J. N. Langley, Mr. J. E. Marr, Sir William D. Niven, K.C.B., Prof. W. H. Perkin, jun., Prof. J. Perry, Mr. A. Sedgwick, Dr. W. N. Shaw, Prof. W. A. Tilden, RearAdmiral Sir William Wharton, K.C.B.

building and fittings will be about 1150l., and so far 400l. has been received in subscriptions toward this object. The school can, if necessary, afford out of its own resources the sum of 600l., but no more, so it seems that at least 150l. should be raised by subscription if the building is to be

MR. JAMES COSMO MELVILL has presented his general

herbarium to the Manchester Museum of the Victoria University. The herbarium has taken nearly forty years to collect, and it was formally opened in its new quarters by Sir W. T. Thiselton-Dyer, K.C.M.G., on October 31.

THE portraits of Prof. Osborne Reynolds and Prof. A. S. Wilkins, by the Hon. John Collier, will be formally presented to the Victoria University of Manchester on Friday, November 18. Dr. A. W. Ward, the master of Peterhouse, Cambridge, formerly principal of the Owens College, and Vice-Chancellor of the Victoria University, will make the presentation on behalf of the subscribers.

A CHRISTMAS course of lectures, adapted to a juvenile auditory, will be delivered by Mr. Henry Cunynghame, C.B., at the Royal Institution, on Ancient and Modern Methods of Measuring Time."

AN inaugural dinner of Royal School of Mines men resident in South Africa was held at Johannesburg on Saturday, October 8. The chair was taken by Mr. A. R. Sawyer, president of the Geological Society of South Africa, and many old students of the school were present.

THE Times correspondent at Tokio reports that a serious earthquake occurred in Formosa at 4.30 a.m. on Sunday, November 6. The centre of the disturbance was at Kia-yih, where 150 houses were overthrown and 33 damaged, 78 persons killed, and 23 injured.

THE deaths are announced of Forstmeister Schering, formerly professor of mathematics and geodesy in the School of Forestry at Munich; Clemens Alexander Winkler, professor at Freiberg; and Dr. Francesco Chizzoni, professor of geometry at Modena.

THE Society of Arts will commence its fourth half-century on November 16, when Sir William Abney, as chairman of the society's council, will open the 151st session with an address. The subjects on which papers will be read at the meetings before Christmas include British trade, canals, the St. Louis Exhibition, patent law, Burma, and street architecture. There will also be a course of lectures on wind instruments, with musical illustrations.

THE Times correspondent at Copenhagen announces that Mr. Mylius-Erichsen's expedition returned there from Greenland on November 6, having been absent two years and a half. Mr. Mylius-Erichsen was accompanied by Mr. Knud Rasmussen and Count Harald de Moltke, a well known painter. The expedition travelled along the west coast, and drove round Melville Bay on sledges. During the whole time the explorers lived with the natives, learning their language, and studying their manners and customs of life.

It was decided early last year, soon after the death of Mr. F. C. Penrose, to commemorate his work in Athens by building on to the Students' Hostel of the British School in Athens a library to bear his name. Mr. Penrose was the first director of the school in Athens, and was called on more than once by the Athenian authorities to advise as to the preservation of the Parthenon. The total cost of the

Athens next spring. The committee will have, it is to be hoped, no difficulty in securing this further sum of money. Subscriptions may be sent to Mr. George Macmillan, St. Martin's Street, London, or may be paid into the account of the Penrose Memorial Fund at the London and County Banking Company, Ltd., Henrietta Street, Covent Garden,

W.C.

MR. J. FLETCHER MOULTON, F.R.S., gave an address on the "Trend of Invention in Chemical Industry" before the Society of Chemical Industry on Monday. In the course of his remarks he said that there are two departments of great interest at the moment from the inventive development they are manifesting in their products. The first is that of pharmaceutical products. Physiologists are beginning to associate specific effects on the human organism with specific chemical groups. These groups appear in countless combinations, and their effect may be masked or hindered by the setting in which they are placed. It may thus be that many of the forms in which these effective groups have up to now been administered have influenced and distorted their normal action, and a line of genuine research and invention is now being pressed forward seeking practical solutions of the problem of the best way to use these operative groups. The second department concerns food-stuffs. A vast waste of nutritious matter is going on all round us. A substantial part of the ability now devoted to the practical solution of difficult chemical questions in existing industries could be usefully applied to the preservation of food-stuffs. The main trend of invention in

chemical industry is rendering certain and complete in their action processes formerly unmanageable or unprofitable by reason of the uncertainty of the reactions that actually and locally took place. The realisation of the necessity of uniformity of conditions in order to obtain full yield manifests itself not only in the efforts to improve old processes, but also in the choice of new ones; that process is a good one which permits the necessary conditions to be secured at every point and at every moment.

A LIST of awards to exhibitors from Great Britain and Ireland at the St. Louis International Exhibition has been received from the secretary of the Royal Commission appointed for the exhibition. The number of grand prizes gained by Great Britain is 121, while 238 gold medals, 102 silver medals, and 132 bronze medals have been awarded to British exhibitors, making a total of 653. It is therefore only possible here to mention a few of the awards to men of science and scientific bodies. Among these awards are the following:---Department of Liberal Arts: photography, grand prize, Sir W. de W. Abney, K.C.B., F.R.S.; the Royal Observatory, Greenwich; the Royal Photographic Society; the Solar Physics Observatory; and Sir Benjamin Stone; gold medal, the Geological Photographs Committee of the British Association; the Cretan Exploration Fund; and the Survey of India. Maps and apparatus for geography, grand prize, Board of Agriculture and Fisheries; Ordnance Survey of Great Britain and Ireland; Royal Geographical Society; Admiralty (Hydrographical Department); the Survey of India; Palestine Exploration Fund. Chemical and pharmaceutical arts, grand prize, low temperature research exhibit of the British Royal Commission; Sir

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SOME excellent photographs of rorquals spouting illustrate a paper on these cetaceans by Dr. G. M. Allen in the September issue of the American Naturalist. In height and volume the spout of all the species is much less than was supposed to be the case by the older observers, even that of the huge "sulphur-bottom averaging only about 14 feet in height, although it may occasionally reach 20 feet. In the same number Dr. C. R. Eastman has an article on fossil plumage, in which it is pointed out how extremely seldom are birds' feathers preserved in marine deposits; indeed, the only formations of this nature from which they have been recorded appear to be the Solenhofen limestones, the Cretaceous of Kansas, and the Monte Bolca Eocene.

THE practice of planting trees and shrubs by stockmen around their ranch-houses is advocated in a Bulletin of the New Mexico Experimental Station, in which the author, Mr. Wooton, describes the native ornamental plants. Poplars or cottonwood trees are recommended for shade, also the hackberry, and a maple known as box-elder. The indigenous flora contains many climbers, including species of Ipomoea, Maurandia, and clematis, while for the gardens on the Mesa native yuccas, the sotol, Dasylirion, and the ocotillo are suitable.

THE latest number of the West Indian Bulletin, vol. v., No. 2, contains an article on the cold storage of fruit, in which it is pointed out that previous to storage it is necessary to have the fruit cool before and while it is being packed. Reference is made to the installation of Hall's system for cooling the fruit chambers on board the West Indian Royal Mail Steamers Tagus and Trent. A review of the cacao industry indicates that Trinidad and Grenada continue to show a satisfactory increase in their exports, and Trinidad stands fourth in the list of cacao-producing countries.

CONTINUING the "Materials for a Flora of the Malay Peninsula," Sir George King, F.R.S., with the cooperation of Mr. J. S. Gamble, F.R.S., has worked out in the latest part (No. 15) the uniovulate series of the Rubiacea. This coincides with the subdivision Coffeoidea adopted by Schumann in Engler's “Pflanzenfamilien." The authors retain Cephalis as a generic name, and include under Webera only a portion of the genus as understood by Hooker in the "Flora of British India." The most important genera are Ixora and Lasianthus, for the latter of which no fewer than twenty-five new species are given. No species of the Indo-Malayan genus Myrmecodia is recorded, and only one species of Hydnophytum.

WE have received from Messrs. J. R. Gregory and Co., of Kelso Place, London, W., the prospectus and first part of the "Twentieth Century Atlas of Microscopical Petrography." This elaborate work is intended to supply drawings, descriptions, and microscopic slides of typical rocks to its subscribers; while, for an additional guinea, chips of the same rocks, mounted by a smooth face on glass plates, are issued to complete the materials for study. There are many good points about the idea, and we do not know why so capable a draughtsman as the author should veil his identity under the not very attractive title of "a senior nedallist and first-class honoursman in Natural Science of the University of Edinburgh." The subject is not treated systematically, and we note that, while the plates can be arranged in a portfolio according to the owner's taste, the text is paged continuously, and cannot be cut up. There are many students, especially those forced to work alone,

who will welcome a book of this kind, accompanied as it is by the actual specimens that are described.

THE Royal Society has published its second annual issue of that part of the "International Catalogue of Scientific Literature" dealing with meteorology, including terrestrial magnetism. Our readers generally will know that this catalogue is an outgrowth of the catalogue of scientific papers published by the Royal Society. This second issue comprises mainly the literature of 1902, but includes some works published in 1901. Not only the titles of papers. appearing in periodicals or as independent works are given, but their subject-matter has been indexed. The referee of this valuable contribution is Mr. T. D. Bell (librarian of the Meteorological Office), which, we consider, is sufficient guarantee of the care that has been taken in the preparation of the work. We note that a very important addition has been made by including the contents of the Meteorologische Zeitschrift for 1902 as well as for 1901 which were omitted in the first issue. But we also note some important omissions which will probably be remedied in a future issue, e.g. the valuable papers which appear in the U.S. Monthly Weather Review. The Royal Society appears to receive notification of very few daily weather reports, as only those of four countries are included out of some twenty-five that are actually published.

MR. JOHN W. BUTTERS, writing in the Edinburgh Mathematical Society's Proceedings, advocates a much more extensive use of the principle of symmetry in teaching geometry, a proposal with which many mathematicians will no doubt agree.

AN amusing anecdote about Linnea borealis is told by M. V. Brandicourt in Cosmos for October 1. This rare plant was reported to have been discovered in 1810 by the Empress Josephine when on a visit to the Montanvert at Chamounix. But it transpired later that the specimens were planted there by a certain Bonjeau, who was pharmacist to Her Majesty, and the secret was let out by the man who planted them in a letter to her asking for help when he was incapacitated by an accident. As M. Brandicourt remarks, no one will ever again find Linnea borealis at the Montanvert or anywhere near-the Empress took them all!

IN the Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, xxv., 4, Dr. J. Erskine Murray describes a simple differentiating machine. In it the differential coefficient of a function the graph of which has been drawn is obtained by recording the slope of the tangent at each point, and to give this the machine is guided so that two near dots on a piece of celluloid shall at each instant lie along the curve, while a tracing point on a second sheet describes the required graph of the first derived function as thus obtained approximately. This method, rough as it sounds in description, is said to give valuable information in many statistical problems where existing methods would prove too laborious.

WE have received parts i. to vii. of the Rendiconto of the Naples Academy (January to July), and in them notice obituary accounts of three members of the academy. Antonio de Martini studied medicine at Naples and Paris. In 1839 and 1840 he published with Salvatore Tommasi two papers on the organism of reptiles and one on the lamprey, and these were soon followed by many other papers. In 1847 he was appointed professor of anatomy and physiology at the veterinary college. The new morphology emanating from Germany at that period attracted Martini's attention, and

he published a valuable work on embryology. About 1860 he was nominated professor of physiology, and two years later he was appointed to a newly founded chair of pathology. He was also appointed consulting physician to Princess Margherita, mother of the present King. Throughout his career he worked hand in hand with his colleague Tommasi. Gaetano Giorgio Gemmellaro was born at Catania in 1832. | At the age of twenty he produced his first paper on certain volcanic minerals from Patagonia, and from then onwards published papers almost continuously for fifty years. The geological history of Sicily was almost made by him. He was professor of geology and mineralogy at Palermo, a member of the Accademia dei Lincei and of many other academies of different countries, one of the "Forty" of the Italian Society of Science, a Senator, and Knight of the Order of Savoy. Prof. Giustiniano Nicolucci was born in the island of Liri, and graduated in medicine at Naples in 184 Under Stefano delle Chiaje he developed a taste for biological science, and in 1842 published his first paper on the structure and functions of the human cerebral nerves. During the political disturbances he left his country, and three years later returned to practise medicine. The various types of humanity with which he came in contact in his profession attracted his attention to the study of anthropology, which he continued to his last day. His researches dealt with both historic and prehistoric anthropology, his favourite theme being the prehistoric anthropology of Italy, and especially of southern Italy.

A NEW and revised edition of " Object Lessons in Elementary Science," by Mr. Vincent T. Murché, has been published by Messrs. Macmillan and Co., Ltd., in two parts at 2s. each.

THE "London University Guide and University Correspondence College Calendar" for 1905 contains in a convenient form the kind of information required by a private student desirous of taking a degree at the University of London.

MR. HEMMING'S book entitled "Billiards Mathematically Treated" has reached a second edition, which has just been published by Messrs. Macmillan and Co., Ltd. In appendix iii. of the new edition Mr. Hemming institutes a comparison of strokes played through and fine, and of the margin of error in each case.

MESSRS. WHITTAKER AND CO. have published a third edition of "The Optics of Photography and Photographic Lenses," by the late Mr. J. Traill Taylor. The short chapter on lenses of Jena glass which was included in the last issue of the book has been omitted, and one on anastigmatic lenses, written by Mr. P. F. Everitt, inserted in its place.

As authorised translation, by Dr. M. Ernst, of the presidential address delivered by Mr. Balfour at the Cambridge meeting of the British Association has been published by Herr J. M. Barth, Leipzig, under the title "Unsere heutige Weltansschauung." Dr. Ernst has rendered the address into fluent German, and has added a few short descriptive notes-mainly of a biographical character-which will be of interest to readers unfamiliar with the names of Newton, Cavendish, Stokes, Maxwell, Kelvin, Rayleigh, and other natural philosophers to which reference is made. In the first note, on the foundation and objects of the British Association, the list of sections should have included the sertion of educational science.

THE "Notes on Shooting, with Instructions Concerning the Use of Nitro-Powders," written by "An Expert," and published by Messrs. Curtis's and Harvey, Ltd., has reached

an eighth edition. This little volume of 83 pages has been completely re-written, and now contains a practical account of the results of recent researches in sporting gunnery. The actions of guns and gunpowder are based on the laws of physics and chemistry, and the results which have followed the application of the scientific method to the problems in connection with this branch of technology have been incorporated in the book. The volume provides evidence that manufacturers are coming to realise that substantial advantages in their work follow an acquaintance with results arrived at by the man of science. The six chapters into which the book is divided deal with smokeless powders and the methods of testing them, with patterns on the distribution of pellets on the target, with cartridge shooting, and aiming at moving objects.

spindle an iron wheel 50 cm. (19.7 inches) in diameter and 30 kilograms (66.1 lb.) in weight. This spindle is the axle of a small electro-motor which is capable of turning the wheels 2400 revolutions per minute.. The whole framework is suspended by three fine, strong steel wires to the ceiling of the room in which the experiment is performed, and a cross piece immediately under the centre of the axle dips into a bath of oil, thereby deadening the subsidiary interfering oscillations. The angle through which the whole apparatus turns about its vertical axis is read off, on the two scales shown in the figure, to about the tenth of a degree.

To perform the experiment the current is disconnected from the motor, and the latter run as a generator for a short period, when a reading of a voltmeter placed in circuit enables the angular velocity of the revolving wheels to be found. Knowing this, one deduces the moments of inertia of the turning masses, and then by an equation which takes for its arguments the combined moment, the constant angular velocity of the wheels, the torsion of the trifilar

suspension, &c., one may calculate from the observed readings, taken from the scales each minute of the quarter or half an hour that the wheels continue to revolve at a constant rate, the angular velocity of the earth's rotation.

For this quantity Prof. Föppl has obtained a value within 2 per cent. of that obtained from astronomical phenomena, and hopes, with the assistance of M. O. Schlick, the maker of the apparatus, to obtain a still more accordant value by further modifying and perfecting his device (Revue générale des Sciences, No. 19, October 15).

THE PERSEID SHOWER.-Mr. A. King sends an account of his observations of Perseid meteors during July and August. The observations were divided into two periods, namely, (1) July 12 to 18 inclusive at Sheffield, (2) August 3 to 18 inclusive at Leicester.

The total time spent in watching was twenty-one hours. Considerably more than 200 shooting stars were seen, of which nearly 130 were Perseids; 152 meteors were noted, about 80 being Perseids. The maximum of the shower seems to have occurred on August 11, or in the daylight hours of the morning of August 12. By August 14 the strength of the shower had much decreased, but on the following night there was a recrudescence of Perseid activity, for within the first fifteen minutes of a watch from toh. to 11h. two beautiful Perseid fireballs, both nearly equalling Jupiter in brilliance, appeared, and altogether the hourly rate of Perseids was higher than on August 14. Mr. King considers that the display was scarcely so strong as of late years, but still was a fairly rich one. The following positions were obtained :-August 6, a 38, 8 +56 (10 meteors); August 11, a 45, 8 +57 (35 meteors); August 12, | a 46, 8 +57 (13 meteors); August 14, a 50, 8 +581 (7 meteors).

The movement of the radiant is thus well shown. In conclusion, Mr. King says:-"All the brilliant Perseids had pear-shaped heads. Of 47 Perseids the colours of which were recorded 31 were yellow, a few of these having a greenish tinge. The tints of the streaks usually eluded observation, but the streak of a bright Perseid which appeared on August 13 was muddy."

THE DUMB-BELL NEBULA.-From a special study of the various forms of nebula which he has photographed with the Meudon reflector, M. Louis Rabourdin has arrived at the conclusion that the dumb-bell nebula may be correctly classified as elliptical, and that the ring nebula in Lyra should also be placed in the same category.

On comparing a number of photographs of these two objects he found that they have the same elliptical form, and that the stars enclosed in each are, generally speaking, similarly arranged. Consequently, he believes them to be objects which started with the same primal form, but have arrived at different stages in the order of their evolution.

Several other well known objects are placed by him in the same class, and he suggests that the nebulæ generally may be of two general types only, viz. elliptical and spiral (Bulletin de la Société astronomique de France, October, 1903).

HARVARD COLLEGE OBSERVATORY.-In a small brochure published by the Harvard College authorities (Cambridge, Mass., 1904) the establishment, growth, and work of the college observatory is briefly recorded. The various stations and the instruments located in each are named and described, and the work already performed, the publications of the observatory, and the officers employed are mentioned in chronological order. Two reproductions of photographs show the stations at Cambridge and Arequipa respectively.

In a second similar publication Prof. E. C. Pickering outlines the second part of his "Plan for the Endowment of Astronomical Research," in which he suggests several methods of usefully spending the money he is seeking to raise for this purpose. Among other things he discusses solar eclipse expeditions, and states that the English method of organisation by means of a central permanent eclipse committee is one which might be usefully copied in other countries, where much money has been wasted" by sending out a number of mutually independent expeditions, often in charge of incompetent persons, to attempt to obtain results which are but seldom adequately discussed ог published.

IRON AND STEEL INSTITUTE.

THE opening meeting of the Iron and Steel Institute was held on October 24 in New York under the presidency of Mr. Andrew Carnegie. Addresses of welcome were de livered by the Mayor, by Mr. John Fritz, chairman of the reception committee, and by Mr. James Gayley, president of the American Institute of Mining Engineers. On behalt of the council Sir James Kitson presented to Mr. Carnegie the Bessemer gold medal in recognition of his great services to the iron and steel industries of the world. On October 26 a selection of papers was read and discussed.

The first and most important read was that by Mr. James Gayley (New York) on the application of dry air blast to the manufacture of iron. The variable moisture in the atmosphere has long been recognised as a barrier to further progress in blast furnace practice. The problem of extracting the moisture has been solved by Mr. Gayley by the adoption of refrigeration by means of anhydrous ammonia. A plant was put in operation at the Isabella furnaces of the Carnegie Steel Company at Pittsburg on August 11, and remarkable results have been obtained. Prior to its adoption, the furnace from August 1 to August 11 produced on an average 358 tons of pig iron daily with a coke consumption of 2147 lb. Using dry air blast from August 25 to September 9 the daily production of pig iron averaged 447 tons with a coke consumption of 1726 lb. Similar advantages would doubtless be effected in the Bessemer converter, in the open-hearth steel process, in copper smelting, and in other processes where air in large quantities is used.

The next paper read was on the influence of carbon and phosphorus on the strength of iron and steel, by Mr. H. H. Campbell, of Steelton, Pennsylvania.

The paper by Mr. C. V. Bellamy, Director of Public Works, Lagos, was of great ethnological interest. He described the process of iron manufacture in the hinterland of the British colony of Lagos, within twenty days of London, where the methods are the same as those practised by the earliest workers in the metal. The smelting works are near Oyo, the capital of the Yoruba country, and it is only recently that they have been visited by a white man for the first time. Analyses given by Mr. F. W. Harbord, in an appendix to the paper, show that the metal is a pig iron partially decarburised by an oxidising flux. It is really a puddled steel, low in sulphur and phosphorus, its purity accounting for its good qualities.

Mr. J. M. Gledhill read a paper describing the development and rise of high-speed tool steel. Since the initiation of high-speed cutting at the Bethlehem Steel Works, great developments have been made, and results in cutting powers far beyond expectation have been attained. An analysis of one of the best qualities of rapid steels produced by Sir W. G. Armstrong, Whitworth and Co., Ltd., showed o-55 per cent. of carbon, 3.5 per cent. of chromium, and 13.5 per cent. of tungsten.

The results of different analysts when operating on the same sample of iron or steel are far from concordant, and attempts have been made at various times to investigate the causes of difference. A further attempt has now been made to ascertain the most trustworthy methods for the determination of carbon and phosphorus in steel by a committee consisting of Mr. J. E. Stead, F.R.S., Baron H. von Jüptner (Austria), Mr. A. A. Blair (Philadelphia), and Mr. Gunnar Dillner (Stockholm), who presented an interim report covering fifty-two printed pages.

A paper on acid open-hearth manipulation was submitted by Mr. A. McWilliam and Mr. W. H. Hatfield (Sheffield), in which experimental results were recorded proving that, at about the temperatures occurring in Siemens steel-making practice, the chemical composition of the slag, particularly with regard to its acidity, is the factor which determines whether the percentage of silicon in the molten steel shall increase or decrease.

Mr. E. Demenge (Paris) submitted a paper on the utilisation of exhaust steam, from engines acting intermittently, by means of regenerative steam accumulators and of low-pressure turbines of the Rateau type. The process has been applied with conspicuous success at the Donetz Steel Works in Russia, at the Poensgen Steel Works at Düsseldorf, and at several French collieries.

The meeting concluded with the customary votes of thanks