OCTOI'.ER 6, I923J 



NA TURE 



525 



and Dr. G. C. Simpson for Africa, Australia, and the 

 ocean generally. 



The Conference was unable to solve the problem 

 submitted to it by the Commission for the Upper Air 

 regarding the international publication of upper-air 

 data. That these data should be collected and 



iblished in a uniform manner is highly desirable, 



it all the efforts of Sir Napier Shaw, the president 

 the Commission, to find a possible way of doing 



have been unavailing. Such an undertaking would 



expensive and would require financial aid from all 



juntries concerned. In present circumstances it is 



5t surprising that such aid is not forthcoming, and 

 the Conference could do was to make suggestions 

 ^r meeting temporarily the pressing need for the 

 apid circulation of results obtained by means of 

 M)unding balloons. The data obtained by the use 

 of aeroplanes and pilot balloons are too numerous 

 to be handled internationally at present, and the 

 Conference therefore recommended that each country 

 should publish its own data. 



Many resolutions dealing with agricultural meteor- 

 ology, terrestrial magnetism, atmospheric electricity, 

 solar radiation, and the upper atmosphere were 

 adopted, but space does not allow of further details 

 here. 



One of the most important questions dealt with 

 by the Conference was its relationship to the Inter- 

 national Union of Geodesy and Geophysics. The 

 great growth of the official weather services of all 

 civilised countries has provided so many questions 

 of administration and organisation for international 

 consideration, that this side of the activities of 

 the International Meteorological Organisation has 

 swamped the scientific side. At recent meetings of 

 the Conference and Committee there has been no 

 time for scientific discussion, and therefore little to 

 attract the members of the Organisation other than 

 those connected with the great official meteorological 

 services. A resolution was therefore considered to 

 alter the rules in such a way as to limit membership 

 of the Conference to directors of meteorological 

 services. There was practically no opposition, and 

 the rule governing the membership of the Conference 

 now reads as follows : — 



" The Officers of the Committee shall invite to the 

 Conference all heads of Reseaux of stations in each 

 country which are official (d'etat) and independent 

 of one another." 



It was generally understood that this would remove 

 from the work of the Organisation all questions of 

 pure science, and that the science of meteorology 

 would be considered only in so far as it is applied to 

 the needs of the meteorological services. Practically, 

 this is no change in the work of the Organisation, but 

 it makes a clear distinction between the sphere of 

 the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics 

 and the sphere of the International Meteorological 

 Organisation. There should now be no material over- 

 lap between the work of the Union, which considers 

 meteorology from the scientific side, and the work 

 of the Organisation, which " studies only those ques- 

 tions which are of interest to all national meteoro- 

 logical services and which necessitate the utilisation 

 of their own network of stations." 



At the last meeting of the Conference, when the 

 new International Meteorological Committee had been 

 elected and Sir Napier Shaw was about to terminate 

 his long connexion with international meteorology. 

 Col. Delcawibre, the head of the French Meteorological 

 Office, rose and in a short eloquent speech expressed 

 the regard every member of the Conference felt for 

 Sir Napier Shaw and the debt which meteorology 

 owed to him. ' He then proposed that Sir Napier 

 should be elected an honorary member of the Inter- 

 national Meteorological Committee, an honour never 

 before bestowed. The proposal was accepted with 

 prolonged applause and much feeling, for all felt 

 that this was a happy way of marking their apprecia- 

 tion of the great work done by Sir Napier Shaw for 

 international meteorology. 



The newly elected Committee met the next day 

 and appointed Prof, van Everdingen president, and 

 Dr. Hesselberg secretary. The office of vice-president 

 was left vacant for the present. 



The general feeling at the end of the meetings, 

 frequently expressed, was that good work had 

 been done and much progress made. Good feeling 

 between members from all countries was very marked 

 throughout. 



The Emerald Table. 



By E. J. HOLMYARD. 



/^NE of the most famous of alchemical tracts is the 

 ^-^ Emerald Table (" Tabula smaragdina "), as- 

 cribed to the almost mythical " founder of chemistry," 

 Hermes Trismegistos. Not merely is it regarded as a 

 masterpiece by the medieval alchemists themselves, 

 but later historians of chemistry have written in- 

 numerable articles in a vain attempt to solve its 

 perennial mystery. The Latin text of the Tabula has 

 been printed so many times that it is unnecessary 

 to reproduce it here ; it may be seen in Kopp's " Beitr. 

 zur Gesch. der Chemie," p. 377, while an English 

 translation is given by Thomson in his " History of 

 Chemistry," p. 10. 



The problems presented by the Tabula are shortly 

 as follows : (i) In what language was it originally 

 written ? (2) What is its age ? (3) Has it anything 

 whatever to do with alchemy ? The third of these 

 problems need not be discussed in this place : it is 

 sufficient to remark that it has always been considered 

 alchemical in nature, and in that judgment we may 

 reasonably acquiesce. 



The question of the age of the worl< n<<(l-; a, fuller 

 treatment. It was first printed at .\uix'iiil)erg in 



NO. 2814, VOL. I 12] 



1 54 1, under the title " Hermetis Trismegisti Tabula 

 smaragdina, in ejus manibus in sepulcro reperta, cum 

 commentatione Hortulani," but according to Kircher 

 (" Oedipus Aegyptiacus," 1653, II. ii. p. 428) it is 

 mentioned by Albertus Magnus in his " Liber de 

 secretis chymicis,-" which is, however, probably 

 spurious. Kriegsmann (" Hermetis Trismegisti . . . 

 Tabula smaragdina," 1657) maintained that the 

 work was originally written in the Phoenician language, 

 and says that, according to some, the Emerald Table 

 was taken by a woman called Zara from the hands 

 of the dead body of Hermes in a cave near Hebron. 

 Other authors inform us that Alexander the Great, 

 on one of his journeys, discovered the sepulchre of 

 Hermes and in it the tract inscribed upon a table of 

 emerald. These obviously legendary accounts led 

 many historians of chemistry to doubt the great age 

 of the Tabula, and Thomson (pp. cit. p. 13) says that 

 " it bears all the marks of a forgery of the fifteenth 

 century." Kopp, however, showed that it was well 

 known to European alchemists in the middle of the 

 thirteenth century, and that it was mentioned by 

 Albertus Magnus (i 193 -1282) in a work which is 



