conducting material. The current was passed through this "match" until the kaolin strip became heated sufficiently to become a conductor itself. The lamp did not, however, prove a commercial success. =Laws of Climatic Evolution.=--The problem of the laws of climatic evolution was characterized by Dr. Marsden Manson, in a paper read at the British Association, as one of the grandest and most far-reaching problems in geological physics, since it embraces principles and laws applicable to other planets than ours. After presenting a formulation of those laws, the author pointed out that in consequence of their working, a hot spheroid rotating in space and revolving about a central sun, and holding fluids of similar properties to water and air within the sphere of its control, must pass through a series of uniform climates at sea level, gradually decreasing in temperature and terminating in an ice age, and that this age must be succeeded by a series of zonal climates gradually increasing in temperature and extent. The conclusions thus reached were that in the case of the earth zonal distribution of climates was inaugurated at the culmination of the ice age, and is gradually increasing in temperature and extent by the trapping of the solar energy in the lower atmosphere, and that the rise has a moderate limit; that the ice age was unique and due to the physical properties of water and air, and to the difference in specific heat of land and water; and that prior to the ice age local formation of glaciers could occur at any latitude and period. Dr. Manson then observed that Jupiter was apparently in a condition through which the earth has already passed, and Mars was in one toward which the climatic evolution of the earth was tending.