Greek Greek Test. Criticism Comparative Philology French German History ... Logic and Philosophy Political Economy... Law Hulme Professor, J. STRACHAN, M.A. Smith Professor, T. N. TOLLER, M.A. Lecturer, Rev. L. M. SIMMONS, B.A. Prof. A. W. WARD, Litt.D. Prof. R. ADAMSON, M.A., LL.D. Faulkner Professor, J. E. C MUNRO, LL.D. Reader in Com-) T. F. BYRNE, B.A., Bar- Mathematics (Pure and Ap-Beyer Professor, H. LAMB, M.A., F.R.S. plied) Physics ... ... (Langworthy Professor, ARTHUR SCHUS. Beyer Professor, OSBORNE REYNOLDS, Prof. H. B. DIXON, M.A., F.R.S. Lecturer, H. HILES, Mus. D. I. DAY CLASSES. II. MEDICAL DEPARTMENT, and also the Prospectuses of Entrance Scholarships and Exhibitions will be forwarded on application to the Registrar. HENRY WM. HOLDER, M.A., Registrar. ST. BARTHOLOMEW'S HOSPITAL AND COLLEGE. PRELIMINARY SCIENTIFIC CLASS. Systematic Courses of Lectures and Laboratory Work in the Subjects of the Preliminary Scientific and Intermediate B Sc. Examinations of the University of London will commence on OCTOBER 1 and continue till July 1899. Fee for the whole Course, L18 18s., or £16 16s. to Students of the Hospital; or £5 55. each for Single Subjects. There is a Special Class for the January Examination. For further Particulars apply to the WARDEN OF THE COLLEGE, St. Bartholomew's Hospital, London, E.C. A Hand-look forwarded on Application. LIVING SPECIMENS FOR THE MICROSCOPE. GOLD MEDAL awarded at the FISHERIES EXHIBITION to THOMAS BOLTON, 83 Camden STREET, BIRMINGHAM, Who last week sent to his subscribers Volvox globator (in sphærosira and golden stages), with sketch and description. He also sent out Pedalie mira, Cristatella mucedo, Alcyonella fungosa, Paludicella Ehrenberg, Fredericella sultana, Plumatella, Leptodora hyalina, Erachionus pala, Melcerta ringens, Stephanoceros, at d the Fairy Shrimp: also Amoeba, Hydra Vorticella, Crayfish, and other Specimens for Biological Laboratory work. Weekly announcements will be made in this place of Organisms T. B. is supplying. Specimen Tube, One Shilling, post free. Twenty-six Tubes in Course of Six Months for Subscription of £11, or Twelve Tubes for 10s. 6d. Portfolio of Drawings, Eleven Parts, 1s. each. THE GLASGOW AND WEST OF SCOTLAND TECHNICAL COLLEGE. DAY AND EVENING CLASSES. SESSION 1888-89. ALLAN GLEN'S BUILDINGS, 72 CATHEDRAL STREFT. ANDERSONIAN BUILDINGS, 204 GEORge Street SCIENCE AND ART BUILDINGS, 38 BATH STREET. YOUNG LABORATORY BUILDINGS, 60 JOHN STREET. Courses of Instruction have been arranged in the following Departments, viz. : Civil Engineering Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Chemical Engineering, Mining Engineering, Chemical Industries, Building Construction, Naval Architecture, Architecture, Textile Industries, Art Industries, Agriculture, Metallurgy, Commerce. The Diploma of the College and Certificates will be awarded to Students who have completed the Courses of Instruction and passed the necessary Examinations. Students may attend any of the Separate Classes, provided they are properly prepared. The Calendar of the College, Syllabuses, and Time-Tables of the Classes, and all further Particulars, may be obtained from JOHN YOUNG, B. Sc., Secretary. 38 Bath Street, Glasgow, August 1888. THE LONDON HOSPITAL AND MEDICAL COLLEGE, MILE END, E. The SESSION 1888-89 will COMMENCE on MONDAY, October 1, 1888. The new buildings, which were opened by T.R.H. the Prince and Princess of Wales on May 21, 1887, afford more than double the accommodation which was provided formerly. FOUR ENTRANCE SCHOLARSHIPS, value £60, £40, £30, and £20, will be offered for competition at the end of September to new Students. Fees for Lectures and Hospital Practice, 90 Guineas in one payment, of 100 Guineas in three instalments. All Resident and other Hospital Appoint ments are free, and the holders of all the Resident Appointments are provided with rooms and board entirely free of expense. The Resident Appoint ments consist of Five House-Physiciancies, Five House-Surgeoncies, One Accoucheurship, One Receiving-Room Officer, and One Senior Dresser to Out Patients. Dressers and Maternity Pupils also reside in the Hospital Special Classes for the Preliminary Scientific and Intermediate M.B. Examinations of the University of London, and for the Primary and Pass Examinations for the Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons of England are held throughout the year. Special entries may be made for Medical and Surgical Practice. The London Hospital is now in direct communication by rail and tram with all parts of the Metropolis, and the Metropolitan, Metropolitan District, East London, and South-Eastern Railways have Stations within a minute's walk of the Hospital and College. For prospectus and particulars apply personally or by letter to Warden. THE MIDDLESEX HOSPITAL The WINTER SESSION, 1888-89, will commence on MONDAY, October 1, when the Prizes will be distributed by Sir Arthur T. Watse Bart., Q.C., and an Introductory Address will be delivered by W. Fuster, Esq., M.A., F.C.S. Two Entrance Scholarships (value £100 and to) will be open for com petition on September 27 and 28. The School Buildings have been recently enlarged, compusing new Theatre, Library, Physiological Laboratory, Materia Medica Museum, Students' Room, and Luncheon Room. Besides Scholarships and Prizes there are annually SIXTEEN RESIDENT Hospital Appointments open to Students. The Compos tion Fee for the whole Medical Curriculum is £100. Special provision is made for Dental Students and for Candidates for the Preliminary Scientific (M.B.) Examination. The Residential College adjoins the Hospital, and provides accommodation for thiny Students and a Resident Warden. Prospectuses and all particulars may be obtained from the Resident Medical Officer at the Hospital, or from A. PEARCE GOULD, Dean. THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 1888. EXPERIMENTS ON THE GROWTH OF WHEAT. The Rothamsted Experiments on the Growth of Wheat, Barley, and the Mixed Herbage of Grass Land. By William Fream, B.Sc. Lond., LL.D., Professor of Natural History in the College of Agriculture, Downton. (London: Horace Cox, Field Office, 1888.) HE long series of reports which have emanated from most readers in the Journals of the Royal Agricultural Society, as well as in those of our more purely learned Societies, have long needed an editor. Back numbers of serials are not particularly attractive to the modern reader. The laborious papers by Sir John Lawes and his indefatigable colleague Dr. Gilbert would have run some little danger of being buried alive had not an able editor and exponent been found. Happily, Dr. Fream possessed the necessary knowledge and discrimination for this task, and, with the entire concurrence of the original investigators, the upshot is a valuable digest of a certain section of the results obtained—namely, those relating to the cereals and the grasses. The volume is adapted for reference rather than for rapid reading, although the sections upon the influence of climate on the cultivation of wheat, and upon the home produce, imports, and consumption of wheat, are less close in fibre, and may be scanned with greater ease. The book is, in fact, rather for students than for the omnivorous reader, but nevertheless appeals to a very large constituency. All landlords, land agents, and farmers, as well as agricultural students (now a numerous class), will welcome it as giving, in a compendious form, and in digested condition, matter which is scattered through many periodicals. The results of continuous wheat and barley growing year after year upon the same land—without manure of any kind, with annual dressings of dung, with annual | dressings of nitrogenous manures, with annual dressings of mineral manures, and with annual dressings of mixed nitrogenous and mineral manures are all given. The fact that wheat and barley have been grown for forty years in succession without manure upon the same land, while the entire straw and grain have been removed, is in itself striking, and still more singular is it that the average produce during all these years is equal to the average yield of Australia, and exceeds that of many of the United States of America. It is also noteworthy that the yield of the last crop comprised in these reports that of 1883-is 13 bushels per acre, or within onefourth bushel of the average during the entire period of forty years. With regard to manures, minerals alone have added very slightly to the unmanured produce; whereas, manures containing nitric acid alone, or some easily nitrifiable compound of nitrogen, have considerably increased the crop. Manures consisting of potash, phosphoric acid, and nitrogen in the form of ammonia salts or nitrates, are able to grow heavy crops of wheat continuously. It is clearly shown that such compounded fertilizers, containing both the mineral and nitrogenous constituents of plant food, can grow crops superior to VOL. XXXVIII.-No. 985. what are produced by annual dressings of fourteen tons per acre of farmyard manure. Also the proportion of the nitrogen applied which is made use of by the growing crops is much higher in the case of the artificial fertilizers than in the case of the farmyard manure. A larger proportion, in fact, of the nitrogen applied is recovered by the crop in the case of the artificial dressings. On the other hand, the residuary effect of nitrogen applied in combination with carbon (as in farmyard manure) is much greater than in the case of applications of prepared salts of ammonia or of nitric acid. The ease with which fertility can be kept up by artificial applications forms, in the opinion of mary agriculturists, a reason for discarding the more cumbrous method of keeping up the fertility of land by means of live stock and the dung-cart. But it must be remembered that no artificial manure accumulates fertility in a soil like farmyard manure, and its nitrogen, being liberated gradually, is available over a long series of years, and especially so at those seasons of the year in which vegetation is most in need of it. The grass experiments are of great interest. First, we have the different quantities of hay produced by various dressings of manurial substances; but more remarkable are the changes brought about in the species of grasses predominating on various plots by the influence of fertilizers applied during a long series of years. On the plot, for example, to which ammonia salts have been continuously applied for thirty years, the total number of the species originally extant has been much reduced, three-quarters of the produce being composed of Festuca ovina and Agrostis vulgaris. The leguminous herbage has disappeared. On the plot manured continuously with superphosphate, the number and relative predominance of the plant species is much the same as without manure, with a prevalence of Lathyrus pratensis among the Leguminosæ, and an increase of Ranunculus repens, R. bulbosus, Achillea Millefolium, and Rumex Acetosa. Again, when ammonia salts and mixed mineral manures are applied, Poa pratensis becomes the prevailing grass. These examples must suffice to show the great changes wrought by continuous applications, and the principle of the survival of the fittest under regulated alterations of the environment. Complicated and multifarious as are these experiments, the general conclusions for the guidance of agriculturists are reducible to a few simple deductions. Thus the superior excellence of nitrate of soda as a fertilizer for cereals and for grasses is distinctly shown. The necessity of nitrogenous manures, such as nitrate of soda and ammonia salts, as means of bringing out or developing the effect of the so-called mineral manures, such as potash and phosphates, is constantly proved. The comparatively small value of many constituents of plants (owing to their already existing in sufficient quantities in most soils), such as soda, magnesia, and silica, is also placed beyond doubt. The residual effect of farmyard manure, and its consequent power of not only keeping up but indefinitely increasing the fertility of a soil, are points. greatly in its favour; while the slowness of its action, and the very small proportion of its nitrogen which appears to be recoverable at any particular time, are considerations. which weigh against it. The residual effect of mineral X dressings applied many years ago as affected and brought out by continuous dressings of nitrogenous manures is another significant fact; while the evanescent effect of nitrates applied as salts contrasts unfavourably with the continued effects of nitrogenous matter in organic combination with carbon. Prof. Fream's book is a substantial addition to agricultural literature, and it is satisfactory to find that the editing of such important results has been carried out, with the "kind and ready" assistance of Sir John Lawes and Dr. Gilbert, by one who brings sound scientific attainments to bear upon a stupendous number of observations made during a series of forty years. There is room for a second, if not a third volume, as the experiments upon the cultivation of the root crops, the leguminous crops, and the elaborate researches made at Rothamsted upon the fattening of animals, are not touched in this first instalment. THE JAPANESE VOLCANIC ERUPTION. THE 'HE Times of Tuesday contains a long letter from its Japan Correspondent describing the scene of the recent volcanic explosion in the Bandai-san region in Northern Japan. This is the first account by a foreign eye-witness that has reached the outside world. The writer appears to have started immediately from Tokio for the scene of the disaster, where he spent four days going carefully over the ground, examining the phenomena connected with the outburst, and hearing the stories of the survivors. The communication which is the result of these investigations, and which was evidently written while the powerful impression left by the scene of awful desolation was still fresh in the writer's mind, is probably one of the most graphic and detailed accounts of the immediate results of a stupendous volcanic explosion that has ever been published. Bandai-san is a mountain about 5800 feet high, and has shown no sign of activity for about eleven hundred years. On its north-eastern flank was a subordinate peak known as Little Bandai-san, which rose directly above a group of three solfataras. At about 8 o'clock on the morning of July 15 (here, as throughout almost the whole of this article, we quote the Times Correspondent), almost in the twinkling of an eye, Little Bandai-san was blown into the air and wiped out of the map of Japan. A few minutes later its débris had buried or devastated an area about half the size of London. A dozen or more of upland hamlets had been overwhelmed in the earthen deluge, or wrecked by other phenomena attending the outburst. Several hundreds of people had met with sudden and terrible death. Scores of others had been injured; and the long roll of disaster included the destruction of horses and cattle, damming up of rivers, and laying waste of large tracts of rice-land and mulberry-groves. A small party was organized in Tokio to visit the scene. As the travellers approached the mountain, they were told that twenty miles in a straight line from Bandai-san no noise or earthquake was experienced on the 15th, but mist and gloom prevailed for about seven hours, the result of a shower of impalpable blue-gray ash, which fell to a depth of half an inch, and sorely puzzled the inhabitants. An ascent of about 3000 feet was made to the back of the newly-formed crater, so as to obtain a clear view of it and of the country which had been overwhelmed. Only on nearing the end of the ascent were they again brought face to face with signs of the explosion. Here, besides the rain of fine gray ashen mud which had fallen on and still covered the ground and all vegetation, they came upon a number of freshly-opened pits, evidently in some way the work of the volcano. Ascending the last steep rise to the ridge behind Little Bandai-san, signs of the great disaster Yet, it grew in number and intensity. "Fetid vapours swept over us, emanating from evil-looking pools. Great trees torn up by their roots lay all around; and the whole face of the mountain wore the look of having been withered by some fierce and baleful blast. A few minutes further and we had gained the crest of the narrow ridge, and now, for the first time, looked forth upon the sight we had come to see. I hardly know which to pronounce the more astonishing, the prospect that now opened before our eyes or the suddenness with which it burst upon us. To than that of absolute, unredeemed desolation-so intense, the former, perhaps, no more fitting phrase can be applied so sad, and so bewildering, that I despair of describing it adequately in detail. On our right, a little above us, rose the in-curved rear wall of what, eight days before, had been Sho-Bandai-san, a ragged, almost sheer, cliff, falling, with scarce a break, to a depth of fully 600 feet. In front of this cliff everything had been blown away and scattered over the face of the country before it in a roughly fanshaped deposit of for the most part unknown depthdeep enough, however, to erase every landmark and conceal every feature of the deluged area. At the foot of the cliff, clouds of suffocating steam rose ceaselessly and angrily, and with loud roaring, from two great fissures in the crater bed, and now and then assailed us with their hellish odour. To our eyes, the base denuded by the explosion seemed to cover a space of between three and four square miles. This, however, can only be rough conjecture. Equally vague must be all present attempts to determine the volume of the disrupted matter. we assume, as a very moderate calculation, that the mean depth of the débris covering the buried area of thirty square miles is not less than 15 feet, we find that the work achieved by this last great mine of Nature's firing was the upheaval and wide distribution of no fewer than 700,000,000 tons of earth, rocks, and other ponderous material. The real figure is probably very much greater." The desolation beyond the crater, and the mighty mass thrown out by the volcano which covered the earth were almost incredible. "Down the slopes of Bandai-san, across the valley of the Nakasegawa, choking up the river, and stretching beyond it to the foot-hills five or six miles away, spread a vast billowy sheet of ash-covered earth or mud, obliterating every foot of the erstwhile smiling landscape. Here and there its surface was dotted or streaked with water. Elsewhere the eye rested on huge disordered heaps of rocky débris, in the distance resembling nothing so much as the giant concrete block substructure of some modern breakwater. It was curious to see on the farther side the sharp line of demarcation between the brown sea of mud and the green forests on which it had encroached; or, again, the lakes formed in every tributary glen of the Nakasegawa by the massive dams so suddenly raised against the passage of their stream waters. One lake was conspicuous among the rest. It was there that the Nakasegawa itself had been arrested at its issue from a narrow pass by a monster barrier of disrupted matter thrown right across its course. Neither living thing nor any sign of life could be descried over the whole expanse. All was dismally silent and solitary. Beneath it, however, lay half a score of hamlets, and hundreds of corpses of men, women, and children, who had been overtaken by swift and painful deaths.” Near by two houses, built for the accommodation of visitors to the hot springs were overwhelmed, and a little lower down two spa-hamlets were absolutely buried in mud. From various indications, especially a comparison of the places destroyed with those saved, it appears that the disruptive force must, in the main, have been directed outwards from the hill-face at a considerable inclination to the vertical. On no other hypothesis is it possible to account for some of the most startling phenomena, for the great distances reached by the waves of ejectamenta, and for the incredibly brief intervals that elapsed between the short-lived explosion and the submersion of large tracts many miles away from the crater. It must not, however, be supposed that the havoc wrought by the volcano's fury was limited to the fall of disrupted matter, or to the area covered by it. Besides the rain of scalding earth and mud, heated rocks and stones, sand, and hot softly-falling ashes, there were the awful shocks of the explosion, accompanied by winds or whirlwinds, which every survivor describes as of intense and extraordinary vehemence. Nowhere, of course, were the effects of these concomitants more fierce than on the heights of Bandai-san. The forests on the unburied slopes above and near the crater presented a weird spectacle. In these hardly a stick was left standing. As if some giant reaper had mown down whole acres with a sweep of his sickle, the trees lay literally in hundreds on the ground, all felled in a direction away from the crater, stripped of branches, leaves, and even of their bark, and twisted into the most grostesque contortions. Its and, according to some witnesses, strange subterranean rumblings and suspicious variations in the temperature and volume of the hot springs, these caused no grave alarm. Nothing worthy to be called a serious warning occurred until about 7.30 a.m. on the 15th. Then came a violent earthquake, followed a quarter of an hour later by a second, yet more intense. Ten minutes after there ensued throes of such terrible severity that the ground heaved and fell, people were thrown down, and houses demolished or wrecked. To all it seemed that their last hour had come. Instantly upon this arose a fearful noise, described by some as like that of a hundred thunders, by others as the most unearthly sound that ever startled the ears of men. Little Bandai-san was seen to be lifted bodily into the air and spread abroad, and after it leaped forth tongues of flame and dense dark clouds of vapour of ejectamenta. Of the ensuing phenomena it is hard to gain any clear idea from the tales of the distracted survivors. Apparently, however, a quick succession of reports, accompanied by violent earth-throes and winds of hurricane force, lasted for about a minute. Then began the shower of ashes, dust, hot water, and leaves. The light quickly faded as the exploded matter spread over the firmament, so that day was soon changed into night, and did not return for a space of several minutes. Meanwhile, the avalanches of earth and mud must have already done much of their deadly work. The interval between the explosion and the arrival of the mud-torrent which swept past that hamlet cannot have been more than from ten to fifteen minutes. Before the light was restored, all the flower of the village had been swallowed up. How that One day was given to exploring the buried area at its lower levels in the valley of the Nakasegawa, and also the outskirts of the volcanic deluge. At one place, a secondary earth-wave, issuing from the crater by a lateral gap, had rushed swiftly down the mountain-side, burying a large party of grass-cutters and horses, and reaching, but only half destroying, the little hamlet of Mine. energy seems to have exactly spent at this point. It was strange to see the great wall of earth and stones, with its vertical face some 7 or 8 feet high, brought up allstanding, as it were, by a frail farm outbuilding. A yet stranger sight was it to see the enormous masses of rock that were strewn about on the surface of the neighbour-long journey of some ten miles from the crater had been ing field of mud. One of them, which was measured, weighed at least 200 tons. Higher up, on the far side of the river, a couple of large villages, in which, though not reached by any mud-stream, not a house was whole, many had been levelled to the ground; others were tottering on the verge of destruction; and of the rest, all were cracked, mutilated, unroofed, twisted, tilted up, or otherwise injured or partially wrecked. A scene of more ruthless and utter desolation could hardly be conceived. Beyond this, the route entered upon the great earth-field visible from the heights of Bandai-san. Nothing could convey a more vivid idea of the destructive forces that were let loose upon that doomed region than a sight of the wild chaos of earth, rock, and mud which now reigns over its surface. The whole effect in some places is much as if a raging sea of those materials, on gigantic scale, had been suddenly congealed and made to stand still. At one spot there is a long mud precipice, said by some observers to be fully 200 feet high. a Although the little village of Nagasaka was comparatively uninjured, nearly all its able-bodied inhabitants lost their lives in a manner which shows the extraordinary speed with which the mud-stream flowed. When Little Bandai-san blew up, and hot ashes and sand began to fall, the young and strong fled panic-stricken across the fields, making for the opposite hills by paths well known to all. A minute later came a thick darkness, as of midnight. Blinded by this, and dazed by the falling débris and other horrors of the scene, their steps, probably also their senses, failed them. And before the light returned every soul was caught by a swift bore of soft mud, which, rushing down the valley bed, overwhelmed them in a fate more horrible and not less sudden than that of Pharaoh and his host. None escaped save those who stayed at home-mostly the old and very young. From the stories toid by the survivors, as well as from his own observations, the writer sketches the following sequence of events connected with the outburst : It seems clear from every account that one of the most terrible features of the catastrophe must have been its appalling suddenness. Though there had been, it is said, slight shocks of earthquake for a couple of days before, performed by the mud at such an astonishing speed it is impossible to say. There is evidence that in places the earth-flow lasted for about an hour. But in the above we have the clearest proof that some at least of the destroying matter was hurled over the country at railroad speed, even after being deflected through wide angles from its original line of motion. We may, perhaps, hope to learn something hereafter that will throw a clear light on the immediate cause of the explosion (the agent, it cannot be doubted, was steam), on the approximate volume of the projected matter, on the partiality of the effects, and on the many and most bewildering mysteries connected with the propagation and distribution of the earth-waves, rocks, &c. Meanwhile we have before us the fact that a massive mountain peak has been blown to bits by an explosion within its bowels powerful enough to toss many hundred millions of tons of material high into the air, and to change the face of nature over an area of some thirty square miles. While whole forests were levelled by the shock, the disrupted matter dammed up rivers, deluged and drowned the land and crops, and buried a dozen hamlets. Earthquakes. and coups de vent added their quota to the work of destruction. Nearly 600 people perished by horrible deaths in their mountain homes and valleys. Four times that number have been reduced to destitution or dire poverty. With one possible exception, it is the gravest disaster of its class that has happened, even in that land of volcanoes, since the famous eruption of Asamayama in 1783, and it cannot but be ranked among the most startling volcanic explosions of which history has any record. It is interesting to know that experts are already at work investigating some of the problems here sketched out by the Times Correspondent, and happily Japan is well provided with experts in the science of seismology, at their head being Prof. Milne, the leading seismologist of the day. Seeing also the countenance given to the study of these phenomena by the Japanese Government, it may be anticipated that no volcanic eruption of modern times will have been so carefully and scientifically investigated as this of Bandai-san, as none has been so graphically and eloquently described. CALCULATION OF RANGES, ETC., OF FRO ELONGATED PROJECTILES. ROM time to time it has been suggested to me that some reduction in the coefficients of resistance deduced from my experiments made in 1867-68, is required to adapt them for use in connection with the improved guns of more recent times. I do not agree with those suggestions. My coefficients were most carefully deduced from experiments made with ogival-headed shot fired at very low elevations so as to secure ranges of about 500 or 600 yards, and the observations were made near the gun. The 5-inch gun was a remarkably good gun, and from the numerous records it gave had a preponderating effect on the final result; while an steady shot cut only a few screens, and had a very trifling influence. It seems, therefore, that the coefficients were derived from shot moving very nearly in the direction of their axes. I have applied these coefficients to calculate ranges for comparison with Commander May's (R.N.) range-table for the 12-inch muzzleloading gun (based on practice 1885); muzzle velocity, 1892 f.s.; "jump," 6 minutes. un Thus it appears that my coefficients give very satisfactory results when applied under the conditions of the original experiments. Commander May's table stops at a range of 4000 yards. As the elevation of the 4-inch gun was gradually increased, the calculated ranges fell shorter and shorter of the experimental ranges. At an elevation of 15° the calculated range was 6364 yards, and the experimental range 6608 yards, giving a difference of 244 yards. The explanation of this seems to me to be as follows: When an elongated shot is fired from a rifled gun at high elevations, the shot endeavours to preserve the parallelism of its axis. This causes the axis of the shot to become sensibly inclined to the direction of the motion of its centre of gravity. Thus the pressure of the air acts from below and raises the shot bodily, so as to give its trajectory an increased elevation. This would naturally increase the range of the shot. After a short time the shot inclines sideways, as explained by Magnus, and the shot continues to move with its axis inclined to the direction of its motion, which is the cause of the lateral "drift" of the shot. This shot having had its axis so much inclined to the direction of its motion, would encounter a greater resistance from the air than another shot fired at a lower elevation, because this latter would move with its axis more nearly in the direction of its motion. Hence it is clear that, in order to apply any rationa! correction to the calculated ranges for high elevations, it would be necessary slightly to increase both (1) the elevation, and (2) the values of the coefficients of resistance. Major Mackinlay, R.A., warns us that the published range-tables are not to be "blindly followed," a very necessary caution, when it is considered that we cannot be quite certain about the muzzle velocity, the "jump," the elevation, and the precise form of the head. The height of the barometer is seldom mentioned. My only sur prise is that such good agreement between calculation and experiment should be found as above. The only question seems to be whether it is worth while to trouble about the correction of calculated ranges for high velocities and high elevations, when the reason for some little discrepancy is so evident. But to reduce coefficients would be to make matters worse. Having been requested to calculate the range of a 92inch shot weighing 380 pounds, fired at an elevation of 40° with a muzzle velocity of 2360 f.s., I could not feel satisfied till I had completed the calculation of a range-table for elevations o to 45° on a horizontal plane 27 feet below the muzzle. I give the result. Gravity and the temperature of the air were considered constant. The air was supposed to be at rest, and the shot was assumed to move in the direction of its axis; head ogival, struck with a radius of 1 diameter. When the results of experiment are published I shall be ready to discuss the matter, but there are so many things uncertain at heights of 10,000, 15,000 feet, &c.. that I doubt whether any theoretical advantages will result. It will, however, be interesting to know what can be done in an extremity. It will be seen that the ranges go on increasing up to an elevation of 45°, and would probably go on beyond an elevation of 50° before reaching a maximum. Elevation. Range, 969 1'3 718 I 2,115 25 3'0 643 3,416 94 569 1,528 508 |