for transport purposes. Copies of the report may be obtained from the assistant secretary, British Fire Prevention Committee, 8 Waterloo Place, S.W.

WE have received a copy of an address delivered by Prof. C. Neuberg before the members of the German Zentralstelle für Balneologie, at Schwerin, in September last, entitled "Beziehungen des Lebens zum Licht" (Berlin, Allgemeine Medizinische Verlagsanstalt, pp. 63, price 1.50 marks). This address contains a valuable summary of recent work on the influence of light on living organisms, both from the chemical and biological aspects; in this field Prof. Neuberg has himself been an active worker, and some of the views he develops, regarding the influence of sunlight on health and disease, will be read with considerable interest.

AN illustrated article in Engineering for February 14 gives an account of the large Humphrey gas pumps installed at Chingford. There are five sets in all; the first two were started on January 18 and 19, and the third a week ago; the remaining sets will no doubt be at work before the official opening of the Chingford Reservoir by his Majesty the King on March 15 next. No accurate tests have been made as yet, but it is already sufficiently obvious that the guaranteed output is being very substantially exceeded. So carefully have the designs of the pumps been worked out that the only detail altered, as the result of seeing them at work, has been the substitution on certain valve-spindles of a solid nut instead of the split one originally provided. It has required considerable courage to accept a contract, under very stringent penalties, for pumps of this type, 7 ft. in diameter, and developing each between 200 and 300 h.p., on the basis of the experience gained of an experimental pump having an output equivalent to about 35 h.p only. The results so far have entirely justified Mr. Humphrey's confidence in the capabilities of his remarkable contribution to the progress of mechanical engineering.

OUR ASTRONOMICAL COLUMN. VARIATION OF LATITUDE: THE KIMURA TERM.-After applying all known corrections to the results obtained by the International Latitude Service, there remains a periodic term, known as the Kimura term, for which many explanations have been suggested. Dr. F. E. Ross now suggests that this term is not real, but is due to our lack of knowledge concerning the method of treating the results. He points out that any one of the suggested explanations is efficient, but argues that there is no need for them, for any periodic error in the system of mean declinations adopted would produce a so-called Kimura term. (Astronomische Nachrichten, No. 4630.)

ephemerides, extending to March 12, which cover the period 240 days on either side of the computed epoch; the period of the comet is 61.5554 years, and it last passed perihelion on October 12, 1852.

THE OPACITY OF THE ATMOSPHERE IN 1912.-An article in No. 63 of the Gazette astronomique directs attention to the general opacity presented by the sky on cloudless nights during the late spring, the summer, and the autumn of 1912. M. de Roy found sixth-magnitude stars invisible to the naked eye, even on moonless nights and at the zenith, while other observers in many parts of the world found a lack of transparency, noticeable in observations of the sun and stars and in the unusual paleness of the blue of the sky. A suggested explanation of the phenomenon is that volcanic eruptions, more especially the one which took place in the Alaskan peninsula and Aleutian archipelago in June, polluted the atmosphere with fine dust, and so reduced its transparency.

THE

A ZOOLOGICAL GARDEN FOR

EDINBURGH.

HE council of the Zoological Society of Scotland, in pursuance of its project of raising the necessary funds for the purchase and laying out of the estate of Corstorphine Hill House as a zoological garden and park, as announced in NATURE of January 30, has issued a prospectus giving a brief account of the development of the modern zoological garden of the type the society wishes to establish, together with some suggestions regarding the benefits of such an institution to education, science, and art, and a full description of the site selected for the purpose. The prospectus is illustrated with scenes depicting enclosures and ranges in the New York Zoological Park and in Carl Hagenbeck's menagerie at Stellingen, which, with modifications, will serve as models for the kind of accommodation it is proposed to adopt for the animals in Edinburgh. Finally, there are many beautiful views of the grounds of the abovementioned estate, which not only testify to the wisdom of the council in its choice of a situation, but suggest that, given the necessary funds for the purchase of stock and the upkeep of the collection, Scotland will be able to claim that it has at least the most picturesque zoological garden in Europe.

The scheme for the establishment of the garden was in some danger, at the time of our recent note on the subject, owing to the approaching expiry of the society's option for the purchase of this fine site, and the doubt whether a sufficiently large amount would be subscribed within the brief period remaining. This danger has been averted by the action of the Edinburgh Town Council, which has agreed to purchase the site, of which the society will have the entire use and control in return for an annual payment of 4 per cent. on the price, the society having the right to redeem the site from the corporation within fifteen years. The society is already assured, by gift and loan, of a large and representative collection of animals, and it is the intention of the council to have a number of them installed and the garden open to the public by the beginning of July, 1913, though operations involving much disturbance of the ground will be deferred until the winter months. Funds are urgently needed, both for the future development of the garden and for the redemption of the site, and donations should be intimated to the honorary treasurer, Mr. T. B. Whitson, C.A., 21 Rutland Street, Edinburgh.

NAVIGATION AT THE ROYAL TECHNICAL

THE

COLLEGE, GLASGOW.

HE steady diminution in the supply of officers for the mercantile marine, which has been going on for the past few years, is becoming a serious problem to shipowners. The average number of certificates as second mate granted annually by the Board of Trade has fallen from 1132 to 746, or 34 per cent., during the last fifteen years, and as a considerable wastage in the number of candidates takes place during the compulsory period of qualifying sea service between the granting of this initial certificate and that of master, it follows that there is a corresponding reduction in the number of officers qualified to fill the higher ratings on board ship.

The governors of the Royal Technical College, Glasgow, being impressed with the desirability of providing improved facilities for instruction in nautical subjects, established in 1910, with the financial assistance of the City Educational Endowments Board, a School of Navigation.

The instruction offered has been eagerly taken advantage of during the two years' existence of the school, but mostly by students out of their apprenticeship stage. It has, however, been felt all along that a development on the lines of practical as well as theoretical training was necessary. At present parents who send their sons into the mercantile marine deprive them of opportunities of higher education that in universities and technical colleges are offered to youths who enter other professions.

This state of affairs has been brought about by the disappearance of the sailing ship and by the reluct ance of shipowners to carry apprentices in steamers. It is partly due also to the fact that the requirements for the essential certificates of competency have within recent years been made more exacting, and the subjects increased, so that candidates who would have been capable of passing the old tests find the higher standard now demanded a serious obstacle. Further, the great increase in shipping tonnage has created a large demand for qualified officers, there being only some 30,000 to man our mercantile marine fleet of some 9000 vessels, figures which go to show that the navigator's profession is by no means an overcrowded one.

In order, therefore, to coordinate theory and practice, the governors have arranged to provide a two years' course of training as marine cadets for lads who have just left school and have reached the stage of the Scotch intermediate leaving certificate.

The winter session will be devoted by the cadets to the more theoretical side of their subjects, whilst attending the classes in the college. The summer will be spent afloat on board the seagoing training steamer Vivid, a vessel of 550 tons, which has now been acquired from the Admiralty. The ship will be commissioned in April each year, and, having bunker capacity for a steaming radius of 3000 miles, she will be capable of making extended voyages. Dormitory, dressing and bathroom accommodation is being pro

vided for fifty cadets, who, in addition to performing the ordinary routine work of the ship, will be instructed in the duties of the navigator and

BIOLOGICAL WORK IN INDIA.

discipline is to be maintained on board, and the cadets will be at all times under the supervision and guidance of the instructors. The addition of the Vivid to the equipment of the school provides opportunities for the practical testing of the theoretical work of the lecture-room under actual seagoing conditions, and the vessel, in fact, furnishes the laboratory which in every other department of applied science has long been considered an essential adjunct to efficient instruction.

In framing the scheme of instruction, the governors of the college have kept in view the fact that owing

the small cyprinoid fishes known to the Spanish inhabitants of Barbadoes as milliones appears to have been considerably overestimated, naturalists in India are convinced that many of the smaller fresh-water fishes of that country play an important rôle in this respect. Experiments have been carried on for the last few years by officials of the Indian Museum with the view of procuring exact details on the subject, and the result is a report, published by order of the Trustees, on "Indian Fish of Proved Utility as Mosquito-destroyers," drawn up by Capt. R. B. S. Sewell and Mr. B. L. Chandhuri, in which eleven species are scheduled with such descriptions and

to increased competition and the consequent necessity of saving every mile of distance and minute of time, the ingenuity of the shipbuilder, engineer, and man of science has provided the modern navigator with instruments of precision undreamt of in the earlier days of steam navigation-instruments the proper use of which demands a sound knowledge of the principles underlying their construction and a careful training in their manipulation.

The course of training has the support of the leading shipping firms, as it is recognised that the cadets who have gone through the full course will be of immediate value on board ship, instead of, as at present, wasting at least the first year of their apprenticeship picking up the elements of their profession in a haphazard fashion.

illustrations as render their identification easy. What, if any, practical results ensue from the investigation remain to be seen.

An issue of the Entomological Series of the Memoirs of the Department of Agriculture (vol. ii., No. 9), forming the second part of life-histories of Indian insects, records the results of investigations carried on at Pusa on the early stages of two species of Rhynchota and eight of Coleoptera. The memoir is illustrated with coloured plates, and, as mentioned in the preface, Mr. D. Nowrogee, to whom the investigation was entrusted, is to be congratulated on the manner in which he has carried out a difficult task.

Beautifully executed illustrations in colour are likewise a feature of a second article on insects

injuriously affecting casuarina trees in Madras, by Mr. V. S. Iyer, forming Forest Bulletin No. 11. The worst offender seems to be the caterpillar of the moth Arbela tetraonis, but the fat grubs of a longicorn beetle are likewise harmful.

No. 10 of the serial just quoted is devoted to an account, by Mr. R. S. Hole, of the great outbreak of bark-boring beetle-larvæ in the coniferous forests of the Simla district between 1907 and 1911. Five species were involved in this very serious attack.

From among several articles in vol. vii., part ii., of the Records of the Indian Museum, attention may be concentrated on one by Dr. N. Annandale on the Indian fresh-water soft tortoises, or mud-turtles, of the family Trionychida. The author recognises one species and two subspecies which were not included by Mr. Boulenger in the volume on reptiles in the Fauna of British India,' namely, Anderson's Trionyx nigricans, from Chittagong, which has hitherto been insufficiently described, and two local races of the widely spread Emyda granosa. Nor is this all, for Dr. Annandale resuscitates Gray's genus Dogania for Trionyx subplana, on the ground that in the upper shell of this species the entire series of costal plates is separated by mural bones, instead of the last pair meeting in the middle line.

In Records of the Indian Museum, vol. vii., part iii., Mr. J. R. Henderson describes a new tortoise from the Cochin district of southern India, under the name of Geoëmyda sylvatica, Geoëmyda being used as equivalent to Nicoria.

Eri or endi silk, the product of the caterpillar of a large Assamese moth, of which the technical name does not appear to be mentioned, forms the subject of the first number of vol. iv. of the Entomological Series of the Memoirs of the Department of Agri. culture of India. According to the authors, Messrs. H. Maxwell-Lefroy and C. C. Ghosh, this silk, which from its nature cannot be reeled, is spun and woven in Assam into an exceedingly durable cloth, which readily takes vegetable dves. Experiments have been undertaken at Pusa with the view of ascertaining whether the cultivation cannot be extended to other parts of India, with results that appear promising. As the cocoons are not damaged by the moths in making their exit, there is no necessity for killing the latter, which renders the silk acceptable to sects like the Jains, who object to taking life in any circumR. L.

stances.

MAGNETIC PROPERTIES OF ALLOYS.

VOL. VIII.. parts 1 and 2, of the Transactions of

the Faraday Society contain a series of papers which were read at a special meeting of the society held for the general discussion of the magnetic properties of alloys. The papers naturally fall into two groups, viz. those dealing with ferrous and with nonferrous alloys respectively.

The iron-carbon and iron-silicon alloys form the subject of an exhaustive paper by Dr. Gumlich, which is of considerable importance in connection with transformer working. He finds that the presence of large amounts of silicon result in the metal, even when quickly cooled, exhibiting a pearlitic structure rather than containing the injurious solid solution of carbon in iron. With prolonged annealing even the pearlite is decomposed into ferrite and temper-carbon. silicon content of 3 to 4 per cent. is necessary for this effect, so that the good magnetic properties of thin sheet-metal containing less than this amount of silicon must have another origin. Figs. 1 and 2 show an allov with 4'5 per cent. silicon and 0'29 per cent. carbon. Fig. 1 is with the metal in the untreated

A

mum magnetisation is determined by the stoichiometric composition, especially where several compounds of the same components exist. Manganese, for example, has a maximum in the trivalent condition with such elements as can themselves be trivalent.

Several papers deal with the Heusler alloys. Dr. Ross describes a series of magnetic investigations from which it is concluded that the magnetism of these alloys is associated with the occurrence of solid solutions having the intermetallic compound Cu,Al as one constituent, and probably Mn,Al as the other. The theory is supported by evidence gathered from examination of the microstructure and from cooling curves. Drs. Knowlton and Clifford, in their paper, also appear to favour the hypothesis of a series of solid solutions as best suiting their magnetic results, but Drs. Heusler and Take still adhere to their belief in a series of ternary magnetic compounds of the general formula CuMn,A', where x and y can have any of the values 1, 2, and x+y=3. It seems

now to be certain that these Heusler alloys-despite their very small hysteresis loss under certain conditions of thermal treatment, &c.-do not give promise of practical applications in electrical measuring instruments. Their extreme variability, their hardness, and their brittleness are strongly against all commercial applications.

THE ASSOCIATION OF TECHNICAL

THE

INSTITUTIONS.

HE twentieth annual general meeting of the association was held in Birmingham on January 31, when Mr. J. H. Reynolds, of Manchester, the new president, delivered his presidential address, in the course of which he discussed the progress of elementary education since the Act of 1870, and contrasted the abundant provision of the present day with the meagreness which prevailed anterior to the Act. He detailed the causes which operated to prevent the realisation of the full fruits of the great Imperial and local expenditure incurred in the establishment and maintenance of elementary education with special reference to the early age of leaving school, and to the absence of proper measures for securing the continued attendance of the children upon suitably designed courses of instruction and training in evening schools during the years of adolescence. He urged the abolition of half-time and the extension of the school age until fourteen, unconditionally throughout the urban and rural areas of the kingdom, and discussed the demand made that the curriculum of the elementary school should be confined to "the three R's," maintaining that there should be made the fullest possible provision for the education and training of the worker's child for his future life as a producer and as a citizen. He further directed attention to the poor physical condition of many thousands of children in the public elementary schools, and appealed for smaller classes and better trained teachers. He dwelt upon the importance of this question of elementary education, since until it is well considered and effectually provided, secondary education cannot be adequately established, and any technical education and training of real value directly concerned with a livelihood and based upon scientific principles are impossible.

Education is one, and indivisible, and if there is to be a satisfactory superstructure the foundations must be carefully laid, and the whole scheme made organically complete from the elementary school to the university.

Out of a child population between the ages of thirteen and seventeen amounting to upwards of

1,800,000, there were only 325,117 enrolled in evening schools. Measures should be enacted requiring all employers to give facilities for the continued education of their employees between the ages of fourteen and seventeen; until that age was reached the child should remain the ward of the schoolmaster.

The Act of 1902 unified under one responsible authority all forms of education, and for the first time in the history of English education gave the means for the provision of a properly organised system of secondary education. The operations of the Technical Instruction Act of 1889 had awakened a new and serious interest in education, derived from the fact that the ill-prepared educational condition of the students made it impossible to impart successfully any satisfactory training in science or technology.

Under the provisions of the Education Act of 1902 numerous old endowed schools all over the country which had become effete for want of effective public control, and of the means to meet the demands of modern requirements, have been revivified, and large numbers of new secondary schools, well staffed and equipped, have been provided. The great drawback to their efficiency is to be found in the short school life, extending to not more than two years and nine months, contrasting unfavourably with the school life of the German gymnasium and the Ober-Real-Schule, extending to nine years, and ending in a leaving examination, admitting without further test to any technical high school or university in Germany. Measures should be taken to ensure a satisfactory length of school life in English secondary schools, concluding with a school-leaving examination giving admission at once to any institution for higher learning.

We have further so to systematise our secondary education that in going from one large urban or other centre to another the scholar will be sure to find a school of similar standing to that he has left. It is to the improvement of the product of the elementary school and in the extension of the school age until fourteen, to a large increase in the number of secondary schools and in the extension of the length of the school life therein, so as to approximate to that of the German and Swiss secondary schools, that we must look for the future growth and efficiency of technical institutions.

Having regard to English conditions these institutions have done an immense service in the past in providing the means of continued education and training for the great mass of the youths engaged in our trades and industries, and English manufacturing industry owes much of its pre-eminence, especially the engineering industries, to the work and influence of these evening schools. In this connection the work of the Department of Science and Art and of the City and Guilds of London Institute has been of high importance and value.

The opportunity of further instruction and training of this character in day classes is much to be desired. It is satisfactory to note that many of the more important firms, especially in the engineering and chemical industries, are encouraging the admission of a much better type of educated and trained man into their works, and are offering facilities and inducements based on training age and attainments. As industries grow in respect of the number and varied equipment of the men employed, and in the extent and complexity of the production, a higher type of man is required, characterised by a better general education, more expert knowledge and practical ability. It is realised that "the day of the trained man has come; that of the untrained man is past." A new science has come into being, namely "the