128 



NATURE 



[September 22, 192 1 



Mr. O. Velghe, director-general of the Belgian Public 

 Health Service ; and Prof. C.-E. \. Winslow, director 

 of the League of Red Cross Societies. Dr. Rajch- 

 man, of Warsaw, has been appointed permanent 

 medical director. 



The following lectures have been arranged for 

 delivery at the Royal College of Physicians : — The 

 Mitchell lecture, on "The Relations of Tuberculosis to 

 General Conditions of the Body and Diseases other 

 than Tuberculosis," by Dr. F. Parkes Weber, on 

 November i ; The Bradshaw lecture, on " Sub- 

 tropical Esculents," by Dr. M. Grabham, on Novem- 

 ber 3; and the Fitz-Patrick lecture, on "Hippocrates 

 in Relation to the Philosophy of his Time," by Dr. 

 R. O. Moon, on November 8 and lo. The time in 

 each case will be 5 o'clock. 



The autumn meeting of the Refractory Materials 

 Section of the Ceramic Society is to be held at the 

 Institution of Mechanical Engineers on Thursday and 

 Fridav, October 6 and 7, when the following papers 

 will be read : — " Refractorv Materials of the London 

 Basin." H. Dewey; "The Marlow Gas-fired Tunnel 

 Oven," J. H. Marlow; "A New Type of Tunnel 

 Kiln, Oil-fired, with many Novel Features," P. J. 

 Woolf ; " .Muminothennic Corundum as Refractory 

 Materials," Dr. \. Granger; and "The Reversible 

 Thermal Expansion of Silica," Prof. J. W. Cobb and 

 H. S. Houldsworth. There will also be a discussion 

 on gas-firing. 



The secretary of the Royal Geographical .Society 

 has received a cablegrarn from Mr. J. M. Wordie, of 

 St. John's College, Cambridge, announcing that the 

 expedition of Mr. Wordie and Mr. Chaworth-Musters, 

 of Caius College, to the Island of Jan ^Layen this 

 summer has been very successful, and that the first 

 ascent of Beerenberg, the very summit of the island, 

 has been made. 



According to the Morning Post, an expedition to 

 Sumatra, under the leadership of Mr. C. Lockhart 

 Cottle, is to sail towards the end of the vear for the 

 purpose of making zoological and museum collections. 

 A special effort will be made to obtain particulars of 

 the life-history of the orang. 



A JOINT research committee has been formed bv 

 the National Benzole .Association and the Universitv 

 of Leeds which will take over the direction of re- 

 search in the extraction and utilisation of benzole 

 and similar products in this country. The National 

 Benzole Association is concerned with the production 

 of crude and refined benzole, and, according to its- 

 constitution, one of its objects is to carrv on, assist, 

 and promote investigation and research. The term 

 "benzole " is used in its widest sense, so the field of 

 activity of the association embraces carbonisation 

 and gasification processes, by-product coke-oven 

 plants, gasworks, etc., but at the present time it is 

 concerned mostly with the promotion of home produc- 

 tion of light oil and motor spirit. Success in this 

 direction is thought to rest largely with chemical 

 investigations into the possibilities of the various pro- 

 cesses concerned, and it is with this object that co- 

 NO. 2708, VOL. 108] 



(>I>eration with the University is sought. The joint 

 committee which has been formed consists of equal 

 numbers of representatives from the Universitv and 

 the association, and the initial membership is as 

 follows :— Prof. J. W. Cobb, Prof. J. B. Cohen, Prof. 

 A. G. Perkin, Prof. Granville Poole, Prof. A. 

 Smithells, Mr. W. G. Adam, Dr. T. Howard Butler, 

 Mr. S. Henshaw, Mr. S. A. Sadler, and Dr. E. W. 

 Smith. Research work undertaken will be carried 

 out under the supervision of Prof. Cobb, and reports^ 

 embodying the results will be published at intervals. " 



The annual exhibition of the Royal Photographic 

 Society was opened on Monday last at 35 Russell 

 Square, W.C.i, and will remain open until Octo- 

 ber 29. Admission is free. The greatest novelty 

 from a scientific point of view is a portrait of the 

 Postmaster-General by M. Louis Lumiere's new 

 method of showing the solidity of solid objects by 

 means entirely different from the ordinary stereo- 

 scopic method. Separate photographs are taken of, 

 say, six different planes of the object, and the camera 

 is so constructed that while the relative positions of 

 the object, the lens, and the plate remain fixed so far 

 as regards the plane being photographed, a move- 

 ment of the plate and the lens renders unsharp the 

 images in the other planes. Thin transparencies are 

 then made from the negatives, and these are placed 

 in properly spaced grooves one behind the other. 

 A diffused light is arranged behind, and the whole 

 is viewed, normally, from a distance of a yard or so. 

 The result shown is strikingly good so far as the 

 face is concerned, the definition being a little soft. 

 The edge of the collar, where there is great con- 

 trast, shows a double or multiple image. Mr. Howard 

 M. Edmunds illustrates a method of photo-sculpture. 

 An image of an accurately drawn spiral line is pro- 

 jected bv means of a lantern on to the face of the 

 subject while a photograph is taken of him. A high- 

 speed drill does the carving, and it is guided by 

 " sighting a microscope attached to it^ on to " the 

 special portrait described. A large series of photo- 

 graphs of spiders, butterflies, moths, etc., taken by 

 flashlight without regard to the time of day or night 

 except as the character of the subject renders neces- 

 sarv, is shown by Mr. Oswald James Wilkinson. 

 The results are excellent, most of the pictures being 

 life-size. There are many radiographs of great in- 

 terest, astronomical photographs from Greenwich, 

 two photographs of a waterspout by Mr. J. W. 

 Knight, and innumerable other examples of good 

 scientific work, besides the pictorial section. The 

 societv's museum, which has lately been enriched by 

 a large quantity of apparatus used by Fox Talbot, is 

 well worth a visit on its own account. 



During the meeting of the British Association at 

 Edinburgh Prof. W. D. Halliburton delivered a lec- 

 ture on giants. "He said that the popular conception of 

 a giant was that he was a powerful, magnificent man, 

 and very often used that power to the detriment of the 

 races of mankind. As a matter of fact, a giant was 

 a feeble and usually short-lived pc^rson, and destitute 

 of the features associated with masculinitv. It was 



