March 3, 1898J 



NATURE 



417 



It is announced in the Times that the Local Government 

 Board has given orders that the new form of vaccine mixed with 

 glycerine, described in last week's Nature (p. 391), is to be 

 served out to all vaccination officers, following upon the recom- 

 mendation of the Special Commission on Vaccination, which 

 recently examined all the great vaccination departments of 

 foreign Governments. This is to be undertaken at once, without 

 regard to the vaccination legislation promised in the Queen's 

 Speech, and will be completely independent of such a measure. 

 Some delay has arisen in sending out the new lymph, owing to 

 the want of a special laboratory for the cultivation of the matter ; 

 but this will nut now be long delayed, as soon' as the Local 

 Government Medical Board is granted funds to purchase or 

 secure a laboratory. 



M. DE FONVIEIXE informs us that the President of the In- 

 ternational Commission for the exploration of the high atmo- 

 sphere has issued a circular notifying that a conference will be 

 held at Strassburg on March 28, to discuss the results obtained 

 up to this time by the ascent of free balloons to high altitudes, 

 and determining the measures which are to be taken to collect 

 registered observations. The German kite-balloons and Am- 

 erican meteorological kites will also be subject for discussion. 

 Invitations have been sent to a number of men of science who 

 are working in similar fields of inquiry. The remarks and 

 discussions will be carried on in three languages — English, 

 French, and German. 



On Saturday last, February 26, the Council of the Society of 

 Arts attended at Marlborough House, when the Prince of Wales, 

 President of the Society, presented the Albert Medal to Mr. 

 G. J. Symons, F. R S., " for the services he has rendered to the 

 United Kingdom by affording to engineers engaged in the water 

 supply and the sewage of towns a trustworthy basis for their 

 work, by establishing and carrying on during nearly forty years 

 systematic observations (now at over 3000 stations) of the rain- 

 fall of the British Isles, and by recording, tabulating, and graphi- 

 cally indicating the results of these observations in the annual 

 volumes published by himself." 



The lists of prize competitions for 1898 and 1899 have just 

 reached us from the Belgian Academy. The international com- 

 petitions consist in the answering of six questions, for each of 

 which a prize of 600 francs is offered. These questions are the 

 following: (i) Describe the researches already made on critical 

 phenomena in physical science, and complete them by new re- 

 searches. (2) Expound and criticise the various theories of the con- 

 stitution of solutions, and supplement them by new researches, 

 especially with regard to the existence of hydrates in aqueous 

 solution. (3) Make some important contribution to the theory of 

 correspondences ( Verwandtschaften) between two spaces. (4) 

 Original research on digestion in carnivorous plants. (5) 

 Original research on the structure and development of a 

 Platode, with the object of determining whether there are any 

 phylc^enic relations between Platyhelms and Enterocoelians. 

 (6) Do the Schizophytes possess a nucleus? If so, what is its 

 structure and its mode of division ? In addition, a prize of 800 

 francs is offered for a solution of the problem of determining 

 the influence exercised by the nitryl radicle NO, in aliphatic 

 compounds on the characteristics or functions appertaining to 

 alcohol, haloid ether, oxy-ether, &c. All papers must be written 

 in French or Flemish, and must be sent to M. le Secretaire per- 

 petuel, au Palais des Academies, Bruxelles, before August i, 

 1898. They must bear a motto (not a pseudonym), and must 

 be accompanied by a sealed envelope bearing the same motto 

 outside, and the competitor's name and address inside. Special 

 correctness is required in the matter of quotations. The con- 

 ditions for 1899 are similar. The questions relate to the thermal 

 conductivity of liquids and solutions, to straight-line geometry, 



NO. 1479. VOL. 57] 



to the variation of latitude, to albuminoid substances innutrition, 

 to the Apterygota, and to the Upper Eocene period. 



The Rome correspondent of the Daily Mail announces that 

 King Humbert has given his permission to his young nephew, 

 the Duke of the Abruzzi, to undertake an expedition in the Arctic 

 regions. The Prince intends to visit Greenland and Lapland, 

 and to study the sea currents and the geology of the locality- 

 He will be accompanied by an aide-de-camp, by Drs. Gonella 

 and Defilippi, who were his companions in the expedition to 

 Alaska, and by a few young naval officers. According to a 

 Reuter telegram from Christiania, the Duke will leave next 

 summer for Spitsbergen in order to explore the country, but 

 the expedition will not start until 1899, and its first objective 

 will be Franz Josef Land. Should the conditions of the ice be 

 favourable, depots will be established, and an attempt will be • 

 made to reach the Pole by means of sledges and dogs. In the 

 event of this proving impracticable, the expedition will confine 

 itself to an exploration of Franz Josef Land. On the advice 

 of Captain Sverdrup, the Duke will ask the Danish Government 

 for a supply of dogs from Greenland, as these are considered to 

 be the best. 



The brilliant lantern slides exhibited by Dr. Isaac Robert* 

 at the Royal Societies' Club on Wednesday, February 23, in 

 illustration of his lecture on " Recent Intelligence from Regions 

 in the Stellai Universe," constituted a striking testimony to his- 

 achievements in astronomical photography. The nebulae and 

 clusters of stars which Dr. Roberts has now photographed 

 number about five hundred, and a list of them, as they are 

 taken each year, is published in his annual Observatory Report 

 in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 

 It is not too much to say that these photographs contain a mine 

 of new astronomical information which has not yet been worked, 

 and the value of which will increase with years. The pictures 

 represent celestial species awaiting the miad of a Dirwin to 

 coordinate them ; for they show stellar systems in the various 

 stages of growth from the embryonic nebula to the finished star. 

 Dr. Roberts has himself endeavoured to discover the scheme of 

 stellar evolution as revealed by his photographs, and he placed 

 the results before his audience last week. His method of doing 

 this was soundly scientific. To begin with, he showed a number 

 of photographs of star regions in which the stars could be seen 

 grouped into semicircles, segments, portions of ellipses, and 

 lines of various degrees of curvature. Some of these groups 

 were composed of bright stars of nearly equal magnitude ; some 

 of faint stars, also of nearly equal magnitude ; while the dis- 

 tances between the stars in the various groups were remarkably 

 regular. Passing from these characteristics of stellar arrange- 

 ment to photographs of spiral nebul?e, Dr. Roberts pointed out 

 that the nebulous matter in the spirals was broken up into star- 

 like loci, which in the regularity of their distribution resembled 

 the curves and combinations of stars exhibited by photographs 

 upon which no trace of nebulosity was visible. It thus seemed 

 that the curvilinear grouping of stars of nearly equal magnitude 

 gave evidence that the stars had been evolved out of some 

 attenuated material in space by the action of vortical motions, 

 and by gravitation. Exactly how the vortical motions were 

 caused, or what has brought about the distributions of nebu- 

 losity in the spiral nebulae, cannot be answered ; but the mar- 

 vellous pictures exhibited by Dr. Roberts establish the reality 

 of the grouping, and furnish students of celestial mechanics with 

 rich food for contemplation. 



The Bishop of London, one of its Vice-Presidents, has con- 

 sented to preside at the annual general meeting of Governors 

 of the Dental Hospital of London, to be held at the Hospital, 

 Leicester Square, on Thursday, March 17, at 5.30 p.m. 



