222 



NATURE 



[October 13, 1921 



Notes. 



With regard to the article on " University and 

 Civil SerVice Salaries " published in our issue of 

 August 25, the editor of the Civil Service Gazette has 

 written to say that " the proportion of Civil Servants 

 receiving above 500Z. per annum is relatively very 

 small, whereas the number of teachers receiving this 

 amount all over the country is decidedly large." The 

 latter part of this statement, we may say, even 

 if it were true, is quite beside the point. That a large 

 number of teachers all over the country should re- 

 ceive more than 500I, per annum does not make the 

 lot of a large number of university teachers who 

 receive less than 500L per annum any better or more 

 endurable. It may be recalled that the article arose 

 out of a letter (and subsequent correspondence) from 

 the Provost of Worcester College to the Times of 

 August 15. This letter stated, inter alia, that many 

 Civil Servants receive double, and even treble, the 

 salary that the greatest learning and distinction can 

 obtain at Oxford, and this notwithstanding that, with 

 few exceptions, Civil Servants of the highest class 

 are men whose intellectual attainments, as tested in 

 examinations, fall considerably short of the standard 

 of a tutorial fellowship at Oxford. If, therefore, any 

 comparison of emoluments is to be made, it should 

 not be as between university teachers and the whole 

 body of the Civil Service, but as between university 

 teachers and Civil Servants 0/ the highest class. 

 When this is done we find, as stated in our article, 

 that the emoluments of universitv teachers fall con- 

 siderably below those of this class, and we mentioned 

 the modest 800L a year of a tutorial fellow of Oxford, 

 and referred to the fact that the permanent heads 

 of Government Departments after September i will 

 receive "only" 3000Z. a year — as one of the Times 

 correspondents quaintly puts it. Whether Civil Ser- 

 vants of the highest class are overpaid or not is a 

 question which we did not discuss. But we had no 

 hesitation whatever in asserting that, in view of such 

 salaries, University teachers — who are public servants 

 no less than the Civil Service — are grossly and un- 

 fairly underpaid. 



October weather this year has created a record 

 which has outstripped the many weather records of 

 192 1. Each da}^ of the first week was extremely 

 warm. The Times of October 6 contained a com- 

 munication on the "Warmest October day on record." 

 Descriptive of October 5 it gave shade temperatures 

 of 84° at Kensington Palace and Camden Square, 

 83° at Kew Observatory and Hampstead, 82° at 

 Croydon, Bath, Weston-super-Mare, and South Farn- 

 borough. At Camden Square so high a reading had 

 not previously been reached in October during a period 

 of sixty-four years. At Kew the reading was the 

 highest October reading in fifty years, and 6° above 

 the previous maximum in October, 1886. On 

 October 6 the temperature was 84° at Kensington and 

 Hampstead, 83° at Croydon, and 82° at Kew. Tem- 

 peratures of .80° and above occurred this year at 

 Greenwich on four days between October i and 6, 



NO. 271 1, VOL. 108] 



the reading was 833° on October 5, and 84-4° on 

 October 6. The average maximum for the early days 

 of October is 60°. There was only one day in 

 Septertiber warmer than October 6, 87-9° on Septem- 

 ber 9, and there was no day so warm in August this 

 year. In the previous eighty years, since 1841, there 

 had been only one day in October with a shade tem- 

 perature so high as 80°, the thermometer registering 

 81° on October 4, 1859. In 1908 there were four 

 days, October 1-4, with the thermometer at Green- 

 wich above 75°, the first three days each having a 

 temperature of 78°. This is the nearest approach in 

 October to the hot spell just experienced. In the 

 eighty years there have been fift5--seven Octobers with 

 the maximum for the month less than 70°, and two 

 Octobers with the maximum less than 60°. During 

 the night of October 3-4 the lowest temperature in 

 parts of London was 64°. In the previous eighty 

 years at Greenwich the thermometer has only once 

 remained above 60° throughout the night, the highest 

 night minimum being 603° on October 6, 1916. In 

 Paris the temperature of 82-8° last week is stated to 

 have been the highest recorded in October since 1757. 



Announ'CEment is made in the Times of October 6 

 that a flashless and smokeless powder has been pro- 

 duced by the Ordnance Corps of the United States 

 army, and that the flameless effect is obtained by 

 mixing certain substances with the propellant so that 

 a dull red glow, instead of a flame, is produced at 

 the muzzle of the gun. The subject of flamelessness 

 in artillery is one which presents difficulties, both as 

 to its tactical advantage in all circumstances — for 

 when the round is flameless there is usually a cer- 

 tain amount of smoke-^and also as to achieving the 

 condition in guns of all calibres. An advantage of a 

 flameless explosive is the reduced liability to back- 

 flash on opening the breech of the gun. The subject 

 has been studied photographically for a number of 

 vears in connection with the liability of blasting ex- 

 plosives to ignite fire-damp in mines, and Will showed 

 by this method that the addition of salts, mostly of 

 the alkaline metals, to blasting explosives suppressed 

 the after-flame of the explosion, not only from explo- 

 sives such as the carbonites (mixtures of nitro- 

 glycerine, nitrates, and oxidisable substances), but 

 even from trinitrotoluene and picric acid. According 

 as the mixture of gases evolved from the explosion, 

 containing inflammable gases such as carbon 

 monoxide and hydrogen, does or does not ignite on 

 mixing with the air at the mouth of the bore-hole, so 

 the explosive gives flame or is flameless. The same 

 principle has been applied to the burning in a gun of 

 propellants of suitable calorimetric value, and for 

 calibres up to five inches mentioned in the Times 

 report flamelessness can be attained without much 

 diflficulty. To solve the problem for larger guns is, 

 however, by no means so easy. 



In his address on October 3 to the newly constituted 

 Glasgow Society for Psychical Research Sir Oliver 



