496 



NATURE 



[Fepruary 8, 1912 



Welcker compan'd the measurements of a skull said to be 

 that of DaiU'.- with the poet's denth-ninbk, and found that 

 the ajjrewnifnt was exact enough to warrant the 

 auih< nficity of the skull. In 1893 Virchow, after com- 

 parinj^ a skull which was found by archieologists in circum- 

 stances which led them to believe it to be that of Sophocles 

 with busts of the poet, was unable to give a decided 

 opinion. 



Ih'- first complete investigation of this kind was made 

 by Welcker in connection with Schiller's skull; the dis- 

 crepancies between the death-mask, which he accepted as 

 authentic, and the skull were so great — more than he 

 found between modnrn skulls and faces — that he came to 

 the conclusion that the skull could not be that of Schiller. 

 In i8<)S Kollmann and Hiiehly jittempted to reconstruct the 

 physioj«nomy of a young woman from a skull found in the 

 d<f'bris of a lake-dwelling. The bust was criticised by 

 Merkel, who came to the conclusion that the skull gave no 

 clue to the essential parts of the face — the eyes, nose, and 

 mouth. He was led to alter his opinion, however, bv 

 handing a skull to a sculptor and asking him to reconstruct 

 the face. The skull was that of an Australian native. 

 The sculptor returned and told him it was impossible to 

 mould a Eiuropean face on such a skull ; the one he ulti- 

 mately modelled had the features of the race to which the 

 skull belonged. 



Prof, von Eggeling has performed a real service to anthro- 

 pologists and given them the hope of ultimately securing 

 a scientific basis for obtaining trustworthy reconstructions 

 of the face from a study of its skeleton. 



In a paper which has appeared in the Berichte der 

 Satiirforscheuden Gesellscbaft zu Freiburg-im-Br. (October, 

 i(»ii) Dr. J. Kalkhof gives the results of a series of 

 •measurements of the orbits made on more than 800 human 

 skulls belonging to various races. He found that although 

 the right and left orbits are approximately equal in height, 

 the left, in two-thirds of the .skulls examined, was dis- 

 tinctly wider than the right. Some ten years ago Miss 

 Fawcett and Dr. .Mice I.ee, while examining the crania of 

 prehistoric Egyptians from Naquada (Biometrika, vol. i., 

 p. 40S), found that the left orbit was not onlv wider, but 

 also higher, than the right. It may therefore' be accepted 

 as proved that in the majority of individuals the left orbit 

 is more capacious than the right. The e.vplanation of the 

 predominance of the left orbit is not easily explained, but 

 it will probably be found that it is due to' the greater use 

 of the muscles of mastication of the right side. Dr. 

 Kalkhof has introduced a method of estimating what he 

 has termed the diagonal axis of the orbit, but its utility 

 is not very apparent. He notes the remarkable shape of 

 the orbits of the prehistoric Cro-Magnon race, especially 

 the horizontal direction of the upper orbital margins. We 

 observe that Prof. Elliot Smith, in his recently published 

 book on the ancient Egyptians, uses the shape of the orbits 

 as a criterion for distinguishing an alien people from the 

 real Egyptians. 



T//E SECOND MRNDELEEFF CQNGHESS OF 

 PURE AND APPLIED CHEMISTRY AND 

 PHYSICS. 



'P^HE second Mendel^eff congress of Russian chemists 

 and physicists was held at the University of St. 

 Petersburg on January 3-10. The number of 'members 

 -was unexpectedly large, namely. 1700 (that at the first 

 congress was 1008) ; there were about sixty general, joint, 

 and sectional meetings, at which more than 220 communica- 

 tions were made. Short abstracts of these papers, together 

 With the discussions, were published in the daily " Diary " 

 of the congress. 



On January 3, after a funeral service in the University 

 church in memory of Mendel6eff and the honorary presi- 

 •dent, Beketoff, there was inaugurated the " Mendeldeff 

 Museum "—a suite of three rooms of the University lodg- 

 ing, which Mendel^eff occupied as professor, containing 

 his library and furniture, all fitted up exactly as it was 

 twenty-five years ago. At two o'clock the inaugural nieet- 

 mg was held in the adjoining Great University Hall, 

 where, after election of the president, vice-presidents, and 

 secretaries of the congress, Prof. Osipoff (Kharkoff) spoke 

 •on the scientific work of Beketoflf, and Umoff (Moscow) 



NO. 2206, VOL. 88] 



on the characteristics and actual problems of the natural 

 sciences). 



The evening of that day, and the three following days, 

 were devoted to sectional meetings. On Christmas Day 

 (January 7) there was only one meeting (physical section), 

 and several hundred membii'rs made an excursion i 

 train to the Falls of Imatra (Finland). On the 

 January 8, the congress was invited to t>-- ' 

 Institute (village Sosnovka, near St. Pet- 

 meetings of the sections of aerodynamics, 1 .,,."• 

 and applied physics, metallurgy and electrochcniisiry look 

 place, followed by an inspection of all the buildings and 

 laboratories of this vast institute. In the evening a 

 general joint meeting with the Russian Physico-t^hemical 

 Society was held at the University, the comnv ■•-•■•> 

 made being : — Walden (Riga), electrolytical diss, 

 non-aqueous solutions; and Lazarefl (Moscow), a;,; n 

 of thermodynamics in chemistry. The day was closed by 

 a banquet, attended by some 500 members. 



January 9 was devoted to sectional work, and January 10 

 witnessed the closing meeting of the congress. After 

 addresses by Prof. Walden (Riga) on the development of 

 chemistry in Russia, and Prof. Goldhammer (Kazan) on 

 modern conceptions of time, space, and a'ther, the reports 

 of the secretaries were read, and several resolutions of 

 sections adopted. Then a vote of thanks to all who con- 

 tributed to the success of the congress was passed, and the 

 president declared the congress closed. The third 

 Mendel^eff Congress will be held in 1914. 



Turning now to the work done in the different sections, 

 we notice that some of the sections proposed did not meet, 

 as no papers were presented ; others were very crowded, 

 and held meetings as often as possible. The great number 

 of communications does not allow more than a mention 

 of the titles of those presenting a general interest. 



(1) Section of Chemistry.— In the eight sectional meet- 

 ings about eighty communications were made ; of these, 

 the following may be mentioned : — Borodovski (Vurieff), 

 determination of atomic weight of elements by means of 

 absorption of electrons ; Speranski (Kieff), adsoqjtion of 

 dissolved substances by ice ; Kuznezoff (Kharkoff), catalytic 

 decomposition of aldehydes ; Grinakovski (Tomsk), linear 

 velocity of crystallisation in capillary tubes; Bubanovich 

 (Zagreb), criticism of Traube's theory of superficial 

 tension ; Fisher (Riga), mechanism of crystallisation ir 

 aqueous and alcoholic solutions; Dumanski (KiefT), nalur 

 of colloidal solutions ; Wurzel (St. Petersburg), latest deter- 

 mination of atomic weight of nitrogen (14,007). 



The Chemical Section held three joint meetings with th-' 

 Section of Physics. Thirteen papers were communicateti 

 of which the following may be noticed : — Tamma: 

 (Gcittingen, formerly YuriefT), determination of molecul.i; 

 weight of crystalline bodies; Zelinski (Moscow), absorptior 

 of ultra-violet oscillations by radio-active substances 

 Romanoff (Moscow), absorption of electromagnetic wav<- 

 by alcohols ; Kolli (Moscow), photochemical action c; 

 electromagnetic waves on a mixture of benzene and toluene 

 HoUmann (Yurieff), thermodynamics of solutions ; Lazarer 

 (Moscow), diffusion and biological processes. 



(2) Section of Physics. — Of the twenty-six papers pre- 

 sented at seven meetings, many dealt with advances of 

 physics during recent years and new fundamental concep 

 tions. .Among the papers were : — Weinberg (Tomsk), slov. 

 deformations of solids ; Goldhammer (Kazan), theory o: 

 dispersion and absorption of light in isotropic immobil' 

 bodies ; Arkadieff (Moscow), magnetic properties of iron 

 and nickel under the influence of swift electrical oscilla- 

 tions ; Ehrenfest (St. Petersburg), on the existence of 

 a?ther ; Roshdestvenski (St. Petersburg), anomalous di- 

 persion in sodium vapours ; Timiriazeff (Moscow). viscosit\ 

 of rarefied gases; Kravetz (Moscow^, constitution of absorp- 

 tion bands in tiansparent media. 



(3) In the Section of Radio-telegraphy six papers, mostl- 

 of a technical nature, were communicated in three meet 

 ings. .\ joint meeting with the Section of .Applied Physii - 

 was held in the Polytechnic Institute, where three conv 

 munications were made: — Chernysheff (St. Petersburg 

 absolute measurements of high voltage ; Miiller (St. Peters- 

 burg), production of electromagnetic waves in a system of 

 three communicating conductors. 



(4) The Section of Geophysics met on seven occasions. 



