;8o 



NATURE 



[January 19, 191 1 



declared, during the hearing of his request for retirement 

 from the Navy, that the explorer went within sixteen to 

 ten miles of the North Pole. It is also announced from 

 Washington that the House Committee on Naval Affairs 

 has reported favourably on the Bill retiring Commander 

 Peary with the rank of Rear-Admiral " on account of his 

 Polar attainment." 



A Reuter message from Berlin states that, under the 

 presidency of the Minister of Public Worship, a meeting 

 was held there on January ii to draw up a foundation 

 scheme for the Emperor William Society for the Encourage- 

 ment of Science. According to the resolutions adopted, 

 membership will entail an entrance fee of loooi. and a 

 yearly subscription of 50Z. The society will be governed 

 by a general assembly, a senate, and an executive com- 

 Tnittee. The senate will consist of ten members elected by 

 the society, but the power to appoint additional senators is 

 reserved by the Emperor, as protector. 



We learn from the Revue scientifique that the French 

 Budget for 191 1 provides various grants to learned societies 

 in France. Among these may be mentioned 1400 francs to 

 the mathematical society ; 1000 francs each to the societies 

 of anthropology, zoology, biology, and botany, the pre- 

 historic society, the Bordeaux society of sciences, and the 

 Rennes society of sciences ; 600 francs to each of the 

 societies of meteorology, mineralogy, and the Nantes 

 society of sciences. Grants of 500 francs are made to 

 three societies, of 400 francs to three societies, and 240 

 francs to one society. A grant of 25,000 francs is included 

 for the fund available to assist scientific research. 



The director of the Meteorological Office announces that 

 the series of meetings commenced in 1905 for the informal 

 discussion of important contributions to meteorological 

 literature, particularly those by colonial and foreign 

 meteorologists, will be continued this year. The meetings 

 will be held on the following Mondays, at 5 p.m. ; — 

 January 23, February 6 and 20, March 6 and 20. At the 

 opening meeting on Monday next, Prof. Grossmann will 

 open a discussion on the relation between the tempera- 

 tures of the North Atlantic Ocean, and of North-West and 

 Central Europe. The subjects suggested for discussion at 

 subsequent meetings are as follows : — Meteorologische 

 Optik, J. M. Pernter; Cloud Report, Part ii., H. H. 

 Hildebrandsson ; scientific results of the Scotia, 1902-4, 

 R. C. Mossman ; Einfluss des Windes auf die Fahrt von 

 Dampfern, P. Heidke ; on the influence of the earth's 

 rotation on ocean currents, W. Ekman ; on the influence of 

 forests on rainfall and the probable effect of deboisement 

 in agriculture in Mauritius, . A. Walter ; climatological 

 diagrams, John Ball ; on the double diurnal variations of 

 the velocity of the wind at Nagasaki, Y. Tsuiji ; the 

 amount of radium emanation in the atmosphere, J. Satterly. 



A CIRCULAR letter has been issued by the British 

 Executive Committee of the International Hygiene Exhibi- 

 tion, to be held in Dresden this year, directing attention 

 to the fact that the British Government has declined the 

 invitation to participate in the exhibition. All the chief 

 States of the world, with the single exception of Great 

 Britain, have accepted the invitation, and have voted sub- 

 stantial sums in aid thereof- The British committee is 

 therefore appealing for io,oooZ., which is necessary if 

 Britain is to be represented at the exhibition. Contribu- 

 tions, or promises Jhereof, should be sent immediately to 

 the secretary, 47, Victoria Street, S.W. 



In a letter to the Times, January 11, the* chairman 

 (the Bishop of Ripon) and the executive committee of the 

 National League for Physical Education and Improvement 

 NO. 2 151, VOL. 85] 



direct attention to three leaflets issued by the league deal- 

 ing with the question of a pure milk supply. These have 

 been prepared by Sir John McFadyean, Prof. Sim{)soki, 

 Mr. F. E. Freemantle, and Dr. J. F. Sykes. One leaflet, 

 intended for " farmers and other milk producers," con- 

 tains advice upon the care of cows, the precautions to be 

 observed by the milkers, the treatment of the cowsheds, 

 the cleansing of utensils, storage, and the danger of human 

 infection. In a second leaflet, " distributors and retailers " 

 are informed of the steps which they should take with 

 regard to dairies and milk shops, infection, contamination, 

 and souring, storage, and sale, utensils, and cleanliness 

 during delivery. The third leaflet contains a number of 

 hints for the benefit of " housewives and all consumers 

 milk." 



An interesting observation, dealing with a very obscu 

 phenomenon of alcoholic fermentation, was communicated 

 at a meeting of the Institute of Brewing on January 9 by 

 Mr. O. Overbeck. In endeavouring to prepare a non- 

 alcoholic beer by removing the alcohol from ordinary beer 

 by a stream of carbon dioxide, Mr. Overbeck states that lie 

 found that the beer after this treatment recovered a part 

 of its alcohol content when cooled and aerated with carbon 

 dioxide. Thus, beers which after the removal of alcohol 

 contained only 02 per cent, of this substance were found 

 after treatment with carbon dioxide in the cold to contain 

 as much as i to 1-5 and even 2 per cent. As the liquids 

 were in all cases practically free from yeast, this remark- 

 able production of alcohol cannot easily be explained in the 

 light of our present knowledge. It may be due to some 

 purely chemical effect or to the presence of some unsus- 

 pected ferment in the beer, the action of which becomes 

 noticeable under the conditions of the experiment. Con- 

 firmation of the observations and further experiments on 

 the nature of the phenomenon will be awaited with great 

 interest. 



The scientific career of Col. George Strahan, who died 

 last week at seventy-one years of age, is described in The 

 Times of January 16, as follows: "After serving for a 

 short time in the Irrigation Branch of the Public Works 

 Department in India he was appointed to the Survey De- 

 partment, in which he continued for the rest of his service. 

 The early portion of his survey career was passed in the 

 Topographical Branch, and many thousand square miles of 

 country in Rajputana and Mysore, as well as in other parts, 

 were surveyed by him and the officers under him. In later 

 years he was employed in the electric determination of 

 longitudes in India and between India and Greenwich, for 

 which work he was specially suited. He rose to be Super- 

 intendent of the Great Trigonometrical Survey, and also 

 acted for a short time as Surveyor-General." 



Time was when the expression " the tsetse-fly " was 

 understood to mean simply the species Glossina 77torsitans, 

 Westwood. Indeed, the name is still often used in this 

 sense by many writers ; not long ago Prof. Kleine created 

 a sensation in the daily Press by the statement that " the 

 tsetse " did not transmit sleeping sickness, meanin^ 

 thereby, G. morsitans, but producing the mistak 

 impression that he had proved G. palpalis to be innocent . 

 in the matter of spreading the disease. Oiie newspaper 1 

 even went so far as to state that Kleine had disproved an 

 connection between G. palpalis and sleeping sicknf- 

 Austen, in his standard monograph of the genus Glossina, ^ 

 recognised seven species of tsetses, and acknowledged, sub- • 

 sequently, the validity of an eighth, G. tachinoidr^ 

 Westw. In a paper noticed recently in Nature (Decemb 

 29, 1910, p. 279), Mr. Newstead brings the number cl 



