal ? Here
we are confronted with a host of hypotheses and theories
that would demand much more space than is here possible,
to discuss adequately.
Experiments by Eontgen, Battelli, and others, have
tended to show that Eontgen and cathode rays are of the
same nature, but that the former constitute only part of
the latter. The clear distinction, however, between actual
similarity is expressed by the absolute non-deviation of
Eontgen rays in a magnetic field, while this phenomenon
is a strong characteristic of cathode rays. The numerous
researches by Swinton and others seem to place beyond
doubt the molecular nature of cathode rays, and to prove
that they consist of electrified atoms or ions in rapid pro-
gressive motion, while the general opinion of physicists
seems to be settling towards a wave or ether theory for the
Eontgen rays. The difficulty of formulating a perfectly
satisfactory theory is great, however, when one has to
contend with the fact that there is no direct proof of
reflection, refraction, or even polarization of the rays. If
polarization could be proved it would simplify matters, as
it would show the vibrations to be transversal. The three
principal hypotheses under discussion at the present time
are : — Firstly, the ultra-corpuscular theory, by Prof. J. J.
Thomson ; secondly, that the rays are transverse ether
waves, and of such excessively short wave lengths that
they are an extreme case of ultra violet light ; thirdly, the
hypothesis of Sir O. Stokes, that they consist of transverse
waves in the same manner as light waves, but that they
differ from the latter in that they do not form regular trains
of wavelets — half a milUon or more, on the average, in
each train— but are solitary waves, each " train" consisting
of but one or two wavelets at the most.
The first of these theories is truly a startling one, for it
assumes that the atoms of ordinary matter can be pul-
verized into stiU finer particles, and that even solid
bodies may be penetrated by the flight of such sub-
atoms travelling with enormous velocity. It also opens
up the question of the divisibility of the atom, which, to
say the least of it, is an amazing one to face.
Stokes' theory amounts to this ; — That cathode rays
consist of negatively charged missiles, shot in showers like
hedge-firing, from the negative electrode against a target
(the anti-cathode), which receives and suddenly arrests
them ; and that the Eiiutgen rays are due to the indepen-
dent pulses propagated through the ether when the
advances of their negative charges are thus abruptly
stopped or altered. The radiation from the target reaches
the object which is being skiagraphed as an undulation
consisting of irregular pulses.
This view has been advanced by Johnston Stoney in
analysing these irregular undulations and resolving them
into trains of waves of different wave-lengths, among which
waves of short wave-length are abundant if the hedge-
firing has been sulliciently violent and irregular. The
object will then be opaque to the longer waves but trans-
parent to the short ones, and the Eontgen effects follow.
This explanation tends to bring Stokes' theory into
agreement with the above theory of Sagnac and others,
that the rays are of the nature of light waves, but with
excessively short, ultra-violet wave-lengths.
HANDICRAFT IN THE LABORATORY.*
GIVEN — a piece of lead glass tubing, two inches in
diameter ; to hermetically seal in the tube a
specimen of chlorine gas in order to display the
yellowish green colour ; how many chemists or
physicists could do it so as to make the specimen
presentable on a lecture table or for exhibition in a museum?
Such a task demands more skill in craftsmanship than most
students are ever able to command. Either traces of the
reduced lead, through imperfect management of the
oxidizing and reducing flames, will be left in the glass to
mar the specimen, or lack of symmetry will appear in the
two ends of the sealed tube due to inefficient control of the
various forces which tend to alter the shape of the glass
while in the plastic condition. A somewhat simpler
(though by no means easy) task in the manipulation of the
blowpipe is to seal up a specimen of sodium or potassium
in vacuo, or in an atmosphere free from oxygen, so as
to exhibit and retain the brilhant silvery lustre of these
metals when their inordinate propensity for appropriating
the vital element is thus held in check. True it is that some
* '• Glass Blowing and Working." By Thomas Bolaa, P.C.S., F.I.C.,
etc. (Dawbarn &. Ward.) Illustrated. 2s. net.
250
KNOWLEDGE.
[November 1, 1898.
arts, as far as literary presentation is concerned, are
extremely difficult to communicate, and glass blowing is
an art of that class ; it is, nevertheless, an art of the
highest importance to scientific students — more particularly
research students — and yet not more than about one in a
huodred becomes really proficient in this auxiliary handi-
craft in the chemical and physical laboratory, while only
a very moderate percentage attain tolerable d-^xterity.
Glass working at the lamp, we take it, is, as Mr. Bolas
says in the handy treatise before us, " specially calculated
to lead to an intelligent study of the reasons for and
agamst various modes of manipulation, and to an appre-
ciation of the importance of economy in effort. . .
To surgical and dental students, as also all students of the
more delicate handicrafts, a preliminary training in glass
working should be specially useful, especially from the
point of view of early acquiring ambidexterity." Practical
wor'fr'.in all the sciences rests ultimately on accurate
mechanical operations; and however ingenious one may be
in origmal suggestion, he must also be able to execute the
needful manipulative work, or somebody must do it for him.
That Mr. Bolas is fully conscious of the magnitude of the
task he has undertaken may be gathered from a passage on
page 10, where he says : " Ttie harmony of action between the
twohands of an expertglass worker is probably beyond every-
thing in technology ; as, for exiimple, when a longish tube,
unequal in diameter at the two ends, is softened in the
middle and then operated on, say by blowing in at one end.
iSot only must the two hands rotate the piece at the same
angular rate while before the blowpipe, but each half must
be balanced on the hands. When taken from the llime
for blowing, the rotation must be maintained, and both
hands must move in such exact correspondence as to put
no unintentional strain on the soft part." All through the
book the author thus indicates difficulties in every detail
of the art and suggests means of overcoming them. It is,
therefore, very gratifying to come across a work sufficiently
practical to make not only a laboratory and workshop guide
to the various phases of glass working at the blowpipe, but
also, to some extent, technically educational in the real
sense of the term — " as leading towards an understanding
why each particular operation is done, and as facilitating
that interdrift of method from craft to craft which is so
conducive to progress." Those who desire to acquire
artistic skill Lu the use of the blowpipe as a modelling
tool — a tool acting with equal facility for relief or intaglio
— will find ample suggestions in this book, suggestions and
instructions which will enable them to model figures, faces,
and expressions, as Venetian artists did in days gone by.
THE
NEW
By A. C.
PLANET
D. Cromjielin.
DQ,
IF one were asked to name the optical discoveries which
have marked epochs in the history of our knowledge
of the solar system, one would probably enumerate,
among others, the discovery of .Jupiter's satellites,
of Saturn's ring, of Uranus, of Ceres and her com-
panions, and of Neptune. The discovery that has now to
be chronicled may claim to rank in interest and importance
at least as high as that of Ceres, for it has peopled a
region of the solar system which has hitherto been regarded
as absolutely blank, and has provided our earth with a
neighbour whose least distance is only half that of any
other heavenly body except the moon.
The discovery of minor planets has advanced so rapidly
in recent years that a new one is greeted with but a
moderate degree of interest. But the telegram announcing
the discovery, on August 13th, by Herr Witt, of the Urania
Observatory, Berlin, of a new planet, provisionally desig-
nated DQ, was seen at once to have in it somethin ^ unusual,
for the planet was retrograding at the unprecedented rate
of half a degree per day, whence it was evident that its
orbit must differ in a marked manner from those of the
other minor planets. The planet was accordingly carefully
followed by a large number of observers during August,
and at the beginning of September Dr. Berberich, of
Berlin, set to work to determine, as accurately as possible,
the orbit of the new body, using for this purpose three
observations made by the discoverer on August 14th,
23rd, and 31st. The elements that he deduced are as
follows : —
Aphelion passage ... ... 1898, June 20d.'4i3 Berlin mean
time.
Longitude of perihelion ... 122" 17' 14"
Longitude of ascending node 303 48 53
Inclination to ecliptic ... 11 6 57
Eccentricity 0-22865
Mean distance from the sun l't606^ The earth's mean dis-
Least „ ,, ,, 112(j(i!- tance from the sun
Greatest ,, „ „ l'794flj being unity.
Average daily motion ... 2010"'I31
Period = 664"734 days = 1 year 9 months 6 day«.
We see from the above that the longitude of the
descending node, or point where the planet crosses the
plane of the ecliptic from north to south, is 123" -18 53",
which is distant only lj° from the perihelion point ; in
other words, the planet when nearest to the sun is, at the
same time, very near the plane of the earth's orbit, and
thus approaches our earth more nearly than it would
otherwise do. The following little table gives the least
distance of DQ from the earth as compared with those
of our other neighbour worlds : —
Object.
The Moon
The Planet DQ
Venus in transit
Mars in perihelion
00026 238,000
0-143 13,300,000
0-264 24,500,000
0-372 84,000,000
The fact that makes the new planet so absolutely unique
is that its mean distance from the sun is less than that
of Mars ; there are two or three of the group of asteroids
whose perihelion points lie just inside the orbit of Mars ;
but in all other cases their mean distances considerably
exceed his.
Dr. Berberich has compared his elements with all the
observations of the planet made during August, and finds
a very satisfactory agreement. It will, however, be under-
stood that the planet has not yet been under observation
sufficiently long to determine the elements with perfect
accuracy, and those given above must be regarded as only
a first approximation. It is desirable to keep the planet
under observation as long as possible ; large instruments
will probably be able to follow it till the end of November,
or even longer. The following table gives its approximate
place at llh. p.m. on certain days in November : —
Day. Right Ascension. South Declination.
November 3rd ... 2lh. Im. 14s. ... 4° 40'
11th .. aih. 12m. 363. ... 4° 9'
„ 19th ... 21h. 25m. 293. ... 3° 19'
„ 27th 21h. 39m. 393. ... 2' 20'
We may thus hope to obtain, even in the present year,
a considerably more accurate determination of the orbit ;
but in the meantime we may provisionally treat the above
elements as accurate, and deduce from them some in-
teresting conclusions.
First as to the dimensions of the new planet. It was
in
N0\'EMBER 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE.
251
estimated to be of the eleventh magnitude in August, from
which, and its distance from the sun and earth at the
time, we deduce that its diameter is some seventeen to
twenty miles. It is not likely in any case to exceed
twenty-five miles, so that when nearest to us its disc will
only subtend to us an angle of about ),", a quantity too
small to be measurable even in the largest telescopes. It
will, however, at such times, shine as a star of between
the sixth and seventh magnitudes, and may thus be visible
to keen eyes. It will at its nearest approach be situate in
Cancer, which is a very convenient position for northern
observers. If its density be assumed the same as
that of the moon, its mass is only about j^.ijoi.ouo o^
hers, which is an altogether inappreciable quantity in
astronomy.
We now naturally inquire when a favourable opposition
wiU next occur. For this purpose we must have the
planet at the nearest point to the sun, i.e., in perihelion,
wards. The following list of perihelion passage was thus
deduced : —
1894, January 21st.
1895, October 28th.
1897, August 3rd.
1899, May 9th.
1901, February 12th.
1902, November 19th.
1904, August 25th.
190(>, May 31st.
1908, March 7th.
1909, December 11th.
1911, September Kith.
1913, June 2l9t.
1915, March 2Hth.
1917, January 3rd.
1918, October 9 th.
1920, July 14th.
1922, April I9th.
1924, .January 2uth.
AscffutiHii .Yoih
Relative Disposition of the Orbits of Mars, DQ, and the Earth
and the earth in the longitude of the planet's perihelion,
which is 122° 17'. Now, on reference to the " Nautical
Almanac," we find that the earth passes this longitude on
or about January 22nd in each year (the longitude of the
sun as seen from the earth is ISC' greater, or 302°).
We therefore seek a year in which the planet passes
through its perihelion on or about January 22nd. We
find one perihelion passage by reckoning backwards half
the period, or 322-4 days from the aphelion passage on
1898, June 20th, and then we can find others by taking
successive intervals of 644-7 days backwards and for-
We thus see that four and a half years ago an exception-
ally favourable opposition occurred. It is much to be
regretted that the planet was not detected on that occasion,
and it would be worth while for any who possess photo-
graphs of Cancer or its neighbourhood taken in January,
1891, to examine them carefully for traces of the planet.
It was moving south about 1 'i degrees per day, crossing the
ecliptic about January 21st,
* near longitude 122 degrees.
An equally favourable op-
position will not occur till
1924 ; it may be noted here
that the planet's period is
almost exactly ^'.'ths of the
earth's ; hence it performs
seventeen revolutions while
the earth performs thirty,
and after this period its
motions nearly repeat them-
selves. We may find the
synodic period, or average
interval between two op-
positions, as follows : — In
thirty years the earth gains
thirteen revolutions on the
planet ; hence it gains one
revolution in ,' " years, which
is equal to two years and
one hundred and twelve
days. The next time that
the earth overtakes the
planet will bo in November,
1 900, when we shall approach
it more nearly than on any
other occasion till the year
1917 ; its least distance
from the earth will be some
thirty-one millions of miles,
which, although more tlian
double what it was in 1894,
is yet considerably less than
that of Mars at its nearest.
The great value to as-
tronomers of such a near
approach lies in the means
it gives for improving our
knowledge of the sun's
distance, the fundamental unit of the solar system. It
has already been recognized that the minor planets
which approach us most closely afford a better means of
determining this than does Mars, in spite of its smaller
distance. The method adopted consists of measuring with
a heliometer the distances of the planets from a number
of neighbouring stars, the measures being made alternately
with the planet east and west of the meridian, so that the
observer has been carried in the interval by the earth's
rotation through a distance of several thousands of miles,
and the planet thus appears alternately on one side and on
250
KNOWLEDGE.
[November 1, 1898.
arts, a3 far as literary presentation is concerned, are
extremely difficult to communicate, and glass blowing is
an art of that class ; it is, nevertheless, an art of the
highest importance to scientific students — more particularly
research students — and yet not more than about one in a
hundred becomes really proficient in this auxiliary handi-
craft in the chemical and physical laboratory, while only
a very moderate percentage attain tolerable dexterity.
Glass working at the lamp, we take it, is, as Mr. Bolas
says in the handy treatise before us, " specially calculated
to lead to an intelligent study of the reasons for and
agamst various modes of manipulation, and to an appre-
ciation of the importance of economy in eifort. . .
To surgical and dental students, as also all students of the
more delicate handicrafts, a preUminary training in glass
working should be specially useful, especially from the
point of view of early acquiring ambidexterity." Practical
wor'b>,in all the sciences rests ultimately on accurate
mechanical operations; aod however ingenious one may be
in origmal suggestion, he must also be able to execute the
needful manipulative work, or somebody must do it for him.
That Mr. B jlas is fully conscious of the magnitude of the
task he has undertaken may be gathered from a passage on
page 10, where he says : " Tue harmony of action between the
two hands of an expert glass worker is probably beyond every-
thing in technology ; as, for exiimple, when a longish tube,
unequal in diameter at the two ends, is softened in the
middle and then operated on, say by blowing in at one end.
ISot only must the two hands rotate the piece at the same
angular rate while before the blowpipe, but each half must
be balanced on the hands. When taken from the flime
for blowing, the rotation must be maintained, and both
hands must move in such exact correspondence as to put
no unintentional strain on the soft part." All through the
book the author thus indicates difficulties in every detail
of the art and suggests means of overcoming them. It is,
therefore, very gratifying to come across a work sufficiently
practical to make not only a laboratory and workshop guide
to the various phases of glass working at the blowpipe, but
also, to some extent, technically educational in the real
sense of the term—" as leading towards an understanding
why each particular operation is done, and as facilitating
that interdrift of method from craft to craft which is so
conducive to progress." Those who desire to acquire
artistic skill in the use of the blowpipe as a modelling
tool — a tool acting with equal facility for relief or intaglio
— will find ample suggestions in this book, suggestions and
instructions which will enable them to model figures, faces,
and expressions, as Venetian artists did in days gone by.
THE NEW PLANET DQ.
By A. C. D. Ckommelin.
IF one were asked to name the optical discoveries which
have marked epochs in the history of our knowledge
of the solar system, one would probably enumerate,
among others, the discovery of Jupiter's satellites,
of Saturn's ring, of Uranus, of Ceres and her com-
panions, and of Neptune. The discovery that has now to
be chronicled may claim to rank in interest and importance
at least as high as that of Ceres, for it has peopled a
region of the solar system which has hitherto been regarded
as absolutely blank, and has provided our earth with a
neighbour wliose least distance is only half that of any
other heavenly body except the moon.
The discovery of minor planets has advanced so rapidly
in recent years that a new one is greeted with but a
moderate degree of interest. But the telegram announcing
the discovery, on August 13th, by Herr Witt, of the Urania
Observatory, Berlin, of a new planet, provisionally desig-
nated DQ, was seen at once to have in it somethin ? unusual,
for the planet was retrograding at the unprecedented rate
of half a degree per day, whence it was evident that its
orbit must differ in a marked manner from those of the
other minor planets. The planet was accordingly carefully
followed by a large number of observers during August,
and at the beginning of September Dr. Berberich, of
Berlin, set to work to determine, as accurately as possible,
the orbit of the new body, using for this purpose three
observations made by the discoverer on August 14th,
23rd, and 31st. The elements that he deduced are as
follows : —
Aphelion passage 1898, June 20(L'4i3 Berlin mean
time.
Longitude of perihelion ... 122° 17' 14"
Longitude of ascending node 303 48 53
Inclination to ecliptic ... 11 6 57
Eccentricity 022865
Mean distance from the sun 1' 46061 The earth's mean dis-
Least „ „ „ 11260 J- tance from the sun
Greatest ,, „ „ l'794fij being unity.
Average daily motion ... 2010"' 131
Period = 664-734 days = 1 year 9 months 6 days.
We see from the above that the longituie of the
descending node, or point where the planet crosses the
plane of the ecliptic from north to south, is 123" 48 .53 ',
which is distant only IF from the perihelion point ; in
other words, the planet when nearest to the sun is, at the
same time, very near the plane of the earth's orbit, and
thus approaches our earth more nearly than it would
otherwise do. The following little table gives the least
distance of DQ from the earth as compared with those
of our other neighbour worlds : —
„, . . Distance from the Earth
Ubject. jjj astronomical imits. In miles.
The Moon 0-0026 238,000
The Planet DQ ... 0143 13,300,000
Venus in transit ... 0-264 24,500,000
Mars in perihelion ... 0372 34,600,000
The fact that makes the new planet so absolutely unique
is that its mean distance from the sun is less than that
of Mars ; there are two or three of the group of asteroids
whose perihelion points lie just inside the orbit of Mars ;
but in all other cases their mean distances considerably
exceed his.
Dr. Berberich has compared his elements with all the
observations of the planet made during August, and finds
a very satisfactory agreement. It will, however, be under-
stood that the planet has not yet been under observation
sufficiently long to determine the elements with perfect
accuracy, and those given above must be regarded as only
a first approximation. It is desirable to keep the planet
under observation as long as possible ; large instruments
will probably be able to follow it till the end of November,
or even longer. The following table gives its approximate
place at llh. p.m. on certain days in November : —
Day.
Right Ascension.
South Declination.
November 3rd . .
2lh. Im. 14s.
... 4° 40'
„ 11th ..
21h. 12m. 363.
... 4° 9'
„ 19th ...
21h. 2.5m. 293.
8° 19'
„ 27th .
21h. 39m. 39s.
... 2' 20'
We may thus hope to obtain, even in the present year,
a considerably more accurate determination of the orbit ;
but in the meantime we may provisionally treat the above
elements as accurate, and deduce from them some in-
teresting conclusions.
First as to the dimensions of the new planet. It was
in
November 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE,
251
estimated to be of the eleventh magnitude in August, from
which, and its distance from the sun and earth at the
time, we deduce that its diameter is some seventeen to
twenty miles. It is not likely in any case to exceed
twenty-five miles, so that when nearest to us its disc will
only subtend to us an angle of about J", a quantity too
small to be measurable even in the largest telescopes. It
will, however, at such times, shine as a star of between
the sixth and seventh magnitudes, and may thus be visible
to keen eyes. It will at its nearest approach be situate in
Cancer, which is a very convenient position for northern
observers. If its density be assumed the same as
that of the moon, its mass is only about ir.oo-i.ooo- o^
hers, which is an altogether inappreciable quantity in
astronomy.
We now naturally inquire when a favourable opposition
wiU next occur. For this purpose we must have the
planet at the nearest point to the sun, i.e., in perihelion,
wards. The following list of perihelion passage was thus
deduced : — ,
1894, January 21st.
1895, October 28th.
1897, August 3rd.
1899, May 9th.
1901, February 12th.
1902, November 19th.
1904. August 25th.
1906, May 31st.
1908, March 7th.
1909, December 11th.
1911, September 16th.
1913, June 21st.
1915, March 28th.
1917, January 3rd.
1918, October 9th.
1920, July 14th.
1922, April 19th.
1924, January 25th.
Asct'fuiimi .Vottt'
Eelatire Disposition of the Orbits of Mars, DQ, and the Earth,
and the earth in the longitude of the planet's perihelion,
which is 122° 17'. Now, on reference to the " Nautical
Almanac," we find that the earth passes this longitude on
or about January 22nd in each year (the longitude of the
sun as seen from the earth is 180^ greater, or 302^).
We therefore seek a year in which the planet passes
through its perihelion on or about January 22nd. We
find one perihelion passage by reckoning backwards half
the period, or 322-4 days from the apheUon passage on
1898, June 20th, and then we can find others by taking
successive mtervals of 644-7 days backwards and for-
We thus see that four and a half years ago an exception-
ally favourable opposition occurred. It is much to be
regretted that the planet was not detected on that occasion,
and it would be worth while for any who possess photo-
graphs of Cancer or its neighbourhood taken in January,
ls94, to examine them carefully for traces of the planet.
It was moving south about 1^ degrees per day, crossing the
ecliptic about January 21st,
* near longitude 122 degrees.
An equally favourable op-
position will not occur till
1924 ; it may be noted here
that the planet's period is
almost exactly f'^tha of the
earth's ; hence it performs
seventeen revolutions while
the earth performs thirty,
and after this period its
motions nearly repeat them-
selves. We may find the
synodic period, or average
interval between two op-
positions, as follows :— In
thirty years the earth gains
thirteen revolutions on the
planet ; hence it gains one
revolution in f " years, which
is equal to two years and
one hundred and twelve
days. The next time that
the earth overtakes the
planet will be in November,
1900, when we shall approach
it more nearly than on any
other occasion till the year
1917 ; its least distance
from the earth will be some
thirty-one millions of miles,
which, although more than
double what it was in 1894,
is yet considerably less than
that of Mars at its nearest.
The great value to as-
tronomers of such a near
approach lies in the means
it gives for improving our
knowledge of the sun's
distance, the fundamental unit of the solar system. It
has already been recognized that the minor planets
which approach us most closely afford a better means of
determining this than does Mars, in spite of its smaller
distance. The method adopted consists of measuring with
a heUometer the distances of the planets from a number
of neighbouring stars, the measures being made alternately
with the planet east and west of the meridian, so that the
observer has been carried in the interval by the earth's
rotation through a distance of several thousands of miles,
and the planet thus appears alternately on one side and on
252
KNOWLEDGE,
[November 1, 1898.
the other of the place it would have as seen from the
centre of the earth. This shift gives the means of
deducing the planet's distance from the earth in miles,
and the distance of the sun then follows from Kepler's
laws. Now, a minor planet, which looks like a stellar
point in the telescope, can be measured with much greater
precision than can a large, bright, unequally illuminated
disc like that of Mars. Dr. Gill's recent determination of
the sun's distance (ninety-two million, eight hundred and
seventy-four thousand miles), which is probably the most
accurate yet made, was based on heliometer observations
of Iris, Victoria, and Sappho, whose least distances from the
earth (in astronomical units) are 0-81, 0'8'2, and 0H4
respectively. It will be seen at once what an improvement
will be effected when DQ is observed at a distance of 0'14,
or only one-sixth of that of the above three planets. lu
fact, any uncertainty in the sun's distance will be reduced
to one-sixth of its present amount. Even the approach in
the autumn of 1900, though far from being the most
favourable possible, should certainly be utilized for
heliometer measures, for its distance will be little more
than one-third of that of the three planets measured by
Dr. GiU.
Another way in which DQ will assist in improving our
knowledge of the sun's distance is by the perturbations
which the earth produces on it, which will be very con-
siderable, and which will give an accurate determination
of the earth's mass compared with the sun's, and hence of
the latter's distance. But this method will not be avail-
able for many years ; it will, however, in the long run,
give very accurate results.
It might at first sight appear that DQ will make still
closer approaches to Mars than it does to the earth, but
this is not the case ; owing to the fact that the orbits are
so much inclined to one another, and the unfavourable
position of the line where their planes intersect one another
(in longitudes 115'' and 295"), they do not approach more
nearly than 0-23 in astronomical units.
As viewed from Mars the motion of DQ would be very
singular, for sometimes Mars would overtake DQ, some-
times it would be overtaken by it, sometimes DQ would be
in inferior conjimction with the sim, sometimes in opposi-
tion to it, sometimes in Mars' equator, sometimes at his
poles.
As viewed from the earth there is one feature in which
DQ differs from all the other superior planets ; they are in all
cases retrograding when in opposition, but DQ when in
perihelion has a velocity whose resolved part in the plane
of the ecliptic is 18-95 miles per second, while that of the
earth in the same longitude is only 18'78 miles per second.
DQ is therefore gaining on the earth instead of being left
behind, and it will therefore be slowly advancing in longi-
tude ; it will have a rapid southward motion in latitude in
consequence of its high inclination which will amount to
about 1^^ per day. When in opposition near aphelion it
will retrograde in longitude i° per day as was the case at
its discovery ; there will necessarily be an intermediate
position where it will be exactly stationary in longitude
at the instant of opposition, and the earth and planet will
travel on side by side with the same velocity, maintaining
for some days an almost constant distance.
It has been suggested that DQ may have only recently
been introduced into its present orbit by perturbations, but
this does not seem to me to be possible if its minimum
distance from the earth be 0'14, for the perturbations by
the earth at this distance though considerable, would not
be able to change the orbit ;)<■»• saltum, and the giant planet
Jupiter, the great disturber of the minor planets, never
approaches DQ more nearly than 3-2, at which distance
it would likewise be unable to effect any sudden great
change in the orbit.
Many of the relations I have referred to above are
illustrated in the diagram. To picture the orbits of DQ
and Mars correctly, we must imagine them rotated about
their lines of nodes through anj^des of eleven degrees and
two degrees respectively. In the case of DQ the upper
left hand portion of the orbit will be the highest above the
plane of the paper, in the case of Mars the lower left hand
portion.
I have now dealt with the relations of the new planet to
ourselves as fully as our present knowledge of its orbit
appears to warrant. A more accurate computation, based
on a larger series of observations, will be awaited with
keen curiosity ; after which its past and future history
may be traced with a closer approach to precision than is
possible at present.
^— ♦-
THE NOVEMBER METEORS.
PROF. E. C. PICKERING, in Circular No. 31 of the
Harvard College Observatory, points out that it
is very important that a continuous watch should
be kept during the two or three days in which the
Earth is passing through the denser portion of
the meteor stream. This can only be done by establishing
a series of stations in various longitudes, so that during the
entire time one or more of these stations shall fulfil the
conditions that the radiant point shall be above the horizon
and the sun below. The watch should be begun on the
evening of November 11th, and continued each night
until the shower is clearly past. Prof. Pickering recom-
mends all observers to note the following particulars : —
Name of observer, location of station, post office
address, time of beginning and ending of observations,
The Constellation Leo with Stellar Standards of Beferencc.
interruptions by clouds or other causes, condition of eky,
as clear, hazy, passing clouds, itc. He then adds the
following directions: —
" The observations most desired are those required to
determine the frequency of the meteors. They are of
252
KNOWLE
the other of the place it would have as seen from the
centre of the earth. This shift gives the means of
deducing the planet's distance from the earth in miles
and the distance of the sun then follows from Keplei
laws. Now, a minor planet, which looks like a ste'
point in the telescope, can he measured with much gr
precision than can a large, bright, unequally illun-
disc like that of Mars. Dr. Gill's recent determir
the sun's distance (ninety-two million, eight hn
seventy-four thousand miles), which is probabl
accurate yet made, was based on heliometer
of Iris, Victoria, and Sappho, whose leastdis*
earth (in astronomical units) are 0-81.
respectively. It will be seen at once wb^
will be effected when DQ is observed at
or only one-sixth of that of the abov
fact, any uncertainty in the sun's di
to one-sixth of its present amount.
the autumn of 1900, though f
favourable possible, should
heliometer measures, for its
than one-third of that of tl
Dr. Gill.
Another way in which
knowledge of the sun's
which the earth prod
siderable, and whii '
of the earth's mas
the latter' s distant
able for many yi
give very accuri
It might at "
closer approj
this is not "
so much
positio]
(in lo:
nearl
:YGm.
%
No\'EMBER 1, 1898.] \
KNOWLEDGE
253
•^reme simplicity, and nei only care, system and per-
'•ance. Once an hour, r better once every balf-hour,
ve and record the tie during which ten meteors
This is most easi done by noting the time by a
id at exactly the thinning of a minute looking at
'iving it undividl attention and counting the
n, not includin; those appearing outside of the
ed by the map. If great nmnbers of meteors
V be better to <unt a larger number, as twenty
If the inter 1 between the meteors is long,
le counted lay be reduced. These obser-
e repeated ntil dawn, or over as long an
h\e. Bween these observations the
or majmake special observations of
Thus vhen a meteor is seen, record
-, the Mghtness on a scale of stellar
'Is tbt Tightness of Jupiter or Sirius ;
•2, tt Pole Star; 4, the Pleiades;
4ble; he colour, B = blue, G=green,
te, am ? = red ; the class, L Leonid,
mid pa through centre of map, N =
IS L 5 , 12h. :^6m., indicates that a
, magnitu'' i, yellow n colour, was seen at 12h. "itim.
, I by trial bef ■! --hand hv many seconds are required
to make each reror 1. Ag! i, the path of each meteor may
be marked upon tbo map I noting its position in relation
to the adjacent stars. Sue work can be done equally well
elsewhere, and should not terfere with the hourly count
mentioned above."
region, to wb
to refers, is
Im. 243. a]
tion betwe
1900. S<
In the N
ingly lar
hs of tt
aving a
distance
is to
ma
e la'
iVLEI
PHOTOGRAPH OF T E NEBULOUS REGION
ROUND i^f 37 CYGNI.
By Isaac Boibts, d.sc, f.r.s.
h the photograph annexed
comprised between R. A.
R.A. 21h. Cm. 4;5s., and in
42° .JG-")' and 44° 51' north,
e — one millimetre to thirty
T. C, No. 7000, it is referred
diffused nebulosity,
region have been taken with
rtures up to sis inches in
f thirty inches, but the scale
small for showing structural
ler ; two of these were taken
r half of the year 1891, and
was taken with the twenty-
f the plate during two hours
3 10th October, 1896, and it
ral details of the nebulosity
Lcale that will enable astro-
nd correlate, any changes
osity or in the stars that
"he whole extent of the
icted, or is in proximity
ould require a larger
is no indication of a
^bulosity such as is
are known to exist
|on, and also some
different parts
matter of great
future is herein
It will be observed, on close examination of the photo-
graph, that nearly the whole surface area of this vast
cloud of nebulosity is covered with stars, ranging in mag-
nitude between the ninth and the seventeenth ; but very
few of them can, with certainty, be pronounced as being
actually involved in, and forming part of, the nebulosity.
The hundreds of apparently finished stars are probably
placed between us and the nebulosity, and if this be the
true inference, what must be its dimensions and distance
from the solar system ? The answer, if one could be
given, would be bewildering, for, so far as it is known up
to the present time, not one of the stars referred to has a
sensible parallax, and therefore the distance from the earth
of the nearest of them would be practically infinite ; con-
sequently, if the nebulosity is at a greater distance than
the stars, we are left entirely without data to enable us to
form even the crudest idea of the extent of this part of
space. If the question should be asked : What evidence
is there for the assumption that the stars are between us
and the nebulosity ? my answer would be that, if the stars
were beyond the nebulosity, their photo-discs would, on
the negative, appear less bright, and their margins be
more or less nebulous ; whereas only those stars which
appear involved in the nebulosity present these appearances.
Of course it is a fair subject for argument that those
nebulous stars which appear to be involved in the
nebulosity are not so in reality, but seem thus because
they are beyond it in our line of sight. But this argument
is much weakened, if not entirely destroyed, when we find
on examination of the negative that those faint, star-like
condensations are not only nebulous themselves but they
follow the curvatures found in various parts of the nebu-
losity ; thus we are driven to infer that the stars are the
nearer bodies to us, and that the nebulosity lies beyond
the stars.
Photography has now furnished a considerable amount
of evidence in support of the theory — first propounded I
think by Sir William Herschel — that the stellar universe
which is within the bounds of our aided vision, vast though
it be, forms only one unit in boundless space ; but this is
not the opportune time for presenting and discussing the
evidence furnished by photography bearing upon this
important theory. I may have an opening later on for its
discussion.
Hfttfrs.
[The Editors do not hold themselves responsible for the opinions or
statements of correspondents.]
THE ECLIPSE THEORY OP VAKTABLE STARS.
To the Editors of Knowledge.
SiKs, — With reference to Mr. Monck's remark (p. 182)
about the title of the article, as above, being misleading,
logically, perhaps it may be ; but a large majority of the
readers of Knowledge no doubt know that the eclipse
theory refers only to the Algol type of star, and the title
would not be misleading to such. No one, except perhaps
quite a stranger to the subject, supposes the eclipse theory
explains the long period variables such as Mira Ceti.
With regard to Mr. ilonck's second paragraph, I dul
assume, for purposes of calculation, that the brightness of
the star (or stars) was uniform in all parts of the disc, as
seen by us. Later on, in the last paragraph but one, I
expressly anticipated his point that an obscuring atmo-
sphere would alter the character of the light curve.
Mr. Whichells (p. 183) is quite correct in stating that
you can get a continuously varying light curve when the
wletli/e.
NEBULA y V 37 CYGNI.
By ISAAC ROBERTS, D.Sc, F.R.S.
November 1. 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE,
253
extreme simplicity, and need only care, system and per-
severance. Once an hour, or better once every half-hour,
observe and record the time during which ten meteors
appear. This is most easily done by noting the time by a
watch and at exactly the bcgincing of a minute looking at
the sky, giving it undivided attention and counting the
meteors seen, not including those appearing outside of the
region covered by the map. If great nimibers of meteors
appear it may be better to count a larger number, as twenty
or even fifty. If the interval between the meteors is long,
the number to be counted may be reduced. These obser-
vations should be repeated until dawn, or over as long an
interval as possible. Between these observations the
observer may rest, or may make special observations of
individual meteors. Thus, when a meteor is seen, record
the hour and minute, the brightness on a scale of stellar
magnitudes,- 2, equals the brightness of Jupiter or Sirius ;
0, Arcturus or Vega ; 2, the Pole Star ; 4, the Pleiades ;
6, the faintest star visible ; the colour, B=blue, G=green,
Y = yellow, W=white, and R = red ; the class, L^ Leonid,
if path prolonged would pass through centre of map, N =
other meteors. Thus L 5 Y, 12h. 2Gm., indicates that a
Leonid, magnitude 5, yellow in colour, was seen at 12h. '26m.
Find by trial beforehand how many seconds are required
to make each record. Again, the path of each meteor may
be marked upon the map by noting its position in relation
to the adjacent stars. Such work can be done equally well
elsewhere, and should not interfere with the hom-ly count
mentioned above."
PHOTOGRAPH OF THE NEBULOUS REGION
ROUND y V 37 CYGNI.
By Isaac Roberts, d.sc, f.r.s.
THE region, to which the photograph annexed
hereto refers, is comprised between R. A.
20h. 51m. 24s. and R.A. 21h. Om. 4:-5s., and in
Declination between 42= o(y'>' and 44° 51' north.
Epoch 1900. Scale — one millimetre to thirty
seconds of arc. In the N. G. C, No. 7000, it is referred
to as faint, exceedingly large diffused nebulosity.
Some photographs of the region have been taken with
portrait lenses, having apertures up to sis inches in
diameter and focal distance of thirty inches, but the scale
of such photographs is too small for showing structural
details in a satisfactory manner ; two of these were taken
by Dr. Slax Wolf in the latter half of the year 1891, and
were published in Knowledge.
The photograph annexed was taken with the twenty-
inch reflector, and exposure of the plate during two hours
and fifty-five minutes on the 10th October, 1896, and it
will be seen that the structural details of the nebulosity
are delineated upon it on a scale that will enable astro-
nomers in the future to detect, and correlate, any changes
that may take place in the nebulosity or in the stars that
surround or are involved in it. The whole extent of the
nebulosity that appears to be connected, or is in proximity
to that shown on the photograph would require a larger
plate than this to cover it, but there is no indication of a
symmetrical aggregation of the nebulosity such as is
visible in the majority of nebulfe that are known to exist
in many parts of the sky.
There are several indications of fission, and also some
evidence of led of vortical disturbance in different parts
of the nebulosity, and therefore much matter of great
interest to the astronomers of the distant future is herein
recorded.
It wUl be observed, on close examination of the photo-
graph, that nearly the whole surface area of this vast
cloud of nebulosity is covered with stars, ranging in mag-
nitude between the ninth and the seventeenth; but very
few of them can, with certainty, be pronounced as being
actually involved in, and forming part of, the nebulosity.
The hundreds of apparently finished stars are probably
placed between us and the nebulosity, and if this be the
true inference, what must be its dimensions and distance
from the solar system ? The answer, if one could be
given, would be bewildering, for, so far as it is known up
to the present time, not one of the stars referred to has a
sensible parallax, and therefore the distance from the earth
of the nearest of them would be practically infinite ; con-
sequently, if the nebulosity is at a greater distance than
the stars, we are left entirely without data to enable us to
form even the crudest idea of the extent of this part of
space. If the question should be asked : What evidence
is there for the assumption that the stars are between us
and the nebulosity ? my answer would be that, if the stars
were beyond the nebulosity, their photo-discs would, on
the negative, appear less bright, and their margins be
more or less nebulous ; whereas only those stars which
appear involved in the nebulosity present these appearances.
Of course it is a fair subject for argument that those
nebulous stars which appear to be involved in the
nebulosity are not so in reality, but seem thus because
they are beyond it in our line of sight. But this argument
is much weakened, if not entirely destroyed, when we find
on examination of the negative that those faint, star-like
condensations are not only nebulous themselves but they
follow the curvatures found in various parts of the nebu-
losity ; thus we are driven to infer that the stars are the
nearer bodies to us, and that the nebulosity lies beyond
the stars.
Photography has now furnished a considerable amount
of evidence in support of the theory — first propounded I
think by Sir Wilham Herschel — that the stellar universe
which is within the bounds of our aided vision, vast though
it be, forms only oiw unit in boundless space ; but this is
not the opportime time for presenting and discussing the
evidence furnished by photography bearing upon this
important theory. I may have an opening later on for its
discussion.
Hfttfts.
[The Editors do not hold themselves responsible for the opinions or
statements of correspondents.]
THE ECLIPSE THEORY OF VARIABLE STARS.
To the Editors of Knowledge.
Sirs, — With reference to Mr. Monck's remark (p. 182)
about the title of the article, as above, being misleading,
logically, perhaps it may be ; but a large majority of the
readers of Knowledge no doubt know that the eclipse
theory refers only to the Algol type of star, and the title
would not be misleading to such. No one, except perhaps
quite a stranger to the subject, supposes the eclipse theory
explains the long period variables such as ilira Ceti.
With regard to Mr. Monck's second paragraph, I did
assume, for purposes of calculation, that the brightness of
the star (or stars) was uniform in all parts of the disc, as
seen by us. Later on, in the last paragraph but one, I
expressly anticipated his point that an obscuring atmo-
sphere would alter the character of the light curve.
Mr. Whichells (p. 183) is quite correct in stating that
you can get a continuously varying light curve when the
NEBULA ij V 37 CYGNI.
By ISAAC ROBERTS, D.Sc, F.R.S.
S
November 1. 1898.1
KNOWLEDGE
extreme simplicity, and needmly care, system and per-
severance. Once an hour, oibetter once every half-hour,
observe and record the tim during which ten meteors
appear. This is most easily one by noting the time by a
watch and at exactly the bej: ning of a minute looking at
the sky, giving it undivided ttention and counting the
meteors seen, not including i ^se appearing outside of the
region covered by the map. f t;reat numbers of meteors
appear it may be better to co' t a larger number, as twenty
or even fifty. If the interva ic tween the meteors is long,
the number to be counted m be reduced. These obser-
vations should be repeated u il dawn, or over as long an
interval as possible. Bet en these observations the
observer may rest, or may ike epecial observations of
individual meteors. Thus, v en a meteor is seen, record
the hour and minute, the br jtness on a scale of stellar
magnitudes,- 2, equals the b^htness of Jupiter or Sirius ;
0, Arcturus or Vega ; 2, the 'ole Star ; 4, the Pleiades ;
6, the faintest starviiible; t colour, B=blue, G=green,
Y=yellow, W=wbii8, and j = red ; the class, L= Leonid,
if path prolonged wr ild passhrough centre of map, N =
other meteors. TL\>5 L 5 YI2h. 26m., indicates that a
Leonid, magnitude 5, yellow i colour, was seen at 12h. 20m.
Find by trial beforehand ho^ many seconds are required
to make each record. Agaii the path of each meteor may
be marked upon the map by oting its position in relation
to the adjacent stars. Such ork can be done equally well
elsewhere, and should not in rfere with the hourly count
mentioned above."
PHOTOGRAPH OF TH NEBULOUS REGION
ROUND y ^ 37 CYGNI.
By Isaac Robets, d.sc, k.r.s.
THE region, to whic the photograph annexed
hereto refers, is omprised between E. A.
20h. 51m. 24s. am R.A. 21h. Om. 48s., and in
Declination betweei 42° 56-5' and 44° 51' north.
Epoch 1900. Soa — one millimetre to thirty
seconds of arc. In the N. ■ C, No. 7000, it is referred
to as faint, exceedingly largdiffused nebulosity.
Some photographs of the 3gion have been taken with
portrait lenses, having ap cures up to six inches in
diameter and focal distance t thirty inches, but the scale
of such photographs is too mall for showing structural
details in a satisfactory man r ; two of these were taken
by Dr. Max Wolf in the latt half of the year 1891, and
were published in Kno\\xedg
The photograph annexed vas taken with the twenty-
inch reflector, and exposure ■ the plate during two hours
and fifty-five minutes on th 10th October, 18'.)6, and it
will be seen that the struci ral details of the nebulosity
are delineated upon it on a^cale that will enable astro-
nomers in the future to dete., and correlate, any changes
that may take place in the r lulosity or in the stars that
surround or are involved in .. The whole extent of the
nebulosity that appears to be onnected, or is in proximity
to that shown on the photc aph would require a larger
plate than this to cover it, t; there is no indication of a
symmetrical aggregation oi the nebulosity such as is
visible in the majority of neilie that are known to exist
in many parts of the sky.
There are several indicat as of fission, and also some
evidence of loci of vortical fsturbance in different parts
of the nebulosity, and thei''ore much matter of great
interest to the astronomers ■ the distant future is herein
recorded.
It will be observed, on close
graph, that nearly the whole surfl
cloud of nebulosity is covered with/
nitude between the ninth and thof
few of them can, with certainty,
actually involved in, and forming' part i
The hundreds of apparently finished i
placed between us and the nebulosity, i
true inference, what must be its dimet
from the solar system ? The answer,
given, would be bewildering, for, so far as it ii
to the present time, not one of the stars refer
sensible parallax, and therefore the distance firos
of the nearest of them would be practically in"
sequently, if the nebulosity is at a greater di
the stars, we are left entirely without data to
form even the crudest idea of the extent of thi
space. If the question should be asked : What e^
is there for the assumption that the stars are betwi
and the nebulosity ? my answer would be that, if the
were beyond the nebulosity, their photo-discs t
the negative, appear less bright, and their ma
more or less nebulous ; whereas only those stars wl
appear involved in the nebulositypresent these appearand
Of course it is a fair subject for argument that t"
nebulous stars which appear to be involved in
nebulosity are not so in reality, but seem thus bee
they are beyond it in our line of sight. But this argument^
is much weakened, if not entirely destroyed, when we find
on examination of the negative that those faint, star-like
condensations are not only nebulous themselves but they
foUow the curvatures found in various parts of the nebu-
losity ; thus we are driven to infer that the stars are the
nearer bodies to us, and that the nebulosity hes beyond
the stars.
Photography has now furnished a considerable amount
of evidence in support of the theory — first propounded I
think by Sir William Herschel — that the stellar universe
which is within the bounds of our aided vision, vast though
it be, forms only one unit in boundless space ; but this is
not, the opportune time for presenting and discussing the
evidence furnished by photography bearing upon this
important theory. I may have an opening later on for its
discussion.
fLetttxn,
[The Editors do not hold themselves responsible for the opinions or
statements of correspondents.]
THE ECLIPSE THEORY OF VARIABLE STARS.
To the Editors of Knowledge.
Sirs, — With reference to Mr. Monck's remark (p. 182)
about the title of the article, as above, being misleading,
logically, perhaps it may be ; but a large majority of the
readers of Knowledge no doubt know that the eclipse
theory refers only to the Algol type of star, and the title
would not be misleading to such. No one, except perhaps
quite a stranger to the subject, supposes the eclipse theory
explains the long period variables such as Mira Ceti.
With regard to Mr. Monck's second paragraph, I did
assume, for purposes of calculation, that the brightness of
the star (or stars) was imiform in all parts of the disc, as
seen by us. Later on, in the last paragraph but one, I
expressly anticipated his point that an obscuring atmo-
sphere would alter the character of the light curve.
Mr. Whichells (p. 183) is quite correct in stating that
you can get a continuously varying light curve when the
254
KNOWLEDGE.
[November 1, 1898.
occulting body, at minimum, has still a portion projected
outside the central globe. I stated, however, that I was
only dealing with central eclipses. Without going into
calculations, which are somewhat operose, and for which I
have not just now the time, it can be seen that we can get
any variety of curve, from an almost straight line with
slight depression in centre to a deeply hollow curve. The
first results when only a very small portion of the bright
central globe is cut off or obscured, and the last when the
occulting body is nearly the same size as the primary, and
when, at minimum, a small portion only (as seen from the
earth) lies outside the bright globe. To get the exact
shape at minimum one would require to calculate the
change in light for several positions of the occulting body
very close together ; in fact, for more frequent intervals.
E. E. Makkwick, Col.
LIGHT CUEYES OF OCCULTING BODIES.
To the Editors of Knowledge.
SiES, — On page 183 of the August number of Kno^nxedge
is the suggestion of worliing out the curves for bodies
which occult each other, as shown in variable stars. In
the case of ^ Lyr.p, this has been done by Prof. G. W.
Myers, Urbana, Illinois (University of Illinois), who pre-
sented his results at the " Conference," held at the Yerkes
Observatory, in 1897, October. The agreement between
the Argelander light curve and the Myers theoretical curve
was very remarkable. Chas. H. Rock\\'ell.
The Observatory, Tarrytown, New York,
9th August, 1898.
WEASEL AND YOUNG.
To the Editors of Knowledge.
Sirs, — About Midsummer I was talking with a friend in
the country, when something crossed the road quite near
us. On being followed it resolved itself into an old weasel
and a young one ; the parent, having seized the latter
behind the ear, was leading or dragging her charge at a
gallop. The animals disappeared under some loose pieces
of wood, and by moving one of these gently I was enabled
to secure the young weasel in my handkerchief. This
wrapper was afterwards very attractive to the parent, who
could detect the odour left by the other, and she came
qivite boldly all around it, posing in the most interesting
attitudes, and with a prettily-earnest expression of face.
On the next day I saw her lead another young one for
quite twenty yards along the road. A farmer friend tells
me that the old weasels (and foxes also) always lead their
young in this particular manner.
It would be interesting to learn whether this habit pre-
vails in the carnivora generally ; it does not appear to
occur in the vegetable eaters. Chaeles A. Witchell.
Acetylene gas was, during last month, put through a
somewhat severe ordeal at the Botanical Gardens, Edgbas-
ton, where a garden party assembled to witness a demon-
stration of the new illuminant there introduced into the
houses. Prof. Hillhouse has studied the light from two
points of view — injury to plants from evolved gases, and
relations with colour. He had failed to see the smallest
sign of any of those injurious effects which the combustion
of coal-gas had upon plants, while the most critical colours,
so far as artificial illuminants were concerned, came out of
the ordeal with success — the mixed shades of mauve and
magenta being as perfectly displayed as with the arc light,
and the various shades of yellow could hardly be more
distinguished in ordinary sunlight.
Appalling possibilities for crime were suggested by Sir J.
Crichton Browne in his inaugural address to the Pharma-
ceutical Society this session. A connoisseur of poisons
could, by keeping his own microbes, slaughter hundreds of
innocent people without the slightest fear of his crime
coming to light. Even in a most minute post-mortem
examination, many of the comparatively new organic
poisons defy detection.
The annual exhibition of the Royal Photographic Society
of 1898 does not, we think, mark any decided advance in
true photography. There is much in the exhibition that
is beautiful, and many of the studies display admirable
and clever work, but notwithstanding the general excellence
of the exhibits there is not one photograph which can be
singled out and branded as a masterpiece. If this forty-
third exhibition of the Royal Photographic Society is to
be of peculiar benefit to photographers, the benefit should
lie in clearing up the vexed question as to whether the
unworked photograph is to rank side by side with the
" faked " photograph. In this exhibition prominent posi-
tions have been given to studies so " worked up " that the
veriest tyro can see that shadows, high-lights, and much
detaU are the result of paint and pencil. The influence of
this upon the average photographer, whether he sends in
an exhibit, or whether he merely attends the exhibition to
learn, must be deleterious.
We learn from a report recently issued by the Board oi
Agriculture, that the total amount distributed during the
financial year, 1897-8, to institutions in this country for
agricultural education and research was seven thousand
two hundred pounds, as compared with seven thousand in
the prenous year. Four colleges — namely, University
College of North Wales, Bangor ; Durham College of
Science ; University College of Wales, Aberystwyth ; and
Reading College — each received eight hundred pounds, and
the remainder was distributed in varying amounts down
to a minimum of fifty pounds. Considering that thirty-
two separate counties share in this grant, it will be
apparent that experimental work in cultivating the soil in
this country is economically performed as far as the
Government is concerned.
Some very interesting ornithological news has lately
been received from New Zealand. A fourth specimen of
Xotoniis Mantdli, a large flightless rail, has been captured.
The last specimen of Notornis was captured some twenty
years ago, and it has long been considered extinct by most
people, although a few have clung to the idea that the
species yet lived hidden in some of the great marshes of
New Zealand. The name Xotoniis was originally given
by Owen to some fossil bones discovered in the North
Island, New Zealand. In 1849, a few years later, Mr. W.
Mantell obtained in the Middle Island a freshly-killed
Specimen of a flightless rail which was declared to be
of the same species as Owen's Xotoniis. A second speci-
men was obtamed in 1851, and a third in 1879. The
present specimen was killed by a dog in the bush ad-
joining Lake Te Anau. The skin and all parts of the
bird have been carefuUy preserved, so that we may look
forward to having some exceedingly valuable details con-
cerning this interesting bird. The fact that this fourth
specimen was a young female proves that the bird is by no
means extinct, and also that it is not easy to find.
Electric traction is likely in the near future to become
a new power in the transmission of the " mail." Such an
electro-postal line as has been recently proposed would be
November 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE.
255
a kind of cannon, emitting bullets in the form of cars,
which can be stopped instantly at a particular station by
simply pressing a button at headquirters. Mr. MacGurty,
a well-known engineer, has constructed a small tram line,
about two miles in length, along which he can easily run
an electric car at the rate of two hundred and forty miles
an hour, or four miles a minute. These special railroads,
it is suggested, should be built preferably above ground,
with stations at frequent intervals, each station being in
charge of an electrician, who would receive the whole, or
part, of the contents of the car, and also be in communi-
cation with neighbouring stationmasters.
During last month the International Conference of
Scientific Literature met at the Hotel MtHropole, and
Professor Eiicker, in proposing " Science in all Lands,"
said that " Science had become the most cosmopohtan of
all the professions." The Royal Society has a regular
organization for recognizing merit outside the nation to
which men belonged, and great scientific triumphs are
recognized as baing triumphs, not for one nation, but for
the world. The Royal Society, in 1864, commenced its
catalogue of scientific papers, arranged according to the
names of the authors, but a catalogue of subjects would
be of even greater utility. Such an uudartaking is beyond
the power of any one soeiety or country, hence the
necessity for international co-operation. It is something
to know that the scheme is progressing satisfactorily,
and that there is a fair prospect of its being completed
in such a way as will tend to cement more firmly than
at present the union of international science.
In England the annual military and naval expenditure
has increased in the last ten years by nine millions nine
hundred thousand pounds, while in the same period the
annual education budget has only been increased by about
three million pounds. Sums spent for these purposes by
the Great Powers show rather interesting results : —
England ...
Germany...
France . . .
United States
W.iR.
£40,050,000
32,840,000
36,570,000
16,700,000
EDCC.\TI0N.
£10,140,000
12,120,000
7,920,000
30,890,000
Thus, the most civilized nations of the world spend about
four pounds in military preparation for every pound in
fortifying youth for the battle of life — the United States
being one notable exception.
Lord Lister, at the opening of the new Pathological
Laboratories, Liverpool, championed the cause of vivisec-
tion. " It seemed," said he, " the veriest common sense
that the more practically familiar a mm was with the
structure and working of the marvellously complicated
mechanism of the human body the better fitted he was
to deal with its disorders. . . . Some, perhaps, might
be disposed to object to such researches because they
involved the sacrifice of animal life, but this was as
nothing compared with what occurred for the supply of
food to man. . . . Antesthetics had come to the aid
of experiments on animals. They prevented disturbance
from the struggles of the animal, and they bestowed upon
the operator the unspeakable comfort of knowing that it
felt no pain." Such operations painlessly conducted, it
is gratifying to know, have, by indicating the precise
functions of different parts of organs, already led to the
saving of many human lives.
/.
BRITISH
.„,*^
ORNITHOLOGICAL -^
- ^ _V . NOTES.
Conducted by Harry F. Witherby, f.z.s., m.b.o.u.
Robins and Honeysuckle. — The Robin, like the Marsh
Tit, is partial to the red juicy berries of the honeysuckle,
and this year several Robins have come to my plant for
the fruit. On the other hand, the Sparrows, which actually
roost in the honeysuckle and a covering hop, never touch
the berries. — Ch.\rlks A. Witchell, Eltham.
The Memory of the Partridge. — This year a niece ot
mine, aged eleven, successfully brought up a brood of ten
Partridges, and they Hew off three weeks ago. One day
last week she joined her father, who was shooting two
miles from home, and, to her great surprise, came across
the identical covey. They immediately recognized their
young mistress, and followed her about from field to field,
and the next morning had all returned to their old quarters
by the hall door. — -.Jos. F. Green.
Further Nofes on Birds observed on the Yenisei River, Siberia.
By H. Leyborne Popham, ma. {The Ibis, October, 1898, pp. 489-
520.) — In a very interesting article under this title Mr. Popham
describes how he found the first nest and eggs of the Curlew Sandpiper.
On the Orcadian Some of the Garefoiol fAlca impennis). By
Alfred Newton. {The Ibis, October, 1893, pp. .587-592.)— In this
article Prof. Newton describes wliat was undoubtedly the true breeding
place of the last pair of Great Auks in Orkney. The last of these
Great Auks was destroyed in 1813. The breeding place is an islet off
Papa Westray, on which Prof. Newton has lately landed, after sereral
abortive attempts, in the company of several friends.
Report on the Moremenfs and Occurrence of Birds in Scotland
during 1897. By T. Q. Laidlaw {Annals of Scottish Natural His-
fori/, October, 1898, pp. 200-217). This report has been carefully
compiled from twenty-four Light Station Schedules, and from
schedules and notes from twenty-two other observers in different
parts of Scotland.
The O-reat Sheerwater at St. Kilda {Annals of Scottish Natural
Sistori/, October, 189S, p. 23S). llr. Henry Evans records the
capture by some fishermen of a specimen of this bird at St. Kilda
on August 7th, 1897.
Baillon's CraTce in Caithness (The Field, October 8th, 1898).—
Mr. W. Arkwright, of Thurso, records that he shot a female of this
very rare species at Thurso, in September.
Erratum. — In the October number of EtfOWtSDOE, p. 234, the
Rev. William Serle's name was unfortunately printed as Scole.
All contributions to the column, either in the way of notes
or photographs, should be forwarded to Harry F. Withekby,
at 1, Eliot Place, Blackheath, Kent.
It really seema as if an effective rat poison will soon be
easily procurable. In the bacteriological laboratory at-
tached to the agricultural department of the Russian
Government a disease broke out among the rats kept
for experimental purposes, and soon spread rapidly among
the whole stock. An examination of the spleen and liver
of the victims brought to light a new bacillus, which
was duly isolated and cultivated, and it has been found
that any mouse or rat inoculated with the prepared virus
invariably succumbs. Pigeons, rabbits, and other crea-
tures appear to be immune from its effects.
256
KNOWLEDGE.
[November 1, 1898.
AN IRISH SUPERSTITION.
By Frances .J. Battersby.
A QUAINT old book, written by Sir Henry Piers of
Insternaglit in 1G82, and entitled " A Cbrora-
graphical Description of the County West Meath,"
gives the following account of the " Connagh
worm," which may prove interesting to some
readers of Knowledge.
"We have a certain reptile found in our bogs called by
the Irish the ' Connagh worm.' This is an ugly worm,
sometimes as thick as a man's thumb, about two or three
inches long, having, as all reptiles have, many short feet,
a large head, great goggle eyes and glaring, between
which riseth orjutteth forth one thick bristle, in shape
like a horn, which is prominent and bendeth forward about
three-quarters of an inch. Whatever beast happeneth to
feed where this venomous worm hath crept (some say if
he do but tread there) is certainly poisoned, yet may be
infallibly cured if timely remedy be applied ; the case is
twofold, yet in effect but one, both proceeding from the
very worm itself. Some there are that take this worm and
putting it into the hand of a new-born child close the
hand about it, tying it up with the worm closed in it till it
be dead. This child ever after, by stroking the beast
affected recovers it, and so it will if the water wherein the
child washes be sprinkled on the beast. I have known a
man that thus would cure his neighbour's cattle tho' he
never saw them.
" The other method of cure, which I like much better, is
by boring an augur-hole in a well-grown willow tree, and
in it imprisoning, but not immediately killing the worm,
so close by a wooden peg that no air may get in, and
therein leaving him to die at leisure. The leaves and
tender branches of this tree ever after if bruised in water,
and the affected beast therewith be sprinkled, he is cured.
The All-wise and Ever-gracious God having thus in his
Providence ordered it that not only this venomous reptile,
but divers others, and who knows if not all, did we know the
right method of using them, should have in themselves
their own antidotes, that so we might have a remedy at
hand as the poet sayeth — ' Una eademque manus vulnus
opemque ferat.' "
The first time I saw the "reptile" it was brought to me
by a country girl, who had picked it up by the aid of two
sticks as it was crossing a road, as she was afraid to handle
it. Subsequently, a friend brought me several specimens
taken off a fuchsia in her garden, and there were few
seasons for many years in which two or three specimens
were not obtained by the first finder, now grown fearless
of its " poisonous " powers. Last autumn a neighbouring
clergyman's daughter walking near a ditch " saw her little
dog barking and snapping at a most curious looking
creature with staring goggle eyes."
We made many inquiries amongst our labourers and
country folk as to what this so-called "reptile" could be,
and the various accounts proved very amusing. One man
said " he had seen one years ago, about thres inches long,
and as thick as two black slugs put together; it had a
round head like a cat's, and goggle eyes." He was afraid to
touch it as its eyes glared like a frog's, and said it bit or
stung cattle, when their heads swelled up, and a man was
once bit on the leg, which swelled up, and he nearly died.
A labourer said that once, having taken his dinner to a
field, he was going to fetch the tin basin in the evening,
when he found a Connagh sitting in it, glaring at him ;
and this informant, when offered a reward for a specimen,
said he would not touch one for ten shillings. The most
reliable and graphic account we obtained was from a
woman who thirty years ago saw upon a stem of meadow
sweet a creature three or four inches in length, almost
black, and banded. She let it climb on a stick. " When
it stretched itself, its head came to a point like a leech ;
when it pulled in the front part, the head seemed very
large, and the eyes could not be seen. As it crawled
towards her they were glaring and banded across in an odd
way, and it had a thing like a gooseberry thorn in its tail."
It fell off the stick, and when she came home her father
reproved her for not having killed the Connagh by smashing
it with a stone, "as now it would sting the cattle.''
All these accounts pointed to the larva of the elephant
hawk moth, and upon a fine specimen having been brought
us this season, tho last informant at once identified it with
the Connagh named by her father. A friend of the writer
told her of an old man who brought her a caterpillar of the
elephant hawk moth which he called by the dreaded name.
It seems certain, then, that the dreaded "Connagh worm"
is nothing more than a harmless caterpillar.
There are two models of the " Connagh ' in the Dublin
Museum at present. They are studded with coloured stones,
and supposed to have been used as charms in days gone by.
yptfecs of ISOOltg.
The Mammals, Bcptiles and iVs/i- s of Essex. ByHenry Laver,
M.R.C.S., F.S.A., 1-.I..S. (London: Simpkin, Marshall & Co.,
1898.) This catalogue of the vertebrate fauna of Essex,
excluding the birds, will, Uke all local lists, prove of value
to students of geographical distribution. It is published
under the cpffis of the Essex Field Club, being the third of
a series of special memoirs for which this enterprising and
enthusiastic body of naturalists is responsible. We are
glad that Mr. Laver has given considerable attention to
the fishes of Essex ; there is still room for work in this
direction, but though some species will doubtless have
been omitted from the catalogue before us, a good beginning
has now been made. The publication of the work will
certainly encourage the study of natural history in Essex.
Text- Book of Entomnhniy. By Alpheus S. Packard,
M.D., pii.D., Professor of Zoology and Geology at Brown
University. (New York : The MacmiUan Company.)
18s. net. Professor Packard's volume deals with the
anatomy, physiology, embryology, and metamorphoses of
insects, and will prove eminently useful to the working
entomologist as well as to students in agricultural colleges.
It is presumed that the reader already has some know-
ledge of invertebrate life, and at the outset the relations
of insects to other arthropoda are discussed. The whole
of the seven hundred and more pages bear evidence to
the extent of the knowledge which Prof. Packard has
accumulated through thirty years of assiduous labour.
Though the greater part of the volume, perhaps, is taken
up with minute and careful accounts of technical detail,
some of the subjects would, we are sm-e, prove of the
greatest interest to every intelligent reader. Thus, on
p. Ill the question of how flies and other insects are
able to walk up, or run with the body inverted, on
smooth surfaces, is dealt with. A series of instanta-
neous photographs, showing the mode of progression
of a beetle, on p. 112, is another instance of information
which would be popular anywhere. The theory of
insect flight, exemplified also by instantaneous photo-
graphs after Marey, is a charming piece of reading,
and these are but a few instances which afford evidence
enough that the amateur entomologist will find much in
this important volume which he wiU be able to understand
and appreciate.
November 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE.
257
Text-Book of Xoolofiy. By H. CI. Wells, b.Sc. (lond.),
F./.S., F.c.p. Revised and enlarged by A. M. Davies,
]:.sc. (LOND.) (London : W. B. ('live.) Gs. Gd. The
changes which have taken place during the five years since
Mr. Wells wrote the llrst edition of his " Text-Book of
Biology " — changes not only in the way in which several of
the subjects dealt with in the book are regarded, but also
in the syllabus of the Intermediate Science Examination
of the London University — have made an extensive revision
of the volume desirable. This work has been entrusted
to Mr. Davies, a teacher who has had great experience in
preparing students for the particular examination the
requirements of which the book is designed to meet.
While keeping to the original plan and method, Mr. Davies
has re-written large parts of the book and superintended
the re-drawing of the illustrations. Though written for
one examination, and consequently somewhat brief in its
exposition of important and interesting questions, the book
provides a satisfactory introduction to zoology, and with
the help of the remarkably clear iigures an intelligent
student should find his task easy.
SHORT NOTICES.
The Pi-orexs of Creailon Discoivreil. By James Dunbar. (Watts
& Co.) 7s. 6(i. We fear that Mr. Dunbar's treatise has lengtli
without breadth. After brushing aside the nebuhir and meteorite
hypotheses as false, baseless, incapable of demonstration, an 1 ground-
less fictions, he enunciates " the new theory of evolution," in which
" the only elements employed or necessary in the formation of the
sun, solar system, and universe are those composing atmospheric air
and water-^the two distinct forms of matter which nature iuvariablv
employs in all its works, from the largest sims to the smallest
asteroids that exist." Our author has devoted ten years to the
formation and suitable presentation of his views on this debatable
and interminable subject of the evolution of worlds. Those who
have plenty of leisure and sufficient curiosity may extract lively enter-
tainment out of Mr. Dunbar's mental somersaidts.
Wireless Telegraph i/. By Eichard Kerr, F.&.s. (Seeley cSt Co.)
Portraits. Is. At present a widespread interest prevails in wireless
telegraphy, and therefore any readable literature on the subject in
handy form is welcome. The book before us has been prepared for
busy people who have time to do no more than catch a glimpse of the
new inventions which are from time to time subordinated to the
routine of daily life. A very vivid picture is given of the unique
career of Lindsay, who anticipated by half a century the mode of
telegraphy which is now attracting so much attention. The merits of
the book from a purely technical jioint of view may be easily con-
jectured when it is stated that Mr. Preece has contributed an
admirable preface, in which he gives a brief history of the latest
discovery of electrical science.
What is Science .' By the Duke of Argyll. (David Douglas.)
Like many other writers on this subject, the Duke of Argyll recognizes
the humiliating limitations of scientific knowledge. Although we
may revel in so-called great discoveries, and regard with feelings of
pride the wonderful advances made during the nineteenth century, we
have after all to reconcile ourselves to the fact that we are as far away
from the real divination of Nature's phenomena as were our fore-
fathers— our new positions being only so many blind alleys. The
reader who likes occasionally to ponder over and compare the known
and the unknown will find the Duke good company, and at the same
time see by what means our author arrives at the conclusion that the
ratio of oiir scientific knowledge to the fund of information locked up
in Nature's casket is as the one grain of sand is to the number of
grains of sand on the earth's surface.
Astronomy for the Young. By W. T. Lynn, B.A., p.r.a s. (Stone-
man.) Illustrated. 6d. It is doubtful whether such a pamphlet
as this would make interesting reading to cliildren. The author
endeavours in the space of about sixty very brief pages to make clear
to young people the elements of astronomy. When we point out
that the earth, the moon, the sun, the planets, comets and meteors,
and the stars all come in for a share of this restricted territory, it
will be apparent how infinitesimal ia the first aid here given to the
comprehension of so vast a subject. The day has, we think, gone
by when the young could be tempted with such a thin intellectual
beverage as Mr. Lynn here offers.
Studies in Plant Life. By Eleanor Hughcs-Q-ibb. (Griffin & Co.)
Illustrated. 2s. 6d. An endeavour is here made to treat Botany from
the optimistic side, and, as such, the book will afEord real assistance to
those who cr.n derive pleasure from the study of Nature in the open.
Technical terms are studiously avoided, and the reader is taught to
look upon a llower as a kind of friend. Such a book as this will tend
to rouse in the mind that feeling of awe which the wonders of Nature
generallv inspire when revealed by a teacher who knows how to
present facts to the student. The literary style of the book is
commendable, and the volume will be found easy reading to all
classes of knowledge-hunters.
Teachers who are in the habit of imparting instruction by the aid
of natural objects would do well to acquaint themselves with some
cabinets of animal, vegetable, and mineral produce put together for
this purpose by Messrs. Cox .t Co. These cabinets contain from two
to three hundred, or more, good specimens of the elements, ores, food-
stufl^s, manufactured articles, oils, gums, and so on, which are of daily
use in life, and each of which, with the aid of notes supplied in a
handbook, is sulficient for a lesson. By this arrangement a large
amount of material is neatly and orderly stowed away in a presentable
case, portable enough to be easily carried about — a system in pleasing
contrast with tl'.e higgledy-piggledy way in which food for the mind
is heaped up in some seminaries.
BOOKS RECEIVED.
Celestial and Terrestrial Globes, in case. (Philips.) 12e. 6d.
The Secret of the Poles. By H. Champion. (White & Pike.)
Illustrated. Is. net.
Diet and Food. By Alexander Haig. (Churchill.) Illustrated. 2s.
Practical Mechanics. By S. H. Wells. (Methuen.) 38. 6d.
Provident Societies and Industrial Welfare. By E. W. Brabrook.
(Blaekie.) 2s. 5d.
The Structure and Classification of Birds. ByF. E. Beddard, P.E.s.
(Longmans.) Illustrated. 2l3. net.
Aids in Practical Geology. By Prof. Cole. (Griffin.) Illustrated.
10s. 6d.
Eclipses of the Moon in India. By Eobt. Sewell. (Sonnenschein.)
10s. 6d. net.
Second Stage Mathematics. By W. Briggs. (CUve.) 3s. 6d.
The Discharge of Electricity through Gases. By J. J". Thomson,
P.B.s. (Constable.) 4s. 6d. net.
The Living Organism. By Alfred Earl. (Macmillan.) 63.
Social and Political Economy. By Thos. Judge. (Simpkin.)
3s. 6d.
Skiagraphic Atlas. By John Poland. (Smith, Elder.) 5s.
Carpentry and Joinery. By F. C. Webber. (Methuen.) Ss. 6d.
Seismoloiiy. By John Milne, F.E.3. (Kegan Paul.) 53.
Qualitative Chemical Analysis. By Chapman Jones. (Mac-
millan.) 6s.
The Illustrated Annual of Microscopi/. (Percy Lund & Co.)
25. 6d.
The Reliquary and Illustrated Archceologist. (Bemrose.) l'2s.
Skertchlys Geology. Revised by J. Monckman. (Murby.) Is. 6d.
Heport of the South-Eastern Union of Scientific Societies, 1S9S.
THE SMELL OF EARTH.
By G. Claeke Nuttall, b.sc.
A BRIGHT fine evening after a day of rain is one
of Nature's compensations. The air is peculiarly
sweet and fresh, as though the rain had washed
all evil out of it. The mind, relieved from the
depressing inliuence of continuous rain, is exhila-
rated, and, above all, the strong smell of the earth rises
up with a scent more pleasing than many a fragrant essence.
In the town, indeed, this earthy smell is often obscured by
the bricks and mortar which cover the land, and by the
stronger, less wholesome, odours of human life, but in the
country it has full sway, and fills the whole air with its
presence. Even a slight shower, particularly after drought,
is sufficient to bring out the sweet famiUar smell of the
laud and thrust it upon our notice.
258
KNOWLEDGE.
[NOVEMBEE 1, 1898.
The smell of freshly-turned earth is often regarded by
country lovers as one of the panaceas for the ills of the
flesh, and " follow a plough-share and you will find health
at its tail " has proved a sound piece of advice to many a
weakly town-sick one, over whose head the threatenings of
consumption hung like the sword of Damocles, though it is
possible that it is the fresh air, and more especially the
sunshine, which are the saving media, and not the mere
smell.
But what do we know about this characteristic smell of
the soil '.' Can we regard it as the mere attribute of the
soil as a simple substance, such an attribute as is, for
instance, the peculiar smell of leather, or the odour of
indiarubber ; or can we go deeper and find that it is really
an expression of complexity below '?
Strangely enough this is the case, for the smell of damp
earth is one of the latest signposts we have found which
lead us into a world which, until recently, was altogether
beyond our ken. It points us to the presence, in the
ground beneath us, of large numbers of tiniest organisms,
and not merely to their presence only, but to their activity
and life, and reveals quite a new phase of this activity.
A handful of loose earth picked up in a field by the hedge-
row, or from a garden, no longer represents to us a mere
conglomeration of particles of inorganic mineral matter,
"simply that and nothing more"; we realise now that it
is the home of myriads of the smallest possible members
of the great kingdom of plants, who are, in particular,
members of the fimgus family in that kingdom, plants so
excessively minute that their very existence was undreamt
of until a feW| years ago.
Some faint idea of their relative size, and of the numbers
in which they inhabit the earth, may be gleaned from the
calculations of an Italian, Signor A. Magiora, who, a short
time ago, made a study of the question. He took samples
of earth from different places round about Turin and ex-
amined them carefully. In ordinary cultivated agricultural
soil he found there would be eleven millions of these germs
in the small quantity of a gramme, a quantity whose small-
ness will be appreciated when it is remembered that a
thousand grammes only make up about two and a quarter
pounds of our English measure. Thus, a shovelful! of
earth would be the home of a thousand times eleven
millions of bacteria — but the finite mind cannot grasp
numbers of such magnitude. In soil taken from the street,
and, therefore, presumably more infected with germs, he
calculated that there was the incredible number of seventy-
eight million bacteria to the gramme. Sandy soil is com-
paratively free from them, only about one thousand being
discovered in the same amount taken from sandy dunes
outside Turin.
But though the workers were hidden yet their works
were known, for what they do is out of all proportion to
what they are ; in fact they perform the deeds of giants,
not those of veriest dwarfs. " By their works shall ye
know them" might be a fitting aphorism to describe the
bacteria of the soU. And the nature of their deeds is
widely various, for though the different groups are members
of one great family, yet, like the individuals of a human
family that is well organized, they have each of them their
special vocation. In the spring time, when the sun warms
the chiUy earth, they act upon the husks that have pro-
tected the seeds against the rigours of the winter, and
crumble them up so that the seedling is free to grow ; they
break down the stony wall of the cherry and plum which
has hitherto imprisoned the embryo ; and then, when the
young plant starts, they attach themselves to its roots,
assist it to take in all sorts of nutriment from air and soil,
and thus help it in its fight through life, and when its
course has run they decently bury it. They turn the green
leaves and the woody stem and the dark root back into the
very elements from which they were built up ; they effect
its decay and putrefaction, and resolve it into earth again.
" Dust to dust, ashes to ashes," is the great life work of
the earth bacteria.
But up to the present the fresh smell of the earth, the
smell peculiar to it, has not been in any way associated
with these energetic organisms, and it is quite a new
revelation to find that it is a direct outcome of their
activity. Among the many bacteria which inhabit the
soil, a new one, hitherto imknown, has been just recently
isolated and watched. It lives, as is usual with them,
massed into colonies, which have a chalky-white appearance,
and as it develops and increases in numbers it manifests
itself by the familiar smell of damp earth, hence the name
that has been given it — Clailutlirir odorifcra. Taken singly
it is a colourless thread-like body, which increases numeri-
cally by continuous sub-divisions into two in the direction
of its length. It derives its nutriment from substances in
the soil, which either are, or have been, touched by the
subtle influence of life, and in the processes of growth
and development it evolves from these materials a compound
whose volatilizing gives the odour in question. This
compound has not yet been fully examined ; it is not
named, nor have all its properties been satisfactorily
elucidated, but two facts concerning it stand out clearly.
One is that it is the true origin of the smell that we have
hitherto attributed to earth simply ; and the other, that it
changes into vapour under the same conditions as water
does. Therefore, when the sun, shining after the rain,
draws up the water from the earth in vapour form, it
draws up, too, the odorous atoms of this newly-found
compound, and these atoms, floating in the air, strike on
our olfactory nerves, and it is then we exclaim so often,
" How fresh the earth smells after the rain."
Though moisture, to a certain extent, is a necessary
condition of the active work of these bacteria, yet the
chief reason why the earthy smell should be specially
noticeable after the rain is probably because this com-
pound has been accumulating in the soil during the wet
period. We only smell substances when they are in
vapour form, and since the compound under consideration
has precisely the same properties in this respect as water,
it will only assume gaseous form when the rain ceases.
The bacteria have, however, been hard at work all the time,
and when the sun shines and "drying" begins, then the
accumulated stores commence their transformation into
vapour, and the strong smell strikes upon our senses.
For the same reason we notice a similar sort of smell,
though in a lesser degree, from freshly-turned earth. This
is more moist than the earth at the surface, and hence, on
exposing it, evaporation immediately begins, which quickly
makes itself known to us through our olfactory nerves.
It may also have been remarked that this particular
odour is always stronger after a warm day than after
a cold one, and is much more noticeable in summer than
in winter. This is because moderate warmth is highly
conducive to the greater increase of these organisms, and,
in fact, in the summer they are present in far larger
numbers and exhibit greater vitality than in the winter,
when they are often more or less quiescent.
Two other characteristics of Cladothrix odorifera are
worthy of notice as showing the tenacity with which it
clings to life. It is capable of withstanding extremely
long periods of drought without injury ; its development
may be completely arrested (for water in some degree is a
necessity with all living things, from highest to lowest)
but its vitality remains latent, and with the advent of
November 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE
259
water comes back renewed activity. But besides drought
it is pretty well proof against poisons. It can even with-
stand a fairly large dose of that most harmful poison to
the vegetable world, Corrosive Sublimate. Hence any
noxious matter introduced into the soil would harm it
little ultimately ; the utmost it could do would be to retard
it for a time.
This, then, is the history of the smell of earth as
scientists have declared it unto us, and its recital serves to
further point the moral that the most obvious, the most
commonplace things of everyday life — things that we have
always taken simply for granted without question or
interest — may yet have a story hidden beneath them.
Like signposts in a foreign land, they may be speaking,
though in a language not always comprehended by us, of
most fascinating regions, regions we may altogether miss
to our great loss, if we neglect ignorantly the directions
instead of learning to comprehend them.
THEHOOKS ON THE MANDIBLEOFTHE HONEY
BEE AND THE GIZZARD OF THE ANT.
By Walter Wesche.
IN Knowledge for October, 1895, will be found a drawing
from my pencil of the hooks on the mandible of the
honey bee, which is the only occasion, so far as the
writer knows, that this process has been figured.
The hooks are nine in number, and in many mandibles
carefully examined I have not found this number to
vary ; they are absent in the queen and the drone, and
in all the wild bees that I have had an opportunity of
inspecting. The rib of chitine running across the hollow
of the mandible is present, as are also hairs (in some large
Fl0. 1. — Hooks on the Mandible of the Houev Bee (Apis melifica)
X 140.
humble bees short and bristly), but not in any degree
modified to the form of hooks ; neither is there any indica-
tion of their presence on the mandibles of the common wasp
or hornet.
What their use is, is at present unknown. Mr. Frederick
Enock says that they are undoubtedly highly specialized,
and he " can only wonder at their object." Sir John
Lubbock did not know of them, and had no idea as to their
use. Mr. T. W. Cowan, to whom I had the pleasure of
showing them, now agrees with me that they are hooks,
and highly specialized, and says that they possibly may be
used in drawing out was, the mandible undoubtedly being
used in cutting it, when forming the comb. I hazarded a
suggestion in 1895 that they might be used in clustering,
by hooking on to the claws of the bee above, but I under-
stand that this theory is not tenable. Perhaps, after all,
they may be of the same use to the bee, as is the iron hook
to the man who has lost a hand, and be used in drawing
objects out of the hive, or in the care and removal of
larva; — but whatever their use, it must be one of great
importance to the worker bee, as otherwise it is impossible
to account for their modification — an importance equalling
that which has developed the hooks on the wings.
The Gizzard of an Ant.
This has been many times figured and described. In
McCook's most interesting work on the honey ant of
California, there is an elaborate drawing of the intestine
and gizzard. The drawing
here reproduced is from
Lasius niijer, the common
black ant of our gardens,
seen often stroking and
"milking" the aphides. The
gizzard is very much the
same in appearance as that
of the honey ant, but the
latteris stated to be chitinous,
while the gizzard of L. nhjer
seems to me to be calcareous,
though I have been unable
to verify this by chemical
test. It is very brittle, will
not take methyl blue stain,
and cannot be recommended as a good microscopic object,
as the edges will not define, or at any rate I failed to make
them. In texture it reminded me of the " dart," in the
sexual organs of the common snail.
In this case also, the use of the organ is not known ;
ants are generally supposed to feed on fluids, and I believe
a good deal of discussion has taken place at various times
on the subject.
The organ consists of four separate parts, the lower
portion of each being far less soluble in a solution of caustic
potash than the upper — and I have often found the upper
part quite dissolved away in the preparation of a whole
mounted insect. I have not been able to find the gizzard
in the common sugar ant (Diplorhopirum donifstica), or in
Mynnica la-riiwdis, both of wliich have stings, though this
seems no bar to its presence, as the honey ant has also
a sting.
♦
BOTANICAL STUDIES.-VI.
SELAGINELLA.
By A. Vaughan Jennings, f.l.s., f.g.s.
THE life-history of the little spleenwort, which
formed the subject of our last study, ' showed that
in the true ferns the plant with which we are
familiar is the real Sporophyte generation. The
fern-plant proper produces no Archegonia and
Antheridia, such as our previous examination of the moss
might have led us to expect ; but a large number of
similar spores are developed in simple spore-cases on the
Fig. 2.-
Grizzard of Ant {Lasius
niger)y. 100.,
* KNOWLEDGE, September, 1898.
260
KNOWLEDGE.
[No^^MBEB 1, 1898.
under sides of the fronds. If the spores are allowed to
germinate under proper conditions they grow into little
green cellular structures, the so-calledP/o?/(rt//(', which lead
a short but independent existence, form true Archegonia
and Antheridia, and constitute, therefore, the real Oophyte,
or egg-bearing stage in the life-cycle. In other words, the
Ociphyte is a reduced, simplified, and transitory stage in
comparison with the highly-specialized, long-lived Sporo-
phyte which we see at its highest in the tree-ferns of the
Tropics.
If we look round for other types to help us in tracing
the course of development of higher plant-life, we naturally
turn first to those relatives of the ferns which are com-
monly known as the "horse-tails," "club-mosses," "quill-
worts," and " pill-worts." Of all these, there is no doubt
that we can most easily obtain the information we want
from observation of the genus Selni/inella.
The species included under this name are for the most
part spreading, low-growing plants with creeping stems,
sending off more or less upright shoots. The structure of
their tissues is in general like that of ferns : they have a
well developed fibro-vascular system; leaves (usually of
two kinds) of several cell-layers in thickness and with
distinct midribs ; and roots developed on slender cylindrical
outgrowths of the stem known as )/ii:(iplinres.
In our own country we have only one species, S. selagi-
noiiles, which is not uncommon in the moist and rocky
parts of our mountain districts. So many foreign species
are, however, now in cultivation and easily obtainable,
that there can be no trouble in getting material for study.
The specific differences are mainly those of leaf arrange-
ment and internal stem structure, and will raise no difficulty
in our line of observation. Several of the illustrations here
used are of Sdai/ineUn s/iinulofia, A. Br., a common species
in the Swiss mountains, not unlike our native form in
size and general habit.
If we commence, as in the case of the fern, by looking
at the mature plant (Figs. I and K), with a view to finding
the nature of its reproductive organs, we find that toward
the tips of the erect shoot the leaves are closely crowded
together, forming spikes or cones.
These leaves do not show any brown groups of spore-
cases on their under side like the fern-fronds, but if they
are stripped off, or if a section is cut along the axis of the
spike, it will be found that they differ from the ordinary
leaves in bearing a very distinct sporangium at the inner
and upper aspect of the leaf base. Closer observation
shows that these sporangia are distinctly of two kinds.
Those nearer the tip are transversely oval, single-
chambered sacs ; green at first, then yellow, splitting
across when ripe and discharging a yellow dust (Fig. M).
Those nearer the base of the cone are larger, and each
consists of four rounded or slightly angular lobes, one
resting on the other three in the manner in which the
round cannon balls of olden artillery were piled ; or, to put
it geometrically, the centre of each corresponding in posi-
tion to one of the solid angles of a tetrahedron.*
Here, then, we meet with a very distinct difference
between this plant and the fern. There are two kinds of
sporangia instead of one. The next step is to look at the
contents of these two sporangia.
At the base of the cone, if it is fairly ripe, some of the
* This tetrabedral arrangement results from a differenre iu the
divieion-planes of the cell from which the epore-group is formed.
Thus, if a spherical cell ie divided by a transverse wall, and the two
segments become rounded off, a pair of cells like a figure eight is
produced. If now each of tliese becomes similarly divided, but one
in a horizontal plane and the other in a vertical one, it is evident that
the resulting cells will naturally aci^uire this peculiar grouping.
" tetrabedral " groups will be found in the act of splitting
along the lines separating the four lobes, and it will be
seen that each segment contains a single large spore.
This spore is rounded externally, but flattened somewhat
on the three internal faces where it was in contact with
its sister spores, and its external coat is covered by
angular projections. The contents of the upper, simple
spore- cases appear as a yellow dust ; but if this is looked
at with a microscope it will be found to consist, not of
single spores, but of groups of four, arranged in the same
" tetrabedral " fashion as the large ones. There are, then,
two kinds of spore as well as two kinds of sporangia.
The smaller are termed Microspores, and their cases,
Microsporanr/iu. The larger are known as Mnrronpores, and,
similarly, their enclosing envelopes as Macro-tpurimijia.
These fern-like plants with two kinds of spores are called
lleterosjioroux, while those with only one kmd, such as the
true ferns, are known as Homonporoiis. The distinction is
not one of merely descriptive value for the purposes of
the systematic botanist, but represents a ftmdamental
differentiation of the greatest importance. This will be
seen clearly if, as in the case of the fern, we follow the
germination and resulting growth of these different spores.
When macrospores have been kept for some time on
moist soil, it will be found that the thick protective wall
has split, and there is a small projection of soft colourless
tissue at the ruptured tip. No green leaf-like cell plates,
similar to the fern-prothallus, make their appearance ; yet
in time young green seedlings of Selaginella, with up-
growing stems, and the characteristic rows of leaves,
make their appearance, evidently rising from the macro-
spore. The fact that such young Selaginella-sporophytes
seem to arise directly from a macrospore suggests two
possibilities. Either the Uophyte, or egg-bearing genera-
tion, has been entirely lost (in which case we have no
explanation of the microspores), or it is so much reduced
and concealed as only to be discoverable by careful
microscopic investigation. The latter is the true explana-
tion.
Even before the rupture of the spore-wall in germination,
the protoplasmic contents of the spore, rich in food
materials, will be found to be in part sub-divided by cell
walls, forming a definite, if minute and simple, tissue.
Similarly, the little colourless papilla which projects from
the germinating spore is a distinct cellular outgrowth, and
will be found to bear on its margin organs like the arche-
gonia of the fern oophyte, though less definite in outline
and less complete in structure. ^Ye have, in fact, a small
and simplified prothaUus : one that commences its growth
within the parent spore ; is fed by the food material con-
tained in the spore, never developing roots and green
colouring-matter so as to lead an independent existence,
but yet containing the egg-cells necessary for the con-
tinuation of the plant's being. The diminishing importance
of the ouphyte stage observed in the ferns is here carried
a step further. The prothaUus is no longer a separate
and individual plant, but is reduced to a small, colourless
group of cells, living at the expense of the food material
stored up in the spore.
In the fern it will be remembered that all the spores
were alike ; that all, on germination, could produce green
prothalli ; and that all of these were similar, and pro-
duced both archegonia and antheridia. It is true that in
some genera prothalli are produced which bear only anthe-
ridia, but this seems to be only an abnormal condition,
changeable by alteration of surrounding conditions, and
* The terms Megaspores and Mei/asporangia, recently introduced,;
are more classically accurate, but the meaning in this case isidenticaL.
NOVEMBEB 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE,
261
by no means constant. As a general rule one may say
that the " homosporous " condition in the ferns is always
associated with an independent prothallus, producing both
archegonia and antheridia. Here we have large special
spores that produce rudimentary prothalli bearing egg-
cells.
It is natural, therefore, to turn to the microspores to
discover the origin of the spermatoids which fertilize these
egg-cells ; and it is not difficult to assure oneself that such
spermatozoids are developed from the microspores. A
very close study of the changes taking place within these
It remains merely as a vestige — a remnant of the ancestral
cell-tissue on which the antheridia were formed.
The spermatozoids are set free by the breaking of the
spore-waO, and the development of the embryo-plants
resulting from their contact with the egg-cells can be
observed in sections of prothaUi in their later stages. The
dividing egg-cell soon becomes a definite cell-tissue, in
which can be distinguished the young stem growing-point
with its first-formed leaves, the commencing root, and a
row of cells known as the xuspensor, which is of interest as
occurring here and in higher plants, but not in other
A. — Macrospore of Selaginella. spinulosa, A. Br. B. — Microspores of the same species, c. and D. — Stages in the
division of a Microspore : the mother-cells of the Spermatozoids in the centre, the " Vegetative," or "' Prothallus " Cell at the
lower pole. E. — Spermatozoids. (Highly magniBed.) f. — Section of a Macrospore after germination, showing the Cellular
Mass (Prothallus) produced by the sub-division and outgrowth of its contents. On the right side above is an unfertilized
Archegonium, and on the left side a developing embryo, resulting from fertilization of a similar organ, a. — Later stage of an
Embryonic Plant. The .ipical growing point, with a pair of young leaves and ligules, to the left. H. — A young Sporophyte of
S. helvetica. I. K. — -Procumbent and ascending portions of the mature Sporophyte of 5. spinulosa. The terminal leaves of
the up-growing shoots bear the Sporangia at their bases, and are crowded together to form a spike or cone. L and ii. — Detached
leaves from the fertile spike, showing the Macro- and Micro-Sporangia, entire and dehiscent, x. — Part of a section through a
fertile spike of 5^. spinulosa. showing in different stages of development the Microsporangia above and Macrosporangia below.
[Fig. c, D, E, after Belajeff ; r and &, after Pfeffer ; ir, after Bischoff. The rest original.]
spores is necessary to a full understanding of their nature,
and requires more elaborate observation. Such examina-
tion leads, however, to this conclusion : that the whole
contents of the microspore are not used up in the formation
of the spermatozoid. The early division of the microspore
contents shuts oil" a portion, the so-called " vegetative cell,"
which seems to be of no further use. There is stiO, that
is to say, inherent in the spore, the tendency to develop
a prothallua-tissue, but this never grows to any extent.
cryptogams. The details of development of this little
embryo from the egg-cell are very complicated, but for our
present purpose we need only note that it can be traced
through its various stages to such a form as Fig. H, and
that this in turn grows into the Selaginella plant.
The question of the origin of the heterosporous type is
fall of interest, but we have little evidence to indicate the
lines of its evolution. It is impossible to say whether a
tendency to differentiation of the spores into two kinds
262
KNOWLEDGE.
[November 1, 1898.
brought about the separation of sexes in the prothalli, or if
the acquirement of dirooious conditions in the oophyte
stage was followed by modification of the spores. That the
establishment of the heterosporous condition dates far back
in the world's history is proved by the fossils of our coal-
fields, which show that it existed in some of the great tree-
like ancestors of Selaginella and its allies, which ilourished
in the swamps round the Carboniferous seas.
All we can pretend to show in this sketch is that this
little mountain " moss," so much less conspicuous than
its cousins the ferns, yet contains, for those who care to
look at it, the evidence of a great change in organic
evolution, which has modified the whole course of plant
development, and made our trees and flowers what they
are to-day.
It is possible that among the upland districts that form
the home of the little Selaginella we may find a better
known and more conspicuous member of the plant-world
to supply the next link in the chain.
NOTES ON COMETS AND METEORS.
By W. F. Denning, f.r.a.s.
Comet Peerine-Chofardet. — This comet was discovered
on September 13th by Perrine, and on the following night
by Chofardet. It was visible in the morning sky, and
situated a few degrees north of the "sickle" of Leo.
Moving rather quickly to the south-east, in the direction
of the sun, it was increasing in brilliancy, but assuming a
position much less favourable for its observation. It came
to perihelion on October 20th, and in November its motion
will have carried it so far into the southern sky that it will
cease to be visible in our latitude. The following is from
an ephemeris by Berberich (Ast. Nach. 8520).
Distance in
Date. E.A. Declination. miDions of Bright-
1898. h. m. c ' miles. ness.
October 18 13 29-8 - 6 10 128 8-7
November 3 15 25-9 27 44 131 40
lit 17 27-0 38 42 145 1-8
December 5 19 12-5 -40 36 170 05
Wolf's Cojiet is moving slowly to the south-west in
Monoceros, but it is a faint object even in powerful tele-
scopes.
The Expected Shower of Leonid Meteors. — The
absence of moonlight at the middle of November is a
highly favourable circumstance, and a pretty abimdant
display of meteors should be observed if the weather is
clear on the morning of November 15th. In 1832-, Novem-
ber 12th, Dawes observed " most astonishingly brilliant
meteors from the east, with little intermission for about
an hour, when a thick fog supervened." In 18G5 many
meteors were seen at Greenwich and other places, but the
shower could not rank as one of first-class importance.
Though 1899 and 1900 will furnish the richest displays,
there will be many of these objects seen in the present
month. Observations should not be commenced before
11 p.m., as the radiant will not rise until shortly before
that hour, and the most brilhant exhibition of meteors will
probably occur in the early hours of the 15th. But a
look out should be maintained also on the mornings of
November 14th and IGth, especially by those observers
who wish to study the scientific aspects of the phenomenon.
There will probably be more Leonids seen than Perseids
in a pretty active return of the August stream ; but we are
scarcely justified in assuming that the shower will furnish
its thousands of meteors as it did in 1833 and 1806, for
the earth traverses the orbit at a point considerably in
front of the parent comet, and we know that the most
profuse distribution of its material lies on the following or
rear side of the comet. Those who watch the ensuing
return of the meteors will do well to trace them on several
nights and to accurately determine their radiant point,
horary number, and time of maximum for each date. In
Axt. Xacli., No. 3516, E. Abelmann, of St. Petersburg,
gives the results of his investigation of the orbit of the
associated comet (Tempel 18G6 I.) and meteoric swarm,
lie corroborates the previous researches of Adams and
Newton, and concludes that the orbits of the meteors and
parent comet have nearly coincided with each other from
a very remote time. He finds that the longitude of the
node is increased 31-5' during one revolution, or about 1-5^
in a century. " As the stream has been observed for about
one thousand years, its line of apses has revolved in that
time about fifteen degrees, but a glance at the form of the
orbit shows that this motion of the apse would alter the
solar distance of the stream at the descending node very
little from the earth's distance from the sun, so that for
many ages yet the continued visibility of the star shower
will not be thereby affected. In front of the comet there
seems to be no train of dense matter, as at its passage
through the node in 1865, the earth was at a com-
paratively small distance from the comet, and meteors
were only remarked in small abundance. At the earth's
passage through the node in 1867, again, only a meagre
meteoric display was visible." Prof. Abelmanrrtseems to
have overlooked the splendid showers of Leonids seen in
America both in 1867 and 1868, and has apparently also
underrated the strength of the system in that part of the
orbit which precedes the cometary nucleus. The observation
in 1898 ought to produce important evidence on the latter
point.
The Meteoric Shower of Biela's Comet. — This event, so
brilliantly presented in 1872 and 1885, and seen in fairly
conspicuous character in 1892, may return again in 1898,
on November 23rd or 24th. But the period of six years,
elapsed since 1892, is less than that of the parent comet,
though the year 1898 corresponds with the thirteen-year
interval between 1872 and 1886. The average period of
Biela's comet, derived from observations between 1772 and
1852, was 6'71 years, but the time was apparently shorten-
ing, for between 1772 and 1826 it was 6-76 years, while
between 1826 and 1852 it was only ()62 years. It is most
unfortunate that the comet has not been re-observed since
1852, and that we can only judge its exact whereabouts by
the most brilliant return of the meteoric system with which
it seems to be intimately connected. On November 23rd
next the earth will probably become involved in that
section of the stream just preceding the comet, and the
shower may quite possibly be a very plentiful one, for in
1838 the earth crossed the orbit far in the van of the comet,
and yet a rich display occurred. But the precise character
of the approaching rencontre cannot be defined. The
period of thirteen years between the shower of 1872 and
1885 may not apply with equal force to future returns. In
1872 the earth was immersed in the material lying in the
wake of the comet, while in 1885 it was involved with that
in front of it, so that in 1)S98 we shall pass yet further in
front, and possibly too far in advance of the cometary
nucleus to witness a really imposing flight of meteors. If,
however, the period of revolution has decreased since 1852,
and the meteoric stream is in process of distending itself
along the orbit, then a fine display may occur this year.
In any case, it should be attentively looked for on the
nights of November 23rd and 24th. The moon will be in
a gibbous phase, and visible during the <,'reater part of the
night. There will, however, be several hours of dark sky
November 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE
263
before sunrise, and these should be fully utilized. The
radiant point of the shower, being near y Andromeda?, is
visible during the whole night. Prof. Abelmann has
recently pointed out, as Schulhof had previously done, that
a great disturbance of this system will be felt in 1901-2
by a near approach to Jupiter. The node will bo decreased
6'2 degrees, so that a shower will, for some years there-
after, occur on November 17th. In 1904 or 1905 it may
be possible to witness the Leonids and Andromedes in
simultaneous play. This will provide an interesting event
and allow comparisons to be made between the swift streak-
leaving meteors and the slow-trained meteors, for the
visible aspect of the objects forming the two systems are as
widely dissimilar as they can well be. Every meteoric
observer will, we are assured, be on the alert on November
15th and :i3rd-21th nest, in order to gather as many
facts as possible of the phenomena that will be displayed.
I am inclined to believe that the Leonids will be best seen
soon after midnight on the night following the 11th, while
the Andromedes will be most numerous just before sunrise
on the 24th, or in the early evening of that date.
THE FACE OF THE SKY FOR NOVEMBER.
By A. FoiS'LER, F.R.A.S.
RECENT experience seems to indicate that the Sun
will be well worth careful observation for spots
and faculiB, and, in the event of a large spot
making its appearance, aurorte may be looked for
about the time of its passage across the central
meridian.
Mercury is an evening star throughout the month, but
he is too far south for easy observation in our latitudes.
He will be at greatest eastern elongation (21°) on December
3rd. On November 20th, at 8 a.m., he will be in conjunction
with Venus, Mercury being 1^ 18' to the north.
Venus is an evening star, but, on account of her great
southerly declination, is badly placed for observation after
sunset. She will be stationary on the 11th at 10 a.m., and
will afterwards rapidly approach inferior conjunction, which
is due on December 1st at 5 p.m. At the beginning of the
month she sets about a hour later than the Sun.
Mars rises late in the evening in the north-east, and,
as will be seen from the diagram given last month, he
traverses an eastward path through Cancer. During the
month his apparent diameter increases from 8-8'' to 11-2",
and his horizontal parallax from 8-4 ' to 10-5". On the
8th his distance from us will be the same as that of the
sun. At the middle of the month 0-9' of his disc will be
illuminated. He will rise about half-past nine on the 1st,
and about eight o'clock at the end of the month.
Jupiter is a morning star, but he is not sufficiently
removed from the Sun to permit observations of his satellites
before the 12th. At the middle of the month he rises
about two and a half hours before the Sun, his apparent
diameter being only 28'8".
Saturn remains an evening star during the month, but
the time of conjunction with the Sun is so near that he
can scarcely be regarded as observable to those who have
not a perfectly clear horizon to the south-west. At the
middle of the month he sets about an hour after the Sun.
Uranus is an evening star until the 25th, when he
arrives at the point of conjunction with the Sun. He may
be considered as not observable.
Neptune rises shortly before 7 p.m. at the beginning of
the month, and about 5 p.m. towards the end. He is a
little more than li° north-east of ? Tauri.
The Moon will enter her last quarter on the 6th at
2.28 P.M.; will be new on the 14th twenty-one minutes
after midnight ; will enter her first quarter on the 20th at
5.5 P.M. ; and will be full on the 28th at 5.32 a.m. The
most interesting occultation during the month will be that
of 19 Piscium, Mag. 5-2, which will take place at a con-
venient time on the 22nd. The disappearance will occur
at 7.9 P.M., at a point 25° east of the north point (30° from
vertex) ; and the reappearance at 8.13 p.m., at 268° east of
the north point (2G0° from vertex).
Conveniently observable minima of Algol will occur on
the 17th at 10.12 p.m. ; and on the 20th at 7 p.m.
Mira Ceti will probably remain a naked eye star
throughout the month.
Attention may be called to the recent development of
the central condensation of the Great Nebula in Andro-
meda, which is now well situated for observation. This is
not a reappearance of the " new " star of 1885, but is pro-
bably a temporarily increased brightness of the central
point of the nebula, which is known to be variable.
By 0. D. LooooE, b.a.
Communications for this oolnmn should be addressed to
C. D. LococK, Netherfield, Camberley, and posted on or
before the 10th of each month.
Solutions of October Problems.
No. 1.
(By J. Jespersen.)
1. K to B2, and mates next move.
No. 2.
(By C. Planck.)
Key-move — 1. Kt to B6.
Ifl . . . KxKt(B6), 2. QtoBGch, etc.
1 . . . KxKt (Kt6), 2. Q to B4, etc.
1 . . . P (or B) X Kt (Kt6), 2. Q to K5ch, etc.
BxP, 2. QxKtPch, etc.
1 . . . PxKt (B6),
1 ... B to Ktsq, etc..
2. Kt to E4ch, etc.
2. Q to B4ch, etc.
Correct Solutions of both problems received from H.
Le Jeune.
Of No. 1 only, from G. G. Beazley, A. E. Whitehouse,
Alpha, W. W. Stead, W. Clugston, W. de P. Crousaz.
Of No. 2 only, from H. S. Brandreth.
[The above pair have evidently proved very difficult.
One of the most expert of our solvers at first pronounced
the two-mover beyond him.]
Abdul Humid. — If 1. K to Q3, the Pawn checks.
H. S. Brandreth.— 1. P to B7 is met by K to B5.
G. F. r.— After 1. Kt to Kt6ch, K to K3 ; 2. Kt to
Kt5ch is not mate.
Alpha. — The composers should be proud.
A. Firth.— Book of games received with thants and
noticed below.
A. C. Chalhnger. — Congratulations on your double
success. Thanks for the problems. We are inclined to
doubt our solvers endorsing your opinion as to the sui-
mate being " not difficult."
X E. Means. — Problems received with thanks. We
will examine, and hope to publish them shortly.
264
KNOWLEDGE.
[NOVEMBEE 1, 1898.
PROBLEMS.
No. 1.
By A. C. Challenger.
BI.ACK (7).
White {'.'}.
White mates in two moves.
No. 2.
By P. H. Williams.
Black (5).
White (:•).
White compels Black to mate in six moves.
[Black's first three moves are forced ; after that there are
two variations.]
We have received a little book of sixty pages, entitled
" Games of the Counties and Craigside Chess Tournament,
1898." It will be remembered that Mr. A. Burn was the
winner of this tournament last Christmas, Mr. Bellingham
being second. These two players, in conjunction with
Mr. H. E. Atkins, the amateur champion, have annotated
nearly the whole of the games in this selection. There is
a report of the tournament, and a photograph of all the
players engaged. It is an excellent shilling's worth,
obtainable at that price from the Hon. Sec, Mr. A. Firth,
Bryn-y-Bia, Llandudno.
CHESS INTELLIGENCE.
The Amateur Tournament at Sahsbury, promoted by
the Southern Counties Chess Union, was successfully
concluded on September 20th. The score sheet in Class I.
reads as follows : —
71 ) Tie for let
7j i and 2nd.
7 3rd prize.
G 4th prize.
HI
5H
5
4^
8^
2
1
J. H. Blake (Southampton)
W. Ward (City of London)
W. H. Gunston (Cambridge University)
G. E. H. Bellingham (Dudley)
Dr. Bleiden (City of London) ...
E. Loman (]\Ietropolitan)
F. -J. H. Elwell (Southampton)
C. H. Sherrard (Stourbridge) ...
B. D. Wilmot (Birmingham) ...
A. Kumboll (Bristol)
A. L. Stevenson (Kent)...
It will be seen that the scoring at the top was extremely
close. Mr. Gunston, who played better than he has in
public for some time past, led for the greater part of the
contest. Mr. Bellingham took some risks against the
three players above him, and lost to them all. An accident
had also affected his health, and is sufficient to account
for his comparatively low position. Mr. Wilmot did not
do nearly so well as at Craigside in the winter. The
remainder came out roughly in order of merit. In Class II.,
Mrs. Fagan, of the London Ladies' Club, secured a most
creditable victory with the fine score of nine wins and two
It now seems certain that an international tournament
will be held in London next year ; £500 has already been
subscribed. It will probably be a two-round tournament,
limited to sixteen or eighteen players.
Mr. Steinitz recently played nineteen games simul-
taneously at the Hastings Chess Club, winning sixteen and
drawing the other three.
KNOWLEDGE, PUBLISHED MONTHLY.
Contents ol No. 15s (September).
Whale Models at the Natunil History
Museum. By K. Lydekker, B.A.,
F.E.8. (niustraled.)
Repetition and Evclutiou in Bird-
Song. By Charles A. Witchell.
The K^kinokoSEo, or World of Cms.
tocea.— V. By the Eev. Thomas B.
B. Stebbing, m.a., f.e.s., f.l.s.
(Illustrated.)
Economic Botany. By John R. Jack-
son. A.L.S., etc.
British Ornithological Notes.
Letters, (Illustrated.)
Science Notes.
Variable Stars of Short Period. By
Edward C. Pickering. (Illustrated.)
The Astronomy of the "Canterbury
Tales." By E. Walter Maunder,
F.E.A.8.
Notices of Books.
" Insect Miners." — II. By Fred.
Enock,F.L.s..F.E.S., etc. (Illustrated}
Botanical Studies. — V. Asplenium.
By A. Vanghan Jennings, F.L.S.,
F.G.S. (Illustrated.)
Notes on Comets and Meteors. By
W. F. Demiing, f.r.a.s.
The Face of the Sky for September.
By A. Fowler, f.k.a.s.
Chess Column. By C. D. Locock, b.a.
Plate. — Copilia Vitrea (Haeckel) and
Calocalauus Plumulosus (Glaus).
Contents of No. 156 (October).
An Esker in the Plain. By Grenville
A. J. Cole, H.B.I. A., F.G.S. (Illus-
trated.)
The Sea-Squirt. By E. Stenhouse,
A.a.c.s.. B.SC.
The Affinities of Flowers.— The
BLadderwort and its Relatives. By
Felix Oswald, B.A., B.SC. (nius-
trated.)
Ethnology at the British Slusemn.
By K. Lydekker. (ri!u*(rot«d.)
The Fourth International Congress
oi Zoology.
The Great Sunspot. By E. Walter
Maunder, f.e.a.s. (illustrated.)
Letter.
Science Notes.
Notices of Books.
British Ornithological Notes. Con-
ducted by Harry F. Witherby
F.Z.S., M.B.O.U.
Sunspots and Life. By Alex. B.
MacDowall. m.a. (IIlu.<tro(<><i.)
Economic Botany. By John R.
Jackson, A.L.S., etc.
Notes on Comets and Meteors. By
W. F. Denning. F.B.A.S.
The Face of the' Sky for October. By
A. Fowler, F.R.A.S.
Chess Column. By C. D. Locock, b.a.
Plate. — The Great Group of Sunspots
of September 3rd— 15th, 1898.
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December 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE
266
ILLUSTRATED MAGAZINE
[ENCE , liTERATURE A i^
Founded in i88i by RICHARD A. PROCTOR.
LONDON: DECEMBER 1, 1898.
CONTENTS.
• PAOR
Editorial 265
Volcanoes of the North. By Gbenvillk A. J. Cole,
M.B.I.A., I'.G.s. {Illustrated).. ■ ... ... ,,. ... 2G(i
Christmas Customs of Shakespeare's Greenwood. By
Geokqe iloitLET 208
The Colours of Cowries. By R. Lyuekkkr. (Plate) ... 270
Notices of Books 272
Shokt Notice? 273
Booza Received 274
Science Notes 275
Obituary 276
British Ornithological Notes. Conducted by Habbt F.
WiTHKKBT, P.Z.S., 5I.B.0.U. ... ... ... ... ... 277
Letters :— Siomund Stein ; G. B. Lonostaff; W. Ai.fbed
Pare ; Jos. F. Oheen ; William C. Tetley ; II. Cordelia
Leigu ; H. J. Lowe : 1I»x\vell Hall; W. H. .S.
MoNOK 277
Variable Stars in Globular Clusters. By Miss Aonbs M.
Clerke. {Illustrated} " 279
Variable Stars in Clusters 281
Botanical Studies.— VII. Abies.— VIII. Lilium. By A.
Vaitohan Jennings, f.l.s., f.g.s. {Illustrated) 282
Notes on Comets and Meteors. By W. F. DBNNma,
r.E.A.s 285
The Face of the Sky for December. By A. Fowlhb,
P.B.A.S 286
Chess Column. By C. D. Locook, b.a 287
EDITORIAL.
UPON completing with the present issue the
twenty-first volume of Knowledce, the
duty again devolves upon us of offering
our acknowledgments to the host of friends
\\ho have so kindly contributed to our columns during
the year ; and also our assurance that the vigorous
child conceived in the fertile brain of Richard A.
Proctor has attained its majority (in volumes though
not quite in years), in perfect health and strength ; and,
further, that it enters upon its future full of promise,
and confident, at least, that it v.'ill seek to deserve a
continuance of that hearty support so freely accorded
it in the past.
In presenting the customary announcement of some
of the leading projects included in our New Year's
work, we have first to say that the January Number
will contain a beautiful drawing of Saturn specially
drawn for us by Mons. E. M. Antoniadi, who will also
contribute an article entitled " Considerations on the
Planet Saturn " ; and that further photographic plates
are in our hands from Dr. Isaac Roberts. The
spectroscopic results obtained during the recent solar
eclipse will, of course, be fully considered in our
columns as soon as they have been worked out ;
and Mr. Maunder is arranging for a continuance of
the photographic studies of the lunar surface.
Much attention will be given during the ne.xt two
or three years to meteorological and cometary astro-
nomy, as these branches of our work are entering
upon an important epoch. We have accordingly
arranged with Mr. W. F. Denning to continue his
interesting column of Notes on Comets and Meteors.
The Face of the Sky will be limned each month by
Mr. A. Fowler, who has conducted this column with
so much care since the lamented death of Mr. Herbert
Sadler. We hope the following writers will also be
found among our astronomical contributors in 1899 : —
Miss Agnes M. Clerkc ; Mons. C. Easton ; Mr. J.
Evershed ; Mr. J. E. Gore ; Prof E. C. Pickering ;
and Mr. W. Shackleton.
The Rev. Thomas R. R. Stebbing, who has been
portraying the Karkinokosm during the year with
such marked success, purposes to complete the
general outline of the studj' in two more chapters,
and then to add some touches of light and shadow to
the picture in subsequent essays.
Sir Edward Fry and Miss Agnes Fry have written
a monograph, which will appear in KNOWLEDGE
during the year, on " The Mycetozoa, and some ques-
tions which they suggest." The articles on these very
interesting organisms, which are referred neither to the
plants nor to the animals, will be full}- illustrated
from drawings by Miss Yry.
Prof. Grenville A. J. Cole has formulated a new-
series of original geological papers under the general
title of " Secrets of the tlarth's Crust " ; and arrange-
ments are in progress for the appearance of a new
series of original studies on the " Treatment and
Uses of Anthropological Data," with the object of
stimulating interest in a somewhat neglected subject.
Commencing with the January Number, Mr. J. H.
Cooke w-ill contribute a monthly column of Notes
devoted to Practical Microscopy ; and among further
contributions may be mentioned a series of articles on
Electricity ; " Two Months on the Guadalquivir ": an
account of a recent ornithological trip in the south
of Spain, by Mr. Harry F. Witherby ; a sketch of
the Great Pitch Lakes in America, illustrated with
some fine photographs by Sir Benjamin Stone, M.P. ;
and further contributions from Mr. A. Vaughan
Jennings, Mr. R. Lydekker, Mr. Alex. B. MacDowall,
Mr. H. Snowden Ward, the Rev. A. S. Wilson, and
other w-riters.
266
KNOWLEDGE
[Decembeb 1, 1898.
VOLCANOES OF THE NORTH.
By Grenville A, J. Cole, m.r.i.a., fg.s., Professor of
Genlofiy in tJie Royal College of Science for Ireland.
THE north-east corner of Ireland is eminently a
plateau country. When we enter Belfast Lough
from the sea, the irregular rounded hills of Down
find a contrast on the western side in the broad -
backed braes of Antrim. Dark cliffs of basalt
can be seen high upon the slopes, with here and there a
gleam of chalk beneath them. One or two deep valleys
have been cut through the plateau by the streams that
seek the sea ; but the general crest is level, some one
thousand one hundred feet above the water, until the
whole mass dies away into a series of rounded domes, far
away towards Moira in the south.
The conspicuous black scarp runs round the coast to
Garron Point ; it is broken on the back of the ancient
gneiss of Torr ; and then it reappears, in its fullest gran-
deur, between Ballycastle and the Giant's Causeway. We
may follow it yet further, to the grim cliffs above the
lowland of Lough Foyle ; and then we may trace these
southward up the Eoe, to the noble heights above Dun-
given and the tableland at Moneymore. Within this
circuit of one hundred and fifty miles, the country is
uniformly covered with basaltic rocks. They dip down
towards the low-lying basin of Lough Neagh, but form
rapidly rising moorlands as we move again outward from
the water. Even on the western shore of the lake,
where their width is only some five miles, the basalts find
room for the production of the characteristic uplands,
clothed with gorse and heather.
The plateaux thus cover almost all the County of Antrim,
and an important part of the County of Londonderry ; but
the scarped nature of their outer edge shows that they
must have formerly extended further. On the east, the
flat top of Scrabo Hill, near Newtownards, recalls the
features of the plateaux : and inspection shows that we
have here a thick mass of basalt, protecting the soft red
sandstones of the district. This hill is nine miles from
the main scarps above Belfast. On the west, again, there
is a remarkable outlier on the northern summit of Slieve
Gallion, one thousand five hundred feet above the sea,
from which the hillside falls rapidly on all sides. We look
away from it westward, across a wild country, worn out of
the older rocks, and can picture the basalt as stretching
on in old times, until it met the rim of its basin in the
very heart of Donegal.
It is little wonder that such broad expanses of uniform
rock, lying in beds, tier upon tier, with an obvious tendency
to weather out as plateaux, were compared by many older
geologists with regularly stratified aqueous deposits. The
type of scenery common in County Antrim is thus repeated
among the limestone hills of Sligo, a district of inland
scarps and massive tablelands : and most of us are familiar
with such features in the stratified Pennine Chain of
England. Werner, reasoning from the isolated sheets of
basalt in central Germany, asserted that such rocks were
precipitated from solution in water ; and his views obtained
a remarkable hold upon men who were content to make
theories, rather than to imdertake laborious observations.
These " Neptunian " doctrines were part of a system which,
as Lyell quaintly remarks, " had not the smallest
foundation, either in Scripture or in common sense,"*
and were refuted by Werner's French contemporaries,
Guettard, Faujas de St. Fond, and Desmarest. Faujas,
• ■■ Principles of Geology," Vol. I. (1830), p. 69. |
in his fine folio work, attributes much of his information
to an elderly cleric, the Abb6 de Mortesagne, whose
enthusiastic and picturesque letters are printed in full. In
another letter we find M. Ozy, a chemist of Clermont-
Ferrand, attributing his own enlightenment as to the
volcanic nature of his country to the visit of " Olzendorff,"
an Englishman, and " Bowls," an Irishman, who came
out in 1750 to study the lead mines of Auvergne. May we
not presume that the " M. Bowls " was acquainted with
Antrim and the Giants' Causeway, and found in the
perfectly preserved craters round the Puy de Dome the
verification of opinions formed in Ireland '?
The matter has more interest than would at first appear ;
for the earliest printed appreciation of the volcanic origin
of the Irish basalts seems to be contained in the second
edition of a highly speculative work, by John Whitehurst,
published in 178C, Whether " Olzendorff" or " Bowls "
was the direct ijistructor of M. Ozy, the views propounded
by them from the summit of the Puy de Dome were
extremely novel in 1750. t The " Irlandois" was probably
the William Bowles who wrote a treatise on Spain in
1776, and whose mineral collection is known to have been
sold in 1830.
The story of the struggle against the Wemerians, and
of the ultimate triumph of the supporters of volcanic
action, is well told by Portlock. ' The Liassic shale of
Portrush in Ireland has been baked by intrusive sheets of
dolerite, and has come to resemble the compact basalt
of the district. Its fossiliferous character made the
Wemerians haU it as a basalt containing marine shells,
and as an obvious proof of their contentions. Kirwan, who
established the first important mineral collection in Dublin,
supported this unhappy view. Playfair published the
true explanation in 1802, before he had visited the district ;
but the error lingered on for another fifteen years. Even
now, when the igneous origin of the plateau-basalts is
everywhere accepted, questions arise as to the vent or
vents from which such broad masses were erupted.
There is no doubt that the great mass of the basalts of
north-eastern Ireland were poured out as lava-flows upon
a terrestrial surface. Despite later faults and dislocations,
the relation of the lower streams to this old land-surface
can again and again be seen. In the beautiful sections
along the Antrim coast, some of which are naturally cut
and some due to quarrying, the following Mesozoic rocks
appear in order : — Trias, Lower Lias, Upper Cretaceous.
The basalts are found lying upon an eroded surface of
Chalk, and occasionally overstep on to the Triassic sand-
stones, as they do at Scrabo HUl. A layer of reddened
flint gravel constantly intervenes between the basalt and
the chalk, representing the material that covered the
surface, as a product of subaerial decay, before the eruptive
epoch opened. We can picture, then, a country of low
chalk downs, the dark beds of the Lias and the red-brown
Trias occasionally showing in the valleys. Trees grew
in sheltered places, and streams collected the flint
nodules in their courses, washing them out of the
general soil-cap of the country. In the great period of
stress, which gave rise to the Pyrenees and the Juras, and
ultimately to the Alpine system, the north of Ireland and
the west of Scotland became broken by a series of fissures,
up which molten lava flowed. These fissures remain to
us as an amazing series of dykes, traversing the area in a
* •' liecherches sur Us volcaiis eteints dii T'ivaraU et du Velay,"
Grenoble and Paris, 1776.
+ See Sir A. Geikie, on Guettard and Desmarest, '■ Ancient
Volcanoes of Great Britain " Vol. I., preface.
J"Eep. on Geol. of Londonderry, etc." (184.'?), pp. 37-44.
December 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE.
267
north-westerly and south-easterly direction. The great
Cleveland dyke, which cuts the Jurassic strata of Yorkshire,
must be included among them ; and outlying members
occur about Lough Erne, and even in the County of
Galway. Sir A. Geikie" estimates that the "dyke-region
embraces an area of upwards of forty thousand square
miles — that is, a territory greater than either Scotland or
Ireland, and equal to more than a third of the total land
surface of the British Isles." This, however, is but a small
matter, compared with the whole region involved in the
volcanic activity of early Cainozoic times. Suffice it that,
as a detail in the general overtlow, the downs of Antrim
and Londonderry became buried in successive lava-flows.
Even the advocates of " fissure-eruptions," as a means
of flooding a whole province with lava, now regard the
molten rock as flowing from a number of points along the
track, each centre resembling an ordinary volcanic vent.
The flows coalesce in the hollows, mount upon their
predecessors, spread now this way, now that, and eventually
Fig. 1. — Columnar Basaltio Lava-llow, resting upon old iand-siirface of denuded Chalk.
QiiariT at Whitehead, Belfast Lough. Typical Sectiou iu the Antrim Plateaux. The
lava has been subsequently denuded, and boulder-clay has been deposited across the whole.
Photographed by Mr. R. Welch.
obliterate all the features of the landscape. New vents
may break through this rudely stratified accumulation, and
may sometimes build up true scoria-cones on the surface,
as their action becomes more irregular and explosive. A
country deluged with lava from small " puys, ' like those
on the central plateau of France, may finally come to
possess a few isolated volcanic mountains, from which the
last products are ejected. \A'hen all dies down, when
denudation works its will, the separated cones are all but
swept away. Perhaps their mere necks, filled with
crystalline lava or with coarse agglomerate, remain
standing out above the earlier fields of lava. Then the
latter become cut into by the streams ; the buried land-
scapes are in places restored to light ; while the masses
left between the newly cut valleys have the form of table-
lands and plateaux, capped by the relics of the flows.
In our northern volcanic area these successive events can
* Work quoted, Vol. II., p. 121.
be followed out. While many of the dykes never reached
the surface, others may easily have been responsible for
the basaltic flows. Olivine-basalts and basaltic andesites,
sometimes retaining a glassy structure in their ground-
work, sometimes of almost doleritic texture, cover the
irregular surface of the chalk. Their lower portions have
often become columnar, where they contracted on cooling
in contact with the loose flint gravels (Fig. 1). The
separate lava-streams can be traced out in the great cliff-
sections, and are seen to dovetail into one another, each
great basaltic " stratum " being formed of several adjacent
and overlapping flows. Steam-bubbles, globular in form,
or elongated by the flow of the molten mass, or strikingly
irregular, are everywhere in evidence, especially near the
surfaces of the flows. In many cases, white nests of
zeolites, chalcedony, or opal, have formed within them, and
probably began to fill up the cavities as soon as the lavas
came to rest. Often the upper part of a flow is rubbly and
irregular, while the lower part, which cooled more slowly,
has assumed a bold colum-
nar structure, so that the
flow appears at a distance
to consist of two distinct
types of lava. This feature
is conspicuous on the bold
headlands round the
Giant's Causeway ; and
the Causeway itself is the
basal portion of a stream
of similar character.
The Giant's Causeway
owes its fame to the ex-
quisite regularity of its
columnar structure, and to
the neatness of its curving
cross - joints. The east
coast of Skye, or the cliffs
of Loeh-na-Keal, in Mull,
may produce nobler vol-
canic landscapes ; while
the isolated relic of a mas-
sive lava-flow. now forming
the Isle of Staffa, is far
more wild and picturesque.
But the district of the
Giant's Causeway mustal-
ways remain as a perfect
museum for the student,
and the black dykes that
jut out into the water are
as characteristic in the landscape as the flows themselves.
The majority of the dykes that are revealed in the fine
series of sections along the scarps of Antrim cut through
both the chalk and the lower lava-flows. They form
black and often sinuous bands, traversing the quarry -faces ;
and their mere abundance is in the highest degree impres-
sive. The lava-flows that may have been connected with
their rise have often been entirely swept away. But we
have clear evidence that pauses occurred in the activity at
various points, for the lava-sheets that remain are often
separated by bands of red earth, which are the products of
the weathering of one flow before the next was poured out
across its surface. These layers, well known also among
the black chffs of Skye, form striking Unes of colour in
the sections. The broad red band, running along the
cliffs east of the Causeway, cannot fail to strike every
visitor, and points to a time of general rest throughout
the district. By its means, as exposed here and at other
places, the eruptive series has been divided into two stages ;
268
KNOWLEDGE.
[Decembeb 1, 1898.
and the dykes that cut this ferruginous zone can safely be
referred to the upper basaltic stage.
This period of quiet must have been, indeed, a long one.
Lakes were formed, and forests grew, on the crumbling
surface of the earlier flows. Ked and brown nodular iron-
ores, like those still forming in the lakes of Sweden, are
quarried above Glenarm from between the lower and upper
lavas. Clay-beds, with numerous plant-remains, occur
here and in other places ; and bauxite, a sediment rich in
aluminium hydrate, forms a valuable ore of aluminium.
The pale colour of the bauxite, unlike that of the bauxite
of southern France, suggests that it was derived in this
case from volcanic rocks rich in alumina but poor in iron ;
and a very suggestive conglomerate occurs in association
with it near (rlenarm. A stream of the quiet period seems
here to have washed down pebbles of white and decom-
posing rhyolite, a lava rich in silica, and far removed in
nature from the basalts. A centre of rhyolitic eruption
probably lay at no great distance ; and at Templepatrick
and Tardree, in the neighbourhood of Antrim town, we
have clear proofs of the invasion of rhyolite into the lower
basaltic series.*
The eruption of dark basicmatter seems, indeed, to have
been successfully interrupted, and the contents of another
reservoir of molten rock penetrated locally through the
the surface. In writing of the ]\Iourne Mountains,! we
have shown how the granite in that area is probably of
Cainozoic age, and how it truncates one series of basic
dykes, and is itself cut by a second series. The rhyolites
of Antrim almost certainly belong to the same epoch, and
have a similar chemical composition. A few cones were
reared locally upon the devastated surface of the country,
and their white flanks and vitreous lavas must have
contrasted strangely with the earlier basalts, which were
now reddening and decaying all around them. Denudation,
however, made short work of these little cones, and their
relics were subsequently buried under the upper series of
the basalts. Their products now appear, thanks to later
weathering, in some force around Tardree, which is one of
the most interesting volcanic districts in the whole of the
British Isles.
Though Sir A. Geikie regards the group of rocks here
exposed as entirely intrusive, the great variety of glassy
lavas that occur on the plateau of Sandy Braes seems to
indicate volcanic action at the surface. We have no need
to go to Lipari or to Hungary for specimens of red tluidal
rhyolites, or spherulitic pitchstone,or black perlitic obsidian.
While the main layer of obsidian has broken up into isolated
blocks, which are decomposing into yellow sand, a frag-
mental rock hard by, formed of pumiceous particles and
blocks of compact brown rhyolite, seems to be a true tuff,
and to indicate explosive action. Down at Ballypalidy, a
little to the east, rhyolitic fragments, as has often been
pointed out, occur in beds of iron-ore among the basalts ;
and the locality, like Glenarm, has become famous by the
abundance of associated plant-remains.
These remains, preserved in the deposits of a period of
repose, are unfortunately all that we have to guide us as
to the age of the whole series of eruptions. Formerly,
the flora was regarded as Miocene, and the close resem-
blance between the sequence of volcanic phenomena in
Antrim and in Auvergne in the Miocene period makes
the suggestion tempting to the petrographer. But Mr.
Starkie Gardner, who has dealt with the whole evidence
* See Sir A. G-eikie, work quoted. Vol. 11., p. 205 ; and G. Cole,
" Ehyolites of the County of Antrim," Set. Trans. K. Dublin Hoc,
Vol. Vl. (1896), p. 105, &f.
t Knowledge, Vol. XXI., p. 123.
from Ireland, Mull, and even further north, has decided in
favour of placing the leaf deposits as far back as the early
Eocene. The scenery of our district in Eocene times was
thus in strange contrast to that of the London and
Hampshire basins ; but the Cleveland Dyke, crossing
England beneath the surface, shows how nearly the peace
of eastern lands was threatened.
When the upper basalts spread across the country, new
centres of eruption were set up, Intrusive masses pene-
trated all the earlier rocks, and came here and there to
the surface as volcanic necks. The one striking object
among the inland plateaux of County Antrim is the
huge mass of Slemish, one thousand four hundred and
thirty-seven feet above the sea, which forms so conspicuous
and strange a feature above the basaltic moorland. This
sheer ridge of rock is composed of dolerite, rising through
the earlier lavas ; and doubtless at one time a great cone
of volcanic material lay about it. At Carnmoney, near
Belfast, a far smaller neck breaks through the Mesozoic
strata, and another rises as a dome-shaped mass above the
romantic valley of Cushendall. At Carrick-a-rede, and at
other points upon the Causeway coast, necks full of "bombs
of basalt, with pieces of chalk and flint," point to more
violent phases of eruption. Though nothing like a true
cone or crater remains in the whole Irish area, disguised
though the details may be by the effects of denudation and
post-Eocene earth-movement, we cannot doubt the cumula-
tive evidence as to the volcanic origin of the landscape.
We still must send our students to Auvergne — or to
Catalonia, if they prefer it — to see how a few puys may
deluge a whole land with lava. But the wonder with
which we look across our great moorlands of the north
will not be diminished by the comparison. The far blue
crag of Slemish, standing out In the clear highland air,
will only become associated for us with days stranger and
more distant than those in which St. Patrick pastured his
sheep beneath its wall.
CHRISTMAS CUSTOMS OF SHAKESPEARE^S
GREENWOOD.
By Geobge Morlet,
Author of " Leafy Warwickshire," etc.
THE first signs of the approaching custom of ' ' keeping
Christmas " may be observed as early as the middle
of October in the parlour of many a rustic cot in
leafy Warwickshire. In the wide and warm ingle-
nook (and the ingle is still to be met with in sundry
cottages and farmsteads of this stationary greenwood) a
small pyramid of sawn log-wood may be seen standing to
dry, and in the middle of the room, or in a recess, the
great green or yellow marrow is suspended by gay-coloured
ribbons from a hook in the rafter — the recipient of many
admiring glances, and many wishes for a slice out of it
when it shall be served as a Christmas dish.
As the stuffed chine of pork is, among the peasantry of
this greenwood, the customary sign observed at the
mothering, so the ribbon-decorated marrow is one of the
symbols of the Christmas custom. The marrow is grown
to a giant size (the larger the more honour to the grower,
and the more plentiful the feast), is hung up in the house-
parlour until the eve of the festival, and is then prepared
and stuffed.
Another custom preparatory to the great feast of the
year is the gathering of crabs, and the stewing of them
for a winter dish. In this we have an ancient custom,
* Sir A. Ueikie, work quoted, p. 277; see also ibid, p. 271.
Degeuber 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE.
269
handed down for at least three hundred years, and in use
at the end of the nineteenth century.
Shakespeare was evidently well acquainted with the crab-
lore of his native woodland, for not only does he make
Caliban say, in " The Tempest " (Act ii., scene 2) : —
" Let me bring thee where crabs grow,"
but in the well-known lines :^
" Wlien roasted crabs hiss in the howl
Tlicn nightly sings the staring owl,
To-who ; ,
To- whit, to-who, a merry note,
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot."
he alludes to this very winter dish, the annual making of
which is a welcome custom to many a rustic housewife in
the poet's own neighbourhood to this day.
The custom of " the Thomasing," though not now (in
its old state) so prevalent as formerly in the out-of-the-
way villages and hamlets of Warwickshire, is still in
extensive use in a new guise and under newer methods.
" Goin' a Thomasin' " is literally going begging for Christ-
mas gifts.
Similar in design to the custom of the " Maying," the
rule at the Thomasing (which, as its name implies, was
always observed on St. Thomas's Day) was to make a
circuit of the villages in procession, and with a little rustic
song at the door of cottage, farm, and hall, to bring the
greetings of the festive season to the inmates, and to plead
for gifts with which to " keep Christmas ' ; a plea which
was, and is, seldom disregarded by the kind-hearted farmers
and county people, despite contrary seasons, increased
rates and taxes, and falls in prices.
Perhaps the prettiest part of the custom which is now
synonymous with the old Thomasing is that in which the
homely carols are sung at the doors of the larger village
houses. In the silences of the dark greenwood (for the
carolling is chiefly performed at night) the voices of the
singers, many of whom are choristers of the parish church,
sound peculiarly attractive ; and the very quaintness of
the rhymes and the tune (which are of their own making)
materially enhance the effect.
One Christmas night, a few years since, I heard the
carollers raising their voices through the dim and silent
woodland and caught the words of their rhyme, which
were as follows — sung to a lilting, swaying tune, which,
owing to the scene and time, had something sweet, and yet
strange, about it : —
" Little Cock Bobin sat on a wall.
We wish you a Merry Christmas
And a great snowfall ;
Apples to eat
And nuts to crack,
We wish you a Merry Christmas
With a rap, tap, tap."
When a repetition of the " rap, tap, tap " is executed as
a finale to the verse, the doors of the houses are knocked,
and the plea for Christmas gifts made and responded to.
Their gifts secured, the dim and quiet landscape rings with
the verses of the beautiful Christmas hymn, " While
Shepherds Watched their Flocks by Night," given by the
singers as a sort of thank-offering for value received.
As it was formerly the custom at the ingathering of the
corn-harvest to commemorate the event by duologues in
costume, so at the Christmas feast in each year a band
of Warwickshire peasants was wont to appear in the
farmsteads and perform various acts of mummery to the
assembled company. The mask and the mummer, how-
ever, are now seen only at rare intervals in the farm
kitchen ; and what, in the past, was a decidedly picturesque
entertainment (formed and carried out by the humbler
folk for the delectation of their betters) has now been
taken up by the betters themselves ; and in " The Hall "
of most villages in Shakespeare's greenwood it is the
custom to organize theatricals and pieces of mummery,
and perform them before aristocratic guests from Christmas
Day to Twelfth Night.
Though their mummeries are now things of the past,
the rustics still number among their customs the venerable
one of bringing in the Yule-log. It would be surprising
if it were not so, in a county where the sered and wasted
remnants of the ancient Forest of Arden stand around
in such variety and abundance — ready grown for the axe
and the hand of the woodlander. The peasant for his
cottage parlour, the farmer for his spacious kitchen, and
the squire for his stately hall, vie with one another in
securing the largest, the firmest, and the dryest log for
the Christmas hearthstone : each according to his require-
ments and the size of the fireplace in their respective
domiciles.
With the humbler true-born native of Shakespeare's
greenwood, whose mind is still overlaid with a cloudy
texture of superstition, any wood will do for the yule-log
but the wood of the wych elm. This must never be burnt
in the house for fear " the old 'ooman," who is thought to
inhabit that tree, should come down in vengeance upon
those who dare to desecrate and destroy her branches. It
used to be the custom to preserve a piece of the previous
year's brand with which to hght the log.
Though not so greatly in vogue, as in the days of the
Squire Cass of " Silas Marner," the drinking of glasses of
elder wine on Christmas morning is still observed with un-
failing regularity in many isolated cots by the wood or on
the waste ; and if the morning be winterly it is a " cup
that cheers."
With the passing of the Christmas festivities and the
arrival of New Year's Eve, the musical dwellers of leafy
Warwickshire again go in procession to the doors of the
village houses and sing their greetings (in the dark and
stilly night) to the occupants of cottage, farm, and hall.
If only on account of the quaintness of their rhymes, the
custom of " singin' the New Year in " deserves to be pre-
served, and some record kept of the lines used for the
occasion ; especially so as there is a likelihood that it may
become rarer each year owing to the change of manners
even in rural districts.
For five years I have not heard the caroUists singing
their New Year's greetings ; but on New Y'ear's Eve in
1893 I chanced to be on the skirts of a village and came
upon a group trilling the following quaint hues : —
" The roads are very dirty,
My boots are very thin ;
I have a little pocket
To put a penny in.
God send you liappy,
God send you happy,
Praise the Lord to send you all
A Happy New Year."
" God bless the master of this house,
God bless the mistress true;
And all the little children.
Around the table, too.
And send you a Happy New Year,
And send you a Happy New Year ;
God bless you all.
Both great and small,
And send you a Ilappy New Year."
Sung in the last hour of the last day in the year, and in
the silence of a dim green \yorld where men thin away to
the utmost insignificance, these quaint and homely lines
of blessing for friend and neighbour (sung in a befitting
minor key), form an appropriate ending to the year's
customs of Shakespeare's greenwood ; a county so rich in
270
KNOWLEDGE
[December 1, 1898.
historic, poetic, and romantic associations, in traditions
and legends, in folk-lore, customs, and dialect, that, turn
whichever way you will, something new and interesting is
invariably to be found.
THE COLOURS OF COWRIES.
By E. Lydekker.
AMONG all the treasures of the shell-cabinet few are
more generally attractive than the cowries, or
kauris (Cypraa), which form the type of a family by
themselves. Kivalling the olives in the brilliancy
of their polished enamel, they exceed those shells
in the beauty and diversity of their coloration, while their
form in the adult state is so peculiar as to attract the
attention of even the most unobservant. Possibly, the
very fact that many of them, like the tiger and Surinam -
toad cowry, are so common as to be employed as decorative
objects for our chimney pieces, has, to a certain extent,
detracted in popular estimation from their many striking
peculiarities. But even if this be so, a moment's com-
parison with any other shell will at once show how dilferent
they really are. And if rarity be an additional attraction,
some, among the couple of hundred or so of living species,
are worthy of attention even from this not very elevated
standpoint. Take, for instance, the prince cowry (C.
princeps) and the spotted cowry (C. iiuttata), examples of
which have sold respectively for forty and forty-two pounds
each ; while the beautiful orange cowry, used as a head
ornament by the chiefs of the Friendly Islands, formerly
fetcheil about twenty pounds, although good specimens can
now be bought at from three pounds to five pounds. Other
species claim attention on account of their commercial
uses, the ring cowry being employed by the islanders of
Eastern Asia for personal adornment, for weighting their
fishing nets, and as a means of exchange ; while in the
latter respect the well-known money cowry has a still more
extensive use over a large part of Asia.
But it is from the pecuharities of their structure and
coloration that these beautiful shells must claim our atten-
tion in the present article. Taking any common species,
such as the one shown in the centre of Fiu;. 1, it will be
seen that the upper surface of the shell approaches more
or less to an egg-shape, with a notch at each extremity
forming the terminations of the mouth below. Somewhat
to the right of the middle line in most species runs a
straight or slightly sinuous streak over which the pattern of
the rest of the upper surface does not extend, this line
marking in the living animal the Umits of the right and
left lobes of the so-called mantle, which during activity
extend upwards from the foot on which the creature crawls
to envelope the rest of the shell. Compared with an olive,
in which it is relatively small, the shell of an adult cowry
differs by the almost or complete absence of a distinct
spire ; while on the under surface the narrow mouth of the
shell (not, be it understood, of the animal) is remarkable
for the series of vertical ridges, or " teeth," with which its
edges are armed.
Now, since almost all other univalve shells related, even
remotely, to the cowries, have a more or less elongated
spire at the hinder or upper end, the enquirer naturally
seeks to tind out the reason for the disappearance of this
part in the members of the present group. In a lully adult
specimen of the common black-spotted tiger cowry no trace
at all of the spire can be detected, but in the equally common
Surinam-toad cowry a more or less distinct remnant, partly
buried in the abundant cement, is observable even in the
adult. In Scott's cowry, of which an adult specimen is
shown in the centre of Fig. 2, the spire is much more
pronounced ; and in a half-grown specimen of the same
species (left side of the same figure) it is so elongated as
to project considerably beyond the hinder extremity of the
shell. The same specimen also shows that in immature
examples of this species the hinder extremity of the right
margin of the shell is expanded into a wing-like extension,
recalling the wing-shells, or Sti-omhida. In both the adult
and the young of Scott's cowry the coloration is very
similar ; but in the young shell shown on the right of
Fig.*2, which belongs to the Surinam-toad cowry, there is
a difference both in form and in colour from the adult. In
form the shell has a distinct spire, and a thin outer lip ; and
if a still younger example were selected it would be found
that these characters were still more exaggerated, the mouth
being entirely devoid of teeth, and the outer lip quite thin
and sharp. Moreover, whereas the upper surface of the
adult shell has a broad dark brown margin, and the
central area spotted with light brown on a ground
of dark brown, the young exhibits dark and light transverse
bands, with a certain amount of mottlmg.
Young cowries, then, are much more like ordinary sheila
than are the adult, and clearly indicate that the latter
belong to a highly modified or specialized type. The
alteration is produced by the expansion of the mantle-
lobes of the adult, which deposit a shining enamel over
the entire shell, eventually concealing, more or less com-
pletely, the spire, and thus totally modifying the original
form. A young cowry is, indeed, much more like an oUve
or a melon-shell : but, as a matter of fact, neither of the
two latter are the nearest relatives of the Cijpraida, among
which are the Stromhida, or wing-shells. And in this
connection the near resemblance of the young of Scott's
cowry (Fig. 2, a) to a wing-shell is decidedly worthy of
note, as suggestive of a direct afiinity between the wing-
shells and the cowries.
Turning now to the interesting problem of coloration,
the first feature that must attract the attentive observer
is that the striking pattern developed on the shells of most
cowries is seldom seen by the animals themselves, for the
reason that by the time the creature is fuUy protruded
from its shell, the upper surface of the latter is more or
less completely concealed by the fleshy lobes of the mantle.
Accordingly, it would seem to be apparent that the
colouring of these moUuscs is developed for the purpose
of protection, and not for the admiration of the different
individuals or sexes of the same species. It might, indeed,
be urged that as the lobes of the mantle are coloured
similarly to the shell, or even more intensely, the colours
are visible to the animals, and are therefore designed for
mutual admiration. But had this been the object, it would
surely have sufficed to restrict the coloration to the outer
surface of the mantle-lobes, and not to have extended it
on to their inner surfaces, from which it is deposited on
the shell. As regards the utiUty of the cowry type of
coloration for protective purposes, I have never enjoyed
the opportunity of seeing the living moUuscs in their
native haunts, nor have I come across any description
from those who have. Cowries, which are mostly tropical
or sub-tropical animals, are, however, described as living
in shallow water not far from the shore, and feeding on
zoophytes ; and, so far as one can judge, their colours
ought to harmonize well with the hues of the denizens of
a coral-bank, or a mass of sea-anemones, many of which
are more or less similarly spotted. If this explanation
prove to be the true one, we can readily see why both the
shells and the hard parts of cowries partake of the same
striking types of coloration.
Turning now to the consideration of the various types
December 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE
271
of coloration met with among cowries, it may be men-
tioned, as a preliminary, that among mammals spots and
stripes are frequently met with in the young which
disappear in the adult. Many species of deer and swine,
for instance, which are spotted or striped with white in
youth become more or less completely uniform in mature
age ; while the lion and the puma frequently exhibit traces
of dark spotting in the cub stage. In these animals,
therefore, it is evident that a spotted or striped coat is
the original type, and a uniform tint the more advanced
form. In cowries, on the other hand, it seems that
transverse dark banding was the original type of colora-
tion, and that from such banded type two later modifications
have taken place. In the one of these, spotting of various
kinds has resulted, while in the other a more or less uniform
colour has been the final result. The primitive banded
type serves to connect the cowries with less specialized
shells, a young Surinam-toad cowry being strikingly like a
melon-shell, both in form and colouring, while the faint
banding observable in young specimens of Scott's cowry
recalls the colours of many of the wing-shells, to which, as
already mentioned, the former approximates in form.
The proof that banding was the original type of cowry
coloration is easy, seeing that it obtains in the young of
the great majority of species. Fig. "J, >>, exhibits the striped
stage of the Surinam-toad cowry, which, in the adult, as
already said, has chestnut spots on a dark ground in the
central area of the upper surface. In Fig. 3, a, are shown
the adult and immature conditions of the common lynx
cowry, the former of which is variously spotted, while the
latter still retains distinct transverse dark and light bands.
Still more striking is the difference between the immature
and adult conditions of the lesser false Argus cowi-j, as
shown in Fig. 4, the latter exhibiting small white spots on
a dark ground, while the former is banded with dark and
light, without the slightest trace of spotting. It will be
observed that this species of cowry is of a long narrow
shape, and it would seem, for two reasons, probable that
that is the primitive form of cowries ; the short and broad
shape, as shown in Fig. 1, «, being a later modification.
One of the reasons in favour of this view is that almost all
cowries which retain the primitive banding in the adult
condition are of the long form. Among such may be
mentioned the little wasp cowry (Fig. 3, b), the mole cowry
(C. falpa), remarkable for its tawny back and dark brown
base, and one variety of the carnelian cowry (C. carncola), as
well as the orange-tipped cowry ( C. isabelhi). Again, in
the true Argus cowry (Fig. G), which develops peculiar
ringed spots in the adult condition, the primitive bands are
still more or less distinctly traceable at all ages.
To exemplify the second reason for the same view, we
may take the serpent's-head cowry, of which the adult is
shown in Figure 1, a. Here we see the short round type in
its full development, the coloration being chocolate brown
above and below, with the central area of the back finely
spotted with white. If, however, we take a young indi-
vidual of this species, it will be noticed that the shape of
the shell is comparatively long and narrow, while the
colouring is in the form of bands. Many other instances
might be cited, but the foregoing are sufficient for my
present purpose.
I may accordingly pass on to notice briefly some of
the more striking types of coloration presented by adult
cowries, and here I must deplore the circumstance that
editorial commands restrict the number of Illustrations to
my article.* Banded cowries have been already men-
* I am inclebtetl for the photographs from which these illustrations
were taken to Jlr. N. M. Kichardson, of ilonte Video, near
Wevmouth.
tioned, but it may be added that, from the intensity of the
colours, the wasp cowry (Figure 3, b) is not improbably
the culmination of this type. ( in the other hand, in the
flesh-coloured carnelian cowry, of which there is both a
long and a short form, the bands tend to become very in-
distinct : and it may be suggested that the short form is
not far removed from the ancestral type of the beautiful
orange cowry, which is one of the few uniformly coloured
species ; such uniformly coloured forms indicating, aa
already said, one line of specialization.
Among the spotted cowries several types are noticeable.
Firstly, we have species in which the back of the shell is
simply spotted with black or brown, among them being the
tiger cowry (C ti(iris), the panther cowry (f. panthi rina) ,
and the much smaller lynx cowry (i . lijnx). As all these
have a comparatively short and wide shell they indicate
an advanced type. Next, we have white-spotted cowries,
such as the false argus (C. cn-i-wi), the lesser false argus
(Fig. t), and the fallow-deer cowry (C. viteUus) ; and
as the two former are long-shaped, while the latter is
comparatively short, they seem to indicate a medium stage
of evolution.
From the black- and brown-spotted types seem to have
originated another group represented by the map and nutmeg
cowries (C. mtiii/iu and ambica, Fig. ,5), in which the spots
are retained along the margins of the back of the shell, the
central area of which is more or less finely reticulated or
vermiculated, the map cowry taking its name from the width
and sinuosity of the line between the mantle lobes. In the
typical nutmeg cowry the reticulations are very nutmeg-like,
but in other specimens more or less distinct pale spots are
dotted all over the central area, till in the variety histrin
(Fig. 1, c] the spots are the dominant feature, being only
separated by thin lines, so as to form a kind of network,
or honeycomb arrangement. Perhaps the colander cowry
(Fig. 3, c) may be regarded as an offshoot of this type.
But another modification may apparently also be traced
to the arabica-iiifijipa stock, the members of which are
intermediate between the long and the short types. As
already said, these cowries have the central area of the back
reticulated or white-spotted, and lighter than the black-
spotted margin. And from such a type the transition is
easy to the modification presented by the serpent's-head
cowry (Fig. 1, a), and the Sarinamtoad cowry, in which
the central area is white- or chestnut-spotted, while the
margin and much of the under surface is dark brown. The
great width and shortness of these cowries afford further
evidence of their high degree of modification. Obviously
the chestnut-bordered cowry (Fig. 1 , rf) is another member
of this group in which chestnut spots have been superadded
to the normal white-spotted central area. Apparently a
special development of this type may be recognized in the
white ring cowry (C. annuluK), the yellow ring from which
it takes its name marking the line of division between the
original spotted central area and the dark area. Finally,
from the ring cowry may easily be derived the money
cowry, in which the ring has all but disappeared, whUe the
marginal area has developed a series of rugosities, apparently
connected with the filaments on the margins of the mantle
lobes, which scarcely intrude on to the central area.
Whether these two white species have a habitat different
from that of their brethren is a subject well worth the
investigation ot those who have the opportunity.
Omitting mention of certain other sub-types on account
of limitation of space, this part of the subject may be con-
cluded by brief reference to the true argus cowry (C argus,
Fig. 6),which, from its elongated form and the retention of
barring, is evidently an ancient type specially distinguished
by the ring-like form of the spots.
272
KNOWLEDGE
[Decembeb 1, 1898.
All the above-mentioned species (together with a host
of others) are members of the typical genus Ci/jjrcea,
distinguished by the smooth and shining enamel, and the
circumstance that the teeth of the mouth do not extend
across the whole of the lower surface, as shown in Fig. 1, d.
There are, however, other cowries differing from these by
the development of rugosities on the back, and the exten-
sion of the teeth of the mouth right across the lower
surface. Both these features may safely be regarded as
indications of greater specialization than exists among any
of the typical cowries. One type is represented by the
pustuled cowry (Fig. 1, b), in which the ornamentation on
the upper surface takes the form of small spherical pustules,
frequently of a bright red colour, when they recall a
fragment of wood overgrown with fungi. In the second,
and still more advanced modification, the ornamentation
of the back assumes the form of transverse ridges, which
in some species (Fig. 1, e) are comparatively wide apart,
and separated by a considerable interval in the middle
line, whereas in others, like the little European cowry
(Til till eiiropaa), they are so closely approximated, and so
nearly meet in the middle line, as to give the idea of a
small and neatly-parted head of hair.
Even these by no means exhaust the modifications
which the cowry type is capable of assuming, as witness
the pure white " poached egg," and the " weaver's shuttle,"
both members of the genus fhuhj, and the latter remark-
able for the elongation of the two extremities of the mouth
into tube-like processes. Both these, as well as certain
other allied types, depart from the ordinary cowry type by
their white or pinkish colour, and are therefore evidently
specialized modifications. In the case of the weaver's
shuttle the colour is probably produced to harmonize with
the sea-fans, upon which these molluscs are parasitic ; but
further information in regard to the reason for the absence
of colour is requisite in the case of the other kinds.
One result of the necessarily brief dissertation on
cowries is to show how short-sighted was the idea prevalent
some years ago that the shells were of no importance in
the study of molluscs, and that attention must be restricted
to the soft parts (the so-called " animal ") alone. A wider
grasp of the subject shows that nothing in Nature is
unworthy of our best attention, and is sure to yield results
of more or leSs absorbing interest if only we approach
the subject with unbiassed and unprejudiced minds.
Kefeeenoes to Plate.
PiO. 1. — a. Serpent'3-liead Cowry {Ci/praa caput-serpen f is).
b. Pustuled Cowry {Piisfiilaria pustulata), upper and under views.
c. Histrio Cowry (C. arabica histrio). d. Chestnut- bordered Cowry
(C.^ helvola), upper and under riews. e. Radiate Cowry {Trivia
Pia. 2. — a. Scott's Cowry fCi/prma scottij, young and adult.
b. Surinam-Toad Cowry (C. mauritanicaj , young.
Fia. 3. — a. Adult and Immature of Lynx Cowry {Cypnea lynx),
b. Wasp Cowry (C. asellus). c. Colaader"Cowry (C. cribraria).
Fia. 4 — Immature and Adult conditions of the Lesser False Argus
Cowry (Ciiprcea exanthema).
Fia. 5.— Nutmeg (aj and Map (bj Cowries (C. arabica and mappa).
Fia. 6.— The Argus Cowry fCyprcea arqus).
Noti(£0 of Booits.
A Classijlcatlon of Vertehrata. By Hans Gadow, m.a.,
F.E.S., etc. (A. & C. Black.) 3s. 6d. net. The extent
to which knowledge increases in all departments of scien-
tific study is nowhere more impressively brought home to
one than in the changing classifications which these
advances make necessary in the domains of biology. Of
course, the practical aim of any system of classification is
sorting and grouping ; and the ideal system is one which
expresses briefly all that is known of the race history and
development of the creatures dealt with. To mitigate the
discrepancies as much as possible, chiefly owing to the
bewildering mass of fossil reptiles which have come to light,
Dr. Gadow has " arranged the reptiles in numerous sub-
classes, and these again in orders, while for the host of
fishes ' divisions,' and for the birds ' divisions ' and
' legions ' have been resorted to as intermediate groups
between sub-classes and orders.' An interesting table on
p. 61 accentuates in the most marked way what has been
said about the necessity of elaborations in systems of
classification which are not very recent. The table shows
there are, in all, some twenty-four thousand two hundred
and forty- one recent species of vertebrate forms to be
arranged ; of these, nine thousand eight hundred and
eighteen are birds, and two thousand seven hundred and
two, mammals. The fishes number no fewer than seven
thousand three hundred and twenty-eight.
Krumsiup I olour PhiAoijraphy. By Frederic Ives. '
(London : The Photochromoscope Syndicate, Limited.)
The problem of reproducing in permanent form the colour
of objects is a popular one. Many attempts at solving it
have been made, with varying amounts of success, but
none of them have been successful in obtaining coloured
prints of natural or artificial objects. Three processes
which have up to the present gone farthest in this direction
are ; — (1) The process of Prof. Lippman, by means of which
beautifully coloured photographs are obtained on glass by
interference effects. (2) Prof. Joly's process, in which an
object is photographed through a glass, having fine lines
closely ruled upon it, coloured in the primary colours.
The colourless picture thus obtained is afterwards pro-
jected through a similar glass, with the result that the
colours are reproduced. (3| The Kromscup of Mr. Ives,
by which three negatives are taken through three glasses
coloured with the primary colours. These negatives are
afterwards combined in one picture. The colours of an
object are thus first analysed and then synthesised. This
method gives excellent results, and is the only one which
has so far been successsuUy placed on the market. The
little booklet which Mr. Ives has written gives full par-
ticulars concerning the construction and method of using
his instrument, and with the various appendices, which
comprise expressions of opinion on the theory of colour by
several physicists, should be useful in popularizing his
method of reproducing natural colours.
Stories of Starland. By Mary Proctor. (Potter and
Putnam Company, New York ; G. \Y. Bacon & Co., Ltd.,
London.) Miss Proctor has written a very delightful little
book on astronomy for children. " I like it awfully " was
the verdict of one small boy upon it. Very simply and
clearly she tells— or, rather, her little brother Harry elicits
from her — the principal facts about what we see in sun and
moon and sky in the daytime or at night. Very many
stories and legends, such as are told by the Indian and
Australian peoples, are mixed up with the sterner facts of
scientific astronomy, and some of these are not generally
known, whilst the rest will bear repetition. The story of
the meteor that was claimed by the landlord as flying
game and the tenant as ground game, the Custom House
authorities intervening, ought to be true if it is not really
so. In a book for children the illustrations might have
well been rendered more numerous than they really are.
It was a pity, too, to insert "the moon" on page 50, and
we must confess that we fail to recognize the aspect.
Perhaps, too, the fearfully complicated system of canals on
Mars, represented on page 71, might with advantage have
oivlid'ic.
^^
Sk^^fif^i
Fig. 5. FiG. 6.
THE COLOURS OF COWRIES.
For Description of Illustrations, see page 272.
December 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE
273
been left altogether to the imagination of the children, or,
at least, relegated to the legenda. The "scenery on the
moon," on page 52, rather mystifies children, as the craters
are shown from a lunar standpoint, and they fail to see
" how the photographer got there. " But all these belong
to the first part of the book. The second part, telling the
stories of the summer and winter stars, are extremely good
— well written and well illustrated — and should lead many
of the children of this generation to consider the heavens.
tieoliiijy far })c<iinturs. By W. W. Watts, m.a., etc.
(Macmillaii.) Illustrated. 23. 6d. As Secretary of the
IJritish Association Committee on Photographs of
Geological Interest, Prof. Watts has had exceptional
opportunities of obtaining good pictures for his work on
geology. A glance through this charming little volume
aft'ords the fullest evidence that he has availed himself of
his position. No book on the market, at the modest price
at which the publishers have issued this introduction to a
most fascinating subject, compares with it in its profusion
of beautifully reproduced original illustrations. In the
three hundred and thirty-nine pages, there are no fewer
than three hundred and nine illustrations. Each chapter
is provided with a concise summary and a carefully
graduated set of questions which should prove of great
service to teachers. Beginning with the familiar and
easily observed aspects of the earth, Prof. Watts takes the
pupil along pleasant roads, by easy stages, to those more
dilficult subjects which are best studied in the laboratory.
But, with the instincts of a true teacher, each difficulty is
cleared up as it is encountered ; and we have no hesitation
in saying that the student who works conscientiously
through this book will find himself equipped with a working
knowledge of geology which will not only help him in
understanding the problems of Nature but will provide him
with a new pleasure in life. The index is more complete
than any we have seen in an elementary work.
The Studio. This magazine, devoted to art, abounds in
illustrations so excellent that they alone render it a
remarkable shilling's-worth. The art enlarged on and
illustrated embraces a wide area. We are charmed
with designs of pots and book-covers, or instructed in all
varieties of brush and pencil work, while artists of Japan,
as well as samples of the schools of the Continent and of
England, are before us. It may be to this breadth of
purpose that a lack of definite instruction is to be traced.
We should certainly like to see a vigorous dealing with
some of the art absurdities of our day, but whether
mediipvalism outdone, as in " Decoration for a Library,"
or truly classic beauty, the " Studio" loves all art, and all
who are called artists, in its pages.
English National Education : a Sketch of the Rise of
Public Elementary Schools in England. By H. Holman.
(The Victorian Era Series : Blackie & Son.) 2s. 6d. This
is an admirable sketch of the history of a great subject,
and its author is to be congratulated upon the skill in
compilation which has enabled him to present a vast mass
of detail without submerging the main purpose of the book.
That it is yet overweighted with much ineffective detail in
the shape of a long array of projects unfulfilled must be
admitted, yet it is an interesting and instructive study to
follow the main lines of the case against popular edu-
cation, which remained practically the same throughout,
but which crumbled steadily away so soon as its sup-
porters were forced to give their reasons, and it was
reserved for Sir Charles Adderley to furnish the most
insane argument in defence of the lost cause. Mr. Holman
has paid an eloquent tribute to the services of Sir James
r. Kay- Shuttle worth, the first secretary of the Committee
of Council for Education, " a post for which he was pro-
bably by far the best qualified man in the country " ; and
he has also generously commended the labours of Mr.
Arthur H. Dyke Acland, a recent Vice-President of the
CouncU. " Of the work of Mr. Acland it would be difficult
to speak too highly, for he has probably studied more,
worked more, and suffered more for the cause of education
than any other non-educationist (in the technical sense)."
This testimony will only confirm the widespread regret
among the friends of education at the impending retirement
of Mr. Acland from the House of Commons. It is in the
main a sorry story which Mr. Holman has to tell of wasted
time, wasted money, and wasted opportunities, which will
not bear reflection in its relation to the present day keen-
ness of the struggle for the world's markets. A supreme
Council of Education was set up in Prussia in ITS'?, and
an elementary school law was adopted in Upper Canada in
1816; while in the mother country it was shown in the
Report of a Royal Commission rather more than thirty
years ago, that more than eight hundred thousand children,
out of a total of one and a half million scholars, were
attending schools which were notoriously inefficient. What
might not Britain's position have been now if a little
common sense had entered into the solution of the education
problem a hundred years ago. Mr. Holman's book is
certainly disfigured by ungenerous references to Matthew
Arnold and to Owen, as well as by an imperfect index ;
but for directness of aim as a continuous narrative of the
facts it is a valuable addition to the series.
Outlines of Vertebrate Palaontoloijij for Stude)tts of Zoology.
By Arthur Smith Woodward. (Cambridge University
Press.) Illustrated, lis. To rightly understand the
varied problems which the study of zoology presents, the
student who has mastered the elementary parts of his
subject must not only acquaint himself with the facts of
embryology but should also enter somewhat minutely into
the past history of life on the globe. Hitherto this has
not been an easy task, necessitating as it did references
to, and a search among, many books and serials dealing
with other subjects as well, but Mr. Smith Woodward,
by the publication of his book, has abolished these
trying and time-occupying experiences. He has brought
together, in rather more than four hundred pages, all
the facts which the student is likely to require. The more
important points and generalizations are alone printed
in large type; purely technical and descriptive information
is set forth in small type. The classification adopted is
mainly that of the British Museum Catalogues of Fossil
Vertebrata, but where the recent progress of research
has made it desirable, certain modifications have been
adopted. The text is accompanied by two hundred and
twenty-eight illustrations, a fair proportion of which are
original. The final chapter of the book is given to a
general sketch of the whole subject from the geologist's
point of view, and in it Mr. Woodward rightly insists
that, " owing to the imperfection of the geological record
and the incomplete exploration of most formations, any
statement now formulated may eventually prove to be
quite a partial account of the facts, and every conclusion
must be more or leas provisional and tentative." Several
other limitations are clearly set forth and deserve to be
widely known. Mr. Woodward's book will be of real
service to students of zoology and geology.
SHORT NOTICES.
FouUrii for the Table and Market rersii's Fauci/ FoipIs. Third
Edition. i5_v W. ±i. Tegetmeier, J.z s. (Horace Cox.) Illustrateil.
2s. 6d. Mr. Tegetmeier is a veteran in the art of poultry rearing.
If early forty years ago lie published a book on profitable as distin-
guished from fancy or ornamental poultry. The County Coxmcila
hare availed themselves of reprints from pages of this work for in<
274
KNOWLEDGE.
[December 1, 1898.
struction in tecliuical education, a fact which stumps tlie work as
authoritative. Housing, feeding, hatching, rearing cliiekeus. diseases
of poultry, and fallacies of poultry farming, are among the many
items dealt with, and the present edition has been made more useful
by including an account of tlie mode of raising turkeys in the open.
Outlines of the Earth's Sislori/. By Nathaniel Soutligate Thaler.
(Heinemann.) Illustrated. 7s. 6d. The author states in the preface
to his book that most other text-books lead the student to believe that
Nature's workings have ended, " rather than something is endlessly
doing," and that the present condition of the earth is stationary
instead of being a stage in an unending procession of events. That
such notions are erroneous may be proved by noting the impercep-
tible change wrought in a certain jilace during a space say of twenty
years, especially in a volcanic district. The method of putting out in
interesting sentences the history of our planet will commend itself to
the reader who desires amusement combined with instruction. The
author eudeavoui'S to prove that the changes which have taken place
on the earth during the many million years in which our planet is
sup])Osed to have existed, ai'c always going on, and will do so until
the end. The book seems a clear exponent of the agencies which are
involved in the mutations of om- ijlanet, and may be recommended as
good reading for all interested in natural phenomena.
Aclcworth Birds. By Major Walter B. Arundel. (Gurney &
• Ja('k8on.) This is a list of one hundred and forty-nine species of
birds observed in the district of Ackworth, Yorkshire. The author
has divided the book into four parts, dealing with permanent residents,
regular summer residents, regular winter residents, and visitors. The
local names of the birds are given, as well as a brief description of
the habits of each species. The book will be of little interest save
to those who live in the district. Whether or no the book contains a
complete list of the birds which have been observed in the district
we must leave to those well acquainted with. Ackworth to judge.
The Birds of Montreal. By Ernest L>. Wintle. (London :
Wheldon & Co.) This is a similar book to the preceding one, and
deals with two hundred and fifty-four species of birds observed in
the vicinity of Montreal. The author has published this list, which
is the work of fifteen years' observation, " with a view to induce others
to publish lists of birds occurring in various districts of the Province
of (Juebec, which would give us a belter knowledge of the avifauna
of the province, as some species occur and breed in only certain
sections of it." Some sporting sketches, compiled by David Denne,
are printed at the end of the book.
Radiograph;/. By R. T. Bottonc. (Whittaker & Co.) Illustrated.
3s. A welcome addition to tlie literature on radiography. The book
does not call for much comment, but it may be safely recommended
to those who desire to have by them a trustworthy account of the
steps that have led up to the discovery and application of the so-called
X-rays. It is lucid and accurate, all the statements made by Mr.
Bottonc, as may be expected, having been verified by personal experi-
ment. Instructions are given for constructing X-ray apparatus, and
tlie subject matter is brightened by excellent photographs of the
results obtained in this absorbing branch of science.
Applied Geology. By J. V. Eisden, ii.sc.(I,ond.). (The 'Qiiarrv"
Publishing Co.) Part 1. 5s. This unpretentious little book is part
of a series of articles still appearing in the "Quarry." Practical works
on geology are scarce, and therefore Mr. Elsden'sbook will be all the
more acceptable. U he price is rather high for such a slim volume,
but the matter more than compensates for this otlierwise prohibitive
figure. Mr. Eisden has made it hie study to bring together problems
whicli confront the practical geologist, and he gives ample rules and
graphic methods for theii- solution. Kules, for example, for calcula-
ting the thickness of strata, calculation of true dip by formula;' and
by graphic construction, and he also marshals many facts from allied
sciences into a form peculiarly adapted to the geologist concerned in
the development of tlie mineral resources of the earth.
The Uncoiiscioiis Mind. By Alfred T. Schofield, m.d., ji.e.c.s.
(Hodder & Stoughton.) 7s. (id. Altliough this book is mainlv a
compilation lirom other treatises on similar subjects, students" of
mental physiology and psychology will find here much useful matter
happily arranged in logical sequence. The many examples of pheno-
mena Iroin every-day life are undeniably interesting and instructive.
The author, not without success, endeavours to put in a handy shape
the more important literature of life and mind. The references at
the foot of each page, and the list of works of reference given at the
end of the book, testify to our author's diligent and steadfastness of
piu'pose in endeavouring to render humanity service in the search for
the source of conduct, of instinct, of tact, and the thousand qualities
that make us what we are. According to Dr. Schofield the uncon-
scious mind is the greater part of mind, consciousness being the
illuminated disc on which attention is rivetted on account of its
brightness, as if it were all, whereas in the shades around stretch
mentiil faculties— deeper, wider, loftier, and truer.
The Fern World. By Francis G. Heath. (The Imperial Press.)
Illustrated. 53. Eighth Edition. The present edition of this well-
known book has been tlioroughly revised, and is now issued at a price
within reach of the majority of book-buyers. Mr. Heath's picturesque
descriptions of fern-life are enriched by the interpolation of coloured
plates, which, since the last edition appeared, have been re-drawu.
Many aspects of fern-life find a place in these pages — the germs,
conditions of growth, classification, distribution, uses, folk-lore, and
so on.
Carpentrg and Joinerg. By Fredk. C. AVebbcr. (Methuen & Co.)
Illustrated. 3s. Gd. Forms one of a series of works on technical
siience under the co-editorsliip of Dr. Garnett and Prof. Wertheimer.
The subject is treated on practical lines, and includes geometry,
carpentry, joinery and staircasing, and handrailing. The drawings
are inteudcd not only as illustrations to the text, but also as a
guidance to the foreman in executing a piece of work which he has
under control in his worksho)). Mr. Webber, follo»ing tlie lead of
many others, begins with geometry, and in twenty-five pages gives
the student a glimpse of many branches of that complex science,
about as mmh as can be learnt in one week's study. It is a great
mistake to suppose this can be of any practical use to a skilled
artizan. Fig. 16; p 13, cannot be drawn from the instructions given.
The author is woefully deficient in literary ability ; he apparently
does not know how to djstinguish between letters and the points and
lines they represent.
We have on our table some beautiful specimens of fossils from the
Middle Eocene — Barton, Hants — sent to us by Mr. E. Charles, a
naturalist who has collected large numbers, particularly of Barton
Mollusca, and. although not a dealer in the ordinary sense, he is
prepared to supply collectors at the most popular prices. Each
specimen is named, boxed, and located.
BOOKS RECEIVED.
From Matter to Man. By A. Redcote Dewar. (Chapman & Hall.)
3s. 6d.
Cressi/ and Poictiers. By J. G. Edgar. (Ward, Lock k Co.)
Illustrated. 3s. 6d. ■
London in the Reign of Victoria. Bv 6. Lam-cnce Gomme.
(Blackie.) 2s. (id.
A Middle Algebra. By Wm, Briggs and G. H. Bryan. (Clive.)
36. 6d.
The Renaissance of OirW Education in England, By Alice
Zimmern. (A. D. lunes <fe Co.) Ss.
The Oroundwork of Science. By St. George Mivart. (Murray.) 68.
The Encgcloptrdia of Sport. Vol. II., LeoZ. Edited by the Earl
of Suffolk and F. G. Allalo. (Lawrence it BuUen.) Illustrated.
Elementarg Te.vt-Boo/c of Botang. By S. H. Vines. (Somieu-
schein.) Illustrated. 99.
Moiv to Avoid Tubercle. Bv A. T. Tucker Wise, M.D. (Bailliere,
Tindall & Cox.)
Hoio to make Lantern Slides, By S. L. Coulthurst. (Dawbarn &
Ward.) Illustrated. Is. net.
The Storg of Geographical Discovery. By Joseph Jacobs.
(Xewnes.) Illustrated. Is.
A List of European Birds. By Heatley Noble, F.iS.S. (R. H.
Porter.) 3s. net.
Handbook for Literary and Debating Societies. (Hodder &
Stoughton.) 3s. 6d.
Practical Inorganic Chemistry for Advanced Students. By
Chapman Jones. (MacmiUan.) 2s. 6d.
Birds of the British Isles. By John Duncan. (Walter Scott.)
Illustrated. 5s.
The Farmer and the Birds. By Edith Carringtou. (G. Bell &.
Sons.)
Humane Science Lectures. Various authors. (G. Bell & Sons.) Is.
Photograms of IS'jS. (Dawbarn & Ward.) Is. net.
A First Algebra. By Dr. W. T. Knight. (Relfe Bros.) 6d.
The Story of the Cotton Plant. By F. Wilkinson. (Newnes.)
Illustrated. Is.
An Introduction to Practical Physics. By D. Riutoul. (Mac-
miUan.) Illustrated. 2s. 3d.
First Stage Practical Inorganic Chemistry. By F. Beddow.
(Clive.) Illustrated. Is.
First Lessons in Modern Geologg. By the late A. H. Green.
Edited by J. F. Blake. (Clarendon Press.) Illustrated. 38. 6d.
Chemistry for Schools. By C. Haughton Gill. (Stanford.)
Illustrated. 4s. 6d.
Moles worth's Metrical Tables. (Spon.) 28.
The Slide Rule. By R. G. Blaine. (Spon.) 2s. 6d.
Comparative Photographic Spectra of Stars to the Three and a
Half Magnitude. By Frank McClean, F.E.8. (Dulau.) 7s. 6d.
Spectra of Southern Stars, with Tables and Plates. Bv Frank
McClean, f.k.S. (Stanford.) 10s.
December 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE.
275
Sir Clements Markham pleads urgently for funds for a
national expedition to the Antarctic regions which, accord-
ing to Sir John Murray, should be furnished with as much
as one hundred thousand pounds, and towards this, we
understand, the Council of the Royal Geographical Society
have promised to head the list with five thousand pounds.
It is to be feared that unless the more wealthy of our
countrymen come forward with the necessary aid in under-
takings of this kind our prestige as pioneers in voyages of
discovery will be eclipsed by adventurers of other countries.
Our own rich (iovernment spends so much on powder and
smoke that it cannot afford to extend a helping hand in
matters of this kind. Jlr. Cornelius Yanderbilt has gene-
rously fitted out an expedition to explore the flora of Porto
Rico, and it is earnestly hoped that many rich men in tliis
country may emulate his example by contributing to the
fund which Sir Clements Markham and others so ardently
desire for so laudable a purpose.
A Parliamentary blue-book on the Ordnance Survey has
just been issued, and shows progress of that important
work up to 31st March, 1898. We gather from the report
that in 1891) there will be available to the public for the
first time a one-inch outline map of the whole of the country,
prepared on one uniform system, and with its principal
details nearly up to date.
From the catalogue of Messrs. -Johnson, Matthey & Co.,
Hatton Garden, London, we learn that " In furtherance
of scientific research, professors and recognized scientific
investigators will with pleasure be supplied with metals of
the platinum group, in moderate quantities, and for periods
to be arranged, free of charge, on condition that the pre-
cious metals are ultimately returned (in any form), and
that the results of the investigations are furnished."
In France there are two villages completely lighted by
acetylene. There are also ten factories engaged in the
manufacture of the c/irhide, formed by the action of the
electric current on a mixture of lime and coke dust, the
reduced calcium combining with the excess of carbon. The
resulting calcic carbide easily decomposes in presence of
water and yields the powerful iUuminant acetylene. The
carbide in the States is produced by electric power derived
from the Falls of Niagara, and similar means are employed
at Neuhausen, Switzerland. The Sohuckert Electrical
Manufacturing Company, Nuremberg, will soon be able to
turn out carbide sufficient to give two hundred million
cubic feet of acetylene annually.
In the annual report which has just been published by
the Meteorological Council, it is shown that during the
last twelve months fifty-five per cent, of their forecasts
were correct, twenty-six per cent, were nearly so, six were
failures, and thirteen partially so. These failures were
largely due to the fact that we do not possess observing
stations in the Atlantic. The observers have no means of
noting the approach of a depression until it is quite near
the coast. It is something, however, to know the results
are becoming more and more correct as the number of
observatories where the distribution of atmospheric pressure
and the direction of the wind are noted by skilled observers
increases. In Ireland and the west and north of Scotland
the forecasts are unsatisfactory, and will remain so till
more stations are established on the Atlantic.
An expedition, the main purpose of which is to deter-
mine the vertical distribution of ocean life by a series of
open nets, has been organized, and consists of Jlr. George
Murray, Mr. V. H. Blackman, and Dr. Gregory, of the
British Museum ; Mr. J. E. S. Moore, Dr. Sambon, and
Mr. Highley, an artist, complete the staff of the expedition.
Prof. Agassiz and his school contend that the oceanic fauna
is confined to the surface and bottom belts and that the
vast intervening zone is devoid of life. Sir John Murray
and others hold that there is no such barren belt, and that
the oceans are inhabited throughout their whole depth.
The Ocernui has been chartered for a short cruise,
beginning work on the West Coast of Ireland, at the edge
of the one-hundred-fathom platform. Continuous observa-
tions will be made with a chain of tow-nets till, when the
depth reaches two thousand fathoms, the series will include
thirty-eight tow-nets. Experiments with various forms of
self-closing nets will be made for the sake of comparisons,
and, if time permit, some deep-sea trawling will be don;.
An expedition has been sent out to investigate the faima
of the island of Sokotra, about one hundred and fifty miles
east-north east of Cape Guardafui. Mr. W. R. Ogilvie
Grant, of the British Museum, Dr. Forbes, of the Liver-
pool Museum, and Mr. Cutmore, a taxidermist, have sailed
for Aden, where the Indian Marine gna,Tishif,Elphi)i stone,
placed at the disposal of the party, will convey them to the
island and back to Aden on the termination of their stay.
The botany of Sokotra is fairly-well known owing to the
visit made to it by Prof. Balfour in 1880, when he gave
special attention to the flora ; but from the zoological point
of view the island is almost unexplored.
While the inhabitants of Great Britain consume eighty-
six pounds of sugar per head, the Russians are credited with
only eight and a quarter pounds. A recent oflicial report
states that the beet-sugar industry was carried on in Russia
as far back as the year 1800. In 1897 the production of
sugar in Russia was six hundred and forty-four thousand
nine hundred tons, of which four hundred and eighty-four
thousand tons were required for her own population ; and
in l89(i some one hundred and fifty thousand tons were
exported to Europe, most of which, of course, found its
way to London.
A very encouraLrins report of the analyses of sugar-beet
grown at Romney Marsh, Kent, has been given recently
by a firm of sugar refiners of Liverpool. Experiments, it
appears, have been conducted at the place named under
the cognizance of the Board of Agriculture, and the results
tend to prove that the district is highly suitable for the
sugar industry.
There were several interesting exhibits at the opening
meeting of the Linnean Society. Prof. Howes showed the
living eggs of Sphenodun, the remarkable lizard of New
Zealand. This reptile is noted for the pineal eye under
the skin in the centre of its forehead, as well as for its
relationship to extinct forms ; and the development which
will now at last be worked out ought to prove of an inte-
resting character. Some photographs were shown by Mr.
Allan Grossman of his common buzzard and the large
chicken which this bird of prey hatched and brought up.
One remarkable point, apart from the triumph of maternal
instinct, is that the buzzard has learned to eat the chicken's
food, while the chicken shows a predilection for flesh, and
wiU help its foster-mother to kill sparrows. The double
tusk of an elephant, shown by the president. Dr. Giinther,
offered a problem as to whether it was a case of redupli-
cation, or whether the milk tusk had not been shed and had
persisted.
276
KNOWLEDGE.
[December 1, 1898.
There is a generally accepted idea that metals have
smells, since if you take up a piece of metal at random, or a
coin out of your pocket, a smell can usually be detected.
But Prof. W. E. Ayrton finds that as metals are more and
more carefully cleaned, they become more and more alike
in emitting wo smell, and, indeed, when they are very
clean, it seems impossible for the best of noses to distin-
guish any one of these metals from the rest, or even to
detect its presence. The smell associated with metals, and
hitherto regarded as being due to the metals themselves,
is really due to the presence of some impurity, usually a
compound of carbon and hydrogen. Much misappre-
hension has also prevailed with respect to the dififusion of
smells. The passage of a smell is generally far more due
to the actual motion of the air containing it than to the
diffusion of the odoriferous substance through the air. If
the breath is held, without in any way closing the nose
either externally or by contracting the nasal muscles, no
smelling sensation is experienced, even when the nose is
held close to pepper, or a strong solution of spirits of
hartshorn. Prof. Ayrton has also carried out experiments
on the power of different substances to absorb various
scents from the air, and finds that many of the old beliefs
have to be exactly reversed. Thus, grains of natural musk
lose their fragrance at a comparatively rapid rate when
exposed to the air. The popular statement that a grain
of musk will scent a room for years is, therefore, not
supported by laboratory experience. The way in which
some smells cling to various substances is very remarkable.
No amount of rubbing would remove the smell of rose
leaves from glass.
A French scientist has been making observations recently
upon double-yolked eggs, a number of which were incubated
for a certain time and then examined. In twenty per
cent, neither of the yolks developed, but were found to be
joined to one another by a considerable surface, and the
germ discs or cicatriculfe were close together. In the rest,
the yolks were free or but slightly joined, while the cicatri-
culffi were in most cases remote from one another. In a
third of the eggs, one yolk only developed, and it was some-
times that at the "big end," sometimes that at the " little
end" which failed; but the most remarkable feature was that
one of the yolks had produced a double monstrosity. The
remainder of the specimens showed more or less develop-
ment in both yolks, and in a case where both embryos
were normal, though the former were joined, the cicatri-
culiB were in their proper position at the north pole, as it
were, of the yolk. Other examples showed one normal
chick and one incompletely grown ; while in one case, and
this in an egg laid by the same fowl, as in the previous
case of a similar character, there was one normal chick
and a double monstrosity. The usual idea is that the
chickens we occasionally see preserved in spirits with four
wings, and as many legs, and perhaps two heads, are
formed from two yolks in a single egg, which have produced
a double monstrosity owing to pressure. But pressure
would hardly account for such merging of two component
chicks as often takes place. The researches referred to
show that in two cases it was a single yolk or cell which,
irrespective of the second, produced the double embryo.
These particular eggs, then, show in one and the same
example two kinds of twins, two young ones produced
together, and one egg-cell producing two young ones.
used, the balloon being fitted with a " steering sail." A
Times reporter says that " We satisfied ourselves that to
steer a balloon to some extent by this method is perfectly
feasible ... for not only can one so direct the balloon as
to avoid obstacles, but the even altitude maintained by the
use of the trail rope lessens the waste of gas ; for it must
be remembered that though the friction of the trail rope
drags the balloon down, the balloon is also relieved of bal-
last to the extent of the rope that is on the ground — two
opposing forces that tend to keep the balloon in equilibrium
at a certain elevation."
According to the Minim/ and Scientific Press
ing are the relative values of the rarer metals
[jiven being per one pound avoirdupois of each
G-allium
Vauailium
Rubidium '
Thorium
Glucinum
Calcium ..
Lanthanum
Lithium
InJium ..
Tantalum
Yttrium ..
Didvmium
Strontium
Ariiim
S(iS,600
10,7SO
9,800
8,330
5,800
4,900
4,900
4,900
4,410
4,410
4,410
4,410
4,200
3,675
Erbium ...
Ruthenium
Niobium
Rhodium
Barium ...
Titanium
Zirconium
Osmium
Uranium
PallailiuiM
Tellurium
Chromium
Gold
the follow-
, the prices
metal : —
. S3,fi75
2,695
2,4.50
. 2,450
1,960
... 1,102
... 1,010
... 1,040
980
560
490
490
■300
Gold, therefore, is not by any means the most precious of
metals, taking only the twenty-seventh place according to
this list, and, weight for weight, gallium commands a
price about two hundred and thirty times that of gold.
Andr^e's system of steering balloons has recently been
tested by Mr. Perceval Spencer. A drag rope, five hundred
feet long and about one hundred pounds in weight, was
Mr. Latimer Clark, f.r.s., whose death occurred on
Sunday, the 30th October, was a distinguished civil and
electrical engineer. Born at Great Marlow, in 1822, he
commenced a career of success as assistant engineer under
Robert Stephenson at the building of the Britannia and
Conway tubular bridges, an account of which he published
some years later. In the capacity of electrical engineer he
superintended the construction and laying of more than
one hundred thousand miles of submarine cable in various
parts of the world, and invented the Clark standard coil,
as well as numerous telegraphic improvements. A joint
paper by Mr. Clark and Sir Charles Bright, contributed to
the British Association in 1861, was the means of putting
electrical measurement on a firm basis. From suggestions
made in this paper, a committee, in which Lord Kelvin
was the leading spirit, evolved a rational system of elec-
trical units — the terms "volt," " ampere, ' " ohm," and so
on, being adopted as the result of their deliberations. Mr.
Clark was also the first to introduce the pneumatic system
of transmitting postal and telegraph matter. As fourth
president of the Society of Telegraph Engineers (now the
Institution of Electrical Engineers), in his inaugural
address in 1875 he gave a valuable account of the early
history of the electric telegraph. The deceased gentleman,
with Robert Sabine, was joint author of " Electrical Tables
and Formulae," a standard work, and, in collaboration
with the late Mr. Herbert Sadler, produced a book on
" Double Stars." He was also well known as the designer
of a cheap transit instrument, useful not merely as a model
for teaching purposes, but as a means of determining true
time. Mr. Clark was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society
in 1889, and he was also a Chevalier of the Legion of
Honour.
December 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE.
277
BRITISH
■±r
ORNITHOLOGICA
Conducted by H&bbt F. Witherby, f.z.s., m.b.o.u.
Barred Wabbler in Lincolnshire. — On September 5th
I shot an immature female of the Barred Warbler i Si/lria
nistiri(i), at North Cotes. The bird was feeding on a bunch
of brambles in a ditch not far from the coast. It was very
wild, flying a considerable distance when flushed. The
wind was east, very light, with iine hot weather. The
only other migrants seen were a Willow-Wren and a young
Spotted Flycatcher. — G. H. Caton Haicjh, Grainsby Hall,
Great Grimsby.
[The Barred Warbler is an inhabitant of Central
Europe. This is but the thirteenth example recorded in
the British Islands, and all have been taken in autumn,
from August to November. — H. F. W.]
Bewick's Swans ix Suffolk. — On the 14th November a
Bewick's Swan was shot at Benacre, Suffolk. It weighed
twelve and a half pounds, and measured, flexure twenty
inches, and total length thirty-six inches. Another was
shot at the same place on the 31st October. They are
being set up by Quatremain, of Stratford -on -Avon. — Jos.
F. Green, West Lodge, Blackheath, 16th November, isOS.
Common iJippt'r at Hilliiigton {The Field, November 12tli, 189S).
— Sir W. H. B. Ft'olkes rcfords that he shot a speotmen of Cincliis
aquatievs on November 9th, at Hillington, in Norfolk. The bird was
apparently of the normal British form, and not of t)ie dark Scandina-
vian form (C. melanogaster) which is usually found in our eastern
counties in winter.
White's Thrash in Warwi-kshire (The Field, November 5th, 1898).
— Mr. Peter Spicer, a taxidermist, of Leamington, reports that a
specimen of Titrdus varius lias been sent to him for preservation by
tlie Earl of Aylesford, on whose estate, near Coventry, the bird was
shot in October. This Siberian Ground Thrush has been obtained a
good many times in England in winter, but only once before in
October.
Pectoral Sandpiper in Kent. — At a meeting of the British Ornitho-
logical Club, held on October 19th, Mr. N. F. Ticehurst exhibited a
male of Heteroptigia maeulata, obtained on August 2nd last, between
Lydd and Rye. This species has been observed in Great Britain
more frequently than any other American species of wader, and nearly
all the occurrences have been on the east coast in autumn or winter.
Eider Duck in Donei/il (Land and Water, November 12th,
1898.) — Mr. T. A. Bond, of Londonderry, reports that a female of
this bird, which is rare in Ireland, was shot on the east coast of
Donegal in the first week in November.
All contributio7is to the column, eitJier in the way of notes
or photographs, should be forwarded to Habry F. Witherby,
at 1, Eliot Place, Blackheath, Kent,
Urttrro.
[The Editors do not hold themselves responsible for the opiniona or
statements of correspondents.]
SUGAK-BEEf INDL^^IRY IX EXGL.l>'n.
To the Editors of Knowledge.
Sirs, — In the last number of your very esteemed journal
you described the efforts made this year to create an interest
in the growing of sugar-beet, and for the establishing of a
beet-sugar industry in this country. You had the kindness
also to mention my name as being associated with this
question. I supplied about four hundred farmers in Eng-
land, Scotland, and Ireland gratuitously with sugar-beet
seed, gave them my advice free, and have analyzed upwards
of five himdrcd parcels of sugar-beet. These beetroots
were grown almost in every county in the United Kingdom,
and the result is a remarkable success, as regards weight
and saccharine contents, which both exceed by far the
figures received from Germany, Austria, France, etc.
You also mentioned the statements of Sir .John Lawes
and Sir Henry Gilbert in their pamphlet on this subject. I
must say I differ in my views from these gentlemen. That
we can grow better beetroots in this country than on the
Continent I have distinctly proved by my extensive experi-
ments. I have further shown that our acreage of roots is
higher than on the Continent. Finally, I have proved
(and letters from authorities are in my hands) that the
figures given in my book " Sugar," relating to the cost of
growing sugar beetroots, are exact. Facts speak best. My
tabulated statement and report about my beet-growing
experiments this year in England, Scotland, and Ireland
will appear about the beginning of December next, and it
will show conclusively that it is possible in this country —
(1) to grow sugar-beetroot profitably ; (2) to manufacture
our own sugar from home-grown sugar-beet with great
advantage, and be independent of the Continent.
— ,..-. — SiGMUND Stein.
THE SMELL OF EARTH.
To the Editors of Knowxedge.
Sirs, — I have read with interest, though I can hardly
say with conviction, Mr. Clarke Nuttall's article on " The
Smell of Earth."
Can Mr. Nuttall explain the smell of damp sandstone ?
It is one of many phenomena, very familiar, but which
appear inexplicable.
If it be alleged that the smell is not that of the stone
but of the occluded gases, the difficulty is only removed
one step. Again, clay has a smell of its own, and I know
no satisfactory explanation of the well-known odours of
iron, copper, etc.
Highlands, Putney Heath, S.W. G. B. Longstaff.
[The smell of damp sandstone, has, I believe, at present
received no satisfactory explanation ; indeed the whole of
our scientific knowledge of "Smells" is still in a very
elementary stage. To say that a substance has its own
peculiar smell because it gives off certain gaseous particles
is, in such cases as iron, copper, sandstone, etc., merely
begging the question. With reference to the smell of
damp earth, the new theory is based on the researches of
M. Berthelot and M. G. Andr^', and the particular bacterium
has been later identified by Herr Rullmann. Your corre-
spondent wiU find more definite reference in " Technical
Mycology," by Dr. Franz Lafar (tr. C. Salter), the first
volume of which is already published by Messrs. GrifSn t^-
Co. {stv " Iron Bacteria "), a second volume being still in
the press.— G. C. N.] „,..
EVOLUTION IN BIRD SONG.
To the Editors of Knowledge.
Sirs, — With referehce to the interesting suggestion made
by Mr. Witchell, in his article on " Evolution in Bird-
song," in your September issue, that human ideas of the
" crescends " in singing may possibly have been borrowed
from the nightingale, it is certainly interesting to note how
frequently musicians, and more especially the older clari-
cinists, have taken their themes from birds. Thus we
have " Le Coucou," by Daquin, "Le Ramage des Oiseaux,"
278
KNOWLEDGE.
by Dandrieu, and " Le Rappel des Oiseaux," by Ramsau,
to mention only a few examples, while many instances
might be cited where bird-calls have been introduced in
orchestral works. Nevertheless, in these cases, we have a
direct artificial imitation of various bird-calls. It is,
however, otherwise with a " nuance " lilse the " crescends, '
which, belonging as it does to musical dynamics, would
scarcely require to be imitated. Rather may we surmise
that this grace in singing would spring spontaneously
from those physiological causes, viz., nervous energy and
muscular tension, which lie at the root of all musical
utterance, for, as pointed out by Herbert Spencer,* " loud-
ness of tone, pitch of tone, quality of tone, and change of
tone, are severally marks of feeling, and, combined in
different ways and proportions, serve to express different
amounts and kinds of feelings." W. Alkrei> Park.
;21, Viadella Scala, Florence.
October 22nd, 1898.
WEASEL AND YOLXO.
To the Editors of Knowledge.
giRs,— The following is somewhat on a par with Mr.
Witchell's interesting account of a weasel and her yonng
in the November number of Knowledge. I was out with
the head-keeper of a well-known shooting in Suffolk, when
we came to a stream. He pointed to a jutting-out piece
of bank, and said he once saw a rat (probably M. amiihihius)
dive from this spot into the water with a young one in its
mouth, swim along with it under water, drag it up on to
the bank, run round with it to the old spot and dive in
again. This was repeated five or six times on exactly the
same beat. The keeper, who is a most observant and
accurate field-naturalist, thinks the old rat was teaching
the young one to dive and swim.
Perhaps the young weasels mentioned by Mr. Witchell
were beintt taught how to run. -Tos. F. Green.
West Lodge, Blackheath.
am not a.
roughly,
sixteen ti
•'A8TR'^'^■0M^ •
To thf
Sirs, — Kind'
of comment
E. \V. Mauni
Tales' " in y(
frequently Chi
and points out
To the Editors of Knowledge.
Sirs, — Referring to the letter in your last issue on a
weasel leading her young, I happened recently to be in a
hayfield where mowing had been going on. Noticing a
bent tuft of grass I turned it up, and saw beneath it seven
little stoats laid side by side — heads and tails together.
Then looking about me I noticed, some half-dozen yards off,
a small round hole which seemed to get larger the deeper it
went into the ground. I therefore placed myself at a
suitable distance to watch, and very shortly, all being
quiet, the mother's head cautiously appeared outside the
hole. She then came out and at once began to take hold
of each little one in turn very carefully, as a dog will take
a puppy, and so lead it towards and down the hole.
WiLLi.\.M C. Tetley.
MOOiVS HALO.
To the Editors of Knowledok.
Sirs, — On the 26th October I was in Oxfordshire, near
Wallington, and saw a wonderful double halo round the
full moon. The halo immediately surrounding the moon
was orange coloured, with a pinkish rim ; and surrounding
this inner halo was another of about the same size, of a
vivid green, with a somewhat deeper reddish-pink rim.
There was a " mackerel sky," but I was surprised that no
storm followed the phenomena. I first noticed the halo
at 11 p.m., and by 11.15 it had quite disappeared; but I
* " Principles of Etliics," Vol. I., p. 2t,S.
rimKH 1 1 »■ -
•■ ui be &boQt
.'1. Cl1i1i«IJ4 Lkii.h.
lue poei m I
Pt. " ' • "■
til.
brf.
be called tt sci.jucc. .Mr
tional 1 nnwlpdeo of the
.i
I
f
a
■ r\ hij
(•
I tell the time
fciUi. . . .■ ^i
.■n. !:.<!.
n.
could carry the instr
tions with it for tlu •
' •■ 1 ■
he would be
-. ;f wub
uie
angular heigh'
■ un the leoKth
of shadows witij lu.
" • ■ -
■.].i
not only give him
sun's position on tl.
well as the degre<
at the time of o^
'.
purely an astr '
.-trnur* WM
essential. 1
iUtions
Uut
could be ma
i.'.wn in
the
treatise Chaucer wrote on
son " LowvB." H« rq
Children.' b
to become m^
the help of iI.l .
the constant use ( n >
bis knowledge of il.
out the year does
unusual " as the u
Again, regardir- •'
Chaucer mak
somewhat do ;
fascination thai ot .
of his time (not to
' R,-'.
among the oneducatc
scorn and contempt most
professors of that art.
Torquay.
[I fear that in Mr. Lowe? d ir.
with the astrolabe he h-
paper. My point was f,
day, actual r*
heavenly boi
question of th.
the case, and doeu not ii.
Treatise on the Astrols
known, but I wu
unequalled gallery
of his time, wbicii
-.11 lie ireatea wiui
: pretenaioQB of the
H. J. Lf.w«.
to show hi? ftcarialnl&nee
December 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE.
279
I differ from Mr. Low aa to Chaucer's own belief in
astrology. He writes olt in detail, as I showed. But I
think he no more believt in it than did Flamsteed, who
yet drew a horoscope t determine a fortunate hour for
founding Greenwich Obs vatory. or Sir Walter Scott, who
yet showed a perfect ac laintance with its principles in
" Guy Mannering." — E.V'ai.ter Maunder.]
THE GICAt' SUN-SPOT.
To the F.dirs of Knowledge.
Sirs, — With referent to Mr. Maunders interesting
article on this subject i the October number, I beg to
send you enclosed a dra^ng 1 made of the spot when very
near the Sun's eastern 1 ib, September 'id. 6h., and other
drawings September di 2h., and September id. Ih., all
G. M. T.
Sunspot in 3 edge. Power 120.
Kdge of 3i cuts the penumbra ?
\
Sept. 2ii(l, 1 p.m. Sept. 3rd ■ a.m. Sept. 4th, 8 a.m. ISOS.
They were taken witlk four -inch equatorial and a solar
prism, and are therefor subject to the inversion peculiar
to such prisms ; this lay be rectified by viewing the
reflection of the drawit i in a looking-glass. The power
used was one hundred \d twenty. The last drawing by
mistake makes the spot little too short.
Jamaica, M.wwell H.u,l.
October 2-ith, Ibs.
VAl ABLK STARS.
To the E tors of Knowledge.
Sirs, — I think there no real point in dispute between
me and Col. Markwick jut I may perhaps suggest that
some variables may be eally of the eclipse-type, though
not usually so classed.
If the obscuring bodj i a close satellite and the obscured
star is very distant, thcosition of the earth in its orbit
would practically make o difference in the phenomena.
But suppose that the bscuring body is a very distant
satellite, or belongs to iifierent system, but happens to
be almost in the direct line between the earth and the
bright star, the amoun of obscuration might depend on
the earth's position ij its orbit, and the period of the
variable star would be ery nearly one year. Now, as a
matter of fact, the nun er of variable stars with a period
of nearly one year seen larger than chance wLU account
for. Is the excess due i this cause ?
With ordinary eclips variables we may expect, on the
tidal theory, a slow inc ase of the period, accompanied by
a slow diminution in tl amount of the variation. But at
the same time the mc ments of the sun and the star
through space would lobably render the eclipse either
more or less central an thus compUcate the phenomena.
Whether the cause v ich I have suggested will afford
the true explanation of hat I may call annual variables,
will I think chiefly dep^d on the result of observations
as regards their spectnat different periods.
W. H. S. Mo.NCK.
VARIABLE STARS IN GLOBULAR CLUSTERS.
By Miss Ag.ves M. Clerke,
Author of " The System of the Stars," " A Popular History
of Astronomy during the Nineteenth Century," etc., etc.
GLOBULAR clusters are, perhaps, the most fasci-
nating of telescopic objects. Their silver radiance
delights the eye ; the mystery of their constitution
allures thought. What, we instinctively ask
ourselves, is the reality corresponding to the
strange and beautiful appearance of " balls of stars " ?
Are the luminous particles composing them sunx in any true
sense '? What are their mutual relations '? Is their aggre-
gation destined to be permanent ? Do they form stable
systems, or merely temporary societies undermined by
forces tending towards dissolution ? Some indications on
these points have been gathered, but definite information
is still to seek. Only within the last few years, indeed,
have the objects in question been brought within the
scope of organized research.
There need be no hesitation, however, in atHrming that
swarming stars belong to the same cosmic family as
solitary stars — that they are spherical masses of intensely
heated matter, radiating into space by means of suitably
adapted photospheric apparatus. But they are unlikely
to be xolar suns. Many are sensibly, probably all are
sub-sensibly nebulous. They stand, then, presumably at
an earlier stage of development than our own luminary,
and may be greatly less dense proportionately to their
brilliancy. The nature of their spectra ought here to
prove of decisive import. Too dim for separate examina-
tion, they, nevertheless, reinforce each other sufficiently,
where the stars run together in the central " blaze," to
give intelligible results with powerful appliances. The
early efl'orts to obtain them, made by Sir William Huggins
and Dr. Vogel, at a time when no adequate means were
available, can now at last be carried out with good promise
of a successful issue.
In our present ignorance of their distance from the
earth we are unable to determine the scale of these
jostling suns. A rough calculation, however, shows that
an enormous remoteness would correspond to standard —
that is, to solar light-power.
The grand southern cluster ;,• Centauri has been
thoroughly investigated from one hundred and fifty
negatives taken at Arequipa. Prof. Pickering may well
call it " the finest in the sky. ' He adds that it lies just
within the border of the MUky Way, and appears to the
naked eye as a hazy star of the fourth magnitude. It has
a diameter of about forty minutes. Over six thousand
stars have been counted on one of the photographs, and
the whole number is much greater. ' . If we assume it to
be seven thousand, then the average lustre of the purtides
contained in a single 'Irop of light equivalent to a fourth-
magnitude star comes out at 13-6 magnitude. But our own
magnificent orb, actually of minus 25*5 magnitude (accord-
ing to Pickering's estimate', if removed so far as to have
a parallax of only one-hundredth of a second, would still
take eleventh stellar rank. Only a remoteness three-and-
a-third times greater stUl. implying a light journey of over
eleven hundred years, could render it faint enough to pass
in the crowd of the assemblage in the Centaur. The
possibility that it may be plunged thus deep in the void
cannot be gainsaid, since the spatial unit fixed by measure-
ments of the parallactic pendulum-swing of the nearer
stars has yet to be appUea to the galactic world in aU its
length and breadth ; but, as Kepler said, " the pill is a big
one to swallow."
* Harvard College Observatory Circular, No. 33.
278
KNOWLEDGE.
[December 1. 1898.
by Dandrieu, and " Le Eappel des Oiseaux," by Ramsau,
to mention only a few examples, while many instances
might be cited where bird-calls have been introduced in
orchestral works. Nevertheless, in these cases, we have a
direct artificial imitation of various bird-calls. It is,
however, otherwise with a " nuance " lilie the " crescends,"
which, belonging as it does to musical dynamics, would
scarcely require to be imitated. Rather may we surmise
that this grace in singing would spring spontaneously
from those physiological causes, viz., nervous energy and
muscular tension, which lie at the root of all musical
utterance, for, as pointed out by Herbert Spencer,* " loud-
ness of tone, pitch of tone, quality of tone, and change of
tone, are severally marks of feeling, and, combined in
different ways and proportions, serve to express different
amounts and kinds of feelings." W. Alkreh Parr.
21, Viadella Scala, Florence.
October 22nd, 1898.
am not aware when it first became visible. Speaking very
roughly, I should say that each halo appeared to be about
sixteen times the apparent size of the moon.
M. Cordelia Leioh.
WEASEL AND YOUNG.
To tlie Editors of Knowledge.
Sirs, — The following is somewhat on a par with Mr.
Witchell's interesting account of a weasel and her young
in the November number of Knowledge. I was out with
the head-keeper of a well-known shooting in Suffolk, when
we came to a stream. He pointed to a jutting-out piece
of bank, and said he once saw a rat (probably M. am/ihihim)
dive from this spot into the water with a young one in its
mouth, swim along with it under water, drag it up on to
the bank, run round with it to the old spot and dive in
again. This was repeated five or six times on exactly the
same beat. The keeper, who is a most observant and
accurate field-naturalist, thinks the old rat was teaching
the young one to dive and swim.
Perhaps the young weasels mentioned by Mr. Witchell
were being taught how to run. Jos. F. Green.
West Lodge, Blackheath.
To the Editors of Knowledge.
SiBs, — Referring to the letter in your last issue on a
weasel leading her young, I happened recently to be in a
hayfield where mowing had been going on. Noticing a
bent tuft of grass I turned it up, and saw beneath it seven
little stoats laid side by side — heads and tails together.
Then looking about me I noticed, some half-dozen yards off,
a small round hole which seemed to get larger the deeper it
went into the ground. I therefore placed myself at a
suitable distance to watch, and very shortly, all being
quiet, the mother's head cautiously appeared outside the
hole. She then came out and at once began to take hold
of each little one in turn very carefully, as a dog will take
a puppy, and so lead it towards and down the hole.
William C. Tetley.
MOON'S HALO.
To the Editors of Knowledge.
SiKs, — On the 26th October I was in Oxfordshire, near
Wallington, and saw a wonderful double halo round the
full moon. The halo immediately surrounding the moon
was orange coloured, with a pinkish rim ; and surrounding
this inner halo was another of about the same size, of a
vivid green, with a somewhat deeper reddish-pink rim.
There was a " mackerel sky," but I was surprised that no
storm followed the phenomena. I first noticed the halo
at 11 p.m., and by 11.15 it had quite disappeared ; but I
* " Principles of Ethic?," Vol. L, p.' 218.
' ASTRONOMY OF THE ' CAXTERBIRY TALES.' "
To the Editors of Knowledge.
Sirs, — Kindly allow me to say a few words in the way
of comment upon the very interesting article by Mr.
E. W. Maunder on the "Astronomy of the ' Canterbury
Tales ' " in your September number. In it he shows how
frequently Chaucer makes allusion to astronomical matters,
and points out how the detail and accuracy displayed by
the poet in these allusions demonstrates a practice of
stellar observation quite unusual to ordinary writers of
the present day, and much less to be expected in an age
before clocks and telescopes, when astronomy could hardly
be called a science. Mr. Maunder attributes this excep-
tional knowledge of the poet to a much more general
practice of observing the heavenly bodies, together with
the popularity of the Universities at the time, diffusing its
knowledge more widely than subsequently ruled. It seems
to me that he has overlooked the chief reason for Chaucer's
familiarity with the movements and altitude of the sun
and other heavenly bodies. He undoubtedly had in
continual use an astrolabe, by which he could tell the time
either by the sun or stars of the first magnitude. He
could carry the instrument about, and by making observa-
tions with it for the many purposes it could be applied to,
he would be continually familiarising himself with the
angular height of sun and stars, and associating the length
of shadows with the time calculated. His astrolabe would
not only give him this information, but also showed the
sun's position on the ecliptic for each day of the year, as
well as the degree in the zodiacal sign the sun would be
at the time of observation, besides other matters of
purely an astrological import for which the astrolabe was
essential. The numerous and varied circulations that
could be made with this instrument are shown in the
treatise Chaucer wrote on the astrolabe for the use of his
son " Lowys." He called it " Bread and Milk for
Children, " but it would require a very intelligent child
to become master of all the problems he sets therein, with
the help of the book and instrument alone. Seeing, then,
the constant use Chaucer must have made of the astrolabe,
his knowledge of the sun's longitude day by day through-
out the year does not strike one as so " strange and
imusual" as the writer of the article states it to be.
Again, regarding the many times and varied circumstances
Chaucer makes use of astrologic lore in his works, it seems
somewhat doubtful if he had been able to shake off the
fascination that study had for so many men of learning
of his time (not to mention its almost uniiersal influence
among the uneducated), although no doubt he treated with
scorn and contempt most of the absurd pretensions of the
professors of that art.
Torquay. H. .J. Lowe.
[I fear that in Mr. Lowe's desire to show his acquaintance
with the astrolabe he has missed the intention of my
paper. My point was simply to show that in Chaucer's
day, actual observation — in a certain direction — of the
heavenly bodies was more general then than now. The
question of the instrument then in use did not enter into
the case, and does not in the least affect it. Chaucer's
Treatise on the Astrolabe is, of course, sufficiently well
known, but I was not deahng with it, but with his
unequalled gallery of photographs of the general public
of his time, which he gives in the " Canterbury Tales."
December 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE.
279
I differ from Mr. Lowe as to Chaucer's own belief in
astrology. He writes of it in detail, as I showed. But I
think he no more believed in it than did Flamsteed, who
yet drew a horoscope to determine a fortunate hour for
founding Greenwich Observatory, or Sir Walter Scott, who
yet showed a perfect acquaintance with its principles in
" Guy Mannering." — E. Walter Maln-der.]
THE aREAT SUX-SPOT.
To the Editors of Knowledge.
Sirs, — With reference to Mr. Maunder's interesting
article on this subject in the October number, 1 beg to
send you enclosed a drawing I made of the spot when very
near the Sun's eastern limb, September 2d. 6h., and other
drawings September 3d. 2h., and September id. Ih., all
G. M. T.
Suiispot iu .3/ edge. Power 120.
Edge of Sun cuts the penumbra ?
Sept. 2nd, 1 p.m. Sept. 3rd, 9 a.m. Sept. 4th, 8 a.m. ISOfS.
They were taken with a four -inch equatorial and a solar
prism, and are therefore subject to the inversion peculiar
to such prisms ; this may be rectified by viewing the
reflection of the drawings in a looking-glass. The power
used was one hundred and twenty. The last drawing by
mistake makes the spot a little too short.
Jamaica, M.^xwell Hall.
October 24th, 1898.
VARIABLE STARS.
To the Editors of Knowledge.
Sirs,— I think there is no real point in dispute between
me and Col. Markwick, but I may perhaps suggest that
some variables may be really of the eclipse-type, though
not usually so classed.
If the obscuring body is a close satellite and the obscured
star is very distant, the position of the earth in its orbit
would practically make no diiierence in the phenomena.
But suppose that the obscuring body is a very distant
satellite, or belongs to a different system, but happens to
be almost in the direct line between the earth and the
bright star, the amount of obscuration might depend on
the earth's position in its orbit, and the period of the
variable star would be very nearly one year. Now, as a
matter of fact, the number of variable stars with a period
of nearly one year seems larger than chance will account
for. Is the excess due to this cause ?
With ordinary eclipse-variables we may expect, on the
tidal theory, a slow increase of the period, accompanied by
a slow diminution in the amount of the variation. But at
the same time the movements of the sun and the star
through space would probably render the eclipse either
more or less central and thus compUcate the phenomena.
Whether the cause which I have suggested will afford
the true explanation of what I may call annual variables,
will I think chiefly depend on the result of observations
as regards their spectra at different periods.
W. H. S. MoN-cii.
VARIABLE STARS IN GLOBULAR CLUSTERS.
By Miss Agnes M. Clerke,
Author of " The System of the Stars," " A Popular History
of Astronomy during the Nineteenth Century," etc., etc.
GLOBULAR clusters are, perhaps, the most fasci-
nating of telescopic objects. Their silver radiance
delights the eye ; the mystery of their constitution
allures thought. What, we instinctively ask
ourselves, is the reality corresponding to the
strange and beautiful appearance of " balls of stars " '?
Are the luminous particles composing them sum in any true
sense ■? What are their mutual relations '? Is their aggre-
gation destined to be permanent '? Do they form stabl£
systems, or merely temporary societies undermined by
forces tending towards dissolution ? Some indications on
these points have been gathered, but definite information
is still to seek. Only within the last few years, indeed,
have the objects in question been brought within the
scope of organized research.
There need be no hesitation, however, in affirming that
swarming stars belong to the same cosmic family as
solitary stars — that they are spherical masses of intensely
heated matter, radiating into space by means of suitably
adapted photospheric apparatus. But they are unlikely
to be solar suns. Many are sensibly, probably all are
sub-sensibly nebulous. They stand, then, presumably at
an earlier stage of development than our own luminary,
and may be greatly less dense proportionately to their
brilliancy. The nature of their spectra ought here to
prove of decisive import. Too dim for separate examina-
tion, they, nevertheless, reinforce each other sufficiently,
where the stars run together in the central " blaze," to
give intelligible results with powerful appliances. The
early efl'orts to obtain them, made by Sir William Huggins
and Dr. Vogel, at a time when no adequate means were
available, can now at last be carried out with good promise
of a successful issue.
In our present ignorance of their distance from the
earth we are unable to determine the scale of these
jostling suns. A rough calculation, however, shows that
an enormous remoteness would correspond to standard —
that is, to solar light-power.
The grand southern cluster ;•.• Centauri has been
thoroughly investigated from one hundred and fifty
negatives taken at Arequipa. Prof. Pickering may well
call it " the finest in the sky. ' He adds that it lies just
within the border of the Milky Way, and appears to the
naked eye as a hazy star of the fourth magnitude. It has
a diameter of about forty minutes. Over six thousand
stars have been counted on one of the photographs, and
the whole number is much greater. If we assume it to
be seven thousand, then the average lustre of the particles
contained in a single drop of light equivalent to a fourth-
magnitude star comes out at 13'6 magnitude. But our own
magnificent orb, actuaOy of minus 25-5 magnitude (accord-
ing to Pickering's estimate), if removed so far as to have
a parallax of only one-hundredth of a second, would atiU
take eleventh stellar rank. Only a remoteness three-and-
a-third times greater still, implying a light journey of over
eleven hundred years, could render it faint enough to pass
in the crowd of the assemblage in the Centaur. The
possibility that it may be plunged thus deep in the void
cannot be gainsaid, since the spatial tinit fixed by measure-
ments of the parallactic pendulum-swing of the nearer
stars has yet to be appliea to the galactic world in all its
length and breadth ; but, as Kepler said, " the pill is a big
one to swallow."
* Harvard College Observatory Circular, No. 33.
280
KNOWLEDGE.
[Decbmbeb 1, 1896.
The mechanical arrangements of globular clusters
entirely baftle our narrow conceptions of what is feasible
and workable. Instead of the neatly finished aspect
betokening orderly revolution round an attractive centre,
they present, very commonly, ravelled edges, a radiated
conformation, and dark vacancies of curiously definite
shapes. An escape of stars is strongly suggested ; and the
conjecture might even be hazarded that the removal of
stellar material thus effected is the immediate cause of the
inward dilapidation manifestly progressing in visibly
tunnelled spheres. The two symptoms indeed appear to
be correlated. Three imposing groups— M 13, in Hercules,
M 3, in Canes Venatici, and M 5, in Serpens, may serve as
examples. All have curvilinear appendages, and all show
pierced, and, as it were, excavated interiors. On the other
hand, w Centauri and 47 Toucani, an exquisite ornament
of the southern pole, are compact within and without. No
perforations are visible in them, and on Bailey's plates they
came out almost perfectly circular. Here the twofold marks
of dissolution are together absent, as in other cases they
are together present.
By far the most remarkable discovery, however, yet
made about globular clusters is that about one in five of
them are literally crammed with variable stars. Their
abundance is such, that as many as a hundred — in
Prof. Barnard's words •' — "have been found in a space
in the sky that would be covered by a pin's head held at
the distance of distinct vision." The pictures affording
this wonderful revelation were taken at Arequipa, with
the thirteen-inch Boyden telescope, an instrument rendered
available for either visual or photographic employment by
the adjunct of a reversible crown lens. Its fine qualities
are not allowed to " rust " in disuse. Hundreds of
exposures, from one up to six hours in duration, have been
made with it for the purposes of this special enquiry, the
results of which have been published in successive
" Harvard Circulars." They are most nearly complete for
(y Centauri. In this cluster, out of about three thousand
stars accessible to separate study, no less than one hundred
and twenty-five proved markedly, and, for the most part,
very rapidly variable. A large majority, in fact, run
through their changes in less than twenty-four hours.
The periods of one hundred and six have, so far, been
ascertained; only eight among them exceed a day's length,
while three fall short of seven hours. One of these belongs
to No. 91 of the blinking battalion, which, springing up to
a maximum once in six hours and eleven minutes, is at
present the quickest of known variables. U Pegasi, until
lately the claimant of that distinction, is outrun by many
components of clusters.
As will be seen by referring to Circular No. 38, printed
in abridged form lower down. Prof. Pickering divides the
short-period variables in w Centauri into four classes,
distinguished by the forms of their light-curves. The first
largely predominates. The objects constituting it increase
with extreme swiftness, and decline by comparison slowly.
No. 45, for instance, with a period of 14h. 8m., sextuples
its brightness in a single hour, and that on the clock-stroke,
all these stars being characterized by exemplary
punctuality ; in other cases the rise may be still more
rapid, but closer inquiry is precluded by the needful
duration of photographic exposures.
Some of the :u Centauri variables show humped light-
curves, indicating abortive secondary maxima, like those
of 'J Cephei and >; Aquilre ; and one exceptional case has
been noted, in which the rule of an ascent quicker than the
descent is reversed.
* See his recent admirable address on " Astronomical Photography,"
p. 26.
Besides w Centauri, three stellar globes — M 5, M 3, and
M 15 — have yielded a copious harvest of rapidly-changing
stars. The first includes about nine hundred components
that can be individualized and watched ; eighty-five among
them are conspicuously variable. Two were visually
discovered as such by Mr. David Packer, of Birmingham,
in 1890. They have been identified by Prof. Barnard
as Nos. 42 and 84 of the Harvard register, and might be
called companion objects, since each alike fluctuates to the
extent of a magnitude and a-half in a period of twenty-six
days. Dr. Common, about the same time, obtained
photographic indications of variability throughout the
cluster* ; but so delicate an enquiry could scarcely be
13 7
1
N
an
s
14 1
\,
14 X
\
14.1
/■
s
74 7
y
\
a^ o; Af ip iv ^ JO Ji -jp 4i
Fia. 1. — Light-Curve of No. 18 Messier 5.
prosecuted under the muffled skies of Ealing. The perfect
conditions at Arequipa were indispensable to success — a
success enhanced by Prof. Barnard's confirmatory work
with the forty-inch Yerkes refractor. " These cluster
variables," he remarks, t " seem to form a distinct class
from the ordinary variable stars. It is very interesting to
watch one of them in a powerful telescope, and to see with
what quickness it passes through its light-variation. One
of the small stars in M 5, whose period is 12h. 31m., seems
to be dormant for a large part of the time, as a very faint
star, invisible in ordinary telescopes. It begins to brighten,
and in two or three hours has risen nearly two magnitudes,
and faded again to its normal condition ; while another
and larger star, quite near it,
seems to require a month or
more to go through its light
fluctuation."
Most of the eighty-four vari-
ables in M 5 are doubtless of
the type dominant in w Cen-
tauri. They traverse their
cycle in a few hours, ranging
through a couple of magni-
tudes by very unequal grada-
tions. From a datum-level of
obscurity, they spring up al-
most suddenly, and with the
regularity of a flash-light, then sink back at a more
leisurely rate. The stationary intervals apparent to the
eye are, however, shown photographically to be marked by
the progress of slow variation. Absolute pauses are short
and rare. No. 18, of which the light-curve is given in
Figure 1, illustrates the peculiarities of the class. Its
period is llh. 7m. 52s., its limiting magnitudes 13-5 to
14-7. Probably no other star equally faint has been
pursued throughout its phases. During nearly five hours
it remains semi-extinct, but needs no more than an
hour and quarter for a triple gain of light, which it
73.5
/
'~\
a a
/
^
s
HI
\
14-3
f
\
<
^ 1 :
Fig. 2. — Maximum of
No. 12 Messier 5. A long
minimum is indicated.
* Monthly Notices, Vol. L., p. 517
■fAstr. Ifach., No. 3519.
Nature, Tol. L., p. 448.
December 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE
281
loses again in about four hours. Figure 2 represents
the maximum of Xo. 12 in this chister. The further
sections of its curve appear to inchide a protracted
minimum, but had not been traced out at the date of
publication. A specific resemblance is evident between
Nos. 18 and 12, as between Nos. 42 and 81.
Prof. Barnard was greatly struck, in the course of his
scrutiny of M 5, with a number of "inky black spots"
near, but not in its densest parts, recalling the analogy of
the model northern cluster, M 13 Herculis. Even the
minor group is described as " a gorgeous object," faintly
visible to the naked eye, I with a yross diameter, so to
speak, of about nineteen minutes of arc. ]
M 3, the beautiful radiated star-throng in Canes Vena-
tici, contains the largest proportion of variables of any
cluster yet examined. One in seven — one hundred and
thirty-two in all — of the nine hundred components
separately discernible on the Arequipa plates fluctuate
extensively. Their laws of change, however, have received
up to the present only preliminary attention. The same
may be said of the fifty-one variables in M 15. This is a
cluster in Pegasus, considered by Dr. Roberts to be strongly
nebulous. The stars, moreover, imprinted on a negative
taken November 4th, 1890, exhibit an arrangement " in
curve lines, and patterns of various forms, with lanes or
spaces between them." :
The absence of variables from most globular clusters
accentuates the wonder of their abundance in others. Nor
is it possible to discover any corresponding differences of
state or aspect. Thus in 47 Touoani, an exact analogue on
a slightly reduced scale of m Centauri, the causes of vari-
ability seem to be strictly localized. A nest of six changing
stars was at once brouglit to light by comparisons of Prof.
Bailey's plates, but none are scattered at large through
the assemblage, which is otherwise made up of perfectly
stable components. Still more remarkably, only two out
of two thousand stars rigidly tested in the great Hercules
globe have proved variable, and that to an insignificant
extent ; whereas nearly one per cent, of the visible populace
of heaven shine more or less unsteadily. Now, this last
cluster is not only generally nebulous, but many of its
outlying members are separately provided with luminous
appendages; so that the disconnection of nebulosity from
variability in light, already tolerably obvious, is, by these
fresh experiences, emphatically re-affirmed. Another fact
of interest, albeit likewise of negative import, is that M 80,
the cluster in Scorpio illumined in 1860 by the blaze of a
" new star," is exempt from the slightest suspicion of
actual variability. Nor has the phenomenon been met
with in any " irregular " group, such as the Pleiades, the
" Beehive," the chromatic cluster about k Crucis, or the
blazonry in the sword-handle of Perseus.
To what, then, can it be ascribed ? Prof. Pickering
makes the "provisional ' suggestion that the key to the
enigma may be found in the relation to the line of sight of
a common plane of revolution, axial or orbital. Irregular
collections, in this view, possess no such fundamental
plane ; while spherical assemblages show effects of
variability depending upon its approach to coincidence
with our visual ray. The hint is of tempting significance ;
it opens up possibilities of insight into clugter-mechanism
such as might have been deemed desperate of attamment
from any other point of view. Yet there are fatal objections
to its unconditional adoption. It implies two rationales
* The co-ordinates are given by Pickering in Astr. Xack., No. iJ354.
f B. Sprague, " Popular Astronomy," Vol. I., p. 408.
X Barnard, Astr. Sack., No. 3519.
§ " Photographs of Star-Clusters and N'cbuUc," p. 119.
of stellar variability — the spot-theory, and the eclipse-
theory. In the first, the period is determined by the
rotation of a single body, in the second, by the mutual
revolutions of a pair. Bodies variable through axial
movement are necessarily assumed to be brilliant on one
side, comparatively obscure on the other. Piebald suns,
however, may be dismissed from consideration as mere
mathematical postulates. They serve conveniently as the
basis of formulie, but lie apart from physical reality. A
degree of interior mobility, indeed, utterly inconsistent
with the presence of fixed dark areas, is indispensable to
the maintenance of white radiation. For it must be
remembered that these clustered stars are unvarying in
their variability. They do not brighten unawares, or
casually " hide their diminished heads." The phases of
each are settled once for all by unalterable law.
The eclipse-hypothesis of short-period variability stands
on a very different footing. There is at any rate good
reason for holding stars of the 5 Cephei class to be
genuine spectroscopic binaries, with synchronizing light-
and-motion periods. But no agreement between their
epochs of minimum and of possible eclipse has been
established, to say nothing of other glaring incongruities
and improbabilities. In addition, eclipsing couples of the
authentic Algol stamp are not forthcomimj nmoni/ iiiiijfiijated
stills. Yet they should, on the geometrical theory, abound
and super-abound. Their apparent absence must be
accounted for in any plausible speculation as to the
causes of variability in globular clusters.
VARIABLE STARS IN CLUSTERS.
CIRCULAR No. 33 of the Harvard College Observa-
tory deals with the results of a systematic search
by Prof. S. I. Bailey for variable stars in globular
clusters. The whole number of stars examined
was nineteen thousand and fifty, of which five
hundred and nine are variable. This amounts to one
variable in thirty-seven stars, or nearly three per cent.
It does not follow, however, that clusters in general con-
tain more variable stars than occur elsewhere, for, if we
except the four clusters, m Centauri, Messier 3, Messier 5,
and Messier 15, which together contain three hundred and
ninety-three variables, an average of seven per cent., the
remaining nineteen clusters have one hundred and sixteen
variables among thirteen thousand three hundred and fifty
stars, or less than one per cent. There is a very striking
difference between the results obtained in clusters equally
rich in stars, as, for example, between Messier 13, the great
cluster in Hercules, where an examination of one thousand
stars shows two variables, one in five hundred ; and
Messier 3, where, among nine hundred stars, one hundred
and thirty-two are variable, one in seven. A common
plane of revolution, orbital or axial, of the different
systems or individuals of star clusters, and the relation of
that plane to the line of sight, might provisionally be
suggested as a possible explanation.
The periods and light curves of several variables in
other clusters have been determined, but the study of those
in iu Centauri is well advanced. This cluster may be
called the finest in the sky. It lies just within the borders
of the Milky Way. There 'are no bright stars near. To
the naked eye it appears as a hazy stir of the fourth
magnitude. It has a diameter of about forty minutes. The
brightest individual stars in this region are between the
eighth and ninth magnitude. Over six thousand stars
have been counted on one of the photographs, and the
whole number is much greater. Only about three thousand.
282
KNOWLEDGE
[Decembeb 1, 1898.
however, are sufficiently bright and well separated to serve
for comparison in the discovery of variables. Of these
three thousand, one hundred and twenty-five are variable.
One hundred and fifty photographs of the cluster have
been taken with the thirteen-inch telescope, and already
ten thousand measures have been obtained, about half of
which have been made by Miss E. F. Leland.
Although the results are at present provisional, it is not
probable that the final results of the discussion will
materially alter the conclusions. Of the hundred and six
variables in m Centauri whose periods have been deter-
mined, ninety-eight have periods less than 24h. The
longest period is that of No. 2, 475d., the shortest that of
No. 91, 6h. 11m. Three have periods less than 7h. Of
the eight having periods of more than 21h., two have
periods between one and two days, two between two and
three days, one of four days, one of fifteen days, one of
one hundred and fifty days, and one of four hundred and
seventy-five days.
The largest range in variation is about five magnitudes,
and no star has been included whose light changes do not
amount to half a magnitude.
The light curves of the ninety-eight stars whose periods
are less than twenty-four hours may be divided into four
classes. The first is well represented by No. 74. The
period of this star is 12h. 4-3m., and the range in bright-
ness two magnitudes. Probably the change in brightness
is continuous. The increase of light is very rapid,
occupying not more than one-fifth of the whole period.
In some cases, possibly in this star, the light remains
constant for a short time at minimum. In most cases,
however, the change in brightness seems to be continuous.
The simple type shown by No. 74 is more prevalent in
this cluster than any other. There are, nevertheless,
several stars, as No. 7, where there is a more or less well
marked secondary maximum. The period of this star is
2d. llh. 51m., and the range in brightness one and a half
magnitudes. The light curve is similar to that of well-
known short-period variables as S Cephei, and vj Aquilae.
Another class may be represented by No. 126, in which
the range is less than a magnitude, and the times of
increase and decrease are about equal. The period is
8h. 12-3m. No. 24 may perhaps be referred to as a fourth
type. The range is about seven-tenths of a magnitude,
and the period is llh. .5'7m. Apparently about sixty-five
per cent, of the whole period is occupied by the increase
of the light. This very slow rate of increase is especially
striking from the fact that in many cases in this cluster
the increase is extremely rapid, probably not more than
ten per cent, of the whole period. In one case, No. 45,
having a period of 14h. 8m., the rise from minimum to
maximum, a change of two magnitudes, takes place in
about one hour, and in certain cases, chiefly owing to the
necessary duration of a photographic exposure, there is no
proof, at present, that the rise is not much more rapid.
The marked regularity in the period of these stars is
worthy of attention. Several have been studied during
more than a thousand, and one during more than five
thousand periods, without irregularities manifesting them-
selves.
A few words may be added in regard to the kind of
clusters in which variables have been found. Up to the
present time they have not been found in any except dense
globular clusters, of which Messier 3, Messier 5, and the
great cluster in Hercules may be taken as examples. The
number of such clusters within the reach of ordinary
instruments is not great. Of the clusters given in the
table, N. G. C. 104, 362, 5139, 52'^2, 5904, 6093, 6205,
6266, 6620, 7078, and 7089, may be described as highly
condensed; 1904. 5986, 6397, 6656, 6723, 6752, 6809,
and 7099, as moderately condensed ; and 3293 and 4755,
as open clusters. 869 and 884, the clusters in the sword-
handle of Perseus, are little more than regions relatively
rich in stars.
The first group, of eleven highly condensed clusters,
having a total of eleven thousand nine hundred and eighty
stars, has four hundred and sixty-two variables, or one in
twenty-six. The second group, of eight moderately con-
densed clusters, has forty-six variables among four thousand
seven hundred and forty-one stars, one in one hundred and
three. The two open clusters furnish no variables, and
the region of three square degrees around N. (i. C. 869
and 884 only one.
Thus far the only regions which are found to be especially
rich in variable stars are condensed clusters, but even here
only in relatively few cases. These dense clusters are
commonly called globular, and many of them are such.
In some cases, however, as lu Centauri, the form is some-
what elliptical.
N. G. C. 6266 is the most striking example of a highly
condensed cluster which is irregular in form. This irregu-
larity is intensified in the distribution of the variables.
The cluster is much compressed on the south side. For a
distance of one minute from the centre the distribution of
the stars seems to be about equal, but if a line be drawn east
and west through the centre, and the stars within one
minute of this line are omitted, there are two hundred and
fourteen stars south, and three hundred and fifty-four stars
north, within four minutes of the central line. In this clus-
ter are twenty-six variables, of which nineteen are north of
the central Hne, and seven south. Excluding those within
seventy inches, there are fifteen north, and only one south.
BOTANICAL STUDIES.
VII.— ABIES.
By A. Vauouan Jennings, f.l.s., f.g.s.
THE results of our study of the mode of reproduc-
tion and life-history of Selaginella (Knowledge,
November, 1898) may be shortly recapitulated as
follows :— The plant bears two kinds of sporangia
(mairosporanijia and microsporanf/ia) instead of
only one, as in the Ferns, and these contain two kinds of
spores (macrospores and microspores) ; the large spores
seem to give rise to the new plant but only by means of an
excrescence of tissue which proves to be the representative
of the Prothallus or Oophyte of the Fern, here reduced,
colourless, rootless and dependent on the spore ; that this
protuberance contains true, but rudimentary, Archegonia,
the egg-cells of which are fertilized by spermatozoids de-
veloped from the microspores, which also show a tendency
to form a still more rudimentary prothallus.
In passing on to the Mountain Pine, the Ahies excelsa
which clothes the slopes of our European mountains, we
are crossing a great gap in the series of plant types : and
yet, while we do not know the forms which bridge the
gulf, once more the use of patience and a microscope has
shown how these widely dilierent types can be compared,
co-related, and brought into line with the other plants we
have been examining.
In botanical classification the gap wa are crossing is
that between the Cnjptofiamia and Phanerogamia. All the
types we have so far studied belong to the former division.
The name suggested itself to the early naturalists as one
to express the fact that the lower plants have no con-
spicuous " flowers " such as characterize the majority of
the higher forms.
December 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE.
283
If we take the term Phanerogamia to mean the higher
plants, in which the organs of reproduction are readily
distinguishable, we may again make two series : — The
Gi/m)iospen)is, in which the seeds are not enclosed in a
special case, and the Ani/iii.yienr.'y, in which they are so
protected. Our pine-tree belongs to the former section,
and the flowering plants to the latter.
Among the Gymnosperms are included three groups : —
The strange (inetticea. (with the Eiilu-Jra recalling a "horse-
tail," and the weird Weln itsdiia of African
deserts, reminding us of nothing but a certain
coal- fossil), which we cannot now dwell on ;
CyctiJs, the beautiful feathery tropical plants
recalling the tree ferns in growth, which we
must refer to later on ; and Co«('/;;s,mcluding
the firs, pines and larches, the yew, the
cypress and the juniper.
Restricting ourselves to our type, and omit-
ting all details as to the structure of the
vegetative part of the plant, we start with
the fact that the pine is a woody exogenous
tree, with persistent narrow leaves, and a
fructification in the form of Cous.
A cone is only a prolongation of the axis
of a branch bearing numerous closely-crowded
leaves which differ from other leaves in form,
and carry the reproductive organs. The
cone-leaves, or " scales," are in fact sporo-
lihylls jnat as much as those of the Selaginella
spike, but are more closely set and more
specially modified for their particular func-
tion. In the species of the Silaiiinella we
examined we found that in the same cone
similar leaves might bear difierent kinds of
spore cases ; Maovsj'orayujia containing four
large Macmspores, or Microsporam/ia with a
number of little Microspores, also in groups
of four. In the pine we find the difierence
carried a step further ; these two kinds of
spores are developed on distinct cones.
In Abiis e.rcelsii the young shoots in the
early spring bear groups of small cones (one-
half to one inch long) of a yellow -white
colour. A section with a knife along one of
these shows that each of the close-set scales
carries on its under side a double sporangium,
filled when ripe with pale yellow dust. This
dust consists of •' poUen-;irains," or Micro-
sporayiijiii. The quantity produced is incre-
dible, and at the time of ripening the air of
the pine woods is full of it, blowing in golden clouds before
the slightest breeze. The grains may fall so thickly as to
cover the surface of lakes in the neighbourhood, and may
be carried enormous distances by the wind.
The reason for the great buoyancy of the pine pollen
will be found on examining some under the microscope.
The main part consists of a mass of protoplasm, covered
by a firm wall, but this is expanded at two points into a
pair of large inflated wings, forming round chambers
containing air. Examination with a higher power and
suitable staining will show that the spore does not consist
of a single cell. There is a portion cut off from the rest
by a curved wall, and each part contains a nucleus. In
other words, before the germinating activity of the pollen-
grain has commenced, it has a tendency, however slight,
to form a cell tissue, in fact, a " prothallus," as we found
to be also the case, in a somewhat greater degree, with the
microspore of Selaginella.
Turning to the female cones, which are larger and of a
deep red colour when young, we find that if one of the
scales is stripped ofi', it will be found to bear at its base, on
the upper or inner side, a pair of pale oval bodies, which
are the macrospnrattriia or ovules. In scales from ripe
cones these have become seeds, and each has a membranous
" wing," which assists its carriage by wind as do the air-
sacs of the pollen-grain. One cannot, however, see much
resemblance between these ovules and the Selaginella
macrosporangia, and there is no sign of the contained
A. — Seed of AInes excelsa. b.— Fertile brancli of the same plant bearing male
tones, c. — Longitudinal section through one of the cones, showing the ilicro-
sporangia on the under sides of the Microsporophylls (leaves of the cone).
D. E. — Longitudinal and transverse sections of a SlicrosporophTll, showing the double
Sporangium on the under side of the leaf, with Microspores in the cavity. F. — A
Microspore ("pollen-grain") highly magnified. The central port-on contains Pro-
toplasm, and the nucleus which is subsequently active in fertilizing the egg-cell.
The small cell cut off above is the vegetative cell representing the Prothallus,
and the rounded side outgrowths are the accessory air chambers that assist in
dispersion of the pollen by wind. a. H — Fertile branches bearing female cones,
from the outside and in section, i. .i.— Scales of the cones in young and older stages,
seen from the inner side. Each carries a pair of ovules at the base. K. — Diagram-
matic section through a scale and ils ovule, showing the Inte:;ument, Micropyle,
Nucellus, Embryo-sac, and Ai'chegoaia. L. — Diagrammatic section of the apex of
an ovule showinj the same structures, with pollen-grains seated on the nucellus, and
sending down tlieir tubes to the Archegonia. M. — Longitudmal section of the base
of an ovTiliferous scale, drawn from an actual preparation, showing the same
structm-es, and the coiu-se of a pollen tube.
macrospores. If any such correspondence is to be estab-
lished, it must be done by cutting thin sections through
them, longitudinally, and as near the middle plane aa
possible, for microscopic examination. What we find then,
is that the whole is composed of a soft cellular mass, which,
however, can be seen to consist of different tissues.
The outer layers form a covering (^int-e'jununt) to an
inner oval cell-mass, the nucellus ; but at the lower ex-
tremity the integument is absent, leaving a little round
gateway, the micropyle. Lying in the nucellar tissue is,
again, an elongated structure, the embryo-sac, which
represents a macrospore. It develops within itself, even at
an early stage, a cellular tissue, called the •ndosperm,
which may be compared with the prothallus tissue of the
Selaginella macrospore. When we examine the dark
bodies lying near its lower end, we find in each a large,
nucleated eyy-cell, or oospherc, with a group of small cells
at the apex, that may well represent the neck-cells of an
archeiiimiwn .
284
KNOWLEDGE.
[Decembeb 1, 1898.
The only question remaining is whether this series of
comparisons is supported by observations on the subsequent
history of the different parts.
When one of the pollen-grains, which are blown in
countless numbers round the cones, comes to rest at the
micropyle of an ovule it adheres there owing to the presence
of mucilaginous material at the apex of the nucellus, and
its activity commences. While the small cell which we
regarded as representing a rudimentary prothallus remains
passive, the other throws out a tube which grows down
through the nucellar tissue toward the archegonium. The
protoplasm passes down with the growing tube, and finally,
when the latter reaches the archegonium, the active nucleus
of the microspore passes into the protoplasm of the egg-
cell, fuses with its nucleus, and thus forms the compound
nucleus from which the new plant subsequently arises.
We may, then, regard our comparison between the
embryo-sac and pollen-grain of the pine with the Macro-
spore and Microspore of Selor/ineUa as proved, and we see
that in spite of the great gulf between Cryptogams and
Phanerogams we can still trace the con-
tinuity of the organs and processes of repro-
duction.''
VIII.-LILIUM.
In conclusion, it will be our work to ex-
amine the corresponding parts of a typical
flower and see if we can carry the series of
comparisons yet a step further and bring the
highest representatives of plant life into line
with their lower and earlier relatives.
The one chosen for illustration here is the
Mountain Lily {Lilium marta(jon). The speci-
mens were collected in July, at a height of
between six thousand and seven thousand feet
in the Eastern Alps, and the moth is drawn
from a specimen taken in the same locality,
though not actually seen visiting the flower.
We noted that the Pine belonged to the
Gymwisperms or naked-seeded plants, because
the ovules and seeds are carried on the free
surface of scales and not enclosed in a special
case. The Lily, on the other hand, belongs
to the Awjiosperms, because the ovules and
seeds are contained within the walls of an
enclosing "ovary." It is, however, the posses-
sion of a "flower" which one naturally regards
as the distinctive feature of the Angiosperms,
and we have to ask at once, what is a flower,
and what parts of it, if any, correspond with
the structures we have seen in the Pine or in
Selaginella ?
We may regard a flower as a shortened
axis bearing whorls (or spirals) of leaves, the
upper of which are modified in connection
with the essential organs of reproduction,
and the lower specialized for purposes accessory
to the process. If we imagine a pine cone short-
ened, its upperscales bearing ovules, those below
pollen-sacs, and the lowest become barren,
expanded, soft, and green or coloured, we
should have (details apart) the structural
plan of a flower. It would be impossible to say why the
lower leaves should become so altered if we knew nothing
of the relationship between flowers and insects. Though
almost everyone has now a general idea of the important
part played by insects in securing the cross-fertilization of
plants, yet few recognize that the attraction of insects is,
biologically speaking, the reason for the very existence of
true flowers. The pine tree casts its myriad spores to the
wind and has no need of petals to its cones, and in the
same way the wind-fertilized angiosperms bear small and
inconspicuous flowers without a coloured perianth. Fer-
tilization by this method is uncertain, and an immense
amount of pollen has to be produced. With the greater
certainty attainable through the agency of insects there is
greater economy, but the plant must make its flowers
attractive, and often form those curious devices and traps
to make the insect do its work, the study of which forms
so fascinating a chapter in biological study. In our
mountain lily the plant's assistant seems to be usually
a day-flying moth, Macroglossa slellutarum, known in
Switzerland as the " Taubenschwanz " or "pigeon-tail."
There are nectaries or honey-glands at the base of the
* The recent discovery that in some Cvcads and in the " Gingko "
(" Maidenhair tree ") the contents of the pollen tube actually form
ciliated motile spermatozoids, is of the greatest value in bridging this
gulf, and one of the most striking results of detailed microscopic
study.
A. ^Flower of Lilium martagon (drawn from a specimen collected in July
near Davos Platz). B. — Median vertical section of the same, showing (a) tliree
of the Perianth Leaves ; (4) three of the Microsporop/iylls (stamens) ; {<■) the
three united Macrosporoph_i/lU (carpels), constituting the ovary in the centre,
prolonged above as the style with its terminal stigma. Growing on the central
axis of the ovary are the rows of Macrosporangia (oi-ules). c. — Macroglossa
sieUalarum, the Moth which effects the cross-fertilization of the plant (drawn
from a specimen taken in the same locality). D. — Transverse section of the
Microsporangium (anther), with Microspores (pollen-grains) developing in the
four chambers. E. and F. — Microspores (poUen-grains) at rest and in ger-
mination ; in F observe the presence of three nuclei. G. — Transverse section of
the Ovary, showing the Macrosporangia (ovules) growing from the central axis
formed by infolding of the edges of the Macrosporophylls (carpels). H. — A
longitudinal section of aMacrosporangium (ovule), showing the two coats separated
at the apex to form the Micropule, the central tissue of tlie Nucellus, and the
Macrospore (embryo-sac) enclosed in it. In the latter are seen, at the lower
(apical) end, the egg-cell with its two synergids (the group representing an arche-
gonium) ; in the centre the nucleus of the embryo-sac, and at the opposite pole
the antipodal cells. I. J. — The end of the pollen-tube comirvg in contact with the
egg-cell, showing the fusion of the sperm-nucleus of the former with the germ-
nucleus of the egg-cell, [i J, after Strasburger. The rest original.]
perianth, and a long fold or half-closed tube leads to them
along the middle of the petals. The moth, hovering below
the flower, has to pass its long tongue down this tube in
its efforts to get at the honey, and in doing so becomes
dusted over by the shaking anthers above with the pollen,
which it afterward carries to another flower.
We must, however, put aside the moth and the petals
December 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE.
285
and tbe picturesqueness, and settle down to work on the
eagential parts of the flower.
First, the Stanitns. The two anther-saos with their
yellow dust-like pollen recall at once the pollen-aaos of the
pine, and if we were right in regarding those as micro-
sporangia, there is no reason why we should not use the
same term here. The stamens are, in fact, " micro-
xpiiroji/iylls," or microspore-bearing leaves ; the anthers,
micrusporanijiii, and the pollen-grains microspori-s. Thin
transverse sections of the anther can be easily made for
the microscope, and there is no difficulty in observing the
two-layered wall, and the four enclosed chambers.
In ripe anthers the chambers will contain loose pollen-
grains, but in those in the immature stage, the pollen-
grains will be seen developing in groups of four by the
division of a single " mother-cell," thus resembling the
microspore formation in Selaginella. The ripe pollen -
grains appear to consist of a single cell, and if they are
stained and mounted, it will be found that such is the
case ; but there are tu-o nuclei, a fact of great interest when
we remember that the pollen-grains of the pine h;id also
two nuclei, one of which was contained in a special cell,
separated by a wall from the rest of the cell-contents.
This we regarded as equivalent to the group of cells in the
Selaginella microspore, a rudimentary male prothallua.
Here, though no cell-walls are formed, we cannot help
looking on the second nucleus as the last relic of the
vanished prothallus.
The apical part of the flower we find occupied by an
elongated, slightly three-sided structure, the uvartj. A
cross-section of this shows it to contain three chambers,
each with a double row of ovules growing from the central
column formed by the meeting of the three division walls.
Though it may not appear so at first sight, the whole is
really composed of three specialized leaves, the carpels or
macrosporoiiliijlls. If we imagine a scale like that of the
pine cone to bear a row of ovules along each side-margin
and then to be folded down the middle so as to bring the
two rows of ovules together, a single-chambered ovary
would be formed such as is seen in a pea-pod. If, however,
there were three carpels placed like the sides of a triangle,
and these were all similarly folded, with the inturned
walls in contact, a three-chambered ovary like that of the
lily would result. The carpels are, in fact, sporophylls,
each with a row of macrosporangia along the margins,
and the three compacted together in this manner form the
ovary.
By cutting a number of sections across the whole ovary
it is probable that one of tlie sis possible ovules in each
slice will be cut near the middle plane, and the following
structures can then be observed.
There is a central tissue mass, the nucellus, but it is
enclosed in this case by a douli'i intefjumint which is
absent at the apex, leaving, as before, a little passage or
iiiicropijle. As in the pine, also, there is a large oval
embryo-sac or macrospore, lying in the nucellus ; but here
we find important differences between the present type and
the conifer. Instead of containing a mass of cells, the
"prothallus," the sac here contains protoplasm, with large
fluid " vacuoles." A large nucleus will be seen near its
centre, and there is a group of three round nucleated cells
at each end of the sac. The group of three, at the end
furthest from the micropyle, called the " antipi'ihit cells,"
must be regarded as the last trace of a prothallus tissue.
The group at the opposite pole consists of two small cells
side by side, close to the apex of the macrospore, and
below the mic/opyle ; and a third larger cell below them.
Its position would suggest that it corresponds to the eriy-
cell of the pine-ovule, and observation of the fertilization
process proves this to be the case. During this process
the two smaller cells, or sijnerijiils, are inactive, and they
seem to have no special duty to perform, so that we are
perhaps safe in regarding them as the last relics of the
neck of an archegonium.
When the pollen-grains have become attached to the
stigma they throw out pollen- tubes, which grow down
through the tissues of the style till they reach the neigh-
bourhood of the ovules, and their tips pass through the
micropyle. The end of the tube at this stage may be seen
to contain two or three nuclei, but it will be found that
only one of these is the fertilizing agent. When the end
of the tube is in contact with the macrospore its end wall
is absorbed ; the active, or sperm-nucleus, passes in and
fuses with egg-nucleus, but the other nuclei in the pollen-
tube remain passive. This, of course, tends to support
the view that they represent the merely vegetative cells of
the ancestral prothallus.
After fertilization the embryo-sac becomes filled with a
tissue of cells serving for nourishment for the embryo
plant, and this tissue is known as the emlosprrw. From
its formation at this stage, however, it is evidently a
different thing from the endosperm in the pine, which is
the macrospore-prothallus.
At this point we must leave the story of the lily, as the
subsequent divisions of the compound nucleus, and its
gradual growth into an embryo in the seed, and finally into
a new lily-plant, are all matters apart from our special
purpose.
What we have found is that by a careful study of the
minute details of the flower we can prove the presence
there of parts corresponding to those observed in the higher
flowerless plants. We have found that even in the highest
plants we can trace the relics of that " alternation of
generations" which is so characteristic of the life-history
of the moss and the fern. Though, from the moss upward,
through the series of types we have studied, the Sporophyte
stage has become ever more and more predominant, and
the Oophyte stage ever less and less, the microscope
shows it to be still there though hidden away among the
secrets of the ovule and the pollen-grain.
NOTES ON COMETS AND METEORS.
By W. F. Denning, f.b.a.s.
New Cojiet. — Mr. W. R. Brooks, of Geneva, N.Y.,
discovered a pretty bright comet in the constellation
Draco at R.A. Uh. o5m. 10s., Dec. + G0° 26' on the
evening of October 20th. It was moving rapidly to the
S.E., and after travelling through Hercules, crossed the
equator on November 17th, and reached its perihelion six
days later. The comet appeared to be about 4' or 5' in
diameter, with very decided central condensation, and
about equal to a star of seven and a-half magnitude.
There is no reason to suppose that the orbit deviates
sensibly from a parabola. During the first half of
December the comet will be situated in the north-western
borders of Sagittarius, and its apparent motion will have
become very slow. The following is an ephemeris by
MoUer of Kiel for Berlin mean midnight : —
Distance in
Date.
R.A
Declination.
milUons of
Bright-
1898.
h.
m.
s.
0
/
mUes.
ness.
)ecembe
r 1
18
15
45
-11
51-0
141
0-3
3
18
16
37
-13
7-4
145
0-2
5
18
17
22
-14
19-7
150
0-2
7
18
18
2
-15
28-4
154
0-2
9
18
18
37
-16
33-9
158
0-2
11
18
19
10
-17
36-3
161
0-2
286
KNOWLEDGE
[Decembeb 1, 1898.
Denning's Comet (1881 V.).— In Ast. Nach., 3524, Dr.
Berberich gives a sweeping ephemeria for this comet,
wbich is computed to return to perihelion on February
10th, 1899. The conditions are, however, unfavourable
to its observation, for it will necessarily be extremely
faint, and only discernible in some of the large telescopes
employed in our chief Observatories. On December 6th the
comet will be in about R.A. 2HG-5°, Dec. - 27° or 31° east
of the sun, and much too near that luminary to allow of
its detection.
The Novembek Leonids of 1898. — November weather
in the English climate is proverbially bad, but it is seldom
that the skies are so clouded and so thoroughly unfavour-
able for observation as they proved between November 8th
^nd 15th in the present year. It is doubtful, therefore,
whether the Leonid shower has been successfully observed
anywhere in England. On November 13th and 14th dense
fogs prevailed in many parts of the country. At the time
of writing (November 15th) reports have only been received
from a few stations, but these are of a disappointing
character. At Bristol the sky was pretty constantly
obscured either by cloud or fog during the whole of the
second week of the month, and the only suitable oppor-
tunity for securing an observation occurred on the morning
of November 13th after 3 a.m. Meteors were, however, by
no means frequent on that occasion, only seven being
observed in an hour, and the Leonids were not represented
amongst them. At 4h. 4m. a.m. a brilliant flash lit up the
sky, and was probably due to the outburst of a very large
meteor, but the observer was watching the eastern region
from an open window, and the flash evidently had its
origin in the opposite quarter. Mr. H. J. Townsend,
writing from Leeds, says that the Leonids were lost in the
fogs which enveloped that district just at the important
time, and Mr. W. E. Besley makes a similarly unfavourable
report from Middlesex. On the night of the 10th, how-
ever, at llh. 29m., he saw a swift, streak-leaving meteor,
about equal in brightness to Sirius, passing from 98°+ 45°
to 63i°-f 47°. This may possibly have been a Leonid,
though its direction of flight was from a point several
degrees below the radiant in the " Sickle." Two minutes
later he registered a meteor of mag. 1^, shooting to jast
S. of /3 Aurigse from a radiant S. of S Ursae. Should the
bad weather have negatived the efforts of English observers
generally, it is still satisfactory to think that the atmo-
spheric conditions on the Continent and in America may
have been more favourable. We shall look forward with
interest to descriptions of the shower as witnessed at these
distant places. It would be a matter for great regret if
the Leonids came and went without being adequately
recorded.
Meteoric Shower on September 25th, 1898. — M. A.
Hausuy, of the Observatory at Meudon, near Paris, writes
that four persons belonging to the Society for the Naviga-
tion of the Air noticed that shooting stars were surprisingly
frequent on September 25th, 1898. They were first noticed
at 9 p.m., when they were appearing at the rate of one per
minute. The numbers afterwards increased, until at 2 a.m.
on the morning of September 26th the maximum was
reached, the rate being three or four per minute. The
moon was ten days old at the time and shining brightly ;
the meteoric shower must therefore have been of very
special character to have asserted itself in the strength
assigned. From the indications afforded by the paths,
M. Hausuy says the radiant was probably situated in
Triangulum.
Large Meteor. — The Indian papers contain accounts of
a fireball seen at Calcutta and other places on the evening
of October 4th at fih. 20m. It moved very slowly from
W.S.W. to E., and it occupied about 10 seconds in its long
horizontal flight. It was five or six times as bright as
Venus. Another account from Calcutta says the meteor
passed from S.W. by W. to N.E., lighting up the whole
face of the Esplanade and (iovernment House almost as
brightly as an electric search light. The nucleus emitted
a sapphire-blue colour, but its material prior to vanishing
became red. The meteor was noticed at Sitarampur, two
hundred and forty miles from Calcutta, travelling from
S.W. to N.E. It was obviously a fine object of its class,
and one of those slow-moving fireballs directed from
radiants in the western sky.
The Geminids. — This well-known annual shower will
recur on December 10th to 12th, and there being no inter-
ference from moonlight it ought to be very favourably
observed. It does not, like the Leonids and Andromedes,
occasionally present very imposing spectacles, but it is
more frequent in its apparitions, and will sometimes
furnish thirty or forty meteors in an hour.
THE FACE OF THE SKY FOR DECEMBER.
By A. Fowler, f.b.a.s.
SOLAR activity continues to furnish surprises for those
who make regular observations, notwithstanding
that the minimum of sunspots, under normal con-
ditions, is so near. The Sun will be at its least
distance from the earth on the 31st at 10 p.m. On
the 13th there will be a partial eclipse of the Sun, but,
as it will not be visible in this country, particulars are
considered unnecessary.
Mercury is an evening star in the early part of the
month, arriving at greatest eastern elongation (21°) on the
4th. He is, however, too low for observation in our latitudes.
He will be in inferior conjunction on the 21st.
Venus will be at inferior conjunction with the Sun on
the 1st, and will afterwards be a morning star. On the
17th she will rise about two hours before the Sun. She
will be stationary on the 21st.
Mars rises soon after 8 p.m. at the beginning of the
month, and about 6 p.m. at the end. He is a conspicuous
object in Cancer, and, as will appear from the diagram of
his path given in the October number, his motion will be
direct until the 10th, when he is stationary, and afterwards
retrograde. His apparent diameter increases from 11-2"
on the 1st to 13-8" on the 31st, and his horizontal parallax
firom 10-6" to 13-1".
Jupiter is a morning star. During the month he traverses
a direct path in the following part of the constellation Virgo.
Towards the end of the month he will rise shortly before
3 A.M.
Saturn may be considered not observable this month.
He will be in conjunction with the Sun on the 6th, and
will afterwards be a morning star.
Uranus is a morning star, rising about two hom'S before
the Sun towards the end of the month.
Neptune may be observed during the whole of the night.
He will be in opposition on the 15th, and on that date will
be about 50' north of ? Tauri.
Conveniently observable minima of Algol will occur on
the 7th at 11.54 p.m. ; on the 10th at 8.43 p.m. ; on the
13th at 5.32 p.m. ; and on the 30th at 10.25 p.m.
MirsL Ceti may, perhaps, continue as a naked eye star
throughout the month.
The Moon will enter her last quarter on the 6th at
10.6 A.M.; will be new on the 13th at 11.43 a.m.: enter
her first quarter on the 20th at 3.22 a.m. ; and will be full
December 1, 1898.]
KNOWLEDGE.
287
on Tuesday, the 27th, at 11.39 p.m. On the 27th she will
be totally eclipsed, and the following data may be useful: —
First contact with shadow
Beginning of totality
Middle of totality
End of totality
Last contact with shadow
li.
9 47-8 G.M.T.
10 57-4
11 42-1
12 2G-8
13 36-4
Diagram showing the path of the Moon througli tlie Eartli's Shadow,
I)ecember 27th.
The first contact on the Moon's limb is at an angle of
112° from the north point towards the east, and the last
at 95" towards the west. The magnitude of the eclipse,
that is, the distance at mid-totality from the Moon's
most immersed limb to the boundary of the shadow
nearest to the opposite limb, divided by the Moon's
diameter, will be 1-883. The eclipse is illustrated in
the above diagram, showing the part of the shadow
traversed by the Moon, and indicating also the points
of contact and the times of occurrence of the principal
phases. During the eclipse there will be occultations of
sixteen stars, ranging in magnitude from 8-7 to 9'5, for
which particulars will be found in the " Companion to the
Observatory."
On the 29th there will be an occultation of i Canori, the
disappearance talsing place at 10.1 p.m., 92° from the north
point (180° from the vertex) ; and the reappearance at
11.16 P.M., 803" from the north point (834° from the
vertex) , reckoned through east.
Correct Solutions of No. 1 have been received from
H. S. Brandreth, G. G. Beazley, W. de P. Crousaz, D. R.
Fotheringham, H. Le Jeune, -J. M'Robert, A. E. White-
house, W. Ciugston.
,/. M'Robert. — Received solution too late to acknowledge
last month.
^4/^;,„._The reply to 1. Q to B6 is Kt to Kt7, a cleverly
provided defence. The Indian puzzle which you send is
very pretty, but it has become evident that our solvers will
I not attempt anything longer than a three-move problem.
I G. F. /■., anil Fl'. B. Stead.— U 1. Q to B3, KxR,
and there is no mate.
X. E. Meaiex. — We insert your 3-move problem below.
Mr. Bolton's 11-move mate is too long fjr this column.
[With regard to problem No. 2, our worst fears have
been realized. It is evident that the readers of Knowledge
are not attracted by sui-mates, and they will not be pub-
lished in future. At the same time we may quote the
opinion of the best problem judges to the effect that there
is more scope for originality in the sui-mate than in the
direct mate. Every possible phase of the latter has now
been exhausted.]
PROBLEMS.
No. 1.
By F, W. Andrew.
Black (V).
(J^^tss Column.
By 0. D. LooooK, b.a.
Communications for this column should be addressed to
C. D. LooocK, Netherfield, Camberley, and posted on or
before the 10th of each month.
Solutions of November Problems.
No. 1.
(By A. C. Challenger.)
. Q to Et7, and mates next move.
No. 2.
(By P. H. Williams. I
1. B to K5, P to Q3.
2. Q to QB7, PxB.
3. Q to B3, P to KiJ.
4. B toQ3, PxB (or A).
5. Q to Bsqch, R to KtS.
6. Kt toB6, RxQ mate.
(A.)
4. P to K6.
5. Q to Bsqch, R to KtS.
6. R to K2, RxQ mate.
'n Hi
mm ^ mm = wm.
i ^ ^ ^*#
'^£^ mm mm.
'm%
^m, A '^'i-j^ 'mi
km
White ,1I)
White mates in two moves.
No. 2.
By N. E. Meares.
BLiCI (10).
White (10).
White mates in three moves.
[We consider it advisable to state that Castling is
allowed in this problem ; also that the key-move is a check.
In spite of this the problem is well worth trying, some of
288
KNOWLEDGE.
[December 1, 1898.
the mates being very pretty. The composer is anxious to
know whether any of our readers have ever seen the four-
fiiU idea carried out : i.e., a position similar to the above,
but containing the second move R to KBsq, which he has
failed to get. Solutions of this problem will not be con-
sidered correct unless White's second moves are given
correctly in every case.]
The following game was played at the Craigside Tourney
last winter. The notes indicated by letters are by Mr.
Bellingham ; those referred to by numerals are by the
Chess Editor.
" (Queen's Gambit " Declined.
(E.
1.
2.
8.
4.
.5.
G.
7.
8.
•J.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
IG.
17.
18.
19.
20.
v21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
3G.
H7,
38
Whitb.
Macdonald.)
P to Q4
P to QB4
P to K8
Kt to KB3
Kt to QB3
B to QH
Castles
P to QKtS
B toK2
KtPxP
PxP
KttoKS!
KtxKt
R to Ktl
PtoQ5
PxP
P to KKt3 ((/)
B to KB4
PtoQG
B toB3
BxB
Q to B3 (4)
Kt to R4 !
KtxB
RxR(5)
Q to E8 check
RtoKl
B to K3 (6)
B to Kt5 !
QxP
BtoB4
R to Ql (9)
B to K3
QxR(r,)
P to Q7
BxPch
. B to KtO
P (^)ueens
5o.
Black.
(C. Y. C. ]Jawbarn )
1. P to Q4
2. P to K3
3. Kt to KB3
4. P to QB4
5. Kt to (,)B3
6. B to K2
7. P to QR3 («)
8. Kt to QKtS (i)
9. QPxP ■
10. BPxP
11. Castles
12. Kt to B3 (2)
13. PxKt
14. P to B4 (3)
15. PxP
Q to Q3 •? (f)
R to E2 ?
Q toQ2
B toQl
B to Kt2
RxB
B to Kt3
KR to Ktl
RxKt
RxR
26. Kt to Kl («)
27. K to Bl
28. R to B3 (/)
29. R to Bl (7)
30. P to KB3
31. R to Ktl (8)
P to Kt4
R to Bl (10)
QxQ
QtoQl
K to B2
QxB
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
32.
33.
34.
3.5.
36.
37.
Notes.
38. Resigns.
{a) Threatening 7. . . . P x BP ; 8. B x P, P to QKt4 ;
i). B to K2, P to B5, with a majority of Pawns on the
Queen's side.
[h) Premature.
(1) The question whether the double exchange of Pawns
is good in such positions has never been definitely settled.
White is generally left with a centre somewhat difficult to
protect, but gains freedom for action in compensation. In
the present position. Black, having already wasted a move,
should certainly avoid opening the game.
(2) The Knight should at least wait to be driven. The
exchange not only leaves Black with an isolated Pawn,
but blocks his open QB file. I should suggest instead
12, . , . Kt to Q2.
(3) Black should retain his command of the point at his
Q4. He might try 14. ... Q to Rl, 15, B to Q2, B to
Kt5.
(c) We prefer . . . B to B4.
id) An exceedingly powerful reply, which gives White a
winning advantage.
(1) White's conduct of all this part of the game is quite
in the best style. Every move tells.
(5) In such a position the more pieces there are ex-
changed on the Queen's side the better White is pleased.
(e) If 2G. . . . Q to Ksq, White wins by 27. Q x Qch,
KtxQ; 28. P to Q7.
(6) If 28. R to K7, Q to B3 threatening mate.
(/) Of course if 28. . . . Q or R xP, White replies
B X P ! Also if 28. ... Q to B3, 29, Q x Q, R x Q ; 30.
P toQ7as before (Ch. Ed.).
(7) For if 29. ... R to Kt3 (or 29. . . . P to B3, 30.
R to K7 wins). 30. R to K7, Q to B3, 31. QxQ and
wins.
(8) Probably with some idea of getting a mating posi-
tion if White proceeds with R to K7.
(9) Anticipating Black's next move.
(10) 33. . . . Kt to B2 would lose on account of 34. Q
to R7, afterwards taking the Pawn.
((/) A beautiful sacrifice which decides the game.
[Mr. Macdonald's play in this game certainly does not
account for his low position in the tourney score.
Mr. Steinitz might have played this game.]
KNOWLEDGE, PUBLISHED MONTHLY.
Contents of No. 156 (October).
An Esker in the Plain. By Gr
Cole, M.B.I,
traUi.)
The Sea-Squirt
A.R.C.8., B.SC.
(Jlius-
By E. Stenhouse,
The Affinities of Flowers.— The
Bladtlerwort and its Relatives. By
Folin Oswald, b.a., b.sc. (niiu-
trated.)
Ethnology at the British Museum.
By K. Lydekker. (IIliutrat«d.)
The Fourth InteiTiational Congress
01 Zoology.
The Great Sunspot. By E. WaJt«r
Maunder, f.b.a.s. (Illustrated.)
Letter.
Science Notes.
Notices of Books.
British Ornithological Notes. Con-
ducted by Harry F. Witherby,
F.Z.S., M.B.O.U.
Sunspots and Life. By A'ex. B.
MacDowall, m.a. {lUustfated.)
Economic Botany. By John E.
Jackson, a.l.s., etc.
Notes on Comets and Meteors. By
W. F. Denning, f.b.a.s.
The Face of the Sky for October. By
A. Fowler, f.b.a.s.
Chess Column. By C. D. Locock, b.a.
Plate. — The Great Groupof Sunspots
of September 3rd— loth, 1898.
Contents ol No. 157 (November)
The Beet-Suzar Industry in England.
By John Mil'.s.
The Karkinokosm, or World of Cms-
tacea. — VI. By the Bev. Thomaa
B. B. Stebbing, m.a., f.b.s., f.l.s.
(lilusti-attd.)
Self-Irrigation in Plants.-III. By
the Rev. Alex. S. Wilson, m.a., b.sc.
(Illustrated.)
Progress in Radiography. By James
Quick.
Handicraft in the Laboratory.
The New Planet DQ. By A. C. D.
Crommelin. (Uluslrateil.)
The November Meteors. (Iliustrafrd.)
Photograph of the Nebulous Region
round Herschel V 37 Cygni. By
Isaac Roberts, B.sc, f.b.s. (PIoIc.)
Letters.
Science Notes.
British Ornithological Notes.
An Irish Suiierstition, By Frances J.
IJattersbv.
Notices of i^ooks.
The Smell of Earth. By G. Clarke
Nut'all, B.sc.
The Hooks on the Mandible of the
Honey Bee and the Gizzard of the
Ant. By Walter Weschii. (Illus-
tratti.)
Botanical Studies.— VI. Selagiuella.
Bv A. Vaughan Jennings, f.l.s.,
F.G.s. (Illustrated.)
Notes on Comets and Meteors. By
W. F. Denning, f.b.a.s.
The Face of the Sky for November.
By A. Fowler, f.b.a.s.
Chess Colomn. By C. D. Locock, b.a.
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